Hungry ghosts and child stories.

When the hungry ghosts within us take over, we have very little bandwidth to move. They become active because the child parts in us stop trusting the adult part to deliver on their emotional and physical needs.

The child parts and the hungry ghosts are not patient and they are not understanding, rather they don't care much about anything at all. Anything but what they want. Just like a child.

The challenging task when this happens is to try and pacify the child, to make it believe that the adult is going to take care of the needs. And even if the child takes over, we have to try to minimise the damage and let the adult part gain agency again.

References:

• The Pathways to Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander
• In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate