Nature and Quality of Early Attachments between child and caregiver

               

                                    DARKSIDE OF THE INNER CHILD- AGE REGRESSION 

Parenting can be wonderful, but there's no question that  it can  be stressful as well. We want to help our children feel calm and safe-but that procedure begins with making sure we're a peace within ourselves too.

Children seek for love and protection as well as discipline, which requires parents intellectual and emotional ability to understand their children. When the environment lacks warmth, care and affection by the care-givers for the developing kid it creates a solidified and frozen form of wounded inner child.

As we grow up into adults, our environmental pressures also increase  and we at times shift from present time to being a wounded child in the past time. We tend to lose control  and become the inner child who is frozen and is shivering, scared or jealous. It's one of our defense mechanisms as described by Sigmund Freud. 

The phase when we start acting and behaving like a child due to the stressors of our lives, e.g. anger outbursts in which we shout and throw things just like when we were kids. Age regression, or feeling younger than you are, is the core foundation of wounded child identity. Here, the observer(growing child) takes a picture of traumatic events and holds that picture of the child going through a trauma. The picture retains the look, the feelings, the pain. Whenever anything resembles the picture, the dark side of the inner child takes over, reproducing those negative memories and feelings that have little to do with present time reality. In short, the dark side of the inner child projects the past incident onto the present situation. 

We start relating the world through the inner child identity. It creates parameters for future interpersonal limitations. In other words, it's seeing our present relationships through past time window of the inner child. As a result it limits our resources, emotional parameters and our decisions. 

Age regression is the most widely accomplished trance and relates directly to a time frozen experience that is uncomfortable,. When a child faces toxicity, neglect, abuse or domestic violence at their homes, it becomes too confusing and chaotic for the child to adapt and integrate completely. This phenomenon of being stuck in past or point in one's personal history is the inner child stuckness, not the present-time adult. This is the reason , as an adult, you say, feel, or react in ways that are not beyond your control and you don't understand why!

Now let's take an example of a father or mother who wants their child  to please them always. Asking a child to please parents to get love, attention, and approval can be traumatic for the  child than might normally be appreciated. Always, asking the child to give up what they want, or even to "give-up themselves" to please parents, and as a result it is asking the child to give up their internal need. In the confusion and chaos of determining how to sustain and survive, the observer creates a pleasing-child identity which results into people-pleaser. 

In this example, the inner-child pleaser created by the observer also has its opposite, an angry dark side which the pleaser is masking. After all , wouldn't any adult get angry if one has to always please other to get love.

In my clinical settings, almost everyday I come across clients who are continually angry at the world. Frustration and anger is caused by not getting what one needs or wants. There are times  when we get angry at the world rather than asking ourselves, "What do I want  that I am not getting?"

This kind of introspection enables us to interrupt the inner child's anger and process of blaming outside world. It helps by forcing the adult to look at what need one has that isn't being met, mentioned and acknowledged. 

STARTEGY TO HEAL YOUR INNER CHILD (GUIDED MEDITATION)

Remember a time as long as you wish to, when you were unhappy and struggling. Picture the scene as black and white film on TV and stop the action where you felt really bad. Now imagine that, just like a special effect in movie, you can float directly into movie and speak directly to your younger self. Tel your younger that you love them, and value them completely. Tell your younger self that you have survived, and anything else that will the inner child feel better. Now imagine reaching out the inner child and comforting your younger self by hugging and embracing it, holding it tightly until you feel warm. Start making sense that your younger self has felt and accepted your love and appreciation. Finally, place your younger self in your heart so that you can continue to feel that love.

The traditional spiritual wisdom coverages with contemporary psychology to reveal the profound truth: that we do not live in the present moment but in trance, identified with reactions form past. 

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