"Inner child" talk not helping?

[DogwoodTree]

Can you breakdown exactly what it is that overcomes you?

The past. That's what overcomes me. All those images and sensations and weakness and darkness and not understanding myself or my needs or my boundaries. When my T talks about "protecting" that child part of me, it seems like he's wanting me to protect all that awfulness of who I was and what I experienced, and all the resulting brokenness. I'm sure that's not quite what he has in mind, but I can't think of that child I was without the engulfing context of my history. Instead of protecting that child-self, I want to leave it behind, so it's no longer a part of me. I don't know if that's possible. But I want to experience today as today. I want to think of physical intimacy as an adult does, not as a child does. Is that possible without having to "embrace" the child I was? Can I leave all of that behind and become something new?

 

[Abstract]

Move on? I did that to an extent but in truth realised it only managed to take me so far. In a sense rejecting the past is a little like PTSD avoidance. Saying we don't want anything to do with it is a little like doing inner child stuff as it is separating out our history. Like Mach the most I can do is some Radical Acceptance and doing some of that certainly has been helpful. For me.

 

[Abstract]

Ah. Posted before I saw this. Shall come back and answer.
What you are talking about is essentially trauma avoidance.

 

[EveHarrington]

Maybe the problem is in how you view your inner child.

To me, she’s the awesomely fun innocent part of me. If I made her go away? I’d end up like the majority of adults who are downright boring, the ones who chase some artificial high because they are essentially as exciting as a mud puddle on the inside. I like that people (the ones who are privileged enough to see that side of me) say that I’m fun. The fun is IN me, not to be found in some drink or some drug or however else people chase that high.

So find a way to tap into her. Color, swing on the swings in the park, play a game. FIND HER. You can run, but why? You’d just be denying a good part of yourself.

 

[DogwoodTree]

To me, she’s the awesomely fun innocent part of me.

But that's not the way I was as a child. I didn't like playing (common autism trait), I didn't experience innocence (I was parentified and over-responsible from a very young age...partly abuse, partly autism (perfectionism), and partly being the oldest child), and I didn't experience joyful, emotional highs (I was too subdued and afraid to feel anything much less express those feelings).

"Tapping into her" seems like stepping backwards into naivete, ignorance, weakness, fear, confusion, neglect, powerlessness, and more.

I actually like the idea of being an adult. I like feeling like an adult around other adults...like, my opinion actually matters, my perspective is valuable, my thoughts can be helpful. I can be productive. I can make good decisions for myself. I can provide for my needs, and I can protect myself. I deserve to be where I am, as I walk among adults at a store or at the gym or in the airport. I don't have to beg for their permission to think my own thoughts. I don't have to secretly hope someone will notice me and give me value. I don't have to cater to their every whim so they won't hurt me. I can decide what I like and what I want, and if I choose, I can make it happen (within reason, of course).

To me, it seems much more beneficial to embrace my "inner adult"...to become the fullness of what I've been growing into all these years...to increase in wisdom and experience and maturity and insight. My creativity? That was stifled as a child. But now? My mind is light-years beyond anything I had available to me as a child inside my own head. I have more information, more self-discipline, more insight, more understanding, more experience to guide my decisions. Why would I want to go back to a place of fear and ignorance and mental/emotional imprisonment? Adulthood, to me, represents not the loss of fun, but the gaining of freedom.

 

[Mach123]

Yeah, I think I've mostly moved past the actively hating the child I used to be. When I think that I want to "destroy" it, it's more about wanting to leave that part behind and not let it be part of my life now or my sense of self. It's not hating so much as letting it go and being done with it. That sense of having been a child...I don't want to cherish that or protect it or even understand it any more. I want to be done with it. I don't want anything more to do with it. I want to keep growing and moving forward and not identify with any of that anymore. I don't know if that's possible--can you move forward by leaving the past behind? Or do you have to accept the past and let it continue to be a part of you?

I don't want to think about who I was. I don't want to "protect" that part of who I've been. I want to move on and become something else, something very different, something more real and healthy and aware and capable and strong.

There are a couple reasons I never was able to move on. First, what I am now happend then and I'm constantly re enacting it. I've discussed this at length. When I have sex or even think about it I become that again and I love/hate it. So love and hate and being myself when it happen is always right there particularly because I'm hyper sexual. 2nd I was always hiding it because it wanted to come out and be submissive in a sexual way (the way women are) and I was horrified always that people (especially the men) would see that's what I was. Thirdly my self harm (I'm not a cutter I just used others to harm me) is tied to hating all that. Fourthly all these memories were represssed till my forties and I didn't know I'd been sexually abused. So when people said "you just gotta move on" it was well intended (everyone says it) but ill advised, and then there's the bit about trying to commit suicide, and freezing and holding still if anyone made sexual advances.

So more than a couple reasons lol. But that's what life was like for me and I always hated when people said "inner child" and I thought it was a bunch of crap. But I hated most things. I just wasn't like other people. I tried. So the therapist says this disassociation has to be all put back together like Humpty Dumpty. IDK but it seems to be helping at least a little. Maybe I'll be able to move on someday. Maybe I'll just be like this and enjoy it more? Don't know. I'm not suicidally depressed right now. That's a plus.

 

[Hello there]

Hi there. I have autism too and this really made me think as I have the same problems. The past me is too messed up to find anything useful there.
What I am trying to do is think of this as the past me rather than inner child. The past me didn’t know what I know now. It is starting to help me to see that I wasn’t behaving badly on purpose, I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Trying to find rules in a world I didn’t understand and being yelled at for getting it wrong. It does not take away the horror of the memories and trauma my difference caused but I can try to put it into perspective. I was not awful, I was autistic.
We have learned from our mistakes and built masks and worlds that mean we can function. I can completely understand why you would not want to pull her back up. She is everything you have trained yourself to hide. Trying to put myself back into her shoes in therapy made me regress. I have never been so autistic and it was dangerous to everything I had built in my life. I am starting to forgive myself for the things I didn’t know and that is different from having to love what you were.
I hope that one day I will get there but it is a journey. Good luck on yours.

 

[DogwoodTree]

She is everything you have trained yourself to hide. Trying to put myself back into her shoes in therapy made me regress. I have never been so autistic and it was dangerous to everything I had built in my life. I am starting to forgive myself for the things I didn’t know and that is different from having to love what you were.

Yes, exactly. That past me represents everything I've tried so hard to overcome, outgrow, and move beyond. Why would I want to go back there? Like you said, it becomes a threat to everything I've got going now, because maintaining today's life requires today's functionality and skills...both of which have been hard-earned, and I continue to work on them to try to keep making progress forward, not backward.

Forgiveness for myself? That I can do, and then leave it in the past. But affection for who and what I was? Nope.

 

[EveHarrington]

But that's not the way I was as a child. I didn't like playing (common autism trait), I didn't experience innocence (I was parentified and over-responsible from a very young age...partly abuse, partly autism (perfectionism), and partly being the oldest child), and I didn't experience joyful, emotional highs (I was too subdued and afraid to feel anything much less express those feelings).

"Tapping into her" seems like stepping backwards into naivete, ignorance, weakness, fear, confusion, neglect, powerlessness, and more.

I actually like the idea of being an adult. I like feeling like an adult around other adults...like, my opinion actually matters, my perspective is valuable, my thoughts can be helpful. I can be productive. I can make good decisions for myself. I can provide for my needs, and I can protect myself. I deserve to be where I am, as I walk among adults at a store or at the gym or in the airport. I don't have to beg for their permission to think my own thoughts. I don't have to secretly hope someone will notice me and give me value. I don't have to cater to their every whim so they won't hurt me. I can decide what I like and what I want, and if I choose, I can make it happen (within reason, of course).

To me, it seems much more beneficial to embrace my "inner adult"...to become the fullness of what I've been growing into all these years...to increase in wisdom and experience and maturity and insight. My creativity? That was stifled as a child. But now? My mind is light-years beyond anything I had available to me as a child inside my own head. I have more information, more self-discipline, more insight, more understanding, more experience to guide my decisions. Why would I want to go back to a place of fear and ignorance and mental/emotional imprisonment? Adulthood, to me, represents not the loss of fun, but the gaining of freedom.

Why are you struggling with accepting that inner child work isn’t for you?

The truth is that not every type of therapy will work for everyone.

What is causing you to hold on so tightly to inner child work?

Dare I say that most people here don’t do inner child work?

Will you feel like a failure if you can’t conquer it?

I think this is the biggger issue, that you can’t just let go, not that you can’t do inner child work.

Find a way to simply accept that this isn’t for you. <Radical acceptance.> And move on.

 

[Hello there]

Hi again.
I get it, I really do.
I suppose where I’m at at the moment is to try to think about the experiences I have had, how I learned to behave as a result and then look at how practical those things are to my life right now. That I did the best I could but maybe some of my strategies are outdated.

I think we need to have some semblance of a mask forever - that’s autism - but maybe I can be in more control of that mask and what it looks like. It’s our protection and stripping that away completely does not appear to be a good idea, in my case, at least at the moment.

Other people use the inner child idea to see how they felt back then and what emotions needed to be dealt with. I have really severe Alexithymia and never knew what I felt in the first place so it’s a bit pointless.

Just like you, rather than look at the past I am trying to focus on the future. What good things did I have to hide in order to hide the bad and can I filter this better in order to be able to be more creative and happier.

I’m looking at this more from a logic perspective than an emotional one and that takes away the need to ponder whether it was right or wrong or if I liked myself or not. It was what it was and I am what I am.

 

[scout86]

But that's not the way I was as a child. I didn't like playing (common autism trait), I didn't experience innocence (I was parentified and over-responsible from a very young age...partly abuse, partly autism (perfectionism), and partly being the oldest child), and I didn't experience joyful, emotional highs (I was too subdued and afraid to feel anything much less express those feelings).

I'm probably not going to explain this very well, and I don't know if you'll find it at all useful. (But, obviously I'm going to throw it out there anyway.)

One of the more bizarre homework assignments my T has come up with involved creating imaginary families. He says it's possible to "avail ourselves of resources we weren't actually born with." (Then he laughed when I rolled my eyes and said, "I was waiting for that". Anyway, he asked if I'd ever though about what it would have been like to grow up in a different family. I hadn't. (I'd actually spent a fair amount of time, as a kid, imagining having NO family. LOL) The assignment was to think about have different families are, as best I know it, and what it would have been like to grow up in different ones. What it might have "felt" like. What I might have learned from it, that I didn't actually learn. What I did learn that I might not have, etc. He said I didn't have to tell him about it, if I didn't want to, but that he thought it would be useful to do it.

It actually WAS kind of useful. Not that I think I can perfectly imagine what things might have been like, and not like it can actually change the past. I guess, for me, it was useful because it made me appreciate that the family you're born into is a matter of random luck. Good or bad. It's not something you earn or deserve and it's not something you have to power to control. It's just something where you have to deal with.

In your case @DogwoodTree , I think if you'd had a different mother, you might have had a chance to grow up believing that being "different" isn't a good thing or a bad thing, it's just a thing. Among a lot of other things. It seems to me it's probably easier to learn to value yourself if you grow up with parents who know you, accept you for who you really are, and appreciate that person too. If you grow up without that, how WOULD you ever come to value yourself? Granted, you could have been born into worse circumstances too. (I didn't spend a whole lot of time imagining that because I didn't think that was really the point of the assignment.) The assignment didn't change how I feel about myself, much, except that it's a little hard to blame yourself for something once you appreciate just how much of it was totally beyond anyone's control.

 

[DogwoodTree]

Why are you struggling with accepting that inner child work isn’t for you?

1) My T keeps bringing it up.
2) He seems to believe this is critical for my being able to communicate boundaries during physical intimacy.

Me personally, I'd be fine with leaving this in the dust and never looking at it again (inner child work). I guess I'm afraid he doesn't have any other tools in his toolkit to address this specific issue...and I'm concerned this might be the only way to address this specific issue...and I suppose I don't want other people, if they find out my position on inner child work, to accuse me of suppressing myself or my background because I didn't get to a point they expect me to attain on this topic (not a huge issue on its own, but present nonetheless).