Posted by shortelise on October 13, 2004, at 9:54:23
In reply to So what's all this 'inner child' stuff? ;), posted by shrinking violet on October 12, 2004, at 17:31:26
Violet, I can't tell you any theory, only how it felt and feels to me.
When talking about feelings, I would find that I'd sort of go to a place where I was not exactly the present day me, but a place where those feelings seemed to live in me - maybe the genesis of the feelings.
My therapist made it clear that it was ok to go there and feel those feelings.
It was confusing often because I would feel things in different terms than I do usually - when they were really early things, and there is a very strong, terribly influential core feeling that comes from then, I am pre-verbal, so it's hard to do anything but just sit in the feeling as I have no words to express it. Other times, I am in myself at other ages, looking at feelings I had at other times, and I express them in a vocabulary that is appropriate to that time and age.
It isn't only bad feelings. There are lots of wonderful feelings, feelings of joy, as well as sorrow, fear, etc.
I think what happens to some of us, it sure did to me, is that we are not allowed to feel these feelings at the time, we can't handle them for whatever reason, we don't get the feedback from our caregivers that we need to feel them, so they remain in us, sort of like a lump in the gravy.
In therapy I would find one of them and I'd go there, feel it, stand in it, be - what maybe eight years old? And talk. My T saw and helped me through whatever it was. Because I was eight, and could not really understand what was going on. For me, it takes a witness, someone to listen, to makes sense of it, and help me look at it from my present emotional age.
This may be nonsense to anyone else, but maybe it could help.
ShortE
poster:shortelise
thread:402277
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041002/msgs/402603.html