Dear Anita,

I’m still in the waiting phase because first the imaging has to be done, and only then the doctor’s appointment. So still waiting, trying to stay positive, but from time to time I do start worrying, then I stop and collect myself, and so… it’s a battle for the mind at this point 🙂

Wow, that was a powerful conversation that you had with your inner child the other day. ❤️ A lot of realizations, insights, letting go (or the beginning of it) and maturing, I’d say. I don’t know if maturing is a proper term, but it definitely feels like your inner child seeing things with new eyes, seeing your mother with new eyes, and not craving her love – or not craving her love so much – anymore.

You’re slowly beginning to understand and accept (and it seems not only on the rational level, but also at the inner child level) that she didn’t have the capacity to be a loving mother. It seems her mothering was all about meeting her own need to feel better about herself by abusing and denigrating you (and your sister).

She created a false image of you in her mind – a twisted image, as you called it – and she raised you as if that twisted image were true. And you believed it, like every child does:

We were F.O.C.U.S.E.D on the wrong person, our mind skewed, twisted by a twisted person.

In her twisted image, she was all good and you were all bad. She needed to see you as “bad” so that she could keep seeing herself as “good.” So that her fragile ego wouldn’t collapse.

Simply put, she needed to put you down, so that she would feel good about herself. Which is typical for narcissistic people: they need to see themselves superior to others, they need to feel better than others.

Come to think of it, it’s actually impossible to get validation from a narcissistic parent, because if they were to admit that we’re good enough, that we’re worthy, in their twisted mind it would diminish their own worth.

And that’s a tragedy of being raised by a narcissistic parent: you can never be good enough, because it would threaten their ego.

And it does make me sad (feeling a little somber this morning…). But once we realize it, we can stop looking for their love and approval – something they would never give us.

We are lovable and worthy, but we were born to parents who taught us that we’re not, who taught us that there’s something very wrong with us. And now we need to rejected that old programming and kind of build ourselves anew. Re-parent our inner child, so we can be the fullness of who we are.

Dear Anita, sorry for being brief (and a little somber – I guess that’s the product of my health anxiety at the moment). I’d like to respond in greater detail to some points in your posts, but got to go for now.

I hope you’re fine, taking good care of LGA and yourself! Talk to you later! ❤️ 🫶 ❤️

oops, an error in formatting – didn’t intend the end part to be italic!

Dear Anita,

you’re welcome ❤️

The exercise, I imagine, will take a lot out of me.. I already imagined the beginning of it, the adult me intervening, and what I saw was the adult me physically fighting the mother with my fists.

Hmmm, if you’ve felt an impulse to engage in a fist fight with your mother, I’m guessing there is still quite a lot of anger that would need to be processed first.

Our adult self has the qualities of a loving, caring parent (among other things), so it would probably resort to milder tactics, such as saying something to your mother, or standing in between your inner child and your mother, preventing your mother from hitting your inner child. Or what you did around the age of 20: you grabbed your mother’s hands and prevented her to hit you.

So ideally, our adult self should have a mature response, like a loving, caring, responsible parent would have.

Please don’t take this as judgment – it’s okay to feel angry, to express our anger and process it. But if anger remains the primary emotion that we feel towards our abusive parent, it means we feel threatened by them, and as such, we won’t be able to protect our inner child either.

So the goal would be that your adult self doesn’t feel threatened by your mother, but to arrive at a place where you understand that she doesn’t have power in your life anymore. That she cannot destroy you, because you don’t believe her lies about you any longer. And you don’t need her to love you or validate you.

And so, if she can’t harm you any longer, you (your adult self) doesn’t feel threatened by her and can release the anger that you feel towards her. And that’s when we can help our inner child, i.e. truly protect it from our abusive parent.

It doesn’t mean you won’t feel anger towards your mother ever again – because there will be definitely situations in which you’ll get triggered (even if you don’t communicate with her). But still, it won’t be such an overwhelming feeling – you’ll be able to react much more calmly to e.g. her name being mentioned, because you won’t feel so threatened by her anymore.

As far as the YouTube, thank you. Thing is, I have trouble following the spoken word (ADD or ADHD).. just not patient or attentive enough. It’s too much trouble for me.

Oh okay. Sorry, I didn’t know. Well, I guess it shouldn’t be a problem, because it’s really a very simple exercise. Just a small clarification: the hand below our armpit is positioned in a way that our thumb is resting on the side of our chest, pointing upwards, while the rest of our fingers are below our armpit.

I wanted to ask you (before getting to the computer this morning): the inner child grows up/ matures when healing takes place over time (you mentioned in a previous post that my inner child is maturing)? How old does the inner child gets with lots of healing.. Or does the inner child stop being a separate entity from the adult self and the two become one?

Hmm, that’s a good question. I guess the inner child represents all our sensitive, vulnerable parts, where we feel scared and need external protection/soothing/comforting.

For example, our inner child needs to feel loved, and if we haven’t healed it, even the most benign situations can trigger a sense of being unlovable, e.g. if a shop assistant doesn’t smile to us, it’s a “proof” to us that we’re unlovable and unworthy.

This would be a very childish behavior, which with healing goes away. Which I think means that this part of our inner child is integrated into our adult personality. So next time a shop assistant is rude to us, we won’t think there’s something wrong to us, but that they’re having a bad day 🙂

But there can still be situations in which we feel vulnerable and scared like a child, e.g. in case of a severe illness, or loss of a loved one, or some catastrophic external event (wars, disasters), etc. That’s when we feel the need to be soothed from the outside, because self-soothing isn’t enough. Many people find that comfort and soothing in a higher power, or perhaps a very supportive friend or a partner, or a therapist, of course.

I believe a part of us always remains a child (here by a child, I mean a part that feels scared and helpless and is in need of external soothing and regulation). But as we heal and mature, this child part is less and less, and only comes forth in difficult situations, however not in everyday situations, which we can hopefully manage on our own.

I hope this answers your question 😊 ❤️