Love Your Inner Child

Posted on June 10, 2015 by gentlekindness

Love your inner child.

We all still have the inner child inside of us. Sometimes the inner child takes over and feels things as if we were that vulnerable small person again.

If you had any mental abuse or other abuse during your childhood, then your inner child will still feel the unfairness of situations and experience it as if you were back in time. Sometimes we can have a feeling of helplessness, that is the same as we felt when we were small children or teenagers, and dependent upon others for most everything.

Sometimes certain people may behave in such a way that triggers the trauma response from things we experiences as children. As an adult we are not sure where this severe emotion and feeling of helplessness is coming from.

We may react to the person out of our trauma response, rather than act out of thought. If we are sent by our brain back to that feeling of helplessness, then we may feel angry, afraid or sad.

When dealing with manipulative people, we need to be in an emotionally detached state of mind. Then we can observe what they are doing and not get caught up in the emotions of our inner child.

Keeping an emotionally detached state, when dealing with manipulative people, will help to keep you from being taken advantage of.

We do not have to feel what this person is trying to force us to feel. We can choose how much emotion this person is going to be allowed to get out of us. Maybe they are not even worthy of you getting upset to please them.

Perhaps we do not have to comply with their desires when they are unreasonable.  After all those are their desires not yours.

Listen to your inner child and care for them.

They are still a part living inside of your mental makeup. Your inner child has wounds that may have not have healed. Maybe your inner child still feels helpless and as an adult you sometimes fall into a learned helplessness state.

Learned helplessness is the feeling of being helpless in a situation even when you have the power to walk away or make changes, such as controlling your response. People can push you around and manipulate you easily when you are in this state if being.

You are not helpless and you can control your responses in situations. But your inner child needs to be tended to, if you are going to able to take more control over situations where manipulative people are trying to dominate over you.

If the inner child has things to say, then they need to be heard. They were treated unfairly in situations and perhaps they were not given the love and feeling of security that they should have been given.

You can comfort your inner child by communicating with them and telling them that you understand that they are hurt and confused. Let them know that people could have and should have treated them differently in many situations. It was unjust, unkind or abusive.

When there are times that are appropriate, you can have this communication with this part  of yourself that lives inside of you.

Time seems linear but as far as your inner child is concerned time is stuck at the point where their developmental growth was interfered with.

They are stuck in the pain of the time on your life where you were most vulnerable and your rights were violated.

Children and teenagers should be given respect and room to express their thoughts and feelings. If your was not, then they may still have thoughts and feelings that they want to let you know about.

Care for this inner child, as if they were under your guardianship, because they are. Ignoring them will cause for them to come jumping to the foreground when you are in stressful situations, especially ones that remind them of injustice they experiences.

It is okay to still carry those feelings from your childhood, but it can be damaging to you to ignore them. You would have treated the child differently, if you had been the adult caring for them. The same goes for when you were a teenager.

Let them know that you would have done things differently in the situations that are bothering them the most. You can go over the situation.

Allow your inner child to tell you what they are hurt about.  

From an adult point of view, evaluate where the caregivers did things that were thoughtless or selfish. Then tell your inner child that it should not have happened that way and you would not have done that to them.

Let them know that they deserved to be treated better. Even tell them exactly what should have happened and how a loving adult, like you, would have cared for them.

Any feelings that are being carried by your inner child, are valid and they matter. They cannot be left unattended. This will only cause for you to become disabled in situations where another person is attempting to manipulate you.

Some kinds of toxic people are very good at targeting the people that have a wounded inner child.  They can tell and they know where to push your buttons, to make you go into the learned helplessness mode.

Love yourself and your inner child.

It was unfair that you were mistreated as a child or a teenager. You need to let your inner child know that you know this and are feel for them.

Care for yourself and your inner child. Learn to identify when you are being triggered by a situation that is making you feel that vulnerability, helplessness and unworthiness. Children who grew up with people who made them feel unworthy of love and attention, carry that feeling into adulthood.

Let your inner child know that they were always worthy of love and affection.

You were worthy of your feelings and thoughts being listened to. As an adult you are also worthy of love. You are worthy to have your feelings about situations respected and considered.

Once you can know that you are just as worthy and special as anyone else, it will be easier for you to make your voice heard and let others know that their feelings are not the only feelings that matter.

Blessings,

Annie

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More

Humanity needed in the world of humans

Soft sweet touches

An understanding ear to hear

Laughter bursting from the small bodies of children

Old hands carefully baking bread for a neighbor in need

Or crafting a blanket with yarn for a stranger in the hospital

A nurse’s reassurance to a frightened patient

Looking at them with the self confidence of the profession; but adding something personal in their glance

A worker willing to go outside the usual procedures  and protocol…in the name of  helping someone who is in danger of foreclosure on their family home

Too many medical bills and not enough time…

Time spent working to take care of loved ones has to be balanced against the need to just be with them

Sitting next to a stranger and matching their body language… their hopeless slouch on the bench…

just to let them know someone sees them…and they are not forgotten

…they are not invisible

Humanity enough to pay the extra 2 dollars for the pizza at the Mom and Pop shop; to drive the extra mile to get there

Rather than paying the “fast-food- dictators” their tithe;  the Mama Rosina Pizza places need to be there…on the Main Streets

What happens when no one cares anymore about the “little” people; will they truly become little people after all?

And the smallest gestures of holding doors for a mother carrying a child and helping the elderly woman cross the street safely…

What will becomevof these small acts of random kindness ? What shall we say to those …who call us foolish for wasting our time…

On people of no consequence?

Who has the right to determine who is more or less significant?

And what does this say about mankind…

If we are just too busy spending time making money…and nothing more?

Isn’t there something further? Isn’t there something more?

 

 

Forks in the Road

This is my late night rambling.  Any typos will be fixed tomorrow. This is a stream of consciousness writing. ….

Sometimes we grieve for a thing we missed out on. This might be a person we thought we were meant to be with. Or it might be a situation like a job or a certain path we imagined was right for us.

But we really do not know what would have awaited us, had we ended up with that thing we were sure we wanted.

Think of a person that you ended up wishing you had never wanted to be in a relationship with. You were sure it was what you wanted at the time, but as time passed it was not what you pictured the relationship to be.

There is also some situation that you were sure you wanted that eventually turned out to be a devastating disappointment. What if you had never gotten it?

You might still be grieving the loss of what you imagined the outcome to be.

There is no way to know if you really missed out on a “dream job” because what you imagined it would be like is probably not how you would have felt once you were in it.

And that person you thought would have been the perfect partner…so much so that you compare your other relationships to that one perfect relationship that you imagine you missed by a hair….

Maybe you did something that you consider a mistake and it kept you from following along that particular path you thought was the “right” one.

While you spend your energy lamenting these imagined scenarios and how well they would have gone, you may be missing the inner voice that is calling toward something much better.

Rather than a loss of great magnitude, some of these things you missed out on may have ended up being the very things that would have kept you from the wonderful things you have yet to experience.

We sometimes feel that we are at a “fork in the road” and that if we choose the wrong path it will completely change our lives. But you are still you even after a seemingly dramatic choice.

You never know where any path will lead or many more moments of truth will seem to present themselves. It could be that you would wind down one path, only to find it ended up joining with the second one anyway, further down the road.

It is important that you know your values and what you believe in. It is also important that you are open to seeing things in a new light, if the facts you come across show you a new way of looking at things.

There are very few, if any, paths  that have a certain right or wrong way…at least not one you cannot correct , change or adapt to.

It is when you go against your inner voice and reject yourself that you get into trouble. You must honor your inner voice and allow it to guide you.

Do not reject yourself for the sake of pleasing someone else.

The sooner you learn to respect yourself and your resiliency, the sooner you can begin to have confidence that whatever direction you walk, that feels right, will eventually lead you someplace where you will be okay.

 

Emotophobia

Emotophobia is the fear of unpleasant emotions, not to be confused with emetophobia, the fear of vomiting.

There is little online about emotophobia.

The few articles I found offered the suggestion to “stop treating negative emotions as if they are your enemies and can harm you.”

This is somewhat condescending and implies that emotions themselves cannot harm you.

The person offering this advice clearly has never been in a situation where showing negative emotions could harm them.

So, they think it is rather ridiculous that someone would associate their negative emotions with danger.

The problem with this thinking is that there are situations where someone’s emotions can cause them harm.

This advise shows a complete misunderstanding of emotophobia and its root causes.

People with emotophobia are not “treating” emotions as if they are the enemy.

For people that have emotophobia, emotions were the enemy and they were followed by consequences.

People that grew up in mentally abusive childhoods were not permitted to have emotions like other people are.

The expression of emotion, which represents being an individual, is often punished by abusive parents.

Even children who were not physically abused, could have had their right to individual ideas and feelings violated.

Narcissistic parents and other overbearing, maniplulative parents do not want their children to develop independent thoughts and ideas.

They do not want their children thinking in terms of their own needs at all. When their children expressed feelings, the abusive parents retaliated. If the child thinks independently and can express their feelings then it might threaten the narcissistic parent. 

The narcissistic parent wants to create a false narrative about the family. It is the vision of the family that is portrayed to the outside world. Everyone in the family has to back this story up. 

Children are not allowed to talk about abuse that occurs in the home. The narcissist re-frames the abuse to the mind of the child. The child is taught to believe the shared psychosis of the family, created by the narcissist. 

Punishments are inflicted on a child who goes against the narcissistic parent in any way. These can be emotional or physical in nature. 

Everyone in the house is trained to cater to the narcissist. Everyone knows that there are consequences for disobedience. The family members are made into a kind cult that follows the lead of the narcissist. 

These mentally abusive parents, want the focus on themselves. The needs and feelings of the others in the family do not matter.

They demand for the child to cater to their ever changing desires and demands. The narcissist will set rules and then change them when they feel like it. 

The children are expected to follow the rules, even when the parent has not informed them of changes. It is like playing a game with someone who changed the rules randomly and does not tell you. 

In order to survive in this type of environment, the child must learn to constantly read the parent’s body language and tone of voice.

They must anticipate the desires and moods of the parent. If they fail to do so, it is met with negative consequences.

If the child expresses disagreement, or unhappiness with a narcissistic parent, they will likely incur the anger and wrath of the parent.

The smallest indication of disagreement  with the parent can bring out their anger.

For their own protection, these children and teenagers learn to disguise their feelings and push them down.

They do not want the parent to see their feelings because it will be used against them.

If you grew up in this type of environment, then feeling negative emotions was the enemy. It is not something we have suddenly developed an irrational fear of as adults.

This environment causes C-PTSD, which is Complex Post Traumatic Stess Disorder, in many people. This is carried over into adulthood.

So, the advice to “stop treating emotions as if they were the enemy” and to tell people that feeling emotions is safe, does not make sense to someone with C-PTSD from childhood mental abuse.

Adults can also develop emotophobia from ongoing abusive relationships with a partner. Women become afraid to disagree with their partner because they fear the consequences of his anger.

Abusive people do not tolerate their partner exercising their personal rights, or expressing opinions that are different from them.

Again, the brain rewires the neural connections to avoid showing negative feelings. This is a necessary survival tactic at the time.

It is not easily undone. The brain considers it necessary in order to protect the safety of the person.

It takes years to develop this survival tactic and to learn how to detach from one’s own emotions.  The brain becomes wired to avoid entering into situations that may cause negative emotions.

To undo what was a learned survival skill takes a lot of work in re-wiring the brain.

Telling someone “emotions are your friends” does not work, especially without any idea why the person feels such anxiety about emotions like anger and sadness.

The only people who really understand what it feels like to have severe anxiety about showing anger, and sadness to others are those of us that are carrying the C-PTSD that causes it.

This is not a simple problem to just fix. You have to re-wire your programming. You have to learn that it is okay for someone else to be upset with us when we say “no.”

You need to learn how to identify what you want and what decisions will support you in a healthy way.  It is okay if other people do not agree with your choices. 

It takes practice to be able to stand your ground about things without fear of the consequences making you comply with others even when it is hurtful to you.

 

Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents

Low self esteem.

Lack of being able to self generate feelings of self worth.

Fear of doing things that make other people upset, angry or disappointed.

Difficulty prioritizing oneself.

Trouble feeling motivated to get ahead in life. 

These are some of the symptoms of C-PTSD from growing up with a narcissistic parent. Your subconscious brain is programmed very early about your identity, and  your role in the family and your place in the world. 

Associations are deep in the subconscious.

If you do not comply with the other person, there will be consequences to pay. If you cause someone to become upset , you will pay dearly. 

People from more health families learn to look out for themselves. You learned that in order to protect yourself, you have to look out for others. 

People from functional families were taught to be in touch with their own feelings and to love themselves.

 If you were the child of a narcissist, you were taught to defend against the wrath f the narcissist by not expressing your own feelings. Eventually you began to have trouble identifying what you want at all. 

As an adult this wiring in your brain keeps you from taking care of yourself properly.

You still have that hyper-vigilance that there is a threat of danger when someone near you is not getting their way. 

You may have a fear of being abandoned by the people you love, if you consider your own needs to be equal to theirs. The longer you cater to the desires of other people, in a relationship, the more they come to expect that treatment from you. 

People around you can become conditioned to expect you to always agree, always go along with them, and never challenge them. 

One of the many problems of this “people pleaser” behavior is that it attracts narcissists and predators. Narcissists and psychopaths want easy prey or at least a victim that had obvious emotional wounds that they can use to use against you. 

If you have never practiced standing up for yourself, then you have no idea how to do this, and you fear the consequences of doing so. What would happen to your relationships if you said “no” to someone? 

What would happen to your world of you began to prioritize your own needs? What consequences would follow if you believed that your needs and ideas were just as valuable as those of the people in your life?

Well, you can see the people in the world who are not afraid to say “no.” You interact with them all the time. They say “no” to you all the time. These people are not all in the same category. 

There are people who do what they want all the time. They never let people cross their boundaries. In fact, they cross over into your world and stomp all over your rights and invade your boundaries all the time. 

These are the narcissists. You may have a fear of becoming like that. You do not want to become the parent that emotionally abused you. The very person that caused much of your difficulty in getting what you want out of life. 

But there is another category of people who stand up for themselves. These are people that have healthy boundaries but still respect the rights of other people. They do not exploit and manipulate others. 

They express their feelings and let people know what they want. They go after the things they want out of life and they consider their personal dreams, desires and emotions to be a high priority. 

 These are not narcissists. They do not use aggressive, emotionally manipulative communication. They do not covertly try to get emotional reactions from you, in order to exploit and control you. 

There is a line between assertive and aggressive. You are being assertive when you express what you do and do not want.

You are being aggressive when you make it clear that you do not care what the other person wants. You undermine, lie to, and gaslight people to get your way. 

Being assertive and having healthy boundaries does not have to injure other people.

You are not a bad person for looking out for yourself.

You are not a narcissist if you care about your own feelings and needs. You are a normal human being. 

I will write about this topic again in the future. Please leave comments below about a specific question or particular problem that you have.

Give me some ideas about problems of having C-PTSD  (complex PTSD) that you are dealing with. 

I want to hear from adult children of narcissistic parents. Also from anyone that grew up under the heavy cloud of a narcissist in some capacity. It is not always a parent. 

Also, if you feel that your ability to move forward and get momentum in life has been affected by narcissistic abuse, either during childhood or as an adult, please leave me any ideas about questions I can address in a future post. 

 

 

 

Be Yourself

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