Solid Inside
Cultivating Authentic Self-Worth and Lasting Inner Peace
Twenty short chapters, each one an attribute of a good parent turned back on yourself — with exercises you can actually do. Here's what's inside.
“A substance that does not flow perceptibly under moderate stress.”
That's the dictionary on the word solid. It's also a fair description of what happens to a person whose relationship with themselves is in good repair. Life's normal pressures stop deforming them.
Order on Amazon →Where it started
An experiment with an empty chair
He was nineteen and chronically suicidal. Each session was just like the last. Because Paul was a mediocre student, struggled socially, and did not have a girlfriend yet, he could not see any reason to continue living. His depression was the flat, numb kind — no crying, no sadness, just weight.
One day a simple question occurred to me: “Are you hard on yourself?” “OH, YES!” he said, perking up for the first time, and listed everything he told himself daily. I'm worthless. I'm ugly. I will never amount to anything. People only pretend to like me.
I thought about that, and realized it sounded like an abusive parent's voice to a child. So I asked him to imagine an eight-year-old version of himself sitting in the empty chair beside him, and to be the ideal father to that boy. Would he say such things to him?
He started crying immediately. “No, never.”
That was the first time in a long while he showed any real emotion — and, more importantly, the first time he showed himself any compassion. He told me later he no longer had thoughts of suicide, partly because he would “never tell a child that dying was the answer.”
I have been developing that analogy ever since. This book is what it became.
The framework
Two parts, one relationship
The Inner Parent
The part that decides, plans, acts, thinks, judges, and talks to you. It bought the umbrella, remembered where it was, and grabbed it on the way out the door. It has authority — and therefore responsibility.
The Inner Child
The part that gets acted upon. It feels, wants, observes, and witnesses. It's where your creativity, energy, moods, and sense of worth live. And it is watching everything the parent says and does.
Contents
Chapter by chapter
Read the first three in order — they're the foundation. After that, take the chapter you need on the day you need it.
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Intro
Introduction
Why your relationship with yourself is the foundation of your mental health, what it means to be “solid,” and why caring for yourself first is a matter of order, not of selfishness.
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01
The Parent and Child Analogy
The model itself. Who the inner parent and inner child are, why we never outgrow the needs of childhood, and the difference between self-care and selfishness.
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02
Self-Compassion and Acceptance
Harsh self-talk and why it never improves behavior. Splinters that have to come out. The courage to sit with an emotion instead of medicating, fixing, or fleeing it — and why what looks like falling apart is often healing.
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03
Self-Discipline: For the Long-Term Best Interest of the Child
The other half of good parenting. Why a lack of structure feels like a lack of love, how to tell a real break from avoidance, and the small language shift from “have to” to “want to.”
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04
The Way to Self-Worth
You can never get enough of what you don't really need. Why approval, achievement, and appearance can't deliver worth — and the one thing that can.
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05
Why It's Not Selfish to Care About Yourself
The parable of the car. Disappointment is not harm. How to give only what you can afford to give, without resentment and without needing the other person to be wrong.
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06
Self-Improvement for the Right Reasons
Intentions matter, because your inner child hears them. Why improving yourself to become “good enough” burns out — and why doing it out of love doesn't. Plus Grandma's Rule for beating procrastination.
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07
Self-Awareness: Know Thyself
How to get to know a person you've never spent quality time with. Following genuine interests, dropping self-limiting identities, and taking an honest inventory without using it as ammunition.
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08
Self-Reliance: You Are the Expert
Experts know a great deal — but never more about you than you do. How to seek good counsel with your eyes open and stop abdicating responsibility for your own life.
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09
Get in the Driver's Seat: Self-Determination
Private victories, keeping some things to yourself, and unhooking emotionally from other people's expectations without unhooking from the people themselves.
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10
Blame and Responsibility
What causes a problem is rarely what solves it. How to place accountability where it belongs and still take ownership of your future — without calling what happened okay.
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11
Responsibility and Authority Go Together
The serenity prayer as an operating manual. You are in charge of what you think, say, and do — and of nothing anyone else thinks, says, or does.
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12
Self-Mastery and the Art of Thinking Differently
Habitual thoughts as well-worn paths through a forest. Eight unhelpful thinking patterns to catch, a farmer who refuses to call anything good or bad luck, and a ten-minute cloud meditation.
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13
The Past, the Present, and the Future
“If only” puts you in the past; “what if” puts you in the future. Three grounding practices for getting back to the only moment you actually have.
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14
“Staying Peer” in a Seesaw World
Going one-up and going one-down are the same game. How to stay equal in worth in the face of put-downs, guilt trips, and your own moments of superiority.
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15
Be on Your Own Side
Authenticity, integrity, and alignment. Why rejection is information rather than a verdict, and why how people treat you is about them.
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16
No One Really Cares What You Do
Freeing and harsh in equal measure. Dismiss the imaginary audience in your head; the only one still in the theater is your inner child.
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17
Loving Others While Loving Yourself
Transactional love versus two solid people. Fill your own cup and give from the overflow, and the need to control or people-please quietly disappears.
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18
How Change Really Happens
Decision, then belief, then action — and the feeling comes last, sometimes much later. A bicycle, a long hill, and the trick of watching your feet.
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19
Helping Others
Never do for someone what they could or should do for themselves. The difference between being responsible to people and responsible for them, and what a boundary actually is.
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20
Hope for a Solid Future
Self-love as a decision followed by action, not a feeling you wait for. There is one life you can change today, and it is as good a life to start with as any.
Also inside
Exercises, not just ideas
The Self-Compassion Exercise
Ten minutes a day for a week, speaking seven specific sentences to a younger version of yourself.
“Would and Would Not”
A magic wand makes you confident. Now list exactly what you would and would not be doing — that list is your action plan.
Identifying Your Excuses
Rewrite your excuse in the form of a parent's excuse, then decide whether it would fly.
The Checking-In Practice
Two or three minutes, a few times a day. Hungry? Tired? Tense? What do I need right now?
The Parenting Skills Inventory
Everything a child needs — safety, health, emotional wellbeing, social needs, purpose, integrity — scored honestly against how you treat yourself.
Cloud Meditation
Place each thought in a passing cloud and return to the breath. Ten minutes of practice in choosing where your attention goes.
“You never outgrow the needs of a child. Being an adult means meeting those legitimate needs, which is now your job.”
Solid Inside
Solid Inside: Cultivating Authentic Self-Worth and Lasting Inner Peace © Lori A. Strayer. All rights reserved. Published by Loridian Publishing, LLC, State College, PA. Excerpts on this site are reproduced by permission of the author and may not be reproduced elsewhere without her prior written permission. All client narratives are composites; names, genders, ages, and circumstances have been significantly altered to protect confidentiality.