Adults of any age, twenty, forty, even ninety, can act like children sometimes.
And I don’t mean in a fun and carefree way, I mean when we’re upset.
We go back to that childhood feeling of vulnerability when we had much less resources to call on in dealing with emotional upsets.
We act like children when one of our inner children is activated.
Maybe we’re petulant, maybe we don’t listen, we shout or scream, we get tongue-tied and can’t express ourselves. Maybe we lash out, blame others, cover up and say things we’re going to regret.
We’re far from our clear thinking adult self at those times and that’s because we’re feeling hurt and back in that feeling from our childhood.
We don’t have one inner child, we have one for each wound or trauma experienced.
Most of us will have many wounded inner children, each carrying a belief such as “I’m not worthy; I’m not lovable; people can’t be trusted.”
Every time something happens to trigger one of those beliefs, the little child who suffered the original wound and created that belief comes to the surface.
Then, when we’re hurt and emotional, it’s easy to find ourselves acting like a hurt child again at such a time.
And if someone in your life is acting that way from time to time, that’s probably why.
Give them a break and give yourself a break, we all do it, unless we heal those inner children and relieve them of the burdens they are desperately trying to address.
To heal, we go within, find our inner child.
Listen to our child, really hear our child.
Acknowledge, validate, love and embrace that child,
Then, we heal and integrate our inner child into our heart space, finally letting go of what was never our burden to carry. And that’s such a beautiful thing to do.
[Image: ‘Surma Tribe Mother With Baby’ photograph by Francisco Mendoza Ruiz courtesy of Fine Art America]
amenet drago 