Inner Matriarch

DANGER!! The Inner Matriarch and her arch rival the Inner Patriarch cause so much trouble and set up so much conflict in relationships.

They are each dedicated to damaging or totally destroying grown-up functional relationships at the same time as they fight each other inside you.

Discover just how much trouble they can cause.

Learn how to identify them and how to deal with them.

I have now devoted a whole website to developing ways of reducing their toxic influence on you and your life.

Go to www.growingaware.net

Characteristics of the inner matriarch.

The overriding characteristics of the inner matriarch is that even when she sets up her house inside a man’s inner village, she remains scornful of men, all men, the way they think and act and feel. Her overriding loyalty even in a man, is towards women. Typically, an inner matriarch will take the side of another inner matriarch living nearby in another person's inner village, in preference to the male in whose village she has set up her house.

If you talk to your Inner Matriarch you will notice she is unlike other inner selves, because she does not seem to be concerned with the well-being of the wounded male inner child in your inner village. Nor is she concerned with helping the other male inner selves who live there.

In a way it's as though she is carrying within her the resentment of 40,000 years of male domination. Typically her attitude is one of justifiable resentment against all men even the most vulnerable inner male child.

Punishing the male inner child

To punish a male, any male is her way of avenging this. By itself, the fact that an inner child is a male is sufficient reason to apply pain or punishment. The matriarch also specialises in punishing male inner children in nearby villages. However, as this article explains, her worst punishments are applied the wounded inner child who lives in your own inner village. Perhaps this is because she has a precise knowledge of that individual child, what aspects about him of are the most wounded and therefore the most likely to feel the punishment.

She knows just where to stick her dagger

One of the most easily identifiable characteristics of the Inner Matriarch is the way she knows exactly where the stick her dagger to inflict the greatest pain on your wounded child. She will study males around her, noticing their weakest points, the things that irritate them the most, what words create the strongest sense of vulnerability in the male. She is an expert at identifying an exiled or disowned character in a male and taking on that same characteristic, something that is guaranteed to cause disharmony in a relationship.

Example: Jill’s new partner Jack is very non-judgemental and proud of it. Jill likes this side of Jack. He is particularly irritated by people who make unfounded judgements about him. Suddenly one day when Jill is in a bad mood her inner matriarch comes out and says to Jack “You are so fixed in your ways, I don’t think we are well suited.”

Jack’s inner child will feel the pain of Jill’s remark, but in fact he also feels something a bit more complex.

It’s actually Jack’s own inner matriarch who will apply the most hurtful stab of her dagger to injure his already wounded inner child, “Little Jackl”

Jack is unable to stop himself reacting negatively, to this wounding in fact the usual reaction is for his inner patriarch to leap in and increase the intensity of the battle by explaining to Jill just how “foolish she is to make such an unfounded judgement.” That won’t help, but it can stir up a real hornet’s nest.

The scene is now set for a full on fight. Jack and Jill think they are fighting but in fact it’s the inner matriarch and patriarch who are running the show. The outcome may well be the destruction of what was shaping up as a good relationship.

Keep in mind that one of the core goals of both the inner patriarch and the inner matriarch is to prevent men and women from having close, grown-up, intimate and peaceful relationships.

In this example the relationship is headed for the wrecker’s yard unless Jack and Jill know about their four inner patriarchs and inner matriarchs and can step back and notice who has taken over. If both Jack and Jill can just move into self-awareness they will be able to separate themselves from the four toxic battlers and get back to the point where grown-up Jill and Jack were looking when the relationship began.

See the Inner Patriarch page for more information on the characteristics of these two destructive inner selves and to learn how to identify them at work inside you.

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