Pietro's thread on dissociation in Flashbacks and Dissociation has made me think of this, but I didn't want to take that thread off topic so I thought I'd start a new one. He's referring to the concept:
and then there's a discussion which includes the inner child idea.
To be clear, I'm not thinking about dissociative identity disorder (DID), but about the other kind of identity that's created/frozen or however you want to describe it. I understand that they're related, but I see DID and alters as something different from what I'm talking about here.
I wondered if anyone has any thoughts on something. I should say that I struggle a huge amount with the idea of an inner child and wish therapists had a different concept for it, because this idea of an almost literal - and in some way, still present - child isn't one that I can relate to at all. So the approaches that go along with it don't seem helpful either.
I experienced a trauma when I was 20, and I separated into two identities at that point, one which had no memory of the trauma and was very driven to achieve things, and one which occasionally emerged and reacted to people and events in a very damaged way, as having been through that trauma. No-one talks about my inner 20 year old or suggests I nurture her by doing things that 20 year olds enjoy. Instead, I'm encouraged to see myself at 20 as part of my past and the effects of that trauma as part of my present - which I think is a healthy and helpful approach.
I don't understand why childhood trauma isn't treated the same way. I suppose you could say that childhood is all about development, but I think being 20 is an important development stage too, and in fact the trauma happened when I was really making a move into adulthood after adolescence, but it damaged that. You could also say that I already had the tendency to dissociate and split off from myself following childhood trauma, but then that's also true of the later childhood traumas which followed the earlier ones. So why are the effects of a trauma when aged 20 treated differently from the effects of a trauma when aged 12?
It's a really big problem for me because I find the inner child concept frustrating. It seems to infantilise me, like it would have done at age 9, say, if I'd talked to someone and they put me in a nice room with a doll to play with for a while, or talked to me as if I was a 3 year old and didn't have my current level of understanding. I don't think it would have helped that 9 year old to have been given something they missed when they were 3. So why try that with my adult self?
I've wondered if it's to do with the nature of my childhood, which was partly that I wasn't taken care of, had to fend for myself and later had a lot of responsibility for others at a young age. I think other people have had that kind of experience and still relate to the idea of an inner child, though.
Clearly I must be missing something about this inner child idea. I wondered if anyone has any thoughts on this. If so, I'd be grateful to hear them but please don't give any details of trauma, I'm afraid I'm not in a place to read them.
and then there's a discussion which includes the inner child idea.
To be clear, I'm not thinking about dissociative identity disorder (DID), but about the other kind of identity that's created/frozen or however you want to describe it. I understand that they're related, but I see DID and alters as something different from what I'm talking about here.
I wondered if anyone has any thoughts on something. I should say that I struggle a huge amount with the idea of an inner child and wish therapists had a different concept for it, because this idea of an almost literal - and in some way, still present - child isn't one that I can relate to at all. So the approaches that go along with it don't seem helpful either.
I experienced a trauma when I was 20, and I separated into two identities at that point, one which had no memory of the trauma and was very driven to achieve things, and one which occasionally emerged and reacted to people and events in a very damaged way, as having been through that trauma. No-one talks about my inner 20 year old or suggests I nurture her by doing things that 20 year olds enjoy. Instead, I'm encouraged to see myself at 20 as part of my past and the effects of that trauma as part of my present - which I think is a healthy and helpful approach.
I don't understand why childhood trauma isn't treated the same way. I suppose you could say that childhood is all about development, but I think being 20 is an important development stage too, and in fact the trauma happened when I was really making a move into adulthood after adolescence, but it damaged that. You could also say that I already had the tendency to dissociate and split off from myself following childhood trauma, but then that's also true of the later childhood traumas which followed the earlier ones. So why are the effects of a trauma when aged 20 treated differently from the effects of a trauma when aged 12?
It's a really big problem for me because I find the inner child concept frustrating. It seems to infantilise me, like it would have done at age 9, say, if I'd talked to someone and they put me in a nice room with a doll to play with for a while, or talked to me as if I was a 3 year old and didn't have my current level of understanding. I don't think it would have helped that 9 year old to have been given something they missed when they were 3. So why try that with my adult self?
I've wondered if it's to do with the nature of my childhood, which was partly that I wasn't taken care of, had to fend for myself and later had a lot of responsibility for others at a young age. I think other people have had that kind of experience and still relate to the idea of an inner child, though.
Clearly I must be missing something about this inner child idea. I wondered if anyone has any thoughts on this. If so, I'd be grateful to hear them but please don't give any details of trauma, I'm afraid I'm not in a place to read them.
