I didn’t post anything last week. I needed a break. Lately, I have felt like crap. I have long covid, and it is leaving me exhausted. I am not the only one who deals with a chronic condition. For that reason, I am pushing through and writing this post. The topic of our inner child is simply too important to leave for another week.
We spend our lives not listening to that traumatized inner child while they cry out for some attention. Isn’t it time we give them the attention they need and deserve? In the words of Melody Beattie, “Listen to the child. Let the child cry if he or she needs to. Comfort the child. Figure out what he or she needs.”
If we listen to our inner child, we discover the source of our present dysfunctional behavior. Here is an example. When I was a child, my mother would serve dessert almost every night. My grandmother, who lived next door to us, would give my sister and me dessert nearly anytime we wanted it. I used sugar as a child to numb the shock and trauma. While that behavior helped in some way, it stopped working long ago.
Today, I read a passage in The Twelve Steps For Christians that resonated with me. It speaks of self-acceptance which leads us to see the roots of our dysfunctional behaviors:
“As we begin to see ourselves, we will learn to accept our whole character–the good and the bad. The acceptance will free us to discover survival behaviors that began in childhood. In the context of our turbulent years, these behaviors were lifesaving. However, their continuation into our adulthood renders us dysfunctional.”
Three ways of listening to your inner child
One of the best things we can do for ourselves as trauma survivors is to realize that our inner child will remain in control of parts of our lives until we listen to them. Here are a few ways you can listen to that child:
1. Be aware of any sadness you feel that isn’t connected to the present. Ask yourself if the sadness comes from your childhood. If it does, write a letter in the voice of your inner child. Write down whatever comes to mind. Don’t worry about grammar or spelling. You are giving voice to a part of yourself that remains buried within.
2. Try tapping, also known as emotional freedom technique. Tapping has a way of bringing up whatever lies buried inside, including your inner child. If you are curious about tapping and want to try it out, I listed several of my past articles on tapping in the resource section at the end of this article. There is also a link to The Tapping Solution app.
3. Practice saying, “I choose to love and like myself.” Keeping saying it every day, multiple times a day. Eventually, you will find that you do love and like yourself. From a place of self-acceptance, you will find it easier to listen to your inner child.
The value of listening
Listening is active while hearing is passive. We can’t just hear our inner child, we must listen. The traumatized child within us speaks if we will pay attention. Here is another example from my life. I was sexually abused as a young child by an uncle. I blocked all memories of the abuse out until I was 22. There is a word for it: dissociation. The American Psychiatric Association defines it as “a disconnection between a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions or sense of who he or she is.”
Because I dissociated from the memories of abuse, I squashed down all of the emotions that went with it. Two years ago, I began doing inner child work. The overwhelming sadness my inner child carried began surfacing in waves. I used tapping and letter writing to listen to what that child wanted to tell me. I began to accept my inner child, and that led to the acceptance of all of me. From self-acceptance, recovery from childhood trauma accelerates.
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Resources
How Tapping Freed Me of Severe Anxiety
Tapping Can Bring Up Painful Emotions
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The picture is of me at age five. Despite all the abuse I suffered, I was free enough to run around without my shirt on. Today, I embrace that wild part of me. (Not that I intend to run around without my shirt on.)