Lilyflower

...they are still so pure. I am finding that we are all at our core pure beings of love, children seem able to show this without any hindrance - wonderful beings!

Lately I've been doing work on healing the inner child within me. I have begun to see that all I wanted as a small child was for my mum and dad to love me with no conditions, to make me feel special and valuable.

Taken from ''Breaking Free, a recovery workbook for codependance'' by Pia Mellody and Andrea Wells miller: children are naturally vulnerable, valuable, immiture, imperfect and dependant. 'It is the role of parent to nuture and help develop these characteristics to bring into the world a healthy functioning adult who is full of self esteem, interdependant, mature able to protect their vulnerability and who can accept themselves as ''perfectly impurfect'' being, understanding their imperfections and how these affect others looking to their HP for help work on themselves.'

I guess I grew up with a less than nuturing family, i'm still coming to terms with how dysfunctional and abusive my family were and are. As a result I didn't get the message from my parents that I was indeed loved unconditionally, and valuable to them.

When I acted out, as children do, my parents would react to my behaviour with a mix of anger (yelling and shouting, intimidation etc), physical abuse (hitting), talking to me in an abusive way (calling me stupid, idiot etc) or by ignoring me (sending me out of their presence and refusing to listen to me speak). I quickly learnt some things, that my feelings were unimportant, that any mistakes I made would cause people to attack me, that I was worthless, that I was not good enough, that other people had the right to hurt me, that if I am not perfect i will feel pain and probably many other things that I still haven't come to realise.

This last week has been very painful, with my daytime thoughts coming to me in bizzare dreams at night, restlessness and an overall heaviness.

I feel though that I am glad to be going through this. I am finally beginning to own my feelings and understand where my behaviour patterns arise from. I have for some time realised that in order for me to break my habits of self-distruction, doubt, fear and finding some kind of strange comfort within an abusive atmosphere; I need to go through this process, peal the layers of my onion back.

I want to find that purity of the child inside me once again under all this baggage, she was there once, and I know that she is still there somewhere, still wanting someone to love her.

i know that love has to come from me and me alone. It's hard though isn't it? Hard to let go of all that pain, to accept and forgive.

Lily xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Kindeyes

Lily
Yes. It is hard. But it is so wonderful that you are exploring yourself and finding that by letting go of the pain, accepting and forgiving......you free yourself! Harboring those feelings certainly does more damage to ourselves than it does to anyone who may have "caused" them.

Your upbringing sounds very familiar to me. I tell myself that my parents did the best THEY could with what they knew at the time. By accepting that, I have been able to make peace with my past and not allow it to define ME.

Keep walking the path you are on.......it's a good road!

gentle hugs

Mair

Hi Lily, my background was similar, it is hard getting to grips with the affects others have had in your life and the consequences that have followed you all your life.

A possitive thought that i have is that i will break this cycle, my kids will not suffer the same.

Take it easy

Mair xx

Lilyflower

Thanks Kindeyes, it is so true that these feelings have harmed me. As a child, I didn't know that, but as an adult I'm learning that I have chosen to keep these feelings and allow them to define me, made my history my story and i don't want it to be. That is why I am doing all this.

My mum is pretty much in denial about everything. All my life she has always had the attitude of why are you like this?, just buck up and get on with it! I've long passed hoping that my mum in particular will ever understand why I suffer depression and find myself in bad relationships. She will never look internally now, I know that, but it has been hard to accept that. For a long time I hoped she would understand, wrap her arms around me and say sorry, KWIM? Guess that was me just being a child still.

I adopted my signiture because I know I need to accept things happened and I can't change it. I know she and my dad did the best they could, they were young parents (17 married and 18 with 1st child) and both came from alcoholic backgrounds with much abuse. in comparison to their own upbringing, they did a great job!

Still i guess there is a part of me that is having difficulty letting go of the pain, i know that I act in ways now becuase of what happened then. I am understanding that my past has led me to the codependancy i suffer now, and why I have had partners, friends and coworkers that I allowed to abuse me. I find myself asking 'why?' all the time, a question that will never probably give me the answer I would like.

Some one suggested to me that I just sit with the pain let myself feel it and give myself an internal hug. Last night after having an 'emotion leak' where I cried like a baby for about an hour, I gave myself some hugs and told myself I loved me no matter what. It felt silly but also good.

Lily xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Lilyflower

Yep, with all my soul I want different for my little girl!

Lily xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mair

She's a very very lucky little girl to have you as her mother. It's a painful journey but the end results are enourmous.

Mair xxxxx

FormerDoormat

One book that helped me immensely was "When Food is Love" by Geneen Roth. And while it has nothing to do with codependency or alcoholism, it deals with another somewhat related topic--addiction to food. The author really got down to the root of her eating disorder and she talked a lot about how she healed her inner child. There's lots of really good stuff for everyone in that book! Since you're focusing on your inner child, I think you'll find this book a Godsend, LilyFlower.

Anyone who suffers from an addiction--be it an addiction to others (codependency), alcoholism, narcotics, gambling, shopping, food, whatever--will find this book immensely helpful.

Barbara52

I'm going to look for that one. Sounds like it could help my particular demon, eating my emotions.

Lilyflower

Thanks FD, I will track that one down, could use some help on the food front as well as I tend to tuck into pizzas, chocolate and milkshakes to make me feel good far too often than what I should!

Lily xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

FormerDoormat

Keep in mind that while I composed my reply, I was munching on apple slices dipped in hot chocolate (we had a chocolate fountain today in honor of Independence Day)....

Lilyflower

Lily xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx