Healing My Inner Child

After my session with my therapist on yesterday, we agreed that I needed to work on healing my inner child. You see I didn’t really have a true childhood. Every since I can remember, my Mom was teaching me about life and the bullshit it brings. She taught me the people to stay away from. She taught me to “listen to the tiny voice in my head” or the distinct feelings that I get when I’m about to do something or around someone. Then I moved into the role of caregiver. I helped take care of my younger Brother. I helped my Great Grandparents after school. I may have been able to play outside but my mind was never really that of a child. I feel like Michael Jackson without the riches.

Michael Jackson: a child who didn’t get to truly experience childhood and as an adult with the means to do so, took on a child-like imaginative life in attempts to make up for missing said childhood

Now I don’t have a Neverland…and I don’t invite over other people children to “play” with them. That’s weird. But I do often times buy my kids things that I wish I had growing up so that I can play with them. Rarely are they actual toys. I mean things like our trampoline, electric scooter, video games, board games, etc. And it’s generally short lived. Well…I do tend to jump on the trampoline quite regularly. My kids however rarely go outside so it’s cool to say the trampoline is really mine…

I was told by someone that I love dearly that I have this emotional wall up and I don’t let them in. One thing about me is I encourage people to talk to me…but me completely opening up is like a snail crossing the street. It takes me time…and a lot of it…

I sat with this comment and I thought about it long and hard. He’s right. I am cautious of everyone and everything. I think A LOT. I do not trust easily and I stay guarded. All of these things are to protect me and my feelings. It would take me a lifetime to tell you all the things I’ve been through to explain why I am the way I am. But I shut down easily. I don’t chase people. I don’t beg anyone for anything not even attention. Naturally I like to be alone. And after sitting for a while I realize that I sat in a mute relationship for so long that my communication skills now suck.

I can own that and I need to work on me…I need to completely heal from all the bullshit in my past. I’ve been good about burying it and pretending none of it happened but shit has a way of haunting you…aka triggering

So I discussed this with my therapist and we (my therapist) thought completing the Recovery of the Inner Child workbook would help. I only got about 8 pages in last night and went to sleep. Let me tell you I had the worse nightmare…

In this nightmare, I was myself as a child rocking ponytails with hair bows, a jean jumpsuit, T-shirt that said “Awesome Kid” and some white Tommy Hilfiger canvas shoes. The entire interaction in the dream was so vivid and real. I couldn’t hear anything in the dream as if someone had hit the mute button on the audio in my dream. But all I kept hearing was a voice softly saying “I will never hurt you.” But what I was seeing and feeling was just that, “hurt and pain”. As I emerged from the corner of the room in my dream, the sound started to come back. I was crying and yelling “you lied to me”. I woke up drenched in sweat. And I was crying. I got up from bed to get myself together bc it was 3am and I needed to go back to sleep. It’s just a dream. Or was it? The soft voice was me speaking to the child (me). This shit is too deep…

I won’t go into detail about the dream but in 8 pages of a book and a dream that seems quite relative to its exercise. Living rent free in my mind is the thought that at some point in my life the people who claim to love me will hurt me. And the thought lingers because time and time again it has happened.

My inner child is hurting…and I have to love her and heal her…

When I feel as though I am being “hurt” by someone who said they love me, I as a child would run. That’s why I ran away as a child. The thought was that I could run away from the hurt and not have to experience it. That’s why I completely remove myself from situations as an adult. I don’t act erratic and dramatic…I just quietly disappear. It’s how I feel like I can protect myself. It’s exactly what I did in my dream. And there was no communication outside of me as a child yelling. The other people in the dream were silent.

I know I don’t communicate my feelings but this is out of fear. They’ve been dismissed and used against me so much that I’m just conditioned to bottling things inside. I can’t change in a day, this has been my life for 30+ years. It’s going to take a lot of work.

Although I already want to give up on this inner child healing, I’m going to keep trying. I see now that it is going to be painful af but if I don’t do it now then when will I? I literally put off anything and everything in life that may seemingly bring me pain.

So hang tight! Some days I may not have the energy to blog. But I and def going to try and I will continue with my Daily Positive because that does help me and some of my followers everyday. But I do want to document my experience as it may help someone else.

Life project #3,786…