1. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 1 THE PERVASIVE ROLE OF THE IMPLICIT OTHER IN SHAPING AND MODIFYING PERSONALITY PSYCHO- AND SOCIO- THERAPEUTIC METHODS OF OVERCOMING THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF IMPLICIT OTHERS IN THE ADULT AND IN THE ADOLESCENT LESSON 11 Under Construction

2. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 2 THE INNER CHILD AND THE IMPLICIT OTHERS No matter how grown up one is, the parents they internalized as child remain in the mind as implicit others. We do not know they are there but we show and feel their effects. We feel the same things we felt as child when parents were always present. Similar acts and circumstances always bring the same feelings and inner reactions. Similar desires, feelings, thoughts, and intentions bring the same inner reactions that we had as a child when our parents were present and reacting to us. INNER CHILD Inner Child in relation to Implicit Parents Unconscious effects of the perpetual watchful eye of internalized, implicit parents We know what you’re thinking. We know what your really want to do! We saw you do that! You know what is going to happen to you.

3. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 3 SLIPPING PAST THE IMPLICIT OTHER FILTERS As adults, we attempt to free ourselves from the negative influences of our parents, just as we tried as teens, even though we are no longer accountable to them and have our own independent lives. However, when we do try to change our lives to be what we really want for ourselves, we usually find that effort snuffed out by the same old feelings. We even attempt to rationalize and say we didn’t really want that or we really wanted to do that [sour grapes and sweet lemons. If we are successful in slipping past, we typically feel uneasy about it. If it seemed our parents wanted us to be mediocre or miserable or anxiously striving, even as adults, we find it difficult to shake that old pattern. Original intentions in an adult Original intentions attempting to slip past the implicit others. Ah ha! We caught you!!

4. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 4 HOW TO IDENTIFY YOUR IMPLICIT OTHERS AND THEIR EFFECTS Implicit Others Original intention Pseudo Dis Incorporate Original intention Modified intention Experience of discomfort/inauthenti city/dissatisfaction Leads to inference that one did not follow through on one’s true, original intention. Action > Inferring modified intention from action Pseudo Incorporate Action SituationSituation Discomfort in a situation, with an act, or with feelings related to the situation, suggest that the implicit other has influenced modification and suppression of one’s original intention. Discomfort can be a teacher helping one regain one’s authenticity. Everything that goes on in our minds is colored by the Implicit Parents. Here are a few factors that are affected. – The way we see the world and the way we think the world or people relate to us. – How we relate to authorities. – How we relate to our and other’s feelings. – How we envision our future. – How we define ourselves, our self definition or self concept. – Our self esteem and how we estimate and judge ourselves. – How we related to different kinds of learning and education. – How we relate to the opposite gender and sex. – Our belief systems, values, interests, and preferences. – How we relate to work, mode of everyday living, finances, success or failure.

5. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 5 Finding And Facing Down The Implicit Parents Using the ‘As If’ Scenario Your parents will be as they always have been just as is true of their parents before them. It is your own ‘inner’ mother and/or father that is the crux of the matter as far as your life and your future is concerned. When you see a vivid display of the typical nature of their personalities, take note of it because this image can create a clear mirror of your inner mother/father that is invisible but, nevertheless, so pervasive, invasive, and insidiously checking on and diverting your every ‘first’ impulse. Seeing the external mother/father doing their thing helps you grasp this inner process because the inner mother/father is so difficult to detect. Yet, you feel those same feelings and act that same way that you did in their presence even in their absence. In order to detect the inner parents, you have to work backwards. You may feel unfulfilled and you may know that this has been going on so long, as long as you can remember, but now you can stop yourself, in your head, and then work backwards. To do this, you use an 'as if' scenario that says, "If I could detect the inner mother/father at just exactly the moment of my original impulse, I could sense how my inner parent would probably be acting and talking. They would be acting and talking just the way I see them in real life in that typical, vivid moment and now they would hindering or squelching my true impulse in my head in the present just as they did in the past. They would be inhibiting the first impulse before it even gets a chance to try itself out. And, that is why I never flow freely from that pristine impulse to action. And, that is why I end up never feeling fulfilled. So what, if I make a mistake! It is my life and I can recover and learn from it. It is not the end of the world. And, I can pick myself up and try again just like everybody else. And, all the feelings I have learned to not like and tried not to feel are, nevertheless, good and are there for a reason. Those feelings do not kill you, they pass, and other more likeable feelings come along. How much better that would be for me than perpetually feeling unfulfilled!“ The shouldn’t and the should of the inner parents can then be replaced with a freedom to experiment and an ability to acknowledge my own judgment and trust my own judgment and then deal with the consequences in my own way. When I can do that I feel fulfilled. I am myself. I am true to myself.

6. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 6 A METHOD FOR REGAINING AUTHENTICITY, SPONTANEITY, PEACE, AND PERSONAL FREEDOM SituationSituation When we learn to identify situations that are discomforting, when we identify what in ourselves is being affected, when we identify how the implicit others are handicapping and crippling our lives, dominating our careers, or keeping us locked in to miserable feelings and moods, we are on the road to inner freedom. We can now decide to throw off or exile our implicit others. It is a difficult path back to our original intentions and primitive feelings. The first move is acknowledge how we have been limited. The second step is imagine the possibility that our true tendencies may be buried deep and may be almost opposite to what we feel compelled to be, do, or have. The third step is to acknowledge that we barely know our true buried self and finding and expressing it is held back by powerful feelings of anxiety. The fourth step is to try to imagine being, doing, and having differently. Just to imagine this makes us feel awkward and want to recoil. It seems strange that to break out and explore and experiment will make us feel even more uncomfortable and uneasy than we did before we began this journey. However, to break out requires discipline, determination and persistence. Implicit Others Original intention

7. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 7 ADULT Psycho-Therapeutic Methods of Supplanting Implicit Others in the Adult SituationSituation Original intention Act consistent with original intention. Accepting, understanding, providing an atmosphere where the past and the negative effects of the implicit others and be safely uncovered and explored and the authentic self can be discovered and expressed. Supplanting the negative implicit others. Now I can be, do, and have in ways that are authentic, true to myself, and eventually spontaneous. I am finally beginning to feel at peace with myself. Implicit Others Original intention ADULT

8. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 8 Phase II. Using journaling and the Think-aloud Method to Overcome the Implicit Other 5. Distant Future 1. Distant Past2. Recent Past Self Retroflexivity The Negative Implicit Others Self Reflexive and Retroflexive journaling: gaining freedom from negative Implicit Others to be one’s authentic self. Implicit others exert the predominant influence over intentions and interpretations of one’s past. Gaining emotional independence and emancipation from and extracting implicit others and their influence are the major goals of therapy, if the person wants to achieve inner freedom, happiness, and serenity. Self Retroflexivity Self Reflexivity Moving back and forth from one’s view of the distant past to the recent past to one’s vision of one’s future.

9. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 9 Phase II. Using journaling and the Think-aloud Method to Overcome the Implicit Other Self Retroflexive journaling: (CONT) ENVISIONING AND THE IMPLICIT OTHER. – By using journaling on a daily basis to recollect the influence of the negative implicit other in particular situations, it eventually becomes a habit to do so in the midst of the day’s actual situations also. – Recovering the inner experiences related to these situations and then retracing back to the situation of origin with one’s parents, or peers, a clear connection can be made. Such an insight that informs oneself of how one’s current inhibitions, compulsions, etc. were formed and how they have made you a prisoner with negative implicit others as the guards, releases you to the possibility of extracting them and their inner influence. As you begin to do this, you may begin to see these situations as opportunities to experiment with new ways of being and behaving, of breaking out of the inner prison. – Gradually, as you see that things can be different, that you can be different, that you can create a better world for yourself, you may want to begin to move from the distant to the recent past and present and then begin to see how your view of your future has also been constrained by the negative implicit others. Once again you can see the possibility of re-construing your future. You can envision a new future that in more in tune with your newly found authentic self and newly found potential. – The next task is to envision plans, strategies, and steps to achieve new goals. – Finally, you can decide to take the opportunity to experiment and practice new ways of being and doing in actual situations. Record your interaction, evaluate it, and self correct just as though you were growing up for the first time. – As you break a few of those ominous barriers, you gain courage to try more, you gain confidence, and the first thing you know you are no longer a creature of old habits but are able to meet new situations with spontaneity, flexibility, assertiveness, and self assurance. Experimenting and finding new ways of responding become second nature. Life is an adventure. You are free to be yourself and create your own world and way of being in the world.

10. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 10 ADOLESCENCE AND SOCIO-THERAPY For the adolescent, life is lived in prospect rather than retrospect. Everything is new. What teens need is someone to help show them the ropes. It works best if that someone is a third party and not a parent. In the institution, that third party is the Maturity Coach

11. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 11 TEEN SituationSituation Original intention Socio-Therapeutic Methods of Supplanting Implicit Others in the Adolescent Implicit Others Original intention Supplanting the negative implicit others by caring, coaching, and helping the teen learn to use good judgment. Maturity Coach “I’ve developed a bond with you because you have been genuinely interested in me, given me support and guidance without coercing me, and helped me learn to use my own judgement wisely.” The Original intention intelligently modified to take into consideration consequences and shaped to more skillfully, wisely, and responsibly achieve my own goals. “You have helped me see that by helping to maintain a healthy, positive community, my own life is much better also.” New, more maturely expressed intention. “It’s like you have become my true parents, psychological parents that are really for me. I feel secure now. Now I am really proud of me!”

12. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 12 Journaling Exercise to Assist in Supplanting the Negative Implicit Other If a person were to sit down at the time optimal for them to ponder their life, morning, night, or whenever, and recall the situations where they felt the most unfulfilled, blocked, anxious, resigned, angry at self or others, etc. and after recovering the memory of the situation and the feelings to take time to go back in time to similar situations and/or feelings when they were a child with their parents and then recall how their parents reacted to them, what they said to them, regarding that type of situation and/or their behavior in that situation, then maybe they could also write their speculations and inferences about the parental influence related to the recovered memory might still be operating, albeit unconsciously, in their lives today. Then write about alternative ways others, for example some person or persons they feel are free of types of reactions and feelings the writer has, someone they feel is really healthy and happy, and imagine how those people would have reacted had they been the writer's parents. In imagination, take them to be the parents and reenact the scene with these new parents present and with their reactions and see and feel in the mind's eye how the writer themselves acting freely and differently. See what it would be like being this way or that and choose one way to actually decide to enact in real life, regardless of how odd they might feel, how out of character, how contrary to their identity do it anyway. Then afterwards get back to Journaling that experience and consider whether to try another, uncharacteristic, approach or to go with that one for a while. This is pretty elaborate, but change at such a fundamental level is inevitably a big and demanding challenge.

13. copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC 13 Differentiating Between the Needs of Adolescents Versus Adults and Differential Use of Methods Is of Crucial Importance. Psychotherapy with journaling as homework is ideal for the adult. Maturity Coaches with socio-therapy is ideal for the adolescent.