To understand what’s needed for healing, it’s helpful to think about the wounds that we are trying to heal.
Our childhood wounds are usually relational.
f your parent yelled angrily at you, that relational interaction left a mark. The yelling itself didn’t necessarily harm you, it was that they were yelling AT YOU.
Think of the wounds or trauma you experienced as a child. Not including natural disasters, wars or other traumatic experiences which were not personal, the wounds or trauma occurred in relationship. If we were hurt, we were hurt by a person or people. If we were neglected or ignored, that was also by a person or people. If we were excluded, ridiculed, judged, criticized…this was always happening in relationship.THE HEALING NEEDS TO BE RELATIONAL AS WELL.
The impacts of our childhood wounding reside inside ourselves. Although the wounding happened in relationship with others, the leftover wounds are right here inside of us. We act them out in our relationships, yes, but the wounds are within our own personal systems.
This is very helpful – because everything that needs healing is right here. It’s actually kind of amazing how convenient that is! We don’t need to go anywhere to find what needs healing.
And guess what else…the healing needs to be done in relationship. But not in relationship with someone else. In relationship WITH OURSELVES. Again…how convenient. We don’t need to count on any outside source to do the work, it’s in our own capacity.
Confusing? Here’s one example: We may have been neglected by our parents and learned that we are not important. The damage is the belief we walk around with: that we are not important.
How does this wound show up in our lives? It impacts how we see others and the world itself. It can show up in every single thing we do – from how we eat to how we drive to how we make love. There are a lot of emotional results of this as well, we are likely sad and angry due to repeatedly experiencing the feeling and view that we are not important.
We will unconsciously show up in a way that shows that 1.we are not important and 2.that we deeply hope that that’s not true, and somehow an external force will show us that we actually are important and valuable.
The second part is there because, of course, it is NOT true that we are not important. Some part of us has this awareness.
How can we heal from this? Through our relationship with ourselves. We can learn to stop neglecting ourselves. To treat ourselves as important. And then we can learn to begin to acknowledge our value, our importance. From there, we will begin to stand taller, to voice our opinion, to express our ideas and dreams. And we feel joy and excitement about our life.
All of this can be accomplished using Inner Child healing techniques. But it is helpful to understand that the relationship you are healing, often you are re-creating it - is the relationship with yourself.
This is what Inner Child work is really about; creating a loving, supportive relationship with yourself.