Taming Your Outer Child: Overcoming Self-Sabotage and Healing from Abandonment

by Susan Anderson

FINALLY, THE BREAKTHROUGH BOOK THAT PUTS YOU BACK IN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE

Most of us have met our Outer Child once too often. The self-sabotaging, bungling, and impulsive part of the personality. This misguided, hidden nemesis—the devil on your shoulder—blows your diet, overspends, and ruins your love life. A menacing older sibling to your emotionally needy Inner Child, your Outer Child acts out and fulfills your legitimate childlike needs and wants in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in counterproductive ways: It goes for immediate gratification and the quick fix in spite of your best-laid plans. Food, attention, emotional release—your Outer Child usually gets what it wants, and your Adult self can feel powerless to stop it.

Now, in a revolutionary rethinking of the link between emotion and behavior, veteran psychotherapist and theoretician Susan Anderson offers a three-step, paradigm-shifting program to tame your Outer Child’s destructive behavior. This dynamic, transformational set of strategies—action steps that act like physical therapy for the brain—calms your Inner Child, strengthens your Adult Self and releases you from the self-blame and shame that are the root of Outer Child issues, and paves new neural pathways that can lead to more productive behavior. Discover

* the common Outer Child personality types, including the Drama Queen; the Master of Disguise; My Way or No Way; and Love the Getting, not the Having
* proven techniques to resolve underlying sources of self-sabotage
* insights that will allow you to stop blaming your supposed “lack of willpower” for your problems
* key strategies for healing the painful issues of your past
* mental exercises that effectively deal with Outer Child challenges around food, procrastination, love, debt, depression, and more

As your head, heart, and behavior come together and learn to help, not hurt, one another, your strong Adult Self, contented Inner child, and tamed Outer child will become a reality. The result is happiness and fulfillment, self-mastery, and self-love.

Genres: Self Help, Psychology, Nonfiction, Mental Health, Personal Development, Health, Relationships

296 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Zooey]

Edit June 2020: Almost one year later and I think it’s unfair to give such an opinionated review while I haven’t worked through the entire book (and to even accuse her for not knowing what’s she doing, I take that back and removed it from the original as it was inappropiate). Still never read the whole thing.

Edited original: Don't like how she splits the person into three parts and makes you do dialogues between big and little all the time. Doesn't get to the core. No background theories in why we become self sabotaging and fearing abandonment, which means no opportunities to gain more understanding in our own psyche. Each chapter is short and has no deeper insights provided whatsoever. It feels like she's touching the surface of the problems, advising you how to pull weeds but not roots.

If you deal with the problems of self sabotage and fear of abandonment in repetitive compulsion I would advise you to pick up the books Adult Children of Emotionally immature parents by Lindsay C. Gibson and Healing the Child Within by Charles L. Whitfield.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book if you tend to sabotage your own efforts. It puts the "outer" child in his or her place - the part that is still mad about slights from childhood etc...the part that says, I was _____ed in childhood so now I can't______ , or I have a free pass to ______ (put off deadlines, overeat, over drink etc). and says...

Outer, I know you mean well and are trying to speak for me, but you are actually messing up the things I want to do, such as getting a job, keeping a partner, being healthy, etc... and then it brings in the "Adult", which, yes, is like the old TA - Parent Adult Child --- but give this book a chance to stand on its own w/o comparing with the old PAC ideas, because they bring in the Adult as a combination of things - both objective and loving - the person in you that can talk to "outer" and say, Look, I am in charge now and I am helping "inner" (your base line inner child that just has needs and is feeling hurt, alone, scared, etc.) to get what s/he needs - your version of help is not what s/he wants so now I am in charge - but I appreciate your energy and all your efforts to stick up for "inner"....

and so on...

the part that I liked most was the concept of seeing your "inner" you as a child on the corner without a family and then "adopting" her. And talking to her to assure her that you will keep her forever and never abandon her. It explains that each time we overeat, procrastinate, act out and alinate our partners, etc, it is like we have "abandoned" our inner self - let the "outer" child take over, like an unruly older sibling that has no brains but just lashes out trying to stick up for us....

[Morgan Schulman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is by far the most helpful self-help book I've ever read-it's like years of therapy distilled into one program (and I say that as a therapist). It helps supply this missing link between insight and behavior to begin positive change.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book introduces you to your Outer Child - that part of you that throws tantrums, reaches for a second cookie, and blames others when things go wrong. Through a series of exercises (visualizing, writing, and dialogues) you get to know your outer child and learn how this part of you prevents you from achieving your goals. You develop empathy for the outer child - it`s only trying to protect you - and learn how to meet its needs and curb its self defeating patterns. The book teaches you how to apply this to interpersonal relationships as well as to personal achievement goals such as finances, diet, and exercise.

[Ashleigh Mattern · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to learn how to get out of your own way and learn how to accomplish your goals, this is a great book for you. But first, you're going to have to get comfortable with some exercises that might seem strange, like talking to your inner child and your "outer child." You're probably familiar with the concept of an inner child, the part of you that holds your most basic needs like to be loved and cared for. The outer child is that part of you that wants the pizza anyway, that procrastinates when you should be working, that eats way too much cake. This book is all about learning to embody your adult self and not let the outer child take control.

[Victoria Wilde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Transformative. Life-changing. Powerful. At first, writing the dialogues felt hokey, but I found myself having conversations I didn’t even know I was feeling. And getting in touch with how you’re really feeling gives you an opportunity to think of ways to change that and take better care of what you really need in a way that propels you forward instead of stuck. I’m a sucker for self-help and development and this book really felt like something different than others that I’ve read. Highly recommend to people who aspire to be more self-aware and happier individuals. All the heart eyes emojis for this one.

[Sam Bates · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. I will admit it seems a little hokie to divide yourself into three parts. Inner child, outer child, and adult self, but it truly works and you can dig deep into your feelings and learn how to let you inner child become alive.

[Betani Skye · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been studying how to deal with the crap subject for far too long, and this really isn't the book you want. if it was, i would have been"tame" years ago. i'm pretty sure i'm less tame, and that the cycle is just speeding up. my MAIN issue with this book is "the inner outer whatever 3 person in you conversations/split? 3??? just 3 people, eh??? no... yeah, we are not that simple. outer-inner dialogue is usually worthless, especially at this basic level. (if i ever unsabatage and forget what it means to feel abandonment...THEN i see if i need to have a heart to heart with my uterus...but that's not going to help me if i don't even feel safe without my bottle 24/7.....anyway.... the more i study this stuff, the more i must begrudgingly admit that if you want to end the cycle of self sabotage, and stop feeling, attracting, and causing abandonment and every other "need" you acquired that you say you don't want but can't stop yourself from getting.....it really is all about feelings and the diving into those feelings with shadow work. and by shadow work i mean feeling into your body and finding the fragment of a memory, then feeling it, and feeling it, and full on invision changing the ending to that trauma the baby you, toddler you, sometimes even your gramma or someone you don't think you even freakin' know. go back any way you can to feel what "you" felt and sooth and change that belief and emotion that trauma created. but the more you do it, the easier it gets, and the more fun it can be, once you get by how nuts you feel and sound as you soothe the entire vibe as much as possible. but as the memory and the feeling isn't "real" anymore than these words i'm writing are real....making it up wonderfully instead of a simple change and feed to a warm bed...that's not going to help anyway. i guess to start you out, do sessions of EFT (emotional freedom technique) and then deeper EFT sessions with an ADVANCED practitioner, or someone trained in holding space and adding helps along the way, as you go into as much depth as possible about how to "fix" all the memories that have caused you to repeat the sabotage and attract abandon. (Teal Swan had some interesting tactics about this type of cognitive behavior therapy that helped me get deeper into my last shadow work session). but S. Andersons's "3 persona" conversations is not going to cut it.
we are not that simple. "clinical" CBT and the steps and is quality knowledge, but theory and awareness are worthless when it's to do with memories you don't have really, when it's trauma you experienced before you understood concepts or language. so i really think feeling/going back to the first time you remember feeling that way and then imagining healing scenarios into changing you past kind of....sometimes it can be fun (letting your baby self know there is a whole other bottle in the fridge for her! she can have as much as she likes!!! and holding her and rocking her, and singing to her (as older me, or making the mom hang up the phone and give her love) that's helped me way more at piecing myself back together. but sometimes i can't face the intensity for a week or two afterwards. Sonya Sophia's youtube's touch on this with EFT....but i think i just have to focus on my triggered outburst feelings that DO have words like, "i want to go home" comes up and i AM home...soobviusly something there... and just follow that down the rabbithole, then start making things up and see if it helps...the last one was finding aspects of me that couldn't handle the neglect as an infant, so they DID "go back home!" (this was from Teal, and i thought, freaky!!, but...then awesome idea!). and i had my beloved passed on grampa go see if he could find the other little baby me's back in heaven/source/carebearland/etc and anyway, it ended up being even cooler and more interesting than i thought i could have imagined....but stuff just comes to you. it's really all about getting into the scared, terrified little soul you once were and giving her/him SO much unconditional support and love and fullfilment over and over again in different memory glimpses, and make that night time story sweet and soothing and so so safe, protected, held, heard, wanted....you know the words you needed. i think we just need to have the courage to follow down that rabbit whole and face what we don't want to think about thinking about. i have lots of typos....but....i don't want to talk about this anymore. hugs to all....if you can message me with questions or tips that ACTUALLY helped you in helping your 6 day old self feel safe and loved.....i've already got baby aspects of me traveling to my soon to be ex in his childhood to help us both be or know or.....SOMETHING. :-). again.....be strong and breathe! imagine if we actually piece ourselves whole again???!!! :-).

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An expansion on the "Journey from Abandonment to Healing" concepts of inner child work that then focuses on the "bratty" outer child. Good activities to help slow down the knee-jerk reactivity of trauma survivors who used overly protective coping techniques that spiraled out of control and grew unwieldy. Great for learning to remove judgement (see above's comment of "bratty") and strengthen ability to redirect unhelpful "outer child" protector parts. Recommend for those with codependency issues, after reading the foundational "Journey..." first.

[naz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coincidentally, I’m reading “The Body Keeps Score” too. The biggest takeaway from that body of work has been that chronic trauma manifests as learned helplessness at all levels of your psyche - limbic brain to higher executive cognition - and intermingles your personality such that you no longer feel in control/an agent of your own self.

You can learn to numb yourself and desensitize from your most painful visceral sensations and thus cut off the most important feedback signals: your emotions.
You may deny and deflect (e.g, workaholic, having arbitrary financial/work milestones, etc).
You may lash out in survival and do anything and all to sustain yourself, at mercy of your habitual defences.
You may shut down, isolate, and never be your true self again.

But, you can't escape your experience. Your body remembers. Your limbic brain remembers. And you will continue to live as another: a hypo- or hyper-aroused version of your true self.

And the effects of trauma compounds over the years until your dysfunctional coping mechanisms are no longer effective. This is when you may have a breakdown, a full hijacking of depression or anxiety.

Ubiquitous CBT talk therapy won't work because you can't think your way out of trauma. You cannot affect your limbic brain in the same way that it can affect your higher executive functions.

Even emotion focused trauma therapy won't be effective unless you can learn to draw the boundaries between atomic pieces that need be aligned.

I have studied many personality theories that have attempted to do this.. Internal Family Systems, Eric Berne's transactional analysis, good ol' Freud's theory and all it's derivatives .. but nothing offered me a way to structure and organize my existence in a manageable way until this book.

Amazing. The novel idea that will completely shift your paradigm about personality and ways of relating with yourself is that you can separate your inner child (emotional core) as a blameless entity with valid needs and feelings from your behaviours (habits/impulses).

This, a small but powerful tweak to the typical way personality is analyzed is profound. You can now relate to all parts of you, even those that felt out of bounds or touch of your cognitive self, and mediate between each part effectively.

My only criticism is of this book is the constant demonizing of the Outer Child until the very last chapter. I understand the need to direct anger/blame on "another" but I don't personally think that's necessary if you have been introspective enough to understand the role that your Outer Child has played so far.

My Outer Child is why I am where I am and why I survived what I experienced. I owe this moment to my dysfunctional ways. I wouldn't have had a chance to pause and gain an objective view without having made a bit of cushion to fall onto, and I owe any sense of security and safety I enjoy today to the way my Outer Child kicked my own ass -- even though it hurt me, even though my body suffered, and even though I made decisions in conflict with my intuition that tore me apart internally and hurt me so much externally.

It was the necessary evil to even have a chance at a restart.

So I take a moment and embrace the Outer Child too. She has been through so much and has tried its best to protect me.

[Ana Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some good insights, but hard to slog through and badly written

This is essentially my review in a nutshell. It took me an absurdly long time to finish reading this not very long book (a year!) because while the exercises can be helpful, the neuroscience is almost garbage, the prose is eyeroll inducing and not compelling, and the author congratulates herself on her program hundreds of times throughout, making it read like a sales pitch. I picked up a good idea or two but I would like most of that time back.

[Adaora Allure · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many self-help books offer to help us nurture and parent our inner child. Susan Anderson offers very practical insights into how our ever-present Outer Child may be aiding our Adult selves in self-sabotage and hindering us from truly "adulting." Her numerous years of practice make her quite the subject matter expert and readers will surely strike a chord with relatable client testimonies. Tips and techniques abound helping retrain your brain.

[Casey McKinnon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book on separating your important inner emotions from the tendency to act out with sabotaging behavior. I found it to be very universal, no matter what you are going through, and would recommend it to anyone on a journey to become the person they always wanted to be; an adult in charge of their own behavior.

[Susanna Della Penna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me. I found it to be mostly common sense.

[Connie D]

Up to page 59. Interesting book especially if you're up to journaling through it.

[Maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, bother. This is one of those read it because it is good for you. It was recommended by a friend and indeed she was correct that it was a pertinent read for me. Lots of items to work on.

[Nicole Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely had some aha moments while reading this book. Something about the author’s voice annoyed me, but the concepts were useful.

[Stephanie La Bue Robles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed new insights from her research. Never thought about a teenage self that would self-sabotage. Easy to understand writing.

[Marissa Pena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great for those struggling with codependency issues and self sabotaging behaviors

[Raslalique · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book to be very difficult to read.

The author keeps trying to sell the premise which, by the way, does not seem to be widely accepted in her field. I don't mind reading outside the box, especially if the ideas are useful. However, this was a hard slog due to the writing. It just wasn't engaging and many ideas were repeated unnecessarily. I never heard of the concept of an "outer child" before this book but personally, after reading this I did not like the concept of an outer child that is responsible for the self-destructive things I do. It seems too much like not accepting responsibility. The book over all is too shame-based for me. We blame an outer child for bad things but I don't want to blame any part of my psyche, especially a part that is supposed to be a child. That's a big turn-off for me.

Another turn-off was the constant fat-shaming. Now, being obese is unhealthy, we all know this. However, many people who would turn to a book like this have used food as a coping mechanism or are addicted to food or sugar and are overweight or obese. A mental health-oriented book that goes on and on and on equating being skinny with being beautiful is inappropriate in my opinion. "You make me look like a blob". Dafuq?! Noooooo! I can't, in all honesty, support a book with this constant theme running in the background. What about those people who just look like "blobs" because of genetics or disease or injury? These constant displays of fat phobia diminished the author's authority in my mind. Even little kids would not get away with referring to someone as a "blob". Fat phobia is in many mental health books. I like Margaret Paul's work but she also describes her skinny fictionalised clients by other traits like hair colour, profession etc. while the larger fictionalised clients are described as any number of synonyms of the word "fat", sometimes with less description about their other traits. It's pretty sad but these people are humans and don't have all the answers, no matter how much their editors want us to believe they do.

[Joshua Biggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

The theme of the book is that we each have the following:
1) a needy, helpless inner child
2) a reactive, reckless outer child
3) a higher adult self

By separating these parts of ourselves, we can start to listen to the inner child, observe/interject the outer child's knee-jerk reactions, and develop the higher adult self. The higher adult self needs to become the executive of the team, by listening to the fears/needs of the inner child, taking notice of how the outer child tends to react to the inner child's requests, and then, ensuring we're acting from a place of higher consciousness.

I like her idea of separating ourselves into parts and developing a system to ensure they work together for our long-term benefit.

For me, the biggest takeaway was the idea of abandonholics, and abandonholism. When she presented this idea (that we become addicted to the pain/soothing caused by our emotionally unavailable partners), it was like a series of cascading lightbulbs went off in my head. AHA!

I'm excited to research this part of her work more thoroughly to break this personal pattern of mine.

[Fatima]

Don’t fall to yourself, or deem yourself incapable. Likewise, don’t assume you are biting off more than you could chew. Just accept the feelings as feelings and push through your fears, get on with your life and have a little faith and some courage. Don’t let outter child use your breakup to gain new ground. Rising to this challenge will do more to promote your emotional growth that avoiding it will.
Because while you are avoiding your fears are secretly gaining strength, not melting away.
No matter what your outter child is up to, to prevent you from the new relationship, it’s time to stop avoiding, worrying, self-blaming and get your adult-self take the command.
Stages of abandonment: shattering, withdrawal, internalizing, rage and lifting

[H Rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

Inaccurate in terms of how the psyche actually functions, the book was a slog and had to force myself to finish. I WROTE all in it, including scratching out entire paragraphs or correcting the concepts, a sacrilege but the only what that I could read the work was to mark it up. Alas, I cannot recommend this book. Shallow, inaccurate, and encourages further splitting of the mind and psyche with made up, contrived concepts that divide Inner Child(ren) parts of consciousness into Inner and Outer. Avoid. Instead of this book, read Inner Child and other works by Dr Lucia Capacchione and Drs Hal and Sidra Stone, or at the very least read concepts by Carl Jung, “What We May Be” by Piero Ferruci, or something by Heinz Kohut.

[Kaylee Schmelzer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was an interesting way to personify brain function as a few actors. As someone who works with children, I almost didn't see the need to separate inner and outer child in an analogy - in real life, kids can both have innocent desire and problematic actions and you reconcile those within the same person. There were definitely some useful exercises and tools in the book that anyone could use, but as a Christian, I felt like there's not a lot of room for God to be part of the process. It really puts the self in self-help. I didn't like how the author encouraged general readers to read the topical sections because there would be something for everyone but wrote for the reader intensely struggling with that topic. I'll take some pieces and leave a lot.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are familiar with inner child work, Anderson's work adds one more step, which is dealing with the Outer Child. According to Anderson, the Outer Child is the part of ourselves that can sabotage us and prevents us from moving forward, leaving toxic relationships, or fulfilling our dreams. This work reminds me of Parts Work and makes sense, however, the suggestions aren't easy or natural and take time to get used to. I would have given this book more stars but I think the information started to get repetitive and could have been scaled down a bit. Anderson has something here when it comes to self-abandonment, getting in touch with one's feelings, and stopping self-defeating behaviors.

[Garrett Rodgers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommended

A close friend recommended this book as he claimed it would, "give practical measures to reverse self-destructive behaviors, rather than simply identifying them and their source(s)."
I have been in counseling for almost 15 years for depression and anxiety and while it has helped me in a journey of healing and growth, this book quickly closed the gap and eventually surpassed my experiences in dealing with the self-destructive behaviors. It is a marvelous concept and I'm glad I picked this book up.

[Chava · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has great examples and practical exercises for turning your life around. Hearing this on audio has trained my adult self on what to say during my mental conversations. Although I'm not sold on splitting my head into more than the voice of impulse and the voice of rationality, I like the concept of splitting self-sabotaging actions from the emotions that underlie them, and taming the actions while accepting the emotions.

[Abhijit Srivastava · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is well structured, and written in a teacher's tone: well meaning, but too dogmatic. The content is backed by years of research, and supported by dozens of live case studies.

My take is that it should be taken as the last resort for people who are dealing with inner challenges. In my limited experience, I've observed that travel and reading helps overcome a lot of inner doubts and challenges. However, in extreme cases, books like this could offer practical guidance.

[Geraldine Snell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great tools and language for journalling, separation therapy and using the 'outer child' as a helpful scapegoat for most self-sabotaging / gremlin / immature behaviours but sometimes a bit long-winded and repetitious, would have benefitted from exercise checklist at end of each chapter but then I suppose it's not a workbook.

[Kel Caffekey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing and made so much sense! I've been working on little me for a few years now and adding into the mix my outer child this totally is life changing!
I've implemented loads of ideas from this book and dialoguing between all 3 parts of me has made such a huge difference already in my life.
I'll recommend this to so many people from now on.