Practice the PAUSE...Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you are about to react harshly and you will avoid doing and saying things you will later regret. ~~~~ Lori Deschene

Miss A · Newbie

Healing your Inner Child?

el-cee · ~*Service Worker*~

Good question, I dont know either so Im interested to read others take on this.

Iamhere · ~*Service Worker*~

All I know is by working the steps and practicing what this program shows us in my life, interactions and daily living, I was able to let go of the past - the pain, the anger, the sadness and the resentments. There was no burning bush event or instant obvious recognition that I was 'free' but rather a gradual shift of the way I felt about my past and those in it.

Working the steps with a sponsor allowed me to see patterns in me. These included my views, my thoughts, my values, my resentments, my insecurities, reactions, attitudes and much, much more. Once I could see the situations that baffled me the most and paid attention to my own thoughts, fears, reactions to those, I could adapt and use a variety of tools to heal/deal with them.

The most important revelation for me in recovery was nobody else was going to complete me, fulfill me or heal me. If I wanted peace, serenity and true joy, I had to take charge of me and work each day, little by little to value me as I am. I am grateful for all who were there to guide me and help me understand that no matter what I had been through or where I had been, there was a path to a better today!

DavidG · ~*Service Worker*~

I started with a soft toy... It does seem daft for an old man- but that is the point...

it takes away some of the expectations- serious... when i was young did feel like an old wise man.

So it is healing for me to feel like a kid now...

Step one: I am powerless over the past... I find my higher power and my inner kid in the same place... and day

by day I learn to live in the present moment... my tuppence worth, lassie!!! smile ,,,

-DavidG.

DavidG · ~*Service Worker*~

Dum de do... commercial break... Alanon has a great daily reader for us adult kids... Hope For Today... I would recommend it!

hotrod · ~*Service Worker*~

Welcome

I do beleive that DavidG was talking about the tools and Step One as developed by the Adult Children of Alcoholics. We do have an Adult Child Board here and it can be found at:
acoa.activeboard.com/forum.spark

-- Edited by hotrod on Tuesday 29th of November 2016 06:20:04 PM

MeTwo2 · ~*Service Worker*~

found for me that i used to say i was walking a path toward my higher power .. then later recognised i was preparing one .. now today i realise much of the work i had done through steps in alanon was leading me to uncovering the child buried under years of debri .. also realize while i stil believe for myself i am still preparing for higher power .. i realise i am also preparing for more recovery toward yes healing the inner child .. nice to finally begin to see her show up .. funny when i was young i also felt like a wise old woman .. confuse

MeTwo2 · ~*Service Worker*~

then again beginning in alanon .. i also felt like i was 5 .. alanon let me be 5 for a good many years .. now i think i'm somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 ..

MissM · Senior Member

I had this sort of epiphany when i was working the early steps that I'd actually been letting that inner child run the whole show for years and she was tired and confused and felt totally abandoned, alone trying to drive around an adult body. Meanwhile "grown up me" had just hidden in bed and left her to manage alone because i was too depressed and it was all too hard.
Does this sound nuts? I like to work with little stories/visuals; it helps me a lot.
Anyway i kind of worked on making a safe place within me for her to rest and be a kid and imagined my "grown up self" taking over and I still use that visual; if i don't practice good self care and responsibility then that "inner child" ends up thinking she has to run the show again and that's not fair so..I have a responsibility to her to care for myself so that she has that safe place to play and rest...I don't know if that makes any sense but that was my process

sarahGee · Senior Member

All great shares - thank you. This is something I am currently working on as well.
My inner child is running amok. I've only just realized this, and hope to make some progress here.

Bethany66 · Senior Member

This is such an interesting thread! I have been getting glimpses of myself as a child, teenager and young adult lately and I have to say I thought I had stuffed her way down deep in a box with a chain and a lock only to find she was driving the bus!! I think it is a process of getting an understanding of what the generations of As and ACOAs in my family have passed to me as there was not active alcoholism around me every day growing up, only the survivors of active alcoholism working out their own stuff. I see now my mom as a ACOA trained me to handle my rage-aholic father and then my two AHs and an addicted young son, a certain way that was doomed for failure. Now I have to unlearn all those years of training and adapting. For me it requires looking at my life, past and present, assessing what worked and didn't work and taking another baby step forward into being fully alive, fully real and fully human.

I don't think for me there is a magic bullet that will fix this, it is going to be a lifetime of learning and growing. Just seeing things realistically is a beginning.

The material presented here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method to exchange information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal level.

Practice the PAUSE...Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you are about to react harshly and you will avoid doing and saying things you will later regret. ~~~~ Lori Deschene

"Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be." Abe Lincoln