If your grown-up self is not working every day on your bottom line or life issues then your  inner child will be busy every day trying to fix them for you. That's hard work for a kid.
 Everyone needs to learn about her or his bottom line or life issues and to distinguish these from what may seem important but which turn out to be only symptoms pointing to the real issues.
Identifying a life issue starts when you notice a group of similar and repetitive problem patterns. You or someone you know keeps experiencing these same patterns again and again through life. If it's a bottom line issue it will keep coming up in different ways, in your conversation, how you see other people, what irritates you in others, what you like in other people. It will usually stand out in the kind of work you do and how you like that  work, the kind of films you enjoy, how you like to relax. Whatever you do, wherever you go there it is again. That's a life issue.
Your most powerful "life issues" are related to the problems that worry you most, but they can also be involved in some of your best solutions.

Signs or symptoms?

When an inner protector character (inner self)  is interviewed, it may talk at length about a particular problem in terms of something that character wants to see changed. But if the problem the character is talking about is described with a broad label like ‘It’s a personality clash." or "It’s a communication problem." this suggests it is only a symptom of deeper underlying issues.

Typically symptoms (rather than bottom line issues) are often externalised (focused away from the individual and outwards to another external person or object)  as in "He didn’t ... ; She won’t ....; You always …. We never ....It always ....They keep doing ...". 

Additional discussion or laddering down to a deeper level may then identify internalised core beliefs. "I don’t .... I can’t ... I never ....".

Those, in turn, point to the deeper internal ‘bottom line’, a smaller group of basic issues (examples below). So, how does this help?

Compared with hundreds of core beliefs, protector characters (inner protector characters) and points of vulnerability, there are far fewer bottom line issues, perhaps ten or less.  You will notice a similarity with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Pia Mellody's life issues)

Remember, If your grown-up self is not working every day on your bottom line life issues then your  inner child will be busy every day trying to fix them for you. That's hard work for a kid.

Copyright © John Nutting 1996- -   and   ©   GROWING AWARENESS   All rights reserved World Wide  1996 -   LAST UPDATE  Sunday, 07 February 2016 11:28

Don't worry about these copyright notices at the foot of each page. It just means I want to hang on to legal ownership of what I write for use in future books.  Until that day, please feel free to copy and even adapt them for your own use and for friends as long as you acknowledge me as the author and owner of the copyright and you don't charge anyone for them. If you want to use them professionally or commercially (charge a fee for them) or for clients, each sheet you hand out must include full acknowledgment of copyright ownership as above and if  you are benefiting as a result, I would appreciate an appropriate sharing.

RETURN TO LOVE YOUR INNER CHILD   HOME PAGE