Getting past the present circumstances to truth and keeping your promises

Monday was a horrible day for me. I was still waiting on the new boiler being fitted, it was freezing cold, no hot water, no car so I couldn’t escape. Arrgh. And I wanted to blow off everything I’d committed to, following up with clients, getting back to prospective clients, working on my website update, my new online programme and writing this blog.

I was in the mood to sit in my own toxic stew of being pissed off, feeling sorry for myself, and thinking this move just wasn’t going to work out the way I wanted and I might as well just give up.

How the heck can I write something inspirational when I’m feeling like crawling under a rock and hiding there for a very, very long time?

And it wasn’t that bad, I had a radiator, a blanket, a hot water bottle and lots of tea. And even more important, I knew the cold had an end point, it would be over by the afternoon and I would have amazing central heating and hot water at the twist of the tap. Not something to take for granted, I tell you.

There’s plenty of people who don’t have the prospect of warmth, who can’t afford to heat and eat. So I needed to get over myself. But it never helps to say there are worse off people. This is my misery, just as you have yours and yes, there are many who have much more awful circumstances but I have to deal with my sh!t first. Then I am in a much better place to help others.

So I sat myself down in my chair with my journal to write, because that’s what I need to do to work through my difficult mood and to see what my soul wanted to share with you.

Last week, the Loving Yourself Comes First course and all the daily blogs practically wrote themselves, I didn’t struggle, I didn’t have to think or reach for words, it flowed out of me like I was channeling it from somewhere or someone else. Which in truth it is. But Monday? Every word was dragged out, it just wouldn’t come.

How am I supposed to help you, share wisdom and truth with you, guide your personal development if I’m stuck? If I’m not sure what I’m writing is what you need to hear.

And I kept writing about the struggle and about whether I even have anything to say, whether I can help you. I’d like to blame the cold for this but it was simply a crisis of confidence, after a week when getting back into my groove had been so easy, now I had to put in some work.

So I sat with it, and I kept writing about what I know, what my expertise is, what benefit my one to one clients had with me and where they had the most fun and impact.

And I thought yes, a mini-course on inner child work, a gift to the child who most needs love from you. Something around that, but it still wasn’t completely coming together.

I wanted to put all of my years of learning and experience with clients into a mini course? Hmm, not sure that fits, this subject is too big, too important.

Something around learning to recognise when you lose control as an adult, how its the inner child who has the reins. How that child got frozen in time in your psyche and takes over when it feels a similar threat looming.

Reconnect to Your Inner Child and Heal the Wounds of a Lifetime. Now I’ve got a title for the course, and it has weight and resonance to reflect the importance of the subject.

I continued to sit and hold space for what’s needed to come through. And its a similar thing when dealing with your inner child. Sitting still and asking that frightened child inside ‘What do you need? How can I help you feel safe, loved, protected and connected? How can I show you that you belong, we long to each other?’

And still I struggled with writing, maybe it was the cold, the lack of sleep, worrying about a family problem that had blown up over the weekend but the words would not come.

My job is helping people by sharing my struggles and how I overcome them, how I continue every day to make the choice to be that better version of myself that I hold inside, as a guide to being better today than yesterday.

I want my work to be authentic, honest, to ring true with integrity, and I don’t dress it up to hide the ugly bits. Because we all have those days. but what do I write about when the words won’t come?

How the wounds of childhood linger long past schooldays? We’ve all experienced it, that overwhelming sense of powerless that grips us as we get swept along on a rising tide of emotion, losing control, regressing to the mindset and behaviour of our childhood self.

Well, yes, it seems that is it. Inner Child work has long held fascination for therapists, probably because the deepest wounds are inflicted on us then and we can carry them for the rest of our lives.

There is strong support for a theory that emotional development stops at the point of a trauma experience, and every time something happens that makes us feel similar emotions and sensations in our bodies, we stop being an adult with access to years of learning, rational thought, experience and ability to problem solve and instead we revert back to the emotional age of that first trauma and act from that limited resource state.

I’ve seen this in myself time and time again, I have two ages I revert to when triggered, 4 years and 7 years old. I have seen it in almost all of my clients and so healing the inner child is a pivotal part of my work.

And I could say that the fact that work was being so hesitant today was down to my 7 year old self feeling insecure and vulnerable about whether it was safe for me to stand up and talk about my work, to stand up in the world and be seen. She likes to hide.

Healing our inner child is so important to our ability to recover and let go of our past. This work explains why we react to certain triggers in such mindblowingly useless ways, acting as though we only have the resources available to a powerless child, with none of the assets of the accomplished adult we’ve grown into.

It’s not a good place to live in. Regression to this childhood state, one that lacks the capability of critical thinking, reasoned insight and the learned ability to problem solve, means you’re always underperforming when under pressure, unable to bring all your skill and talents to bear in finding creative solutions to your problems.

One simple technique to help counteract this diminishing of your adult faculties is to become aware when you start to regress and ask yourself, ‘What age am I right now?’ Take note of whatever age comes to mind.

And then have a conversation with that younger part of your psyche. What in this current situation reminds you of something that happened at that age in your childhood? What will it take from you to help that part of you feel safe and integrated into your whole?

And you can look at the situation from childhood if one specific incident comes up and see how it was maybe misinterpreted by a childlike mind. Are you now able to reframe it and give that young part of you a new explanation of that event, one that gives them (and you) peace and security?

You can have a regular dialogue with your inner child, in fact with many various parts of your psyche, to help bring you to a fully integrated, happier, calmer whole.

Instead of having different parts of yourself at loggerheads, wanting different things and all for the same reason – to keep you safe and well – you will have all parts of you working towards common goals.

Helping you feel calmer, clearer and with full access to all the reasoning ability that stress switches off.

Inner child work has been a mainstay of my hypnotherapy practice and every client who goes through my unique healing, recentering, reconnecting process has experienced a profound recognition of their inner child and their needs. Establishing an ongoing relationship with that part of themselves that had been neglected, frustrated and ignored, bringing instead a sense of wholeness, completion, connection and joy.

Reconnect to Your Inner Child and Heal the Wounds of a Lifetime. This is a massive amount of work, encapsulating years of research. There’s so much to go through, so much for you to experience that it must be broken down into a 4 week programme. Yes, it’s hard work but it feels amazing, fun, frankly amazing.

Do you remember laughing until your stomach hurt? Laughing so much your peed yourself? Your cheeks and jaw got sore? Laughing so much that you forgot what your were laughing about, yet you couldn’t stop?

If you’re like most adults, it wasn’t yesterday or last week, or in the past month or year. Past five years? Can you even remember when you last laughed like that?

I was channel hoping last Friday and came across Vic and Bob’s Big Night Out on iplayer and their surreal, ridiculous humour had me giggling and laughing and if felt so good. It also felt unfamiliar, I realised it had been far too long since I’d had a good laugh and we need laughter like we need air, water, sunshine.

Laughter is a fundamental part of human connection, children laugh 100’s of times a day, adults less than 10 times a day. Why did we stop? We don’t die without laughter as quickly as we would if our air supply was cut off, but the grey bleakness of a life without laughter will kill us just the same.

Most adults turn their back on the things they loved to do as children. It doesn’t matter to a child if they’re good or not, if they want to dance or sing or paint or tell stories or whatever it is they want to do, they do it, simply because it makes them feel so good.

We grow up and we stop doing the things we love. We forget them, we bury that knowledge and we lose touch with that part of ourselves. But it doesn’t stop existing, it might shrink but its still there, neglected and ignored.

If you want to live a fulfilling, satisfying life, then the needs of every part of you needs to be recognised, honoured and served.

Do this. Sit down somewhere quiet for 15 minutes and allow the years to drift away as you go way back to when you were little. If it helps, get out an old photo of you when you were young. And think about the things you loved to do, the things that were so much fun they made you feel giddy with excitement and joy.

Even the simple things like standing with your arms straight out and spinning round and round til you just couldn’t go round anymore. And you’d wobble and maybe fall on top of your friends and it was so much fun you couldn’t wait to stand up and do it again.

Think about all those things you loved, skipping rope, football, juggling. colouring in, splashing in puddles, riding your bike hands off.

Make a list and keep adding to it as more things come to mind. And every day, think about that inner child and do one of those things on your list for them, reconnecting to the childlike wonder, joy and impulsiveness to just do the thing because it feels good.

Don’t be afraid of looking silly. Looking silly, being silly is a part of the fun and a necessary part of letting go of the constricted box you’ve found yourself in.

Break out of the jail of conformity, laugh like your four year old self, and welcome that childhood energy into your life, integrate it into your being.

Reconnect to Your Inner Child and Heal the Wounds of a Lifetime.