Hubchallenge day 7: Inner child work

Essentially what my therapy did was defuse the fear. Because there was someone who was listening intently to what I was saying and capable of asking the right questions I was able to confront my deepest fears about my self and my life.

It's difficult to describe the therapeutic process, because a lot of it is wrought in images and personal symbolism that is not easily transfered into a narrative. It's almost impossible to relate the stories and convey the depth of emotion and transformation that occurs through this kind of healing. But I'm going to give it a try by relating the story of a session where I confronted some of my deepest fears.

Remember when reading about this session that the symbols work at a very deep level. Inner child work, as it is called, tends to go back to early childhood memories. Or sometimes not even full-blown memories. In particular when the hurt occured very early in life, sometimes the inner child you're working with is preverbal. This means that at the time the incident happened it didn't have words for what was going on. Sometimes this means you don't get words, just sights and sounds, smells and feelings. You have to find a way to make sense of it, by  putting it into words. Using dual consciousness to look at the scene as well as be in it, you can sometimes give words to the preverbal child. This is a very powerful process as it gives words to things that have cut very deeply. This heals some very old wounds.

In therapy, most often we'd talk about my daily life. It was a rather turbulent phase in my life, trying to figure out what love really was and how it worked for me. Trying to keep my head together in order to do my job as best as I could. Trying to figure out who I was, what I liked and disliked in my life. I had thoroughly lost whoever I was before, and I had to reïnvent myself, using everything I had experienced and piecing it together in a way that suits me. The me that I was becoming.

On this particular day I had been talking about feeling small. I was in a relationship with a very impressive woman at the time. She was very outspoken and opinionated, knew what she wanted and didn't want and next to her I felt myself shrink, become small and insignificant. It was a familiar feeling that I very much didn't want in my life anymore. Discussing this and the mechanics of it in my relationship with this woman, I got triggered into feeling small during the session.

Getting triggered, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, means that because of something that is said or done, or even a smell, sound or touch, you are transported back to another time. Now, if that other time is like a good memory, you would call that a daydream. If it's not such a good place that you're transported to, it's called a flashback. The trigger is whatever get you there, usually something that is symbolic of something had happened before. In my case the trigger in the relationship was the balance of power. Talking about that with my therapist I got in touch with a great feeling of sadness. So I guess you could say that right there and then talking about it was the trigger.

This is how I understand the therapeutic process to work: You seek out triggers in order to find a flashback to a not so happy time, a time that is surrounded by pain and fear. This pain and fear is what is influencing your daily life. In this case my relationship with this woman.
When you find the trigger, the natural response is to fight the flashback. That's what I did, tooth and nail. The flashback, in this case a scene that wasn't even from my abuse, but from my family life prior to that, is horribly painful when you're in it. So painful in fact that everything inside me had been fighting for nearly 40 years to keep the lid on the memory.

One of the tools my therapist used was guided meditation. This sounds rather new age, but in fact it is a great age old tool, the power narration. The power of a good story has been used to educate people from the age of Homer and before, so finding my personal story and reïnventing it to include a happy ending was a great metaphoric way of working at something I couldn't approach directly. The direct approach being so scary that I balked.

Having identified the trigger, the flashback that was waiting in the wings. I was still fighting it, my whole body on red alert. I trusted in the therapeutic process and this particular therapist though, so when she invited me to get comfortable, lie down and watch my breathing for a while I felt safe to do so. This is in fact the first stage of a very light hypnotic trance, nothing hocus pocus scary in it (or I could have never submitted myself to it), just a state of enhanced receptiveness with a little bit less anxiety.

She asked me to see myself at the age of the flashback happening. Instantly I was an eight year old girl, dark curly hair. The mind playing a wonderful trick on me there, as I was a blond, blue eyed shy little girl, whereas this curly Sue had a great sulky attitude. For the purpose of courtcases and punishing perpetrators I think these kinds of memories are worse than useless, in fact they hurt the credibility of witnesses, but for the purpose of the therapeutic process it doesn't matter. The mind sticks things together in weird and wonderful ways and some of those ways hurt you, make you less able to cope with everyday life. This is what you're trying to undo when you're going through therapy.

The cold, hard bowlingball was a feeling as well as an image. I curled into a tight foetal position and clenched everything. I clenched everything so hard that in the week that followed I had a muscle-ache in places I had never suspected I had muscles. My body was looking catatonic, but I was still in contact with the therapist with my mind, listening and paying attention.

She touched my shoulder gently and said: "Yes, this is what you know how to do. Clench everything. You're very good at that. It's okay to let go though".
I started swaying back and forth, movement is a way for me to allow emotions to come out, my teeth were shattering, I cried and cried and cried. It was a tremendous release of pent up emotions. The therapist put on some music, some words filtered though: "She's a real emotional girl. She wears her heart on her sleeve. Every little thing you tell her, she'll believe..."

The crying was intense. The sadness like a wave crashing over me, screaming my agony like a seagull against the wind. I felt it lasted maybe a half hour, I'm not sure, time and place had lost all meaning for me. Then, it subsided, like a wave crashing into the shore and then softly bubbling away...

Several tissues later, still lying there, I was able to tell the therapist about what had happened, the bowling ball and the rolling out of the circle. She invited me to come back into my circle and send my parents away for now. The little girl looked angry.

I was both the little girl and my adult self. My therapist asked me if I could make contact with the little girl. I found that a hard assignment: The little girl didn't want me there, didn't trust the adult me. I couldn't blame her, I'd been pushing the memory of her away for 32 years at the least. No wonder she didn't trust me, the adult me. My therapist didn't have to tell me not to force anything, I knew I would have to win this little girls trust over time. She would allow me to sit on the outer edges of her circle. That was enough for that session. Besides which I was completely exhausted.