There are few experiences more frustrating than that confusing type of depression or anxiety--the kind that seems to happen “for no reason” and appears to have no source, despite our efforts to reflect and understand it.
When we’re dealing with this mystery psychological suffering, we might be contacting an inner child in need.
As we move through life from birth to adulthood, we experience, and we digest. We are complex systems that are constantly learning, processing, and storing information. We interact with our parents, siblings, teachers, and friends on a daily basis. We digest these interactions into information.
We use this information to develop patterns to look out for, beliefs to use in navigating future experiences, and data to make sense of who we are and where we belong.
As children, and especially Highly Sensitive (HSP) children, we have unique needs individual to our personalities. Our caregivers (who are likely doing their very best!) are not going to catch and meet all of our needs--for attention, affection, connection, and validation.
Think of the times you’ve really felt “seen” for who you are. Without advice, opinion, or concern attached. Just seen. Understood. Listened to.
It’s rare! The type of connection we crave often comes in inconsistent, unexpected moments.
We treasure these pieces--these moments of feeling attuned to. They keep us feeling secure in who we are, both individually and in relationship as adults. They create a belief of “I’m okay as I am”.
But the other pieces--the times where we felt our caregiver’s mind was elsewhere, the times where we felt judged, the times where we felt ignored--these pieces remain in our system like a smudge on our glasses, affecting how we see and navigate the world to this day.
Our inner child’s ingenious system of creating patterns, beliefs, and self-concept takes in ALL information--as fact. This includes the interpretation of our caregiver’s distractedness as personal, the perception of our parent’s anger as our fault, and the feeling of shame that comes with misunderstood or ignored feelings.
This interaction of our system with our environment creates debris--pieces of pain that have nowhere to go. Smudges on our glasses.
Our inner child takes responsibility for these pieces. I must be too annoying. Too sensitive. Not good enough. And we earnestly carry these pieces of pain forward, into our patterns, beliefs, and self-concept.
Our inner child’s pain could show up as an unexplained depression we feel due to a long-term sense of disconnection, beginning with an overworked and distant caregiver.
Our inner child could feel angry at people who try to get close, doing their best to protect us from being let down like we were in the past.
Our inner child could feel afraid of attention after accepting their role as The Helper, turning the focus on others instead of receiving affection, and feeling simultaneously terrified of and starving for connection.
There are countless ways our inner child may be showing up in the here-and-now.
All of these parts of us--the ones that need resolution, need attention, need healing--will continue to show up for us, asking for what they need in the ways they know how, until we turn our attention to them and recognize first-off that they even exist.
Through mindfulness, psychotherapy, journaling, and any other ways we know how, we can contact these painful parts. Once we acknowledge and begin building a relationship with our inner child, we can finally give ourselves what we’ve been needing.
We can integrate these painful pieces, clearing our mind, body, and emotions from old, unhelpful, and unfinished stories.
From this place--this place of clarity and wholeness--we can live authentically. From this place, we find emotional freedom.