hubchallenge day 15: Inner Child work

The core assumption of inner child work is that the child you once were is stuck in time and needs to be brought along with love and tender care. When something traumatic like childhood sexual abuse happens, it's like the child decides: "This is too much for me to handle". Having no other recourse it files away the memory for future reference. If this is a single occasion, usually there will be some harm done, but the child will bounce back from that. If the child is able to speak about it with a caring adult who helps him/her cope, there will be a learning experience and the child will heal. However when the traumatic experiences happen more often, the severity of the damage is greatly increased. Instead of feeling "this is too difficult for me to handle" and filing it away for the future, the child can't cope an gradually may decide "Life is too difficult for me to handle". This put's the child even more at risk, because one of the possible solutions is to find an adult who can take care of you. A natural response on behalf of the child, but very hazardous as by this time the adult who can take care of you is generally the abuser. The others have stood idly by, turned away or seem incompetent. Usually the abuser is quick to point out that there is no other help available. The child starts to actively participate in the abuse, throwing in it's fate with the abuser as, at least the abuser appears to have some power, something they feel utterly devoid of.

As an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse, the childs actions are often the most difficult to forgive. Self-blame and guilt has been reaffirmed so many times over the years that it becomes the way things are, instead of something that happened and can be overcome. Many adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse are absolutely convinced that they bear the burden of guilt for the abuse. Sometimes they feel they initiated the abuse, if they've approached the adult for some TLC for instance. Sometimes they have actively participated in creating moments in which the abuse could take place. Sometimes they blame themselves for simply failing to cry out at the time, or failling to fight back. Or they feel guilty for having kept things bottled up inside for so long.

The result of this is that the adult carries a lot of confused feelings for the child they once were, varying from condemnation to outright hatred. In speaking to them about childhood sexual abuse in a general sense they will lay the blame squarely at the adult, but speaking about their own particular case they invariably blame themselves. They call themselves stupid, gullible, naïve, silly, lazy... any number of derogatory terms that they would likely never use on a child, but they use it on their own inner child: the one they once were.

These labels carry over to the adult too, sometimes. I was convinced I was lazy and gullible. Lazy because my mom called me that, all the time. When the abuse was going on I was in highschool. I was an okay student but highschool was still a rather intense period in my life, building my own identity and studying a lot. Most teenagers have trouble getting up in the morning, and processing all that happens to them during the day makes them appear lazy. In my case this was exacerbated by the fact that three or four days a week I was abused for sometimes hours at a time. My abuser found pleasure in making me have several orgasms in every session. Aside from the normal teenage stuff I had to contend with I was physically exhausted half the time. No wonder my mom thought I was lazy. I was over 40 when I learned that I really wasn't. Mind you, that's after a time in my life when I worked 90 hour weeks, worked at 4 jobs to pay off some debt I had gotten into and generally had been working at menial jobs for years to maintain a fairly high standard of living. I still thought of myself as lazy because that is what had been anchored so deeply within me.

Same holds true for thinking I was gullible. I'm an intelligent woman, well educated, alert, quick to pick up on the undercurrent of any situation, I learn swiftly and easily. And yet, untill I did extensive inner child work I thought of myself as stupid, gullible and lazy.

In inner child work you do on a small scale what someone who suffers from DID does on a large scale. You identify inner children and communicate with them. The story about rolling outside my own inner circle as told in "The actual memory" is but one of many such memories and meetings with my own inner children. In communicating with the pain from the past, it kind of helps to have an image of the child at the age it happened. The real trick is to have a dual awareness: to be the adult, to be firmly connected to today and the way life is at this moment, and at the same time be aware of what it is like for the child. I believe if you really get to know someone, get into their skin and know them for who they really are, it's easy to forgive them for whatever they may have done.

For me, seeing myself as a little girl, as an image seperate from the adult that I also am, helped me find empathy for who I was, for the scared, scarred, brave little girl who was trying to survive a physically abusive early childhood and the sexually abusive teenage years. My fear for the physical violence of my father drove me into my abusers arms. I was just trying to be a good girl for everyone and my abuser saved me from that. He was a powerful man in our family, where there had been none other than my father. Instead of being a slavish little girl for everyone, I was now only his slave. Some would call that an improvement and it would have been had it not been for the sex. The sex degraded me, demeaned me and kept me in the bonds of slavery. The dirty secret kept me in his power, made me desperate to please him and to not fall from his grace. Because he'd taught me: No one ever would love me the way that he loved me. (in retrospect? Thank goodness for that, spare me that kind of love, please)

Inner child work is a great method of working with the trauma generated by childhood sexual abuse. It appears to be a soft approach for breaking down those barriers of self defence that the adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse has built up between themselves and the world. Don't be mistaken though, it's not for the meek. It takes a complete willingness to face everything that happened, letting go of all your denial, letting go of any and all excuses, taking full responsibility for your life... and looking at yourself in mildness.

In the process of healing yourself, your inner child, working with your deepest secrets and innermost fears, you get to know yourself in all your glory and all your littleness. What it boils down to is: How happy can you be, being who you are, every dimple and pimple, the good, bad and ugly, all part of who you are. Every emotion, every expression, everything you do in the world is a part of who your are. Making peace with every part of yourself, putting the balm of forgiveness, mildness and compassion on everything about you.