JustAYak

Those that come from abusive, neglectful, drug-addicted families, how did you figure out what is "right" and what is truly "wrong"? I am having a lot of trouble with this feeling of self-doubt, and this thought that I'm not allowed to do things because as a child I was never allowed to do them. It's wrong and I will get in trouble, is what my inner child would say. I know it's a sort of schizophrenic way of thinking, the inner child vs. the adult, but it makes a lot of sense to me (after my therapist explained it), so bear with me here. I am having trouble soothing my inner child...that part of me doesn't believe that it will be okay to share my secrets and do the things I want to do, despite the fact that now I don't suffer the consequences I would have received for doing such things when I was younger. He doesn't believe I can protect him, as my adult self now. He is terrified of what will happen if I tell. While I can acknowledge and validate his feelings, I have no idea how to soothe him...I feel as though acknowledgement is not enough. Does anybody get what I'm saying? Has anybody experienced this sort of therapy before? How do you get your inner child to meld with you and show it that you don't reject it or blame it anymore for what's happened? It hurts him, it makes him sad, confused, and feel alone when my adult self blames him for something that could not possibly have been controlled by him alone. I don't want him to feel that way anymore, but I don't know how to show him it will be okay.

I have always had major self-doubt, second-guessing myself. It's like I can't trust myself. Perhaps this is really a manifestation of my inner child, my inner child does not trust me. This is all very confusing and I am just beginning to explore it. I hope it brings me some healing and peace.

chicory

I have a lot of self doubt too Jay. Whenever I speak up about something, I can feel something inside saying "What you say has no value", and I talk myself out of sharing... a lot. I believe it comes from not being listened to as a child. Always being told to go away, find something to do, go outside, etc. I do not remember one time of going to my parents with anything and being listened to. We learned to be seen , not heard.

I know that isn't healthy, nor is it loving my 'inner child', who still seeks validation. I have to talk to myself a lot, and tell myself that I am not damaged goods, but am now a loved person, with something to offer. It is a struggle . often I have that feeling of 'not good enough', or not equal. I just have to talk to myself. It seems sad at my age, but I did not find out what was wrong with me until my mid thirties, when I went to Adult Children of Alcoholics twelve step meetings. There I found out that I was not crazy or weird.

I think it is really awesome that you are working on this now. Perhaps sometime in the future you might find a group of others like yourself, face to face meetings, where you can hear others who feel just like you, and help each other to work through doubts, fears, and there is real healing in that.

JustAYak

Thanks for the response ((Chic)). I looked for an ACA meeting near me as I am curious but the closest one is an hour away and I cannot drive due to the seizures.

Your comment on "We learn to be seen, not heard" really stuck me because that's one of the major things I struggle with. I don't like to rock the boat and flying under the radar is the easiest way for me to live but isn't always very effective. It causes a lot of isolation and frustration about why I can't just be "normal." I can't break out of this fly-on-the-wall persona because I am so afraid. All I've known is trouble when I have tried in the past but it's safe now...my inner child doesn't think so though. I don't know how to tell him "You're safe and I'm going to take care of you now," in a way that he believes me. Is it just repetition? Eventually I'll trust in myself if I say it enough? That doesn't make much sense to me, I guess.

chicory

You know, you are doing things today that you did not do a year ago. you are growing . your inner child is learning to trust. slowly, but surely.
I believe that as a child learns, slowly, with each experience, to distrust, it works the same way to learn trust. with each experience, each day, your vulnerable inner child will learn. I think time is our friend that way. repetition of positive messages helps to replace the negative . but I think that those walls we built to protect our selves are hard to tear down. they are strong, but were built a brick at a time, one experience at a time, and have to come down that way, too.

But! when a brick wall becomes full of holes, its gonna come down faster at the end, you know?

I think you are doing it. I think you trust yourself more than you did a year ago... actions show that, I believe.

and if there was anyone that I would want to listen to, talking about what is important to them, it would be you . you are a great guy, with a great big heart. give your inner child a big hug-he cannot be hurt like the past, because you are much stronger now.

sure there is discomfort... there always is when we are tearing down our protective walls. but the meanies are gone. only cleaning of the closets now, and you can do that in your own time. friends help, thats what I found in group, kind hearts who understood and showed me that I was loveable and made me look at my good traits. I always poo-pooed it when people would say nice things... would not let that soak in to 'feed' my hunger for love and acceptance.

but we are nice! you are nice, I am nice.. we are pretty lovable. I would like a friend like me, you would most definitely be lucky to have a friend like you!

let that inner child feel loved today!

One more thought... children learn by example. by being what we want that inner child to be someday, and being patient and loving and reasonable in our expectations, it will happen .

caboblanco

What exactly is my inner-child and how do I get rid of that bugger?

chicory

Hi Caboblanco.
Are you an adult child of alcoholic/alcoholics? If so, perhaps you were not nurtured enough , or were damaged mentally/verbally/physically. That causes a lot of us to be very vulnerable, sometimes as much as a child. If the abuse was bad enough, it might be very tough to function in some ways... like trust, confidence, feeling secure within yourself.

That is how I see it. since this is Jays thread, I don't want to take over, but did want to share how I see it. I bet Jay has an even better way of explaining it.

caboblanco

Im an adult 33..that was raised by an alcoholic father. I am also a recovering alcoholic myself. I don't know if the abuse was so bad or if i was just too sensative at that young age. well my sisters seemed to turn out great anyway, but to be fair my father was a lot harder on me being I was he only son.

soberhawk

I have never been through therapy focusing on the inner child, I am not very keen at visualizations – I do not even like the AV concept.

I have not had as rough childhood as you – a lot of respect from here how you are taking this on.

I think everyone has taken strategies that were sensible when they were children and kept on using them as an adult where they were only limiting their lives. If you have had a rough childhood it is just impacting your life a lot more.

I do not think I am that impacted by such things today and if I notice it I can challenge it. There is no reason to limit oneself instead of seeing what limits the world sets for one. It is easy today but it was not easy as young as it fueled a lot of anxiety. It is not easy to be tough when I ended up stammering with eyes flickering around. I am glad that I am not in my twenties anymore

I hope it will be rewarding to do this Yak.

Be brave and gentle towards yourself.

Remember to celebrate your successes, you need to do that when you take on challenges.

JustAYak

Hi caboblanco. Here is my take on the "inner child" as my therapist explained it to me. I hope it makes some sense.

When we were young, our parents imprinted upon us "don't trust, don't talk, don't feel." They rejected us in every way imaginable. They neglected us in many different ways, emotionally and maybe even when it came to general care (providing food, housing, etc.). Our feelings were never validated and often were actually treated as "wrong" by our parents. We weren't allowed to tell anyone about family dysfunction for fear of punishment. They did not show us love as other kids around us may have received it. Because of this, we grow up believing all this misfortune that has fallen upon is was our fault. That there was something wrong with us when we were a child and that's what caused such awful treatment from our parents. We developed coping skills in childhood that are no longer effective in adulthood and while it worked quite well when we were children, it is creating difficulties in our personal lives now. For instance, as a child I learned to be quiet, speak only when spoken too as that was the safest way for me to survive. It kept me from getting beat up everyday. If I did what I was told when I was told to do it, then *maybe* I could avoid my father's fists. The maybe is key here...sometimes I could do everything right and it would still turn out to be wrong because my father's decisions had no rationale -- he beat me whenever he felt like it, whether I did what he told me to or not. Now that I am an adult, and no longer have to deal with an abusive father as I don't live with him (and he's passed on anyway), I find I am still using the coping strategy of being quiet and reserved. I second-guess everybody's motivations for getting to know me or get closer to me. This is hampering my ability to make friends and real connections with people. I find it extremely difficult to trust anyone and it is this fear of rejection and hurt that drives me to use the only coping strategy that ever worked, the one I developed in childhood -- be quiet and you don't get hurt (as much). It is too bad though, because I am finding this does NOT work as we age...I need to learn new coping strategies.

All this comes to the "inner child" ideology. The inner child is the part of you that is still feeling confused, hurt, and blamed for all the things that happened in your childhood. It is the part of you that doesn't feel loved or protected. It is where all the fear stems from. My adult part now knows I can protect myself, but yet I still find myself feeling fearful at times. Anxious. This is because my inner child does not realize he is safe now. He is still in survival mode. When I bring up things in therapy that I feel guilt about, that I feel is my fault, my therapist tells me I am blaming my inner child. She asks me to consider how that makes him feel. Imagine it this way... would you blame an eight year old for being beaten by his parents? Of course not, it was not his decision, he probably didn't know what to do and was scared for his life. An eight year old cannot simply tell his parents to stop beating him without any consequences. We cannot expect children to make adult decisions or decisions that threaten parental loyalty. That is what I was doing. I was expecting my inner child to find a way out of the beatings, I was blaming him for being unable to make adult decisions. By blaming him, I make him feel guilty, confused, and alone. He feels rejected by my adult self, just as he felt by my parents. Now, I need to mend that relationship with him, so I can feel whole again. So I do not have to fear people or be afraid of rejection. If I can let him know that it was NOT his fault that he was not loved, and that he is safe now, and that I will protect him, I believe I can heal. It is about validating and acknowledging our inner most feelings.

If this makes sense to you, which I hope it does, I think you'll be able to see that you don't "get rid" of him. That is what we have been trying to do all along, we blame our inner child and shut him off, reject him, to try and get rid of him. This makes it much worse for us in adulthood. It makes things much more difficult. You cannot live fully if you shut off a part of yourself, you cannot be rid of your inner child, it just doesn't work that way. We need to repair our relationships with them if we want to be healthy otherwise I believe we will continue to live in fear and use ineffective coping strategies to manage our problems.

I too am a recovering-addict and also got the brunt of the abuse as I was his only son. My sister appears to have faired well but I know was still affected a great deal. You were not too sensitive...any abuse is awful and should never happen. You see, you have blamed your child for being too sensitive instead of placing the blame on your father where it belongs. No parent should hurt a child, ever. Bottom line.

JustAYak

I am making a conscious effort to tell him I love him everyday now... I know it sounds crazy but I think it is necessary. I have a hard time feeling love for myself and I have treated my inner child so poorly! Nothing will get better overnight but I think this exploration will help me.

We aren't even doing any visualizations actually. She has not asked me to visualize anything, just to "talk" to him. It's really just an inner dialogue that we do naturally anyway. She tells me what to ask him, and I find it surprising that answers actually come to mind when I ask myself these questions! It's hard to explain, it's like I'm accessing a dark little corner of my mind that I haven't been to in years.

I am wondering, what do you mean by "AV concept?"

JustAYak

I think I just figured out what "AV" is. Addict Voice? I also do not think of it in terms of addict voice vs. non-addict. It is all me and my voice. I do not like to personalize the addict part of me vs. the non-addict part of me (because there is no such thing as the non-addict part of me). If I thought there was a non-addict part of me, wouldn't that be considered denial?

However, I do believe there are child-like manifestations of my feelings, and adult manifestations. When I am fearful, the fears are often not rational (anymore), and that is definitely stemming from my child part. When I feel a sense of pride in my work, that stems from my adult parts as my child part never had an opportunity to feel that way. It is a distinction that makes sense to me, though I realize it would not make sense for everyone.

chicory

Wow- I am wondering how much of my anxiety problem could be helped with more work on my inner child? PTSD..that is more physical, correct or no? an imbalance of serotonin , affect of too much cortisol?

thanks Jay for the explanation. I know it helps me to tell myself that I will take care of my self, when I am unreasonably anxious over something.

caboblanco

I had a therapist years ago that told me that there is a uncouncious part of my brain. As a child raised by the father I was raised by I could uncouncsiously decide to not please him by acheiving great things because he would just take credit for it. It sounds almost ridiculous and scary but it really

struck a nerve with me. My father was so nasty to me and pushed me so hard so early all I could do was to say screw him and not achieve to my abilities, but this was not on a conscious level. It was deep inside me. I did achieve things in area where my father took no interest in like music and

sports. I don't know if this is what happened to me or still effects me today or if this would be considered the "inner child"

soberhawk

Great explanation Yak, thanks.

It sounds like a great strategy.

It must have pissed your father of that you focused on sport and music, while he emphasized schoolwork (I could imagine) – it is not always parents choose the right methods.

Riverbird

I haven't read all the replies so sorry if I'm repeating stuff but this post really caught my eye. This is so exactly the problem I have! I've been trying to get into therapy for a long while now. It's something I really want to do, but the actual act of doing it freaks me out soooo bad. If I even manage to schedule the appointment, I almost never manage to get myself there, and definitely not on time. If I do get there there is so much internal conflict that I essentially lose my ability to speak. I've had multiple therapists refuse to see me after a few sessions because they think I'm unwilling. The truth is the fact that I'm showing up at all shows a huge willingness, but it is so painful for me just to be there. I wish I could figure out how to put in to words for them how painful it is just to be there...but part of me wants to just sob and tell everything, while another part of me is so afraid of telling ANYTHING (I think because of the childhood threats of what would happen if I told certain things) that I can't make any words come out at all. It literally feels like there's a war going on inside of me, and I just get more and more angry inside while I'm stone-faced on the outside.

I sort of feel like I have more than just the inner child. I wrote it out in story form and came up with 6 different "characters" that I feel like have an influence on what does or doesn't come out when I attempt to share. It drives me crazy because I'll set up an appointment with a therapist (or plan to go to an ACA meeting, or to talk to a friend, or whatever), and I'll be genuinely looking forward to it all week...I'll even plan and rehearse some of what I want to say, and then I get there and nothing. So clearly I have no answers on how to soothe and calm the inner child, but I just wanted to say I can relate. The things that I have found to help are to take care of my inner child as though she were an actual child. I have a teddy bear for her to hold (which I actually did take to therapy once and it helped a ton, but the next week I was too self-conscious about it but couldn't explain why), and a special box for her with crayons and coloring books and such. I'll also spend some time curled up under a cozy blanket and watching cartoons when I'm feeling unsettled, since I think a lot of the fear and the upset does come from the inner child.

Don't know if that helps, but I really appreciate your post because I can relate to it a lot.

cymbal

I really appreciate this question. I wonder if you've read Robert Burney's
pages on joy2meu? He has some techniques that he shares to soothe the
inner child(ren). The pages helped me.

I found that there are several children. Each of them have different feelings. I think having an inner dialogue helps. Also think about hugs or hair stoking. Things that you would do to soothe an injured animal. Think of an injured kitten or puppy and send those feelings to the child. Having compassion for the kids is such a step in the "right" direction.

Personally I don't think its possible to change myself from an introvert into an extrovert. I think "expecting" big immediate changes of yourself is setting yourself up for resentment. I think maybe acceptance of myself as I am has helped me. Maybe trying to tell myself that its okay to take risks sometimes, do something different, so I might get something different.

I wish you success. Please take what you like and chuck the rest.

happybeingme

I just want to thank everyone for sharing in this thread. I am just starting my journey on inner child issues and it helps me to know others are working on this stuff too.

Lovenjoy

Hi Jay - I am so grateful for you and this thread has helped me enormously this morning. I was struggling very badly this morning and didn't know why. Sick of snow but more than that… RAS is doing well at the moment so not that… My alanon program is going well so not that… Doing my program this morning was not helping… My HP led me to stay with trying to figure it out, and I could tell it was important to my growth to keep looking for the source of the emotional fallout I was experiencing.

And after a few hours of struggle I realized that all the personal work I have been doing was challenging some of my fundamental beliefs within. The hidden beliefs which I developed as a child to survive and beliefs which no longer help, only hinder... And that brought me back to my first recovery in ACOA, which brought me to you.

And now I am looking at the fact of why my inner child is upset (I believe this to be the source of today's turmoil) - she has always believed she was the one that needed to hold everyone together and now adult me is taking that belief away….. Your heartfelt explanation above brought tears to my eyes and has shown me the direction I need to be going in to feel better today. Thank you so much and love and blessings to you.

Kialua

I think what helped me as an abused child was I realized at the age of 3 or 4 that my parents were crazy nuts and I was never going to be like them when I grew up and I was going to be nice to kids. Well I did go through quite a drinking time as a teen, but I never have abused children and neither has any of my siblings.

As far as what helped me know what was right and what was wrong, I was brought up in the church and knew the 10 commandments so that shaped my conscience. Things I wanted either lined up with that or didn't.

As far as being afraid of how others would react to my comments, if I speak the truth in love I don't care how they react. It's their problem. I have to acknowledge my own truth, those who accept that fine, those who can't well that is fine too but it doesn't limit or control me. I'm not in charge of how they feel or think and I don't have to outthink them like I did with my abusive dad. Always trying to say or do the right thing that didn't really matter because he was just out to beat me no matter what I said or did. So that is a no win situation. I just say what I know is truth for me and let people deal with it or not.

AuntieSoso

I wish I could be like that. I want to be like that. I want to be able to speak my truth and stand in my truth but it is so hard for me. I'm really taking an inventory of one of my friendships right now and part of me just wants out. And I look at it and I'm mad at her for so many things she's said and done to me in the past that have been hurtful that I just let "roll off my back because I'm an easy-going person." And at the same time, I'm just as mad at myself for putting up with her crap and either not calling her out on it, or backing down from a point of view just to get her to stop badgering or arguing or pushing or whatever.

And I look at the dynamic between my parents and I see that I learned that from my mom because my dad would yell or argue . . . actually, not even argue, because what he said was always right and one didn't question it. And I learned how to be quiet and still and if I just sort of tried to be invisible then maybe no one would bother me and I wouldn't get in trouble. And if I was the good girl then I could please everybody and maybe no one would get mad and there wouldn't be any yelling.

That poor child who was little me. On the surface, she had everything. Underneath, she was terrified and still is.

I haven't done any inner child work, but I look at the way I treat my pets and I treat them as I suppose I would treat my inner child. I tell them how much I love them, how special they are to me, how they are safe with me, how they will always have a home with me, how I will protect them and take care of them . . . maybe that's why I have so many pets and still want more!