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Extracted and abbreviated from "Growing Towards Wholeness Through Grief: The Journey of the Wounded Child Within", by Teresa M. Kaplan.
Full version at: http://www.creativegrowth.com/teresa.htm
We are all born with a sense of wholeness and completeness, even though we are not fully developed yet. We are valuable and special as no one is exactly like us. “
When we are young, we are at our greatest time of need. This time is crucial for the development of our sense of self. Our needs are simple, yet essential:
Often, rather than the adult parents meeting unconditionally the needs of their children, it is the children who unconditionally meet the needs of their parents. It is understandable then that a pattern thus unfolds throughout the generations ... until courageous members begin to face their grief and thus begin to break the cycle. Until then, we see the tragedy of the loss of our beautiful complete authentic Selves.
Even when we were loved, we were not fully seen or acknowledged or appreciated as our whole selves. Or worse yet, we were judged or criticized for it. All of us at one point felt hurt, rejection, neglect, unfairness. And especially, all of us had unmet needs. Thus all of us can benefit from grieving these experiences.
And in order to become our true self, we actually require most of these needs. And yet this is often not possible. Rarely does one have a mother or other figure who is even capable of providing or helping us to meet all of our needs. “There is usually no such person available. . .
Thus, in our recovery, we grieve over not having had all our needs met as infants. . .”.
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The goal of our adult selves is to reclaim that natural path of unfoldment, to travel to and remain in the “center” of our being. It is possible to reconnect with who we really are--the complete authentic self we were born as that may still be hidden underground. And this is the transformation that occurs through our child’s grief.
"The natural response to emotional abandonment is a deep-seated toxic shame that engenders both primal rage and a deep-seated sense of hurt. There is no way you could grieve this in infancy. You had no ally who could be there for you and validate your pain, no one to hold you while you cried your eyes or raged at the injustice of it all. In order to survive, your primary ego defenses kicked in and your emotional energy was left frozen and unresolved."
The true self has been in “a state of noncommunication,” because it had to be protected.
“Minimization is a subset of denial; it is acknowledging, but making light of, childhood losses. Many survivors minimize hurtful childhood memories by transmuting their pain into jocularity.”
"Minimizing the effects of the difficulties of my childhood, completely disconnected from my inner child’s pain".
John Bradshaw: “In order for grief to be resolved several factors must be present. The first factor is validation.
Our childhood abandonment trauma must be validated as real or it cannot be resolved”.
Carl Jung: “Whatever is denied conscious access continues to influence the individual anyhow--but via unconscious processes".
When we do not explore our feelings, these “unconscious processes” can have a significant impact on our sense of self, our adult relationships, and our lives.
Although we can deny or discount our emotions, this does not make them magically disappear. They remain hidden, or turn against the self, or project outwards effecting others with whom we are in relationship.
Some of the difficulties - when we remain unconscious of our child’s pain – are: co-dependence, feelings of emptiness, trust issues, difficulties with intimacy, depression, hostile self-criticism, low self-esteem, irritability (due to holding in anger), anxiety, fear, and excessive need of approval or attention.
Much of our unnecessary emotional pain is due to the pressure that comes from not releasing stored up energy that has accumulated throughout our lives.
Without the release that comes through our grief work, we may be holding so much deep inside that it can effect us emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually. As our bodies, hearts, minds, and spirit are interconnected, when we experience wounding, it is a wounding to our entire being.
Our emotional trauma is stored up as energy in our bodies. When not processed, this can have a great effect on us. As Whitfield says, “When we are not allowed to remember, to express our feelings and to grieve or mourn our losses or trauma, whether real or threatened, through the free expression of our Child Within, we become ill”. This “illness” can and does take on many forms.
By repressing or ignoring our childhood experiences and our still living inner child, “we are limiting our consciousness and our ability to experience life”.
Much of our adult suffering stems from our ungrieved past.
Through the act of crying we can finally begin to release this stored up energy. When we are able to let go and open up to our pain and cry--not just silent tears but deep bodily sobs--we are naturally healing ourselves. When we give ourselves the space to sit in the pain and allow it to move through us physically via unrestrained tears, we are being there for our child self.
We can surrender to our bodies and allow them to do the work, shaking and releasing “primal” sounds from deep down, carrying the hurt out of our body. We can let ourselves sob and shake, knowing this is the body’s way of letting go of the pain it has been holding for many years. ”... it is extremely therapeutic to surrender to this trembling as it marks the release of the deepest levels of pain”.
John Bradshaw: “It’s okay to be angry, even if what was done to you was unintentional. In fact, you have to be angry if you want to heal your wounded inner child.”
Allowing and experiencing our anger during grief work is necessary in many ways. As with allowing our tears of sadness, feeling and expressing our anger helps us to release the stored up emotions that have accumulated inside due to our childhood experiences. This process is extremely important. Otherwise, in our adult lives we may continue to hurt ourselves or others with our unconscious behaviors that come from old unresolved anger. When we work through our past anger, we are less likely to carry anger in our adult lives. When we attempt to deny it we then allow it to come up unconsciously and this is when it turns against us--becoming rage, suicidal depression, creating violence in the world. Most of us fear our anger and hide from it, as we are afraid of this energy and of its seeming power to damage us. Ironically, it is truly damaging only when we do not embrace it. And thus we see the necessity of allowing our anger to manifest during our grief work.
But not only is our experiencing of anger necessary, it can also be extremely beneficial. Many possibilities for transformation occur when we embrace our anger and work with it. As Walker (1995) says, “Angering unlocks our joy. When we finally end our lifelong repression of our anger, we often feel exuberant relief” (p. 87). Anger empowers us. It releases our fear so that we can more fully embody ourselves and feel more free to express who we are. It allows us to hold boundaries. It gives us assertive strength, without the need for aggression. It builds confidence. Interestingly, it may even create more peace within us.
And during grief work we need not fear our anger as there are many healthy nonviolent ways to explore and express it. It is important to understand that almost always the least helpful way to express our anger is actually releasing it directly towards others, even the person we our angry with. Some other more helpful techniques, most of which I myself actively participated in, include psychodrama, art, writing letters (not to be sent), role-plays, sharing with others, yelling, voicing primal noises, journaling, pounding, dancing to “angry” music, expressing with self out loud or silently. Through using our feelings therapeutically in this way, experiencing our anger frees us from our fear of it, and we come to learn that our expression of anger is not always dangerous—it can be safe and healing. And as Walker (1995) says, “What a wonderful paradox that the safe letting go of control actually insures us that control will not be lost destructively! Safe angering insures this won’t occur because it prevents rage from becoming an explosive pressure cooker without a release valve” (1995, p.150).
Through our grief work we can begin to live in a more full, rich, deep way. It has been claimed that when we repress one emotional aspect of ourselves, we then dim all of the others. If we are afraid to dive into our pain, we may not be allowing ourselves to experience the full intensity of our joy.
“In reclaiming and championing your wounded inner child, you give him the positive, unconditional acceptance that he craves. That will release him to recognize and love others for who they are” (Bradshaw).
With this connection and self compassion, we no longer feel like a victim, for we are healing ourselves inside. With self love, we are more loving and empowered. We are big. We are grown.
Marion Woodman: “Children who are not loved in their very beingness do not know how to love themselves. As adults, they have to learn to nourish, to mother their own lost child”
If we “forgive” before we feel our blame, we may carry our child’s hurt and anger around forever. Not until we fully experience our anger, do our resentments begin to fall away. Not until we fully express our blame, do we release it and open our hearts to truly seeing, accepting, and loving.
As we begin to contact our inner child, we can separate her painful wounds from other aspects of ourselves.
This holding of our child naturally elicits a loving self-compassion within us which then may replace self blame and criticism. Our relationship to our self shifts. We can learn to contact our nurturing parent inside, and begin to reparent ourselves by giving and receiving the complete acceptance that we couldn’t possible get from another yet so much deserve. We begin to find True Love. We begin to truly heal.
Techniques and exercises that facilitate one to contact the inner child, experience our grief, and build “reparenting” skills to encourage self-love and compassion.
Give reassurances such as, “It’s okay to cry, I’m here for you, You are not alone ".
These dialogue techniques can be especially helpful in allowing our true
hurt and uninhibited child self to speak up. It is extremely important to
remember that our full and complete acceptance is essential in facilitating
this. “And without a non-judgmental, empathic, mirroring atmosphere, inner
child simply will not emerge” (Firman & Russell).
And with it, our true child self feels she can begin to safely speak after
these many years, encouraged through dialogue.
There will always be our child self inside of us. She may always remember the pain and hurt she has experienced. This may not change. What we may shift is the relationship we have to her, how we hold her--this is the healing that is in our power.
Emotional phases:
The process of grieving our inner child is very similar to the process of grieving any other major loss that we experience in life.
Judy Tatelbaum: “Feelings of grief are very intense and often very mixed. We may feel emotions in an entirely new or different way. Among the many feelings aroused by loss are sorrow, anguish, disbelief, despair, anxiety, loneliness, guilt, regret, resentment, emptiness, and numbness, as well as yearning, love, and appreciation for the deceased”
The phases of grief appear as a spiral rather than linear experience. It may be ongoing or come back again after a long period of rest, as we continue to do the work of integration. Even after deep grieving, my own grief still comes up at times, elicited by a dream or touching circumstance.
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Therapists who have wrestled with their own survival personality and faced their own wounding seem best equipped to mirror the wounding of another (Firman & Russell. And what an incredible gift to be witness to others growing through grief and becoming their wiser more loving authentic selves.
See also: