5.2 Inner Child Work ～ foreverliketh.is

5.2 Inner Child Work

Planted: September 1, 2022
Last tended: February 25, 2023

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This is the solution to the problem of inadequacy formed in childhood.

We spoke about how inadequacy/toxic shame is formed by simply not getting your needs met as a child.

We didn’t really discuss the solution.

Connecting with your needs is part of it. That will stop it from getting worse.

But that doesn’t heal the emotional side. When a child goes through abandonment, it leaves a huge emotional imprint. The inability to express that and deal with that is what causes toxic shame.

Externalization is the only thing that heals the inner toxic shame.

The externalization section of this course dealt with day-to-day shame but didn’t deal with externalizing the feelings from the original cause – childhood.

This video is about reconnecting with the hurt, abandoned child who dealt with those abandonment experiences by developing a belief that he is flawed.

Now, as a form of deep externalisation, you can let these feelings out. But this is an optional bonus because it doesn’t work for everyone; it’s hard to be this vulnerable and some people just won’t be ready. It’s weird, quite hard to embrace, and makes some people afraid or avoidant.

Remember what abandonment is: it’s simply not getting your needs met. Not getting unconditionallove. Not getting the mirroring that all children need. Or being told that some behaviours are ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’, or being denied feelings (many people grow up unable to laugh, unable to cry). This abandonment is referred to in the videos below as ‘abuse’ or ‘original pain’.

Abuse can be as simple as having a critical parent. Or a parent that ignores you. Or a parent that pushes you to study hard, achieve lots, and doesn’t treat you well when you fail at that. That’s conditional love, not unconditional. Anything that means that the child doesn’t get their needs (love, mirroring, unconditional acceptance) met.

Simply having a disabled parent can be ‘abuse’ in this context: if that parent isn’t independant, they can’t meet their own needs, and therefore won’t be able to meet your needs. Having a parent that also has toxic shame also nearly always leads to abuse. Abuse in this context can seemingly be very minor and inconsequential – but it isn’t.

Obviously abuse also includes physical abuse (hitting, spanking, physical punishment), sexual abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, and literal abandonment (divorced parents = abandonment). There’s a big range in the spectrum of abuse from simply being ignored to being beaten and raped. It all leads to toxic shame (but in varying degrees, obviously). Then, with internalization, disconnection, and external influences… even the most minor of initial toxic shame can spiral downwards and continually worsen until it’s a huge problem.

The only way to heal this original abandonment is to let those feelings out. Reconnect with the abandoned child and bring those feelings out from the subconscious and up into the conscious mind. So this is emotional, quite shocking, and not very pleasant to experience.

I believe it needs to be done.

I also believe that people should only do it when they’re ready. Use your judgement.

It’s very old and dated (1990) but the information is timeless. This whole series actually won a daytime emmy award. Watch out for the creepiest title sequence in history though. Here’s the first one:

The externalization work starts about 32 minutes in but I think you should watch it all.

Obviously a lot of this information is recapping what we’ve spoken about but given the length it can go into much more detail. And John Bradshaw is amazing at this. So If you resonated with the video above, here are the others in the series: