Inquiry · “You Are Not Your Thoughts”
The Six Steps of Inner Bonding
To move from self-abandonment to self-connection by feeling your feelings, learning the false belief behind the pain, consulting loving guidance, and taking loving action.
Six Steps: (1) Be willing to feel your feelings and own them.
(2) Choose the intent to learn (not to control/avoid), with compassion.
(3) Dialogue with the wounded self / inner child — find the false belief and what it needs.
(4) Ask higher guidance for the truth and the loving action.
(5) Take the loving action.
(6) Evaluate — is the pain softening toward peace? If not, go back.
What it is
Inner Bonding is a six-step daily practice, co-created by Margaret Paul and Erika Chopich, for ending what Paul calls self-abandonment — the habit of ignoring, judging, or numbing our own feelings the way our caregivers once did.
The map has three players inside you: a wounded self (the shame-based ego that learned in childhood to control or avoid pain), a loving Adult (a present, compassionate part that can choose to feel and to learn), and a source of higher guidance (a wiser, loving inner/spiritual resource).
The six steps walk the loving Adult through turning toward the wounded inner child with compassion, uncovering the false belief fueling the pain, asking guidance for the truth and the loving response, acting on it, and checking the result.
It operationalizes the deeper, untouched Self (All Is One), the recognition that suffering rides on assigned meanings / false beliefs (Only Love Is Real), and stillness as the doorway to inner clarity (The Inner Creates the Outer).
The Method
Paul’s six steps (innerbonding.com; Inner Bonding, 1992), faithfully summarized:
- Willingness to feel pain and take responsibility for your feelings. Move into the present moment, focus inside, and tune into your physical sensations and feelings rather than running from them. Make the conscious decision: these are my feelings, and I’m willing to take responsibility for them (rather than blaming others or numbing out).
- Move into the intent to learn. Consciously shift your intention. Paul names two opposite intents: the intent to protect/control (avoiding pain through addictions, judgment, withdrawal) and the intent to learn (opening, with compassion, to what the pain has to teach). Invite a loving, compassionate presence and choose to want to understand what’s causing the pain.
- Dialogue with the wounded self / inner child to discover the false beliefs and what they need. From the loving Adult, gently ask your feelings: What am I feeling? What am I telling myself, or doing, that’s causing this wounded feeling? Uncover the false belief behind the shame, fear, or anxiety, where it came from (often childhood), and what the inner child actually needs. Also connect with the child’s gifts and what brings it joy.
- Dialogue with your higher guidance. Ask a wiser, loving source (however you experience it): What is the truth about this false belief? What is the loving action toward my inner child in this situation? The aim is to receive truth and loving direction rather than the wounded self’s fear-driven story.
- Take loving action. Act on the truth and the loving behavior that came through — speak up, set a boundary, rest, reach out, comfort yourself, change a self-talk. The action is the loving Adult actually caring for the inner child.
- Evaluate and notice the results. Check in: is the painful feeling — the anger, anxiety, shame — softening toward peace? If yes, the action was loving and true. If not, you return to the earlier steps to find the deeper false belief or a more loving action. (Sourcing note: the six step-titles and the wounded self / loving Adult / higher guidance map are Paul and Chopich’s Inner Bonding terms, attributed; the protocol is described faithfully in my own words, not reproduced.)
Source & Lineage
Inner Bonding was co-created by Margaret Paul, Ph. D. and Erika J. Chopich, Ph. D., set out in Healing Your Aloneness (1990) and fully in Paul’s Inner Bonding: Becoming a Loving Adult to Your Inner Child (HarperSanFrancisco, 1992).
It grows out of inner-child work (the reparenting current in 1980s–90s recovery psychology), spiritual psychology, and attachment theory, and resonates with Assagioli’s psychosynthesis subpersonalities and (in parallel, not derivation) Schwartz’s IFS. → (cf.).
Common refinements
Skipping Step 2. Doing the dialogue while still in the intent to protect turns it into self-attack or problem-solving; the compassion of the intent to learn is the hinge.
- Analyzing instead of feeling. Step 1 is felt sensation in the body, not a mental theory about your feelings.
- Letting the wounded self answer Step 4. Higher guidance speaks in truth and love; if the “guidance” is harsh, fearful, or shaming, that’s the wounded self — return to Step 2.
- Stopping at insight. Step 5 (loving action) is what changes the relationship with the inner child; insight without action repeats abandonment.
- Refinement: keep it short and frequent. A 5-minute pass several times a day builds the loving-Adult muscle better than one long session.