Honouring Your Inner Child
One of the greatest lessons in my own healing journey was realising that there is no such thing as 'fully healed', but rather a continuous nurturing of my souls pathway.
Understanding my emotions and how the experiences I have faced have shaped me, allow me to live a life filled with love and gratitude. Every trigger, every reactive behaviour has been learned to protect myself from feeling the very emotions I pushed down as a child.
When we are young our somatic nervous system isn't developed enough to process all our voluntary emotions, so any thoughts and feelings we have when we are confronted with with fear, are literally pushed down. The problem is the next time you start to feel those emotions, the cognitive process recognises the attachment to fear, so you feel the need to push them down again. This leads to the development of limiting beliefs, behaviours and self sabotage designed protect yourself from feeling the very emotions that need to be processed. So essentially if you don’t feel them, you store them deep down and learn ways to carry around an emotional part of you that never grows, a part of you that always remains a child.
Enter that time when you really did react like a child... were you really acting from a place of truth or was it a reactive behaviour you have developed to protect the younger you? What did the younger version of you really need in that moment? The situations that trigger you in your day to day life are placing a spotlight on what you need to heal. Understanding the 'why' around your triggers is one thing, but learning the 'how' to process them is life changing.
This may ruffle some feathers, but I challenge the Western Mental Health system and the agenda to prescribe a "pill for an ill", as do I challenge the idea that spending hours of talk therapy and keeping you "in your head" will solve your problems. As someone who has worked with and personally experienced the above mentioned, I can categorically state that the only way to process trauma, suppressed emotion & limiting beliefs is to actually feel them, not numb them with prescription medication or worse still drown the ‘there’s something wrong with me’, self judgement that comes from talk therapy, with alcohol and substance abuse.
For me, perfectionism has always been my greatest struggle and although it has taken me some time to get to the place I am in right now, I am still healing. Whilst I can honestly say I am not aiming for perfection, I accept with love who I am in this moment. I am so grateful for my journey and for those who have crossed my path and triggered me over the years, you have all taught me so much about myself, so thank you. And to those who have guided me with their wisdom and their own healing journeys, thank you for sharing your light and love.
My personal healing journey has been a true blessing, I am so grateful that when I was at my lowest point and on the precipice of ending my own life, I had the courage to turn and face my shadow. Every single day I give thanks for each breath I take and honour my inner child, who in fact saved me in that moment, my inner child, who in her sovereignty, was born with pure love and empathy for others also supported me in my darkest hour. So it is an honour that I walk together with her today and hold space for others on their healing journey. I am who I am, because of my scars.
Whilst everyones path is their own and travelled at a different pace, one can never under estimate the power of emotional self healing, particularly when things that seem so small in your childhood can in fact bare a huge impact on who you are as an adult. So my question for you today is this, when was the last time you really connected with the younger version of yourself. How does the 4 or 5 year old YOU feel in a triggered moment? Are YOU acting in a way that honours your truth or is it an act of self sabotage?