Inner child conversations

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the inner child but I always had a poor grasp of it. I recently started to understand how to use this concept in practice and I hope this example helps more people understand things better.

I grew up with emotionally distant parents and I realized in my relationships I was unhappy because I only felt like I was in love when the person was being distant from me. It made me notice the emotion of  my inner child more clearly, because she was showing me through my life experience that she was crying about the lack of love. She only came alive and felt passion when she was in a situation where she could yearn and cry about this lack of love.

Unconsciously, I wouldn’t feel excited any time someone loved me and I would push people or choose people who could make me feel what my inner child was feeling. Effectively she was in control and making the decisions about what I was attracted to and what I wasn’t. But finally I realized she wasn’t making any sense.

I was frustrated that my relationships were following the same pattern even though I had healed to the level of knowing what I deserved. Even if the person who was distant changed and fulfilled that fantasy, it wouldn’t satisfy me because what I wanted was the yearning itself. What she was crying about was the past and the past was an illusion that she was projecting onto the present. I know this because of how the brain functions under trauma.

I spoke to her. I said that there was no amount of love in the present can change the past, and that what she was asking me for was essentially impossible. I told her I can’t change the past but if she let me I can find experiences where I feel loved, but she will have to let me have more control.

What the child in me was scared of was that there was only one way to get love: change my father. Change someone else. Be more attractive so someone else can love me enough to change. This is a passive way to navigate life, it’s also essentially powerless, as powerless as a child. I told her there are so many ways to get my needs met, and I told her the examples of all the people who loved me but I walked away. How kind this world is and how many people want her to be safe and happy.

I couldn’t promise her anything but I think she’s satisfied that I didn’t ignore her and gave her the comfort she needed, which for me is to have painful things explained intellectually.