Saturday, March 8, 2014

Inner Child Work And Feeling Safe

It seems that I am doing some inner child work lately. As I talked about in recent articles, my inner child does not feel safe right now. The only reason that I can come up with is writing my book has opened her up to all kinds of fears. Fear of being exposed to the world, on a bigger scale, as an incest survivor; breaking the bonds of silence in a new, bigger way; being vulnerable to so many strangers; being open to recalling new memories. All of it feels overwhelming to her. I can feel her fear and see her shaking.  I wonder if her fear is what is causing my headaches, in an effort to get me to stop writing but I am not going to do that. I can acknowledge her fears but I won't give in to them. If I gave into fear, I would never have left home when I did at 19. I would have never broken the silence of incest. I would never had told my dad that he wasn't safe to be in my life or around my children. I would never have written the first blog article or talked on the first radio program several years ago.

I see how far I have come today and I am proud of the courage that I have. I will keep facing my fears as they come up and I will assure my inner child that she is safe. I will pay attention to what her feelings tell me. And I will continue to write.

I have decided that something that might help is to go back and reread the book Recovery of Your Inner Child: The highly acclaimed method for liberating your inner self written by Lucia Capacchione, Ph. D., Published by Simon & Schuster, New York, NY: 1991.  This book taught me the importance of writing with my non-dominant hand in order to give my inner child a voice. I haven't done any of that kind of writing in many years. Maybe that will give me some answers to what is going on right now rather than me just guessing.

One thing that I learned is that the inner child is the keeper of my creativity. I realized recently that it was her fear that was blocking me from writing. When I faced that fear, the words started to flow again.

Another book that helped me with inner child work is an affirmations book that I have recently shared from, here in my blog. The book is called Affirmations For The Inner Child written by Rokelle Lerner. This book takes you throughout the year with an affirmation to be read for each day of the year.  I wanted to share the affirmation with you from March 3 on Safety.

"It is safe for my inner child to emerge.

The child within runs and hides when someone wants to come close. He lets himself be seen only for a short time, then gets frightened and runs away to hide again. He wants so much to be loved, to play, to experience the goodness of life. But life is too scary. Indeed, life has never been safe for him.

It is time to make life safe for my inner child and I have the power to create a safe haven. Safety brings freedom not only to accept and love myself but also to love others.

As I concentrate on making a safe haven for my inner child, I will be aware of my friends, old and new. I will choose friends who are emotionally healthy or moving on the journey toward wholeness. It is within the loving bonds of friendship that my inner child can come out and learn to feel safe."

Another friend of mine who is working with inner child issues is Mary Graziano. I want to share the link to one of her blog posts called "Memories Still Do Hurt."
 

http://nippercats.blogspot.com/2014/03/inner-child-is-hurting.html

I hope that all of you are having a good week. Keep telling yourself that Spring is just around the corner. I think most of us are tired of old man Winter.
Patricia

 

6 comments:

nippercatshome said...

Hugs to you my dear friend. Working on our inner child work is so hard at times, when memories surface. She is scared, we are scared for her. But you are so right, we have to not be afraid to move on, and not let her keep us back in the past. Telling her that she is now safe, that we are safe will hopefully let her see that this is true. Yes she hides when she is afraid, but we can't let that fear keep us hidden. Working on my inner child has been frustrating lately, as memories are resurfacing that I had hidden deep within myself. Learning to love myself for some things I did as a child is still hard for me. I think she senses that too. Moving on is the healthiest thing we can do. Am here for you as I know you are here for me also. Love to you Pat, I know you won't let her win. You will write that book, I think it is an important thing that you must do. Thank you for sharing my link to my blog.<3 ~Mary

Patricia Singleton said...

Mary, You are very welcome for the link love, my friend. Healing is hard work and neither you or I either one are going to give up. I appreciate your love and support and I will be here loving and supporting you too, as long as it takes. <3

Unknown said...

Thank you. Good stuff.. My inner child is glad I read this.

Patricia Singleton said...

Jean Marie, You are very welcome. I am glad you find my post useful. (((Hugs))) to your inner child.

Unknown said...

Thank you Patricia, when I finally listened she had quite a story to tell me. It has been allot of processing. Now I am happy to move forward with my inner child more free.

http://breakinggenerationalchains.blogspot.com/2014/05/letting-pain-go.html

Patricia Singleton said...

Jean Marie, Yes, when we finally listen to our inner child, usually she/he does have a lot to tell us. It can be quite a revelation. Loving our inner child instead of hating them does wonders for our healing of our adult self.