The Inner Child, enigma to me

[tea-lady]

I hear the elusive, Inner Child work survivors must do in order, to well survive and be ok after coming Out of the FOG. It seems elusive and mysterious that only some have access to.
So where can I get solid sound self therapy to heal my inner child and recover from being neglected and abused by toxic and narcissistic family. I always hear about how great it is, but it feels like woo woo and frankly an enigma. I would like to know if it actually is a thing. I have trauma trapped in this body of mine.   Thankyou

[Call Me Cordelia]

I hear ya. It did feel woo woo. Part of it was not knowing how to regard myself with anything approaching compassion. Some of it simply is woo woo. My opinion, but a lot of "meditations" are simply weird to me.

I did find EMDR very helpful. Reading about the science behind it helped me feel confident going in. It seems rather odd so preparation is critical, my therapist did 3 sessions with me I think before we did any actual EMDR. If you are guarded against the process of any kind of therapy work it's going to be hard for it to be helpful. The Body Keeps the Score was key for me.

I don't know if this applies to you, but since I am no longer able to be in therapy what I am doing is self-parenting alongside my actual children. Raising kids brings up all kinds of triggers as they are growing up, and the parallels and contrasts between their experiences and my own at a similar age is sometimes like a punch in the gut. When that happens I sometimes imagine I've adopted myself at the age when whatever the trigger is happened, and parent both my child and imaginary young me at the same time. It is exhausting though.

Another thing that has helped is writing letters to myself at various ages. This is helpful especially when I'm not working through an obvious trigger, such as riding a bike. Writing about being bullied in school, never being allowed to dress like the other kids, those sort of memories that were still affecting me. I would just start writing, sometimes pages and pages. On rereading my "voice" sounded like that ten year old or whatever age I was. That trauma was still real to me. Then usually I would be tearful, and when THAT was calmed a bit, I could write back in my adult voice in response.

There are workbooks and such for inner child work but I found I came up with more than enough material to process just by living my life and I dislike workbooks. I'm annoyingly independent and always have to do things the hard way. According to my mother, anyway.  Hope this helps!

[Boat Babe]

Hiya and here's a hug for you the adult and one for your inner child. 

We clearly don't have a small person tucked away inside us but we have memories and ingrained patterns. We are also creatures of narrative and metaphor.

I first encountered my inner child, for want of a better word, in therapy. I was talking about my father physically assaulting my mother when I remembered/imagined (really not sure which cos I was very young) sitting on my bed, hearing this and feeling primal fear and despair. I felt terribly sorry for this little girl and burst into tears. The T suggested I soothe her/the memory/the feeling using the words and emotional strength of the adult that I was now.  It was revelatory as I imagined holding her in my arms and telling her that she was not alone with this and that I was there to look after her. Something big shifted that day and not only did I feel much better after the T session, I also knew that I could soothe myself. I understood at a deep level where so much of my anxiety sprang from and why I was the way I was.

Two years ago I got my first dog. I joked that I got him for my inner child (I would have loved a canine companion back then) and, I gotta say, my inner child loves the pooch!

[GettingOOTF]

Hi there. I batted with this too. There is a podcast called The Adult Chair that is about this topic. She explains it very well.

There isn't an actual little child living in us, that's something to make it easier to connect to that part of our mind. When they talk about inner child work they talk about dealing with the coping habits we leaned as a child.

There was a lot of shouting and conflict in my home. I got in to such trouble for random things so I was always scared and that's been how I approach life as an adult, so in my case they'd say my inner child is scared but really it's me who needs to learn to fully accept that the world isn't how it was when I was a child. I need to stop making decisions from a place of fear.

I have very few memories of my childhood so I found inner child work difficult as I couldn't recall specific incidents like they ask you to in most inner child work. The Adult Chair takes a different approach. I recommend starting with the first episode where she covers the basics.

[Hepatica]

Dear tea-lady,

I think I understand what you are saying, the nebulous sensation of imagining the inner-child and reparenting her. It seems, for me anyway, to take a leap of faith and I find that hard. I don't rule it out but I feel like I am faking it when I try sometimes, or even most times.

Reading Pete Walker's book, From Surviving to Thriving and seeing a TEd talk awhile ago (can't remember the name sorry) but it was about the factors that lead to adult physical and mental responses to adverse childhood experiences, how they studied this and found correlation between childhood adversity and later life challenges, really helps me. It is because they are talking about physiological responses and this really makes sense to me. It makes sense that when a plate is dropped and  it shatters that our bodies will react into fight or flight until we realize we are ok. Hearing thunder makes our body react. Hearing a baby cry makes us respond. I understand now why years and years and years (18 years for me) of screaming fights between my parents and sister messed up my physiology? My anxiety button was turned on way more than the average child in a peaceful family. What GettingOOTF said is exactly how I think as well. We had a childhood of fear and now I approach my adulthood from that place and I desperately hope for healing.

Looking at it this way really really helps me have compassion for myself. When I joined a Mindfulness Mediation group, focussing on self-compassion I learned that I could calm myself down by deep breathing, focussing on my body and even saying soothing words to myself. I thought about it as reprogramming for less anxiety and depression and it works. It is not a complete healing but I have noticed myself being more calm in social situations and that's good.

I struggle now with the highjacks that come with emotional flashbacks. After reading Pete Walker's book at least I now know what is happening even if I can't get it under control yet. At least I am working on the self-talk and not beating myself up. I am much more kind to myself now and that's another good thing.

I dabble with inner child work even thought I don't necessarily feel I believe it yet, but I hope it can work. I re-visit my young self in my memory of moments of extreme sadness and pain and imagine sitting with her and telling her I've come to help her survive it and I tell her that now things are much better and all will be ok. Boat Babe mentioned getting a dog. I did this for myself as well. This has been the biggest joy for me, that I can give myself the things I always wanted as a little girl because many of the things I wanted then, I still love now. (Maybe one day I'll get that house in the country with a few rescue donkeys...  )

I understand the enigma part of it though. It is a mystery but what we do know is that we did experience childhood adversity or abuse in later life and it did effect us at a physiological level. And I believe that this can be worked with. I hope to try EMDR at some point as well.