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- The Kid Within
Most of us are tough on ourselves.
It creates an ongoing internal pressure.
We have to learn to access emotions and let go.
It is required if we want to find freedom and success.
Inner child work is the most powerful tool I’ve found for letting go.
This week’s newsletter and Recover! Heal! Launch! Premium videos - are focused on accessing this most vibrant, creative, and wise part of us. Also, our Monthly Roundup of your comments is below.
Premium Members: Your exclusive premium content is at the bottom of the newsletter - a deeper dive into this topic!
“The very characteristics of childhood I am describing—wonder, dependency, curiosity, optimism—are crucial to the growth and flowering of human life.”
― John Bradshaw
I attended a workshop with John Bradshaw back in the day. When I first heard a grown man talking about the “inner child” I almost walked out. It was way too touchy-feely for my emotionally shutdown state of being.
In retrospect, I see that it was a sign of the immense shame I carried that needed healing. I still cringe occasionally, but it’s become central to my recovery and the way I work with others to heal the deeply embedded shame most of us carry.
Inner child work is among the simplest, most accessible, and most effective trauma healing techniques that exist. It is internal psychodrama. The magic of theatre is that it gives us some distance and we can see ourselves on stage. It evokes emotion or what the Greeks called “catharsis.” Inner child work evokes old feelings that are not easily accessed.
Often we look outside ourselves for the answer to our pain. We look for “the one” or “our better half.” In her classic book Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes:
“We all have made the mistake of thinking someone else can be our healer, our thriller, our filling. It takes a long time to find it is not so, mostly because we project the wound outside ourselves instead of ministering to it within.
There is probably nothing a woman wants more from a man than for him to dissolve his projections and face his own wound. When a man faces his wound, the tear comes naturally, and his loyalties within and without are made clearer and stronger. He becomes his own healer; he is no longer lonely for the deeper Self. He no longer applies to the woman to be his analgesic.”
We find our deeper self by developing a relationship with emotion - not by numbing it out. The kid in us provides direct access to that great pool of vibrancy - and has been waiting for us to turn within
When we visualize that small person in us, we may feel shame or fear at first. But with time the grief and joy will flow forward. We will make friends with the emotions that we used to hide away.
Three topics that bring the healing tears to me immediately: 1) My daughter 2) My other daughter who died many years ago, and 3) True contact with the little boy in me. I have made repeated contact in therapy, at workshops, and in my journaling. I used to be ashamed and have mild disdain for this little guy, but that’s all changed. He’s my favorite person now. Grief is the doorway to healing and true joy, and the inner child stuff gets me right into that river.
One way to see this is that the child within us has been holding these emotions since we were hurt. We all have some trauma - mild or severe - and if we were not nurtured properly through these experiences, the emotions become frozen in our unconscious.
Although unconscious, these feelings still have influence and power and can run our lives. The child can help us see the reality of these emotions, and then we can develop ways to allow them to come forward.
Writing to our inner child with our dominant hand, and allowing the child to reply with the non-dominant hand is incredibly powerful. It will get the emotions rolling if done with sincerity.
“How are you feeling?”
“i’m mad.”
“Can you tell me more?”
“you’ve left me alone so long, i’m sad too.” etc.
Believe me, the feelings will come, and feelings expression is the main medicine that heals trauma. Further, your child remembers perfectly what was and is most important to you - before we started piling on familial and cultural expectations. If we can get past the cringe, inner child work is a key to healing and freedom.
A great community-based program called Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families (ACA) has taken these techniques to an advanced level. It’s free and highly recommended. This week’s videos and worksheets in Recover! Heal! Launch! are focused on this topic as well.
AN AFFIRMATION
Today, I am speaking with my inner child and listening to the response. I allow the feelings to come forward. I trust that this pure voice in me holds the key to my freedom, joy, and peace.
Reminder: You are part of a community here. We are supporting each other to grow! Please reply with your experience and comments. We’ll be doing a monthly round-up of community responses.
Take care,
Bob
Premium Members: More on this topic below! Scroll down for the Recover! Heal! Launch! videos with Bob, worksheets, questions for growth, affirmations, meditations, solutions, and guided visualizations.
The Monthly Roundup!
The forum for your voice on healing.
On Writing:
Just read your "writing" article, was unable to post a reply there. Loved your comment "sometimes I like my misery". My younger self luved to wallow, until I realized it was a waste of energy and precious time. I always have to write with pencil. I don't erase, I just like the process of graphite meeting paper.
On STFU:
One thing I learned from my experience is not to be who I really am. But that has a healing effect for me. This is personal. Hiding can save you from chaotic situations. I can only define my personality. It's tricky but true.
No one is to be blamed. Everyone is learning to be or not to be.
What is boundary really? Boundary for me is the balance between humility, learning to be ( self) mirrored with the outside. Boundary is thus to have the capability to collect all the good energy to within, and learn but at the same time knowing that perfection is lame.
I think collective consciousness should act to individuals at both ends of the spectrum ( good and bad) reciprocally to what group thinking allegedly thinks of individuals on the spectrum. I think this balances things and group judgment and traumatic impact on individuals will cease through time and then everyone will come to search for the truth within self in time.
What is the solution to asking for help and the answer is no? I'm alone now and it's better than the "no" crowd. Every self help says ask for help, could someone expand on asking for help the right way?
I am not good at asking for help.
I'm not good at this because when I've asked in the past, I haven't received it, it's been attached to something else and/or I've felt used & manipulated in asking for it.
I try to do everything alone as a result. I'm sensitive & hate getting hurt.
I'm also in such a terrible place that I basically have no choice but to admit I need help. That's where I'm at.
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