THEORY: Inner Child work & Attachment Healing

[sKePTiKal]

So - this is going to take me a while to "get out" coherently. And I may not have the luxury of time to put it all out here, all at one time, so I'm going to lock the thread until I do. THEN, I really want everyone's thoughts about this and viewpoints and debate/discussion. But I think I've finally come up with my personal theory - personal roadmap or treasure map, if you will - about how to go about this type of healing.

DISCLAIMER: This is a theory - as such, it may be over-generalized; over-personalized to my individual situation and I continue to experiment and try to "prove" parts of the theory in actual experience; in reality. I expect that there are those of you that will question some of my basic premises - which may in fact be "leaps of faith" or magical beliefs. Hell, I could be flat out wrong about some things. It's OK to tell me that. [deleted] The "theory" is my way of learning about things that I could've learned in a "normal" FOO... and changing my personal dysfunctions enough to become healthier, happier, and to lose the anxiety while building confidence in myself. To feel "safe" - as much as humans can. We can still be eaten by a grizzly bear or wiped out by a meteor.

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Some basic terms and a description of what I think "The Problem" is:

"Attachment" is simply knowing that there is someone who will take care of your needs. As an infant, to create an environment of physical comfort. Later, to mirror back to the infant their emotions and to "mark" when those emotions differ from "mom's" emotions. Mirroring and marking help establish the boundaries of the "self" - me (and my emotions) and you (and your emotions). Those boundaries are the foundation of what is called "self-efficacy" - which is a fancy word for confidence in your own abilities. Those basic boundaries are also the nutritious soil which allow the child to become his/her own unique "flower" - a separate, independent individual with a coherent "SELF". Growing up, those boundaries shift - the child needs less from the parent and is more self-sufficient - and eventually can "standalone" as an adult in "real life" outside of the family.

"Parentification" is a word that describes a reversal of family or parent-child roles. The child satisfies the parents emotional/physical needs, instead of the usual relationship. This situation can take different forms - using a child as spouse or expecting, demanding, or requiring the child to parent the parent. Obviously, parentification disrupts the normal "attachment" process.

"Boundaries" is a word to describe a bit of the human condition. I can't know what he thinks, feels... unless he tells me. Often, dysfunctional parents claim some sort of "extrasensory" perception, claiming to know the child better than he/she knows him or herself. This usually scares the bejesus out of the child who comes to believe that "there's no place to hide", there is no place safe or peaceful or quiet where the child can simly BE who he or she is.

Some confusion arises through the use of the word "boundaries" (though it's still appropriate) to describe an individual's right to accept/decline participation in some activity.

"Let's go jump off this cliff"! "No, I don't want to".
"You're going to Harvard - it's the only legitimate university". "No, I want to go to art school".
"I want to be a scientist when I grow up" "No, you can't. Girls can't do the math and it's not "right" for girls to compete with men. Only men can be scientists". (Hear this long enough, and you believe it through every little mistake you make - you see the mistakes as reinforcing the false belief that was projected - pushed into and through your "boundary" of how you define or see yourself.)

"Gaslighting and Projection" go sort of hand in hand. Gaslighting is when someone persuades you that what you know is real, is wrong. Projection is when that person pushes their reality, emotions, beliefs etc into you instead of owning them or admitting to them him-herself. For instance, when some claims in a discussion that "you're getting angry" or "raising your voice" when in fact, they are refusing to hear what you've been saying and they are angry that you don't completely agree with them. In this type of thing, they've just pinned the projection tail on the "donkey" - accused you of their emotion. Ironically, in this situation, the donkey usually feels extremely angry & confused but without being able to explain why!

Gaslighting and Projection are two forms of trespassing, intruding on boundaries.

"The Inner Child" I'm coming to define as my emotional self. For sake of simplicity, I believe that we all have a physcial, intellectual and emotional "center" - "self". They interact - sometimes more than they should; sometimes a lot less than they should. I don't profess to know what the ideal balance of all 3 centers are - sometimes I think I get a glimpse or two. Those glimpses are moments of unsurpassed well-being and delight. Just because they don't last forever, doesn't mean that they aren't totally real. And I'm not totally convinced that "the goal" is to extend those moments to 100% of our waking existence. They arrive... and they pass... like the crocus in the spring. But they are important moments to appreciate.

So, in my theory, my emotional self was traumatized. And because of gaslighting and my need to "prove" what I knew really happened to me (assault & rape which my mom denied had happened) - and to a lesser extent, projection - and because my Nmom insisted on reversing our roles (she NEEDED me to parent her)... my emotional self was banned from existence - snuffed out - shamed into a chinese box and told NOT to come out because how dare I have emotional needs and expect my mom to meet them?

And there (the dark chinese box) is where my emotional self stayed for a long, long, long time.

My 12 yr old emotional self had been effectively "stopped" and told that all those emotions & needs were BAD and WRONG.

"Reparenting" is the process of reassuring my inner child that those feelings weren't bad or wrong - on the contrary, how normal to feel that way. In reparenting, I validate my emotional self's feelings. Like a good parent, I have "rules" of behavior for my emotional self...  behavioral boundaries for this awkward pre-teen who doesn't have the built-in, osmosis-learned sense of scale or appropriateness that people normally learn. In reparenting, I meet my emotional self's needs - and reassure her that it's OK and safe to have those needs.

Reparenting and Inner Child is way of thinking and talking about how I care for myself. About my relationship with myself. Not about separate, unconnected different personalities contained in one body.

[sKePTiKal]

Reparenting

So, this is the bulk of the work. Going through normal life... interacting with people... and learning that not everyone is going to treat me or respond to me the way my Nmom did in that "trauma period". Even when situations are similar enough to actually trigger the old self-protective responses or scare me to death or unfair and unjust... my relationship with that "other" isn't the same. That means that my old strategy for self-survival doesn't quite "fit" the new situation - it's dysfunctional. In emotional terms, it means that I usually relive the old feelings, I even say the same kinds of things, and even sometimes play the manipulative cards that I felt were played against me, when I feel "cornered" enough.

That is, IF I'm not centered in myself and haven't had a chat with the inner child prior or negotiated a pre-arranged agreement about what is appropriate behavior. My inner child tends toward melodramatic acting out, extreme anger, and consequently total withdrawal - feeling unworthy of fun, pleasure, or self-care. I've been dealing with finding a way to undo the self-sabotage I "suffer from" and working with the inner child on where her logic went kaflooey... why she thought this was safer than caring for herself... what the emotional string of stuff is underlying it.

That's now. In the beginning things were a little different. Inner child was shy - untrusting - scared to "be" simply because of scary times when even breathing was punished... and unsure of all the "rules" due to that parentification situation and gaslighting. Maybe she really WAS insane - maybe she really WAS the cause of all the bad things that happened. When you're a kid and isolated from "normal" - or repeatedly told that "those people are stupid and out to get you" - you don't have a good foundation of facts to compare your situation to. It took a couple years to establish a comfortable relationship and those first couple of years unleashed a torrent of emotional stuff & inner child babble which had been buried for years. I counted 16 journals, when we moved. All packed - all saved; even though there's no longer any need to review them. I know the story.

So the work in the beginning, was to simply comfort the inner child - satisfy those emotional needs; let her cry until the tears stopped - and let her scream out whatever was "sitting on her heart" like a 16-ton anvil. The poor kid needed to feel comfortable feeling her feelings... and know that I wasn't going exile her, or judge her, or do anything except give her a safe place to feel. "I" - the much older me - had learned a lot being a mom. I started to sleep better.

Somehow, through school - a place where I could learn what wasn't taught at home - books - somehow, I'd acquired a fairly functional self that did pretty well "out in the world". The inner child was a seeker - passionately desperate for "answers" - and eventually those two paths hit head on, when I became personally miserable, stressed out, felt everything in my life was out of control - and that my inner condition meant that I was a total fraud in that other, competent world. I kept asking: what's wrong with me????? Well, "wailed" is more like it.

The thing is - "I" - the whole me - is both the emotional self (inner child) and that other competent "parent". What I didn't know until starting this work... is that it is OK - hell, it's the only way out of the predicament for me - to parent myself. To care for myself - to have healthy rituals like brushing my teeth and eating breakfast (meeting my own needs). To learn how to express my feelings, at least to myself - and when it's better to keep those to myself. To allow myself a "time out" when I'm feeling overwhelmed by too much sensory information or too many people... to regroup and recenter.

Inner child isn't such a terror; she's just a little more "feral" than most. She responds well to praise - so instead of thinking of the list of things I don't get done in one day... I only think of the ones that I did accomplish. Instead of being oppressed by the size of the "problem" I'm trying to conquer... I only think about the one thing I did for myself today. Whether it's looking up the closest place to ride horses... taking an extra five minutes in the shower ('coz the warm water feels so good)... or wearing some clothes that I really like. I've learned it's OK to take care of myself (and the inner child) first before doing anything else each day.

Sometimes inner child prompts ME - she "taps me on the shoulder" - when I'm multitasking too much, driving myself too hard to accomplish something. After a few years of getting to know each other now, she helps me... as much as I help her. She reminds me to go "play" and to take care of myself.

I'm still talking about her as if she were a separate person - it simply seems easier that way. But "both of us" know that in reality we are the same person. I feel what inner child feels; she hears and understands my "logic" (that vulcan-esque intellectual side); and she has grown up in the process of the work while I've grown "younger" in some ways. We are simply one "personality" with multi-faceted sides.

[sKePTiKal]

OH YEAH - while that above sounds great - know that sometimes I still don't get it "right". I screw up. Lately, it seems it's happening a lot. It's still very much a learning curve and work in progress! Some days I do better than others... but that's what I consider "normal" folks are like, too.

[sKePTiKal]

So, in the beginning of this kind of work, I found I needed extreme privacy. The long history of keeping all those "secrets" covered up and the fear associated with them... the absurd, weird, and quasi-3rd person way I learned to listen, feel, and relate to my emotional self was embarrassing. I felt extremly foolish - like I'd never learned it's not polite to pee in public; not being able to relate to my emotional self felt like that. Something so friggin' basic, it seemed a miracle that I even sorta functioned as an adult at all. It felt shameful to just be learning to feel, when I was already a grandma for cryin' out loud!

I really needed my therapist during that phase. It was still extremely difficult to verbalize some of the things I was finding out about myself - those horrible "discoveries" of old memories and the feelings associated with them. I relentlessly drove myself at breakneck speed down, into, through everything... despite her suggestions to pace myself, take it easy on myself. I just had to "know" everything and I wanted to "know" it all NOW. After 40 years of trying to answer the question: what's wrong with me? I was tired of waiting.

It was about this time, that I started to take tai chi seriously. The practice and classes were a "break" from all that kind of intense work. The physical part of it helped to release "held" energy...helped me "connect the parts" of my body... helped me feel the difference and begin to harmonize "inner and outer". I started going to class twice a week. Most of the time, it was a large class - 12 to 18 people. When I started classes, I kept to myself not knowing anyone and feeling very self-conscious. But over time, I began to "feel" the other people around in class and slowly opened up.

This was the transition from healing in isolation (and sometimes chasing my own tail through the same old loops) to seeing that I could also heal through interactions with other people. Maybe it's something about tai chi. Maybe it was the teacher (who's quite good) or the type of people who are drawn to this practice - but it felt like a very safe place to just "be", even if I was in a "state". It was a useful first plateau out of isolation and beginnning to establish connections with others.

I guess I felt I needed to be fully engaged in life and with the people I found in it. All kinds of people. This is what I felt when my therapist metaphorically patted me on the head and sent me on my way to "thrive". By then, I was already connecting with folks here. And working and reworking parts of "me". Here, I found mothering - extreme kindness when I was beating myself up. Wise words of direction and guidance. Hilarious humor and shared tears. And lots & lots of practice interacting with people of all kinds! Exactly what I needed - the reassurance that I wasn't crazy after all; that really, there wasn't anything wrong with me (where'd I get that idea I wonder??? HA!); and that no, I wasn't "doomed" to a lifetime of the same old crap.

My long-winded point being, that isolation and privacy in Inner Child work - while necessary & essential at one point - needs to be let go (gradually and when one's ready) for doing that work in the real-life world of people. Not that I talk about it with everyone or explain myself to people using the language of this work. But my interactions and choices and even those "some days are better than others", when I could've done better times are where the work continues.

And maybe - while it's true that this will always be a part of my identity (like I posted on Ann's thread) - it is becoming less so; gradually becoming a less prominent part of me. That's one of the things I've noticed about "letting go" - there's no rhyme, reason or method - nothing "to do". It - whatever "it" is - just fades out in importance or difficulty and my attention moves on to other things.

I used to teach technology to adults. When people were about ready to give up and declare themselves "hopeless" and decide that they were never going to "get it"... I would explain that the learning curve in the beginning is very, very steep because there is a lot of little pieces of knowledge that is brand-new. Over time, that knowledge becomes integrated - familiar - and the student reaches a plateau where their ability to take in additional new information has expanded and the learning process speeds up. The very first lessons are built upon - not replaced - so that there is an accumulation of skills toward a desired purpose. Not a bunch of disparate, unconnected skills that apply to different things. I tried to point out to people when they reached that plateau, so they could look back to the beginning of their learning curve and see it for themselves. It gave them the confidence to move forward to more difficult material on their own.

That analogy applies to this kind of work, also. I think I've hit that plateau... and I want to encourage the rest you that this situation isn't hopeless. You will "get it". It will get easier... and you'll learn faster. Having screwed up parents that impacted who you are isn't a life sentence and you're on your way to freeing yourself from the past.

[sKePTiKal]

PHEW! OK... that's all. I'm done. Sorry it took so long.

I know I wasn't able to say things in a linear fashion or remember to say everything. So YOUR TURN!
I'm looking forward to people's comments & questions, etc.

[Gaining Strength]

feeling unworthy of fun, pleasure, or self-care

this includes so much for me.  Starting with self-care - I love that you wrote about eating breakfast and brushing your teeth.  I recognize that my attempts at exercise which for years came so easily are a form of self-sabotage and i have begun to hear that faint voice of criticism and condemnation that I have internalized cry out when I try to do things that are "self-care" including exercise and eating well and sleeping.  That internalized voice is about worthiness or more acurately unworthiness. 

This is such an important hurdle for me.  It taps into such pain - agony - indescribable.
I must use the techniques I have identified to overcome this hurdle.  Self-care is at the very core of my sabotage that started out by my family and was absorbed by myself.

this is definitely where I must shine the light and expose my own self.  The focus for me is that hiding, retreating is only a temporary respite from the pain.  the only real cure is to move out and experience that the shaming and ridicule that once traumatized me is now coming from myself and where or when it comes from someone else I can actually cut them off or realize that those people need not be in my life. By retreating, I am falling into the trap of expecting and self-actualizing the very scrutiny and failure that I have been trying to hide from - that self-fulfilling profecy.  Only in standing up and facing it can I overcome it.  It all seems so contradictory.  This is going to take more courage than I think I have.  I think it will be helpful to distill things down to one or two specific examples and work on overcoming those and then move on.

Self-care - this topic and the way you wrote about it are lifeblood for me PR.  thank you for that gift.

[Meh]

Phoenix,


Please don't take parts of what I have written about MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF BEING VOICELESS and quote them out of context.

You took something that I wrote from the member's story section and added your own definition to it. It's a perversion of MY story.


I already expressed that I personally don't want to have a dialogue about this subject at this moment for my own reasons so I would also like it if you don't stick my quotes into your thread.  

I'm starting to feel voiceless again.




Thanks.

~ Helen.

[sKePTiKal]

GS:

The self-care is completely interwoven with interactions with other people, for me. I think it's got something to do with perception. Like, if I take a chance - just being me in a situation - and find out that "nothing bad happens"... it adds some energy to the self-care. It's not separate. If I allow someone to help me - stifling my conditioned reaction to reject that out of fear or belief that I'm not doing it "right" (internal criticism) - I'm adding fertilizer or more energy to grow my energy to care for myself - and that judging, critical voice is fainter; fading away. I'm not doing myself any favors isolating myself because of an out of scale perception of over-responsibility, "toughing it out", or embarassment that a grown woman should know or be able to do, X - Y- or Z. Remember connection-competency-autonomy? You were right that connection might be the key, to my way of thinking and what I've been learning.

OY Ann!! If we always saw everything all the time, it'd get pretty boring in a hurry. Really - I think your thread on the schemas needs to be separate, because that's more of a practical how-to topic. My method kind of developed trial & error, after my T "kicked me out of the nest" and reassured me that I'd be able to fly. Since then, while "almost" believing her... and clinging to the examples that we worked through together like a magic talismen... I've been learning how to re-assure myself.

[sKePTiKal]

Phoenix,


Please don't take parts of what I have written about MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF BEING VOICELESS and quote them out of context.

You took something that I wrote from the member's story section and added your own definition to it. It's a perversion of MY story.


I already expressed that I personally don't want to have a dialogue about this subject at this moment for my own reasons so I would also like it if you don't stick my quotes into your thread. 

I'm starting to feel voiceless again.




Thanks.

~ Helen.

I will honor your request. I apologize, for using your phrase.

Please note that the only time I referred to you in my thread, was in appreciation of the aptness of a phrase. All else is simply my own reflection on my own process, way of working through my issues, and my realizations. This thread is sort of my - "been there, done that" summary of my own work with the inner child and attachment. I hoped it might help explain some of what we talk about in various threads, for some our newer members.

Friends?

Amber