The Inner Child. Permission To Live

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

“I have never felt truly existing, alive. She always seemed to herself worse than others, somehow insignificant, pathetic. Every time it was so strange when they talked about me in the third person. As if I really am, as if I am alive - just like everyone else."

To my cautious question about childhood, Varya (name changed, permission to publish received), in an exaggerated cheerful voice, replied that her parents were normal: they fed, dressed, put on shoes. She has no complaints about them. She has claims to herself. And they are very large. She is not that she cannot love herself, but that she feels that she is the same as everyone else and has the same right to life.

I ask the girl to draw a family of animals. These are cats. An angry cat dad and a frightened sad mom turned away from the crying dirty kitten, which shrank into a ball.

“I was always compared with everyone,” said Varya, and large childish tears rolled from her eyes, “A five was good only if others had lower grades. No matter what happened, my parents were never on my side. Any stranger and his opinion were more important to them than me. "What people will say" and "No worse than others" were full members of our family."

Little Vara thought that her parents had dozens of different masks: for work, for friends, for teachers, for shop assistants. In public, they sometimes hugged their daughter, ruffled her hair and even occasionally spoke in an affectionate voice, but at home she seemed to again become an empty place, ceased to exist for them. The parents immediately had more important and urgent matters.

And then the girl would go to her corner, curl up into a ball and lull herself to give herself at least some support - the only way she could. “Poor you, poor,” she said, hugging herself tightly with trembling hands.

And the parents often quarreled. The girl was sure that she was to blame for this, and firmly decided to die so that her parents would be happy without her, well, a little - in the hope that they, who so rarely notice her alive, would at least notice her death and even cry for her.

Varya says that in fact, her parents caused her a lot of pain, and she carries this pain in herself all her life, but she always forbade herself to be offended by her parents.

Applying the techniques of emotional-image therapy, I ask the girl to mentally return to her parents the harm that they caused her.

This is a terrible hurricane - a tornado that sucks all living things into its funnel. In the language of the unconscious, a funnel means a tendency to leave life, a decision “not to live”. Each of the parents as if stretches out his hand and gathers his part of the hurricane into a fist. They are its masters and overlords. This does not mean that the parents wished their child to die, but the girl did not feel loved, desired, and did not receive a “blessing” for life from her parents.

And after the hurricane, the feeling of guilt leaves - a thick collar that choked Varya. The girl says that her mother holds it out to a long line of figures standing behind her, and they carefully pass it to each other. This string is a symbol of the genus. Our unconscious remembers and stores everything that was long before our birth, everything that our ancestors lived with. We often find ourselves hostage to the “values” of the genus, such as deep feelings of guilt, for example. But it is within our power to get rid of it and interrupt the further transmission of this toxic inheritance.

Using the technique invented by N. D. Linde, the creator of emotional imagery therapy, I ask Varya to feel sorry for the kitten - as much as she felt sorry for herself in childhood. The girl is surprised to notice that the kitten becomes even more unhappy, disheveled, lies down and freezes in anticipation of imminent death.

- So he doesn't need pity? - Varya is surprised.

- Yes, he needs love. And pity, including self-pity, is only a surrogate for love, which, however, often allows the child to survive. In the case when there is an acute lack of parental love. Now we can say to the dirty kitten: “I will not pity you anymore. I will learn to love you! " Press him to you: “You are my treasure, my happiness, my princess. I bless you for life! You are the most beautiful and valuable thing that I have!"

Tears flowed from Varina's eyes, and at the same time she laughed, hugging her Inner Child - a kitten, spinning and dancing with him. And suddenly she stopped, staring in front of her, fascinated: now she was hugging a girl in a pink ball gown, as beautiful as a princess. The princess also hugged the girl by the neck, and they connected. A powerful energization took place: Varya's cheeks turned pink, her eyes sparkled, she felt hot.

From that moment on, Vari's emotional state began to change. The girl began to feel alive and real. Our work continued, and over the next two months, the asthma attacks, from which the girl had been constantly suffering from the age of five, completely stopped. Varya no longer chooses - suffocate or stay alive. She chose life.