On Caring for Your Inner Child

Sometimes caring for the younger part of you that's hurting is what you really need

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Sometimes when you say “no”, the other person gets really, really angry.

This is something that I experienced a few months ago.

I attempted to convey things has gently yet direct as possible. But, needless to say, the conversation didn’t go as I hoped it would. This person, unfortunately, became very angry.

They yelled.

They blamed.

They accused.

The only thing they (fortunately) didn’t do was flat out threaten (though, I’ll admit, I have had that happen before).

Despite maintaining my composure and doing the best I could in handling this situation, I was fairly shaken up afterwards. Which is understandable, because, well, I am human. And when humans are yelled at for an extended period of time, you’re probably going to get dysregulated, at least somewhat.

In order to help myself process the conversation and get regulated, I decided to go on a long walk and listen to music. During the walk, I was able to get a little more clarity on what I might want to do. I got some ideas on what my next steps could be, so I decided to write some down.

But then some of those ideas became even more ideas.

And more.

And more.

And then I reached out to talk with others for support and get their ideas.

Until pretty soon I had far too many ideas but no real clarity on how I wanted to handle this situation. It had now become overwhelming in a different way.

I caught myself with thoughts like:

Is this going to be good enough?

This person could still be mad if I do X…

But then so-and-so said I should do Y.

Maybe I could do Z, but that could bring up X problem.

Naturally, I reframed these thoughts for myself in saying things like:

It doesn’t need to be perfect.

What do you want?

As this process continued, I found myself landing on an idea that I thought I wanted, only to still feel unsettled about the whole situation.

So, as a last resort, I decided to sit down and meditate.

I’ve tried out many different types of meditation over the years. In the last few years, my go-to has been to do some grounding using guided imagery. Since I do a lot of somatic work in both my work as a therapist and in my personal life to help manage daily stressors, integrating some guided visualizations felt like a great addition (plus, let’s be honest, I’ve always found that way of working to be intriguing).

So I sat down and began doing some grounding visualizations for myself. After a few minutes, I randomly had some child-like imagery come up organically. It started with some kid bicycles and followed with many toys all wrapped up in this light yellow color, which felt like it signified the innocence of childhood.

Soon after the first several images popped up, I then clearly saw a 10 year old. And very quickly I noticed that the 10 year old that I saw was my 10 year old self and she was unhappy.

So I decided to talk to her.

“Why aren’t you taking care of me?” she said to me as she looked down with disappointment.

“What do you mean?” I asked, as my adult self.

“I was being bullied. That person was mean to me and you’re not taking care of me. I need you to stand up for me.”

As my adult self, I gave her a hug for comfort and my 10 year old self was, fortunately, able to accept it.

“What do you need?” I asked her.

She couldn’t really articulate what she needed, because she didn’t fully know herself. All I could sense was that she really wanted an adult to meet her needs. So I tried a different question.

“Do any of the responses that I came up with work for you?” I asked.

“No” she said, “because none of them really keep me safe.”

At that moment I suddenly realized why, despite so many ideas, I was still feeling so stressed about this situation:

Because none of these ideas met the needs of my 10 year old self. So until I could come up with a solution that truly honored her needs (rather than focus so heavily on what I think this other person might need or what someone has told me I should do), I was still going to be stressed about this.

Then the baby in my belly kicked — and I had the thought:

Not only do I need to do a better job of caring for my own inner child, but I’m soon going to have to also care for a new child. A new life who is different from me and will have their own unique needs that I’m going to have to learn how to meet.

And it’s on me now to figure that out. Because I’m the adult, so I can’t really depend on another adult anymore to figure this out for me. I need to find those answers for myself. Realizing that I’m the adult, so I need to, essentially, step up and really care for myself initially brought up some unease. But then the thought came in: If I just reground, I can do this. I can do all of this if I’m coming from a grounded place.

And so I grounded myself once again and ended my meditation. Once I did, a flood of new thoughts on what to say to this person came to me. But this time the ideas felt different to me from before. There was an ease and natural flow to it, whereas before it felt more like I was really trying to “push” or “force” something.

So I grabbed a notebook and I wrote down exactly what I wanted to say for this person. It flowed out from my hand and on to the paper with ease and little effort.

And so, when the time was right, I did exactly what I felt was the right thing to do.

And it was all okay.