Healing Your Emotional Self (21 page)

Even though no one else can give you what you missed as a child, this doesn’t mean you are doomed to never receive it. There is one person who can give you what you missed out on—what you so desperately need and desire. That person is you.

The adult part of you—that part who had to grow up even though you didn’t get what you needed to do so—can begin to take care of the needy child in you. The adult part takes care of business, gets up to go to work every day, pays the bills, and puts a roof over your head. This adult part of you can begin to take care of the child part of you—the part who feels helpless, afraid, deprived, and unloved.

Inner-Child Work

The concept of inner-child work was developed many years ago, and numerous therapists, particularly those who work in the recovery field, have been recommending inner-child techniques for so long

that they have become somewhat of a cliché. But cliché or not, inner- child work can be the most important work that people who were neg- lected or abandoned can do to raise their self-esteem.

The concept of the inner child is the idea that we all hold within ourselves the memory or the essence of the child we once were. It is as if one part of us grew up and became an adult, but another part of us remained a child. This is particularly true of people who were neg- lected or abused as children, because neglect and abuse can cause us to become fixated or stuck at a certain age—unable or unwilling to grow up. Our inner child is also symbolic of our feeling selves. Accessing this feeling self can help you to determine what you need at any given time.

Exercise: Discover Your Inner Child

The following are suggestions as to how you can discover and nurture your inner child:

1. Go through old picture albums, paying particular attention to photos of yourself as a child. Look closely at them and find one or two that you are attracted to, either because you have feelings of fondness or tenderness toward the child in the photo or because there is something particu- larly compelling about the child you see.
   

2. Get this picture framed and put it up in your bedroom or another room where you will see it often. Or place a photo of yourself as a child on your bedroom or bathroom mirror as a subtle reminder that you have a deprived child inside you who needs love. Actually speaking to that picture of yourself every morning, saying things like “I am with you,” “I will take care of you,” and “I love you” can be extremely healing.
   

3. Begin to imagine that your inner child is with you at all times and that this child has needs you must attend to. For example, picturing your inner child next to you in your car can cause you to drive safer or take time out to stop for lunch.
   

4. Begin carrying on a dialogue with your inner child. For example, you might ask, “How are you feeling today?” or “What do you want to do today?” Most people do this silently, inside their heads, but others actually speak out loud to their inner children and have them answer out loud.
   

Exercise: A Written Dialogue with Your Inner Child

An effective way of beginning a dialogue with your inner child is to do the following writing exercise:

1. Draw a vertical line down the center of a piece of paper or on a page in your journal.
   

2. With your dominant hand (if you are right-handed, this will be your right hand) ask your child a simple question like “How are you feeling today?” or simply write, “Hello.” Write this on the left side of the vertical line.
   

3. Switch your pen or pencil to your less dominant hand and see if an answer comes to you. Don’t overthink it. See if something just flows out. The answer generally feels as if it is from another part of you. In this case, we are focusing on your inner child, so the answer may very well sound childlike. Write this answer on the right side of the vertical line.
   

4. If your inner child is trusting and accessible, he or she might say something like “I’m sad” or “Hello” in response. But often there is no response at all. This may be an indica- tion that your inner child is angry with you or does not trust you enough to respond. Because you haven’t connected to your inner child before, she or he naturally may feel suspi- cious of you. After all, where have you been? Why haven’t you cared about her before? For this reason, you may need to ask several times, on different occasions, before your inner child trusts that you really care. Some people have actually gotten a response such as, “What do you care?” or “I’m not going to talk to you.”
   

   Connecting with Your Inner Child
   

   Many people have a difficult time finding their inner child. If this is true for you, you may need to gain your inner child’s trust before she reveals herself to you, because many adults who were neglected or abused began treating their inner child the same way their parents treated them. As my client Dana explained to me, “My mother ignored me and my needs. She simply pretended I wasn’t there. Now I find that I do the same thing to my inner child. I just ignore her, hop- ing she’ll just leave me alone.” If you’ve been ignoring your inner child and her needs for a long time, she isn’t likely to reveal herself to you very readily. After all, why should she? As another client, Toni, explained it, “My inner child didn’t want anything to do with me. She didn’t trust me as far as she could throw me. Every time I tried talk- ing to her I just heard a deadly silence.”
   

   You may have to earn your inner child’s trust. You do this by being consistent and patient and by keeping your promises. Don’t ask your inner child what she wants or needs unless you plan on providing it for her. And never, ever tell your inner child you are going to do some- thing and then not do it. Whatever blossoming trust she may have had in you will go right out the window. The following suggestions will help you connect with even the most reticent inner child.
   

   1. If you continue to get no response when you attempt a written dialogue, you may wish to write a letter to your inner child. The purpose is for you to make contact, to express any regrets you have about the way your child was treated and about the way you continue to treat him or her. If you are sincere and gen- uinely sorry, your child is more likely to gain some trust in you.
      

   2. You may then attempt to have your inner child write a letter back to you. You can do this using your less dominant hand if you wish, but it is not necessary.
      

All of this may sound foolish to you, but believe me, these tech- niques really work. Not only do they help you to connect with the dis- owned parts of yourself (your feelings, your childhood memories), but they also help you to focus on taking better care of your needs. In essence, they help you to provide for yourself today what you didn’t receive from your parents when you were growing up.

Self-Indulgence

Adult children who were deprived in childhood not only continue to deprive themselves the way their parents did, but they also often go to the other extreme and become overly self-indulgent. In fact, the flip side of deprivation is indulgence. This is why so many neglected and emotionally abused children grow up to become adults who are overindulgent. As a way of balancing their hardships, and in a desper- ate need to comfort themselves, they develop a way of being far too easy on themselves. When life becomes difficult, they look to food, alcohol, drugs, relationships, shopping, or a multitude of other addic- tions for solace and comfort. Based on in-depth interviews with the families of obese children, Hilde Bruch, a psychiatrist at Baylor College of Medicine, and her colleague, Grace Touraine, found that the roots of the drive to go to excess were parenting styles that were permissive and/or depriving. Medical literature has since corrobo- rated Bruch’s and Touraine’s findings, showing that various problems are more likely to arise when parents are permissive or depriving. The literature on eating disorders, substance abuse, affective disorders, and health promotion is particularly consistent with this idea.

My Experience with Deprivation and Indulgence

My mother was a single parent who worked hard to support us. She stood on her feet for eight hours a day, selling cosmetics to wealthy women in an upscale department store. Every day she got up several hours early to give herself plenty of time to apply full makeup and dress immaculately so she would look good for her job. She was so focused on looking good in order to keep her job that she paid little attention to what I wore or even to making certain that I took care of basic hygiene, such as brushing my teeth. The result was that I often went around with dirty teeth, dirty hair, and unclean clothes.

Because my mother worked so hard and was so stressed out over keeping her job and putting food on the table, she indulged herself in the evenings and on her days off. One of the first things she did when she got home was to open her first of many cans of beer and sit down

to watch TV. On her days off she allowed herself to sleep in—often until noon. When she finally got up, she drank coffee and smoked cig- arettes for several hours until she segued into drinking beer and smok- ing cigarettes late in the afternoon. She read or watched TV for the rest of the evening—sometimes drinking as much as two six-packs of beer. As a child I felt horribly deprived of a mother. I longed for one who would get up in the morning and do what I saw other mothers doing—making breakfast, cleaning the house, doing their kids’ laun- dry. I wanted to be able to bring my friends over for dinner, have my mother drive us to a movie, or go bowling, as my friends’ mothers would do with them. Instead, I got up in the morning and went out- side to find a neighborhood kid to play with or an adult to talk to. On school days I got myself dressed and went off to school without break-

fast. I often looked like a little ragamuffin.

You’d think that I would be a thin, maybe even sickly child, but fortunately I had good genes and maintained fairly good health, with the exception of suffering from chronic bronchitis because of my mother’s smoking. I also had severe constipation because I ate so lit- tle in the way of vegetables and fruit, and I had multiple cavities because of my poor dental hygiene. Instead of being thin, by the time I reached six or seven I began to look rather pudgy. I had already begun to indulge myself with food in order to make up for the emo- tional deprivation I experienced. Ravenous from missing breakfast, I would scarf down every bite of my cafeteria lunch. After school I made myself fried egg sandwiches (we never had lunch meats or cheese on hand). At dinner I stuffed myself with whatever my mother had managed to put together. And late in the evening I would sneak into the refrigerator to see what I could find.

The beginnings of my tendency to indulge myself also came from my mother’s tendency to go to extremes with deprivation and indul- gence. We would “scrape by,” as she would say, all week, eating beans and macaroni, but when she got her paycheck she would always buy us a steak or a chicken and a treat. This was usually a half gallon of ice milk—a cheaper version of ice cream. She’d buy the ice milk on a Friday, for example, and by Saturday night, or at the latest by Sunday afternoon, it would be gone. She would probably have one bowl of it and I would have the rest.

From my mother I learned many things. I learned to work hard. In fact, I learned that you can do most anything if you just forge ahead and put your mind to it. She was able to raise a child all on her own in spite of the fact that she didn’t have any skills except being a good salesperson. I learned that if you just stayed focused on the task at hand and ignored your body, your feelings, and your needs, you could get by with little rest, little pleasure, and little nurturing. And this is what I became accustomed to doing for most of my life. I worked hard and accomplished wonderful things, but seldom took the time to pay attention to my body or my emotional needs. I deprived myself of sleep and seldom played or gave myself much pleasure. I ended up doing the same as my mother—dividing my life into two extremes: deprivation and indulgence. I worked myself into exhaustion and then “came down” from my work frenzy by overeating and then “sleeping it off.” Just as my mother dealt with stress by drinking her six-packs, I dealt with mine by overeating when I got home. And surprise, surprise, at the end of a long week at work I “rewarded” myself with ice cream.

Journaling Exercise: Too Harsh or Too Easy

1. Write about the ways that you are too easy on yourself (you don’t push yourself to exercise, you allow yourself to eat ice cream even though you want to lose weight, or you con- tinue to allow yourself to procrastinate).
   

2. Write about the ways that you are too harsh with yourself (pushing yourself to complete a task and ignoring your need for proper nutrition and rest, depriving yourself of a treat now and then because you are so obsessed with stay- ing thin).
   

Stop Attacking Yourself

Few childhood experiences have as destructive an impact on your sense of self as abandonment. It creates a basic feeling of worthless- ness or wrongness that amplifies even mild hurts into a feeling of

devastation. If you were abandoned as a child, almost any painful event can cause you to experience a sinking feeling of worthlessness. For example, if someone becomes critical or angry with you, if you feel ignored or discounted, or if you make a mistake, it can confirm your basic belief that you are worthless. Your reaction may be either to get angry at yourself and chastise yourself severely or to become numb. You may live in constant fear that others will discover how worthless you really are. When someone criticizes or rejects you, it may feel as if they have seen the real you. No matter how small the current difficulty, it is a painful reminder of the times when you were rejected or abandoned as a child and came to believe that you were to blame for it.

Even though you may try to tell yourself that it is just a small thing, your reasonable voice gets drowned out by your overwhelming feelings of worthlessness and being wrong. You may try to defend against or block the feelings of worthlessness by attacking yourself, believing that if you beat yourself up enough you will finally correct your flaws—that the things you hate in yourself can be fixed—and that when you have beaten yourself into shape the bad feeling will go away.