Posted by gardenergirl on September 16, 2005, at 9:16:50
In reply to Re: Totally freaked out by session! » daisym, posted by fairywings on September 16, 2005, at 5:51:02
Hi,
He's not saying you have DID or that you have parts or alters like those with DID do.But we do have memories, feelings, hurts, and longings from childhood that can continue into adulthood. These are more primitive and basic than the thoughts and feelings we have as fully developed adults. Yet they can still drive our behavior. So when we try to apply adult, rational understanding to a situation when the situation is, at least in part, stemming from a childhood need or experience, it can be hard to work out.
So talking about an inner child is a convention or pragmatic way to try to start talking about these unresolved issues from childhood. We all do retain our child selves as part of our whole self. Most of us are more or less whole selves with our lifetime of experiences and our lifetime of knowing our Self integrated into who we are today.
Sometimes therapy works well if you start to piece apart that whole Self in order to see what's going on at any given moment.
So for an example, I tend to interact with male authority figures in ways that are not as effective, because I keep expecting them to reject me or ignore me, or otherwise act like my father did. And since as a little girl, I wanted nothing more than to know my father loved me, cherished me, really, any rejection from him was devastating. It seems I tend to seek what I didn't get from my dad (approval, etc.) from male authority figures. So this makes those interactions way more weighted and messy than they need to be. So, you could say that my inner child is coming to work with me and interacting with my boss or other male authority figures in hopes of finally getting what she didn't get from my dad.
Okay, way more than maybe you wanted to know. But please be reassured. T's talk about parts as a way of understanding the whole self. He's not talking about DID.
((((fw)))
gg
poster:gardenergirl
thread:555516
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050912/msgs/555599.html