22/02/2022
Integrating the Inner Child
When trying to tackle the anxiety, depression, dissatisfaction and countless other unpleasant feelings that plague me in this life, its automatic to wrestle with myself and God. Praying to be different, trying every possible method to resolve the issues, and kicking myself for being unable to behave the way I believe I should, the way to earn me an easier and better life.
I used to think this was normal and tried to white knuckle through.
But what I came to realise during the final stages of editing my novel, is that the majority of my discomfort comes from emotions that are primal, and historical. The battle of Inner Angels and Enemies isn’t just happening on a linear timeline, progressing from youth through to old age. As partly spiritual beings we have eternal energy which is not confined to human time, and our battles are constantly moving back and to, throughout the entire timeline of our lives. This opens up a whole realm of possibilities when it comes to finding faith, peace, and healing.
During a serious bout of anxiety, due to some extreme personal challenges, my therapist told me to say to myself, “This is me in my fear, this is me in my fear” I wasn’t to say it to him in an attempt to explain myself, but rather to say it to myself to bring me to a deeper place of awareness and acceptance. Immediately I felt like I was 8 years old. My therapist directed me to pay my 8 year old self some attention, to listen to her and then show her unconditional love.
I have a vivid imagination, so I found it easy to picture listening to this younger version of myself prattle on about how scared she was, I pictured myself playing with her hair and validating her and holding her with compassion and affection. I felt better instantly.
This was revolutionary and sparked an amazing journey of growth, healing, and self-acceptance.
Developing resilience during childhood dysfunction or trauma hugely influences our adult lives. Children often blame themselves for any kind of trauma or trouble in the family home, and I took it upon myself to carry the burden of responsibility for things that I actually had little to no control over. Things such as the mood and safety of the home, the feelings and choices of others, financial worries and solving other grown-up problems like spiritual, health and relationship issues.
Children in these situations have to grow-up quicker than they should, which means shutting down the childish part of their true selves. This childish part has the power to sabotage our thoughts, emotions, and actions, as well as our playfulness, innocence, and sense of faith, safety, and trust, long into our adult years perhaps even the rest of our lives.
Sometimes the inner child is referred to as the ego, because they had to default to certain survival strategies to cope with childhood struggles. They can become defensive or controlling, hyper responsible, avoidant, addicted, aggressive, judgmental, co-dependant, promiscuous or dishonest (just to name a few) in attempts to remain safe in an unsafe environment.
I didn’t even realise until recently that my inner child was suffering from prolonged invisibility. She had been shut down so often, ignored, and bullied into submission that she had practically disappeared. No one including me knew she was in there. But she began showing up more and more. I noticed myself acting in extremely childish ways. Over-reacting to the trivial annoyances of life, crying when angry, feeling clingy and needy, shame spiralling, or turning into a sulking or hostile brat when my plans were challenged even slightly.
I knew it was time to integrate my inner child… but I was shocked to find more than one child inside me!
Depending on the emotional trigger, I can often discover children of different ages within me. Sometimes I have to console a 2 year old, sometimes a 12 year old and sometimes a 20 year old. Today I am dealing with the pain of a situation that happened only last year that needs healing.
My practice is this….
PROCESS OF INTEGRATION
1. Notice any disturbance to my mood. Ask myself am I peaceful or pressured?
2. If any sense of discomfort or pressure, take myself somewhere quiet with a pen and paper or journal or laptop. Write every thought that comes to mind and I mean every thought. Go deep and name the feelings and reason for these feelings. Then go deeper again and sit with those feelings. I don’t try to change or fix or resist them, just be with the feelings, practice acceptance. This is about being curious not critical of ourselves.
3. I imagine a younger version of myself and see if she has any feelings to add to the pile. I let her unburden her “Childish” and intense feelings and thoughts. I pay her all my attention until she has unloaded everything.
4. Then I give validation to her feelings. i.e. “That must feel very unfair. That must be heavy on your shoulders. I’m sorry you feel that way. That must feel awful, of course you’re angry, scared and sad.” etc.
5. Reparenting for me involves considering how God parents us, He doesn’t give us advice on how to fix ourselves, and He doesn’t condemn us in our brokenness. “A Broken and contrite heart God will not despise” God models patience, kindness, forgiveness, freedom, love and hope. So I remind my inner child of all the principles of God’s love for her and point her to the ultimate act of love. His Son on a Cross! I tell her how much God loves her (even if I am struggling to believe it myself) I recall all the amazing blessings God has given her. I tell her how worthy she is, that she is enough, she isn’t being punished and she isn’t to blame, she is forgiven, she doesn’t have to be perfect to be loved, she can embrace her humanity.
6. Sometimes I have trouble connecting with my inner child or sometimes she seems fine even when I am disturbed. So recently it came to my attention that apparently I can also be influenced by the inner children of my parents. This could be all part of the generational healing in God’s design. This requires knowing some of your parents childhood and the types of struggles and painful feelings they faced. Sometimes their child needs validation and comfort (as above), but sometimes its as simple as recognising that they are not me and I don’t need to carry the burden of their unresolved emotions. I can detach from any unhealthy attachment or powerful feelings like blame, bitterness, shame or criticism etc.
This process takes time and practice to do well and I learn something new about myself and my inner children every time I do this. Some therapists recommend holding a stuffed animal or doing some colouring in, or having a childhood photograph nearby, anything to connect with the inner child to help tap into the flow of feelings. I have also found so much healing from writing honest letters to God from my inner child, and writing apology letters to my inner child for all the times I ignored her or betrayed her to please others.
There are so many beautiful benefits of learning to integrate the inner child; such as feeling soothed and calm without any external crutch, feeling balanced and more mature in challenging situations, increased faith in being loved and worthy. But also embracing playfulness and joy that comes when the super-serious pressure lifts and we are finally able to experience the childlike innocence we missed out on.
The painful challenges of our lives can be handled in so many interesting ways. I hope you try this one for yourself and experience the freedom and healing it brings.
21/01/2018
Therapy & An Unexpected Result
One of my clients asked me the other day, “What was the most valuable thing you gained from going to therapy?”
For those of you who don’t know my story, let me just say that I never thought I needed therapy. I thought I could trust my instinctive reactions and emotions, I valued my knowledge and principles. It was only when I had the car accident that my lawyers suggested I go to therapy, to help me regain my confidence on the road as panic attacks had begun to consume my time in the car.
That initial, seemingly isolated prompt, unearthed a deep curiosity, which led to over a decade of therapy. I found so many different perspectives to myself that I had never considered previously, and gained something new from each of a few different therapists.
So when my client asked me this question, in an attempt to better understand her own journey of self-discovery, I didn’t want to be rash, taking a moment to ponder. I have gained so many valuable things from therapy, if you break it all down into each break-through and each level of growth. But the stand out for me personally was so surprising!
Over time, therapy gave me the ability to value my own truth, regardless of how others see it. It gave me sense of belonging to myself that I never expected.. Something Dr Brene Brown talks about often in her research.
Before therapy I had very little tolerance for my own flaws, or the flaws in others. I had developed a system of manipulating myself and my surroundings, to protect myself from a world I had deemed unsafe since childhood. This meant, I not only manipulated others, but I had also managed to deceived myself in the process. The dangers of the world that I wrestled to avoid, were grounded in criticisms and rejections of people who I thought loved each other. I somehow managed to become a chameleon, adapting myself to whoever I was hoping to impress, as a way to protect myself from all possible and painful rejection.
Fear, hidden fear, can pollute our behaviour in so many ways that we are often, completely unaware of. It can cause us to not even know ourselves at all. We’ve all heard that we ‘can not truly love others until we love ourselves’, but how can we love ourselves if we don’t even know ourselves?
I was completely unaware that all these toxic fears and behaviours were hiding inside myself.
Therapy helped me ask myself some tough but honest questions. I began to build a relationship with my true self.
Therapy helped me figure out what was most important to me, which turned out to be, the ability to depend upon the unpolluted Love of my Saviour. Also, to give more value to how God sees me, than how the world sees me. If it wasn’t for this epiphany, I would not be able to handle the constant stream of misunderstanding and rejection that goes hand in hand with creating anything, presenting it to the world, and realising how little some people actually care about the things that matter most to me.
Sadly attending therapy still carries a stigma, perhaps in my former uneducated days I too thought only “crazy” people needed therapy. But thankfully my understanding has grown, actually so much to the point that I believe therapy should be mandatory for everyone. At least once or twice per year to check-in with yourself. It is far too easy to convince ourselves that we must remain where we are, that needing help of any kind is weakness. My friend, be assured there was nothing weak about my therapy sessions. They were ballsy, vulnerable, courageous, honest, challenging and above all healing! Doing nothing to change an unhealthy or unfulfilled life, looks far more like weakness to me.
The painful criticisms and disappointments, that come from all human relationships, never lost their sting, but they certainly lost their ability to steer my life towards more dysfunction and self-condemnation. Best of all , when we understand our fears we can overcome them, so that they no longer hold us back from fulfilling our dreams!
24/07/2015
Sins of the ‘Filter’
It is easy to take credit for all the talents we pass onto our children, however it is often much harder to admit that we pass on our curses also. This valuable piece of understanding has been the main motivator for me to accept my faults, identify my curses, and work towards change within myself and my life. For the sake of my children, my two precious girls, I wanted more for them than the dysfunction I have lived with.
The main breakthrough at the beginning of my self-journey was discovering that my filter was broken.
You may be asking what on earth is your Filter?
The filter, as my psychologist titled it, is the part of our brain that tells us what to let out and what to keep back, what to let in and what to block out. For one example, it is the part of our mind that determines what is important, what is worth getting upset about and alternatively what is not worth getting upset about. I am not simply talking about the experience of internal emotions, I am also talking about the external voicing of our emotions, the times we show our anger, the times we lose our cool, the times we raise our voice, or force another to hear our unpleasant thoughts and feelings. I am talking about our considered self-talk, the conversations we have with ourselves that analyses our reactions and our paradigm.
This filter also helps us read others accurately. It determines when a situation calls for hostile opinions to be voiced or when discretion is required. It helps us determine if someone has actually wronged us and to what degree of intent, or if we have assumed the worst due to our insecurities or previous experiences. Our filter helps us decide whether being aggressively assertive is required, or if a more subdued form of confrontation would have more beneficial results, or if deflecting the situation and letting it go is best. It helps us discern if someone’s feedback is valid and worth application, or considering if it is merely an outburst without the use of their own filter.
There are numerous causes for a broken filter, only individual, psychological investigation can help determine the cause, and along with an honest relationship with God, it is also the only way to fix a damaged filter. There are countless issues that reverberate throughout the life of one with a damaged filter. It will effect all relationships, possibly career opportunities, and disrupt our sense of inner peace. And of course, sadly, it can cause these issues to transfer into the lives of our children, especially if we have not address it and passed the damage down the line.
I understand how difficult it can be to step back and take inventory of our reactions and responses, it can be daunting to re-evaluate yourself, your life and why you do what you do. Inner enemies encourage us to stay broken, they empower our resistance, preventing us from accepting our broken filter, which can impede us from pursuing the healing we require. A healthy filter prevents so much of the drama that seems to flood our lives, it helps us keep a safe healthy barrier from those who create problems and helps us understand how to best navigate the waters of relationships to bring more contentment and fulfillment.
If after reading this post you too wonder if your filter is broken, I thoroughly recommend praying for God to help you find the right therapist to address it. Be prepared to get very honest with yourself and after some tough work, look forward to the benefits of a healthier mindset. When we realize that our filter is broken, it can be tempting to use its damage as an excuse to deflect responsibility for our outbursts, bad reactions and the chaos that is usually partnered with this issue, rather than something we must take accountability for. But if we think it may be broken then we may be effecting others negatively, and it is unfair to all parties to leave it untreated. We must take ownership and accept the filter is part of us, we need to sincerely apologize to others whenever it misfires and make steps towards healing.
I have seen the fall out of this issue so often in myself and many around me, and I pray with my whole heart that the Lord reaches in and encourages our Inner Angels to fight against the enemy and the curse that is a broken filter. Not only for our sake, but the sake of those we love and the next generation.
18/07/2013
Through Child’s Eyes*
What stands out most to you as you recall being a child, looking up at adult relationships?
Did you have two parents or grandparents who worked together through tough times?
How about your neighbours, family friends or your friend’s parents, were any a really good team?
Were you from a single parent family, where independence and struggle filled the years?
Did step parents join your family for a while and then leave without further contact?
Was compassion and grace obvious? Or was there bitterness and disappointment?
Was there respect, or insult?
Was there silent tolerance and unhappiness, or joy and companionship?
Rejection rather than acceptance?
Were there unresolved arguments?
Did family members gather around for support during the difficult trials of life?
Children absorb everything! Our own childhood effects so much of who we become and what behaviours we choose to adopt as we grow to form our own relationships. The behaviour modeled by the adults in a child’s life are powerful to say the least.
What will our children take away from their childhood? What understandings will they form from the behaviours modeled by us, and those we are in relationship with?
Will they come to believe Fathers are replaceable?
Will they believe the man should be the head of the household and given the respect to be so?
Will they think demanding and holding grudges is the way to make things change?
Will they be able to recognise a sincere apology and appreciate the value of such a thing?
Will they accept abuse as normality?
Will they view alcohol or drug use as a reward for surviving another tough week or even a tough day?
Will they understand and respect money, without letting it ruin them?
Will they cherish hard work and education?
Will they have the belief that they are valuable?
Will they have faith and hope that all will work out in the end?
These are tough questions…
They will grow into whom they determine themselves to be. Our mistakes may make them shudder at the thought and they may refuse to repeat them. On the other hand, they may follow closely in our footsteps.
They may make choices that take them so far from anything we came close to in our own lives, however the influences they received from their childhood will stay with them, deep in their hearts and memory.
Isn’t that worth thinking about? Isn’t that worth praying about?
None of us can claim to be perfect parents or to have perfect relationships, and that is why I believe it is so important for our children to have a concept of faith in the only perfect parent, our Heavenly Father.
I am not suggesting an upbringing with religiosity, with laws and punishment beaten into every conversation. Nor with judgement and focus on sin, which I feel is more damaging than encouraging. Those things they can learn and understand as they grow and begin to question for themselves.
However the precious unconditional Love from God is vital to our sense of self-worth. The concept deep within us that someone accepts us, forgives us, helps us, is watching out for us. Knowing we will never be rejected or forsaken, so long as we keep Him in our hearts. Having healthy, righteous behaviour modeled for us, that we can aspire to emulate in our own lives, is extremely beneficial. Plus the accountability that our actions effect the greater good of the world we have been invited to be part of.
Don’t our children deserve to have these elements of faith in their lives? If we are unable to always show up in the ways that are best for them, I am comforted and so grateful that God will never fail them. Open His word, learn about His Love, share it with your children and invite Him to fill all spaces where our humanity makes us fall short. May Gods Blessings be upon all the children!
20/05/2013
The Pursuit of YOU*
I have come across many people who hide from themselves, they resist the pursuit of finding themselves, and miss out on growing into the happiest possible version of themselves.
Have you learned how to be happy and accept who you are, and ignore the opinions of those who set out to change or criticise you? Have you stopped the force of influence from people who you do not aspire to be like?
Are you authentically true to yourself?
Does your life and character reflect who YOU really want to be?
There are some important steps to pursuing the authentic, untainted version of you! Steps towards learning how to become the You, that YOU really want to be.
I have found these steps to be the foundation of what I have gained during over 6years of honest therapy, with a few different psychologists.
Sometimes, often even, a stigma can follow an announcement of seeing a psychologist. Those who have not had therapy, or not understood the need for it, may vastly misjudge those of us who go regularly, and wonder what is ‘wrong’ with us. Some may avoid therapy even if they think they need it, because this stigma covers them with shame. Sure, the most extreme cases of ‘crazy’ are treated in therapy, and so are a variety of mild to severe mental illnesses, mood disorders and psychological conditions. However I don’t feel you have to have a severe problem to benefit from regular therapy. In fact I think everyone would benefit from seeing a good therapist, even just once in a while.
I have found that a good therapist is a sounding board, a place to express your own thoughts, feelings, desires and concerns about who you are and how your life is going. It is place to escape the onslaught of voices from those who have taught us their own rules of good & bad, right & wrong, should & should not. It can become a place where you get to investigate and choose which rules YOU agree with, which ones you want to alter, and which to delete entirely.
A good therapist will not tell you what they think you should or should not do, but will empower you to eliminate those toxic, unhealthy influences and rules you are not benefited by. Those you have adopted through exposure during your lives, which do not improve your sense of fulfillment and self-acceptance.
Have you spent time digging through your beliefs, choices, actions and habits and figured out what makes you tick? I recommend we question everything we were ever taught and test it against what we have learned in our own experiences. What was true for our parents and teachers may not be true for us. What we teach our children is based on our own perceptions and may not be true for them as they grow into their true selves.
Once you have figured out which rules you want to keep and apply, establishing some boundaries will protect your belief system. Developing your own boundaries in a healthy productive way, gives strength and stability to your choices. Good therapists will help with this. The instability from past attempts at boundaries, I have found, resulted because they were actually walls put up reactively, out of anger and resentment etc. These unhealthy walls will probably crumble at the first sign of challenge, or cause even more of the bitterness and anger that first created them.
A healthy proactive boundary will bring a sense of peace, it does not need to be pushed onto anyone else, but when challenged can be gently, or firmly, reinforced exactly where you have comfortably placed it. It gives assurance of the ‘You’ who you want to be, because when challenged, you won’t allow someone you did not permit to influence your beliefs and your sense of the authentic YOU!
09/06/2012
Broken Hearted Children*
So often I hear stories and see with my own eyes the damage brought about when parents separate. Children from split families often struggle with insecurity, and a string of psychological conditions. This is a subject extremely close to my heart, as I was estranged from my father from the age of 10 until I was an adult, and I still battle with the internal scars it caused me.
After doing some research I found some shocking statistics effecting children whose parents are no longer together. Not only are the children from split families prone to psychological distress, which lasts well into adulthood. These statistics also showed frightening increased levels in the following areas when compared to children from homes with both parents, these include; lower grades, poverty, poor health, suicidal tendencies, incarceration, teen drug and alcohol abuse, early sexual encounters, and the likelihood of being victims of child abuse and assault. 40% of children growing up in America today are being raised without their fathers; commonly the case in Australia also. Half of the children in America and Australia will witness the separation or divorce of their parents. A study of children six years after a parental marriage breakup revealed that even after all that time, these children tended to be “lonely, unhappy, anxious and insecure”.
It seems that many marriage vows are no longer taken as an actual ‘vow’, it is a promise too easily broken, same goes for people who chose to have children together without considering how the child may be effected if there is no family unit. For example when I learned of my teen pregnancy I knew I would manage on my own just as my Mum had, but I never considered how my child might be affected by who her father was. It seemed irrelevant to me, because I was a child who grew up without a father, and at that time I thought I had turned out ok. (Ha! I can tick off well over half of the points above!)
Due to the rampant popularity of sex before marriage, it has become more common to agree to have a child with someone before we have even decided if we would marry them. Having a child together should be acknowledged as an even stronger commitment than marriage, yet this often fails to be the case. Children from separated families raising their own children are sometimes unable to see the consequences from that separation, as they have not developed the self-awareness to see their true internal stability or instability yet. Therefore the cycle continues and increases throughout society.
So often in our relationships we allow too easily the bumps of life to divide us, we live in a throw away, walk away society which has destructive, devastating consequences to the development of our characters and the spiritual “footprints” we leave behind. Western culture allows us to choose our own life partners, we choose out of emotion, need and desire, and then quickly, easily, we doubt our choice. Perhaps we assume it was the wrong choice because our previous lessons came from one of our bad decisions. Perhaps its because we didn’t apply Godly principles of LOVE to our relationships. Perhaps it is just too hard and we give up in search of something easier, of course we forget that it was not meant to be easy. For children this destroys their ingrained belief in the capability of their parents. The very foundation of a child’s perspective of stability and security comes from the belief that their parents are the most capable people on earth, they look to them for reassurance. When parents fail to work on their relationship and it breaks down, so does the trust of their children in them.
The emotions behind the reasons we chose our life partners are fickle! Once powerful and thought-consuming, eventually will change, develop, or even disappear completely over time. We are humans with much baggage and sin, and we expect our life partners to miraculously fill our empty places and help us carry the baggage weighing us down, and that means they are hoping the same from us also. Love and sexual connections actually allow our baggage and sinful nature to rise to the surface, so that we can face it and deal with it together as a couple. However, the ‘Better or Worse’ promise only seems to apply when we see their ‘better’ side, and we stop loving them when faced with their ‘worst’, too often facing each others sinful baggage causes much heartache and leads to bitterness and separation.
Speaking from personal experience, this is something I spend most of my time in therapy dealing with. The essence of both parents is within a child; therefore any bitterness viewed by a child from one parent toward the other is identified in some way as bitterness towards a part of them. It sends confusing messages into the inner foundation of their self-love and security.
Due to this inner battle, where I turned this bitterness upon myself, I have suffered from an incredible amount of insecurity, unsure of how anyone can truly love me because it took years for me to learn to accept myself, like myself, let alone LOVE myself.
The enemy within knows our inner wounds and is out to destroy the foundation of all of God’s designs, especially the functional family unit.The inner enemy can exaggerate our emotions, pointing to the hurt or painful memories over and over, knowing the action that follows will be a destructive one. We owe it to our children to use our inner angels to war against these emotions, striving to make sure our actions are the result of a selfless, logical decision and not a selfish, emotional one. We need to call on our Heavenly Father, knowing that our obedience to Him allows His promise to protect our children to be fulfilled.
Didn’t we make a secret promise to our children when we became parents? We would do anything to keep them safe. Their inner security is vital when determining the ‘safer’ path they will walk in their lives and it is our duty to steady their feet for their journey ahead.
References
- http://www.families.org.au/default.aspx?go=article&aid=925&tid=1
- http://www.marriage-success-secrets.com/statistics-about-children-and-divorce.html
Inner Angels & Enemies 