How to stop abusing your inner child
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This is me at 2 and bit..
I was a curious kid, always asking questions and exploring. Mum said I was a hugger too, always going round hugging people. I daydreamed, made up stories and played with my dinky cars. I also wanted to be loved. To show love and to be loved. Simple as that.
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That little kid is still inside me. He is me.
So why would I verbally abuse him?
Why would I tell him he was useless?
Why would I teach him the belief that he needs to make everyone else happy before he can be happy?
Well that’s how we treat our adult ourselves.
The way we talk to ourselves is akin to verbal abuse and psychological violence. Listen to how many times you put yourself down, tell yourself you can’t do something, tell yourself that you’re a dumb arse, talk yourself down the darkest road of despair and even scream at yourself.
Imagine if everyone vocalised their inner monologue. It would be hell riding on a bus or walking down the street. You’d think you were in an insane asylum. Just because we do it in the privacy of our own minds doesn’t mean it’s Ok to do. Unfortunately we’re conditioned to do it. No-one has told us otherwise.
And the crazy part is, most of all that self talk you’ve picked up from somewhere else, like your parents, teachers, TV and society in general. And you believed it without even questioning it.
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But here’s the good news. All that damaging self talk is not you. If you’ve picked it up, you can put it down.
As Louise L Hay mentioned in You Can Heal Your Life, if we want to start to be kinder to ourselves, we need to start talking to ourselves in a kinder way, as though we’re we’re talking to our 5 year old self.
That’s what I’ve started to do. (and that’s why I wrote Being You is Enough, mainly for kids, but also for my adult self.)
Using mindfulness, when I start to hear myself start sprouting some fear based dialogue, I imagine my 5 year old self standing there holding his dinky cars and he’s scared, he’s afraid and just wants to be loved. Now how can I continue to abuse him when he’s like that? So in my mind I reach down and hold him and let him know he’s safe, protected and deeply loved. By doing that I’ve changed a pattern and changed the energy around that pattern. Instead of fear, I’ve replaced it with love. Love for myself.
And if you hear yourself say, ‘I don’t deserve that love’, then imagine your 5 year old self saying that and how would you react? Yes, you’d want to hug and reassure them too.
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