The battle between the child and the adult

I do love it when my spontaneous inner child bursts free. At other times I get waves of guilt as my parental self tells me I am being irresponsible or some other thing. Come to think of it I started to attempt a post a while back that asked why we can be so hard on the inner child in us especially when we are healing.. Having to grow up too soon or being shamed can leave many of us with lasting scars and emotional deficits in this regard..

This child may not always be a positive influence at times especially if the wounded aspect of it is dominating, then we can feel angry, aggrieved or full of rage at being ‘ignored’ or ‘put down’ not even realising that something else someone else inadvertently (or deliberately) did to us has just triggered something from the past. Michael Brown talks a lot about this triggering process in his book The Presence Process. The best we can do is begin to be mindful around it and learn to listen in for the ‘message’ or lesson.. Its also when we need the loving inner adult to step in and help that damaged kid make sense of things.

On this issue there is a poet who has a strong presence on WordPress that I will not name and who work I deeply admire who recently published a book of poetry.. It saddened me a lot on the weekend to read that it had not got the review she was hoping for and that this had taken her right down into a depressive spin. While part of me felt sad the person reviewing it could not have shown more sensitivity and empathy, another felt even sadder she had allowed their opinion to trigger and devalue her own self concept. To my mind its very hard to judge art or poetry as so often it is just a means of soul expression and yes even I know a lot of my poems aren’t of the gold star variety while the occasional one is, and at times its a bloody victory getting them past the inner critic. (I currently have at least 30 unpublished poems I have written in my drafts folder.) Anyway, like it or not, the world is just not always going to applaud even our best efforts and there will always be for some of us for one or either force of parent or child to dominate our self expression into the world either projected or reflected.

Today I thought so sadly of both my parents who never got to just have a lot of fun or a free happy childhood, both having been raised by parents traumatised by the outbreak of World War One who then had to struggle on alone during the depression they then both got caught up not only in the fury and struggle to survive of World War Two but were also caught up in the ferocious and dangerous independence struggle of the Indonesian people in the years immediately following the ending of that War. My father was part of the force stationed in the (at then Dutch East Indies) that was engaged in flying home POW sufferers following the ending of the War. Both my older sister and brother were involved in this as they were both under 10 years when all of this was going on. I sometimes forget how utterly different my brother’s experience was in our family to my own in this regard.

Today I can have an awareness of the child within the adult that struggled so hard to live and make her way in the world, who had so many unmet relational needs that drove her and who was always so observant of, and curious about the world. I notice this quality of curiosity in my dog Jasper so often.. and it reminds me of myself. I also watch myself try to stifle his ebullience out of fear or embarrasement that he is not being ‘a good dog’ (LOL!!) just as mine was quashed by my Mum at times… I was a bit too much of a handful for a 40 year old Mum in the 1960s and Mum had her own repressive conditioning to deal with.. I see my living sister who is now hospitalised also really struggling to make any real connection with her inner child consciously while knowing how she also longs to set her free but so often gets stopped by that powerful Hitler death force of the inner critic.

Earlier in the week I began to re read some chapters of the brilliant book Leaving My Father’s House, in which Jungian therapist Marion Woodman shares the individuation stories of three women weaving them within the mythological context of the fairy tale Alleilurah that speaks of a girl riven with shame who becomes a servant in the house of the King and seeks to win his attention and grow in esteem through making soup (all a metaphor for our struggle to develop healthy narcissism coming out of wounding families as well as a wounding culture.

In the portion I read again on Tuesday night Mary struggles with the inner forces and voices of the Witch and Hitler who keep her bound to the death of perfectionist striving, at the same time as she begins to open up to inner loving wise transpersonal supportive forces such as Atman and Nellie who encourage her to be and live as her truly embodied messy self and bring spirit into matter.. Along the way she encounters the deer who has a lot to teach her as she battles to know that she can live as an expression and embodiment of love when she begins to throw off the shackles of restrictive inner complexes that keep her bound to an unfulfilling life…

For myself encounters with my inner child at times fill me with life and joy, at other times with great depths of grief and sorrow for what got split off or lost, not only for me but for both of my parents as well as my siblings. I think of the ways in which so much that happened for them was outside of their control and how hard they struggled within the pressure of all of those forces to survive.. My heart then overflows with both healing and compassion.

I was grateful about a year ago to come across a night time forgiveness meditation from Louise Hay that involved seeing your inner child enclosed in circle of love with the inner children of both your mother and father. Thinking about it you could, if you wanted, extend this circle even wider to encompass the inner children of all of the ancestors that you know and love… in the meditation she encourages to gaze on the dilemma of what their inner kids suffered with compassion so that we can take the healing power of forgiveness deep inside our heart and body and bathe within its unifying affects…

This pleases me somehow, while it makes my inner self jump with joy and yes that jumping may also take place very close to a river of tears that will probably always continue to flow downstream as I feel deep within my cells the powerful imprint of all my dear ancestors struggled with while incarnate upon the earth plane.

Today I am grateful when my inner child makes a showing.. But I also like it when the inner parent steps in too and reminds her to have boundaries in the world…. Sometimes it seems to me though that, in my life at least, I encountered too many killing forces in this regard… this allies to my Catholic upbringing I am still trying to come to terms with… today I am grateful when my child can play and feel joy. I feel sad to think of how many years she just got lost and came to feel so powerless and helpless, while all along at any moment she had the opportunity to reach for life and know that she had the power to create a happier one.