Inner Child Healing

Childhood was a time when many of our conscious and subconscious thoughts and beliefs became ingrained as automatic neurological pathways in order to survive this time.

For many, childhood was a time of survival. A time of hiding in plain sight in order to guarantee a meal, shelter, education, love, protection and hopefully to minimise the risk of violence. Everything we know, we learned from our parents and they from their parents in turn. Our parents may have made some modifications to the way in which they were raised if they were conscious of unhealthy patterns or they may have continued with the same child-rearing methods without question of their impact on the child. On you.

They may have done this with the intention of doing their best for you but without the realisation that they were programming you with patterns and behaviours born of historical, cultural, political and societal ‘norms’ that were not aiding you in your progression but hindering you. It is a kind of Stockholm syndrome in which those who are captive love their captors and captivity in order to survive. We are all suffering from a generational Stockholm syndrome.

When we find it difficult to say ‘my parents did this wrong’ or ‘my parents could have done this better in this way’ we have to push away the pain caused by their actions, conscious or unconscious, and therefore we self-reject. I am not saying we need to be critical or harsh with them, in the main they were doing what they could in the circumstances they found themselves. What I am saying is that we need to stop invalidating that small child within us who is still smarting from the harsh punishment, who is still craving closeness and affection and who is still wanting to be seen and loved for exactly who they are instead of performing a persona through which they know they will gain the attention and approval of their parents. We need to allow this child to be itself and to acknowledge that it is right and it is valid and it deserves to be loved just as it is and it is enough. If your parents are not here to say it to you or if your parents won’t say it to you no matter. You say it to yourself. You self-parent. You reparent yourself.

This is a treasure of conscious adulthood. The ability to re-parent oneself. The ability to get into bed with yourself when you were three and could hear your parents shouting at each other through the wall and you didn’t know what was going to happen to them or to you and you felt lonely and afraid. You can go back there. You can hold your own hand. You can sing in your own ear. You can be there for yourself. You can tell yourself it’s going to be alright. You can tell yourself that it wasn’t fair. You can tell yourself that you deserved better. You can tell yourself that it is not always going to be this way. You can show yourself not to yourself back then and say, see? Look!, despite everything that you endured look what your inner strength, your creativity, your inner-knowing and your self-love has produced. Look here. It’s me! It’s you! You have done an amazing job, you are an amazing little person. I love you. I am always here for you. I am always here for you.

And maybe at that moment when you were three you might remember an instance when you were curled up under your duvet and an angel came to hold your hand. Or another time when you were looking up through the leaves of a tree and the dappled sunlight was falling onto your open hands and right at that moment a blossom floated past on the breeze and you know, you know it was you. It was you now. You can do that you know.

You can also feel it now. Yes. The ‘future’ you with you. Guiding you. That glinting light when you need help with a decision, that funny smell when you’re about to sign a contract that you’re really not sure about. You are here with yourself and when you connect with yourself more, the more you will notice yourself speaking back to you now.

You can cry for yourself, you can acknowledge yourself, you can want better for yourself. It is not selfish. It is not self-indulgent. It is (r)evolutionary.

When you heal yourself. You heal us all. When are kind to yourself. You are kind to us all.

When you acknowledge all the parts of you that yearn to be seen and loved you know longer act from childhood pathways and mechanisms lurking in the shadows. You no longer have to conceal your pain under the false-comfort of addiction and consumption.

When you acknowledge yourself as full and whole and valid you no longer need anything external to feel that way. And what’s more, if you decide to have any progeny you do not pass it on to them. The cycle has stopped with you. The pattern has stopped with you. They will not need to self-soothe with addiction and consumption. They will grow up from the very beginning feeling valid and heard and significant. They will approach the world from a place of confidence, creativity and openness – trusting themselves naturally in a way that you had to learn much later in life. But not too late.

And the whole world changes as it fills with compassionate, engaged, life-filled people who no longer act from self-destructive, defensive and self-soothing conditioning but approach each moment of their lives with a freshness, wonder and genuine engagement from which the creative seeds of the New Earth are born.

On behalf of us all - Thank you for healing Yourself.