Embracing My Physiology

Where I work, which is at a university medical school, employees have the option of taking a university class without paying any tuition. Every spring and fall, the catalog shows up and in the 20 years that I have been there, I have never taken a class. This fall, when the catalog appeared, my guidance said “You have to take a class.” “Okay,” I thought, “let me see what is offered.” Dutifully, I looked through some likely options: French? Computers? Things like that. Nothing felt right, so I went back to my guidance who said “Read the catalog.” So I started from A and read the catalog (it is only about ¾“ thick) until I got to D for Dance. The class totally jumped out at me “Somatic Awareness.” In the description, it mentioned that the class would focus on three somatic techniques: progressive relaxation, focusing and Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing. I could not have imagined how powerful the class would be for me.

What I learned about is the physiologic power of the trauma response and about the healing power of completing it. I learned that this healing is not about will power; that the trauma is in the autonomic nervous system and the circuits of the brain and will stay there unless it is released but that, at the same time, our bodies already know how to heal. More important, perhaps, for me, is a new awareness of the fact that if the trauma response is not completed, our physiology gets stuck, and we get triggered into the same physiology over and over again. Somatic experiencing provides a way, although perhaps not the only one, for our loving adult to help our inner child complete the trauma response in a way that no one did at the time, and truly heal.

In AA, in the Serenity Prayer, there is the concept of knowing the difference between what you can and cannot control. This concept is central to Inner Bonding and I think I have mastered it pretty well in terms of trying to be safe by controlling other people’s intent. However, with trauma, there is the experience of the unbearable and having no control over it and no way to cope that works. This experience forms the core of our beliefs. We all have some level if this. The trauma does not have to seem all that overtly ”horrible.” It can be being rejected or humiliated or lonely. No matter what the cause, the physiologic response to trauma has 3 components. We are all aware of the concept of fighting as one of the possible responses. A lot of us go there, blowing up when triggered, trying to fight back and yet never quite feeling in their bodies that this resolved anything. That is not my default. Flight is another well known response and many people spend their lives running away, traveling, in perpetual motion, but again, not experiencing a bodily sense of resolution. As a result of trauma, our wounded self remains hypervigilant, but somehow this does not create inner safely. These responses, fight and flight, are the topic of another conversation. What I had not integrated is the third possible response that can be programmed into our bodies, which is the freeze response, becoming immobilized, maybe dissociating and/or collapsing because neither fight nor flight was possible. When trauma is unhealed, these bodily reponses are automatic and involuntary when triggered.

I had already, through Inner Bonding, become aware of the power that the decisions we make as children to make our world make sense and to feel like we have some control. For example, universally, we adopt the idea that there is something wrong with us and that explains what is happening, rather than the unbearable reality that our parents are incapable of loving us or keep us safe and that we are helpless to change that. The shame is more bearable than the devastation of the truth. We continue heal this over and over at more and more subtle levels.

What I have learned in this amazing class is that, without realizing it, I have been in judgment of my own physiology, thinking that if I were good or strong enough or brave enough, I could face the scary feelings instead of shutting down and curling up into a frightened ball; that I should be in control and overcome. Or, in Inner Bonding, wounded self (ego) terms, if I were truly doing it right, being connected strongly enough with guidance, I would be able to stay present for my inner child no matter what and she would not need to have a trauma respons of freezing. At the same time, I have long had a deep sense that my healing is about facing something, that facing it will set me free to be fully present without having to work at it. I don’t even think now that is a necessarily a specific event I need to face, but rather that is about gaining the global ability to tolerate feeling very scared without freezing or checking out. Maybe some people heal this by jumping out of an airplane, but I cannot. I cannot even tolerate scary movies, although that is another way that people try to deal with being so scared. And I think, without having fully experienced it, that it is this healing, this separation of the fear and the frozenness, as Peter Levine says, that will provide the automatic connection with myself, the loving adult that remains in Step 1 of Inner Bonding, that I have always wanted.

As I wrote about this, I suddenly got that the core belief that I have lived with, in relation to my body, is that the best I could do is try to survive as well I could, but that there was nothing I could do, fundamentally, about the terror inside me except avoid going there, since clearly I did not have the “cojones” to face it. I know now that this was my false belief. This belief was based on my reading of a lot of therapeutic mythology, that doing this was the only way to get past living this way. So no way out, just limitations! I now realize that re-traumatizing myself, the thing I judged myself for not being able to do enough of, would not ever have worked. I see now that this false belief was keeping me in judgment of my body and how it responds. Now I am learning that there is another way out, one that would also be compassionate and loving to my body and to my inner child. The concept is scary and thrilling at the same time.

As I write, I realize, in a weird way, that this is about salvation. What a word!! Spirit truly in action! This weekend, I had a riding lesson and tried to canter for the first time. The same day, I also read Peter Levine’s description of what “collapse” in the face of inescapable trauma looks like. And I could see that I was scared when I tried to canter, and that I collapsed. I contracted the front of my body and symbolically curled into a ball which of course made me more unstable on the horse and rightly scared of falling off. Fortuitous!! Instead of judging myself, for the first time, I embraced what was happening and what had happened over and over again with physical challenges in my life, and why I simply tried to avoid them. I saw, with compassion, that I could not have done anything different (yet!). More than anything, I see a way out (oh, what a loaded phrase that is for people with birth trauma!!) Wow!!

Confessions of a Fixaholic

I am taking a class at the moment (courtesy of my employee tuition benefit) called Somatic Awareness. Maybe it should be called “Rocketship of Awarness,” at least for me. Last week we did a simple exercise that was amazingly powerful, and I want to share it with you now. What I am going to suggest is that you do the exercise (it is very easy) and write down your reactions at each step. There are only 5 steps. At each step. you will be given a simple scenario to imagine, and your job is to tune into your reactions, mental, emotional, physical and sensory. Tune in as much as you can, write it down and then go to the next one. Then when you are done, I will share what I learned from it and I hope you will share what you learn too.

*First imagine that is it your birthday. Take your time and tune into how that is.

*Then imagine that you realize that you have lost your purse (or wallet if you are a man). Take your time and again tune into how that would be.

*Now imagine that the phone rings. You look at caller ID and it is your friend. She tells you that she has your purse at her house, but that you need to come over immediately, because she is leaving soon. Again, tune into how that would be for you.

*Next imagine that you get to her house and ring the bell and there is no answer. You ring again. No answer. You knock. No answer. How would that be for you?

*Finally, because you are close friends, you try the door. It opens and you walk in and suddenly there is a loud chorus of “Surprise! Happy Birthday!” How would that feel in your body? Interesting, no?

*Here is what I experienced. When I imagined it was my birthday, I saw a cartoon image of rockets and fireworks and had a feeling of celebration in my body. My inner child was really happy, although here was also some sadness about all of the birthdays where I was not able to feel celebrated. Basically, I felt proud of myself for how far I have come. But then … when I imagined the lost purse and really let myself really feel it, I felt frantic, panicked. I told myself I HAD to look for it. I HAD to do something. In my mind I started looking and I realized that I was totally checking out, going into the numb, pseudo calm problem-solving place that I know so well. When I checked back in I could feel that my abandoned little girl felt lonely and burdened down by the imperative to solve this problem. The physical sensation of the crushing burden, of curling up with pain, was really intense!

Then the phone rang, and it was a great relief to focus on something else! When I realized it was my friend, I felt ecstatic, until she told me I needed to come right way. Immediately, I felt trapped and forced to do something I did not want to do, again crushed and in pain. I again went to checking out. Not allowed to feel how much I do not want to do this. Have to solve the problem of the lost purse and solving this problem was more important than attending to my little girl.

When I got to my friend’s house and no one answered the door, I felt frustrated and confused. Another problem to solve! I struggled to find an explanation, as I continued to ring the bell. I felt scared that something had happened to my friend as well. Maybe if I opened the door I could solve the problem and the discomfort would go away!

When I walked in to the “surprise,” it did not feel good at all! I was spinning and confused. Everything was out of control, and I felt a huge pressure to act happy which made it worse. In that moment there was no solution to the problem and I hated that feeling.

When I went back thru it, I saw the places where I had failed to connect with my inner child and stand up for her, but what jumped out for me more than that was the way, in this imaginary exercise, I jumped into framing each scenario, except the first one, as a problem and trying to solve it from my head, rather than embracing the remarkably intense feelings that were being triggered. Framing things as problems that I can or cannot solve is a way to not feel helpless. Indeed most of my dreams have been about solving problems and so is my day job. I am good at it. I have to say that thanks to Inner Bonding, when I find a problem I cannot solve, I can easily let go of it, but this kept me from seeing the other side of this issue for me. Interestingly, since this exercise, I noticed that my dreams have changed. I guess I got some of the message.

Everyone in the class had different reactions to each step. There is no right reaction. In fact, you might find that your first reaction could be to freeze inside, or to laugh or to get mad or feel hot or cold. It does not matter. What matters is that this is a great exercise for simply tuning in to your body and learning about yourself.

There is an ironic part to this, maybe the universe’s sense of humor. I said in class that I do not lose my purse, which is true. Today, I was getting ready to go to Thanksgiving dinner and, guess what, I could not find my purse! True to form, I did not ask my inner child if she wanted to look for it, I just did, circling over and over to the few places it could be. I knew it was in the house somewhere. Finally, I asked for an image of where it could be, and I clearly remembered the last place it was, on my desk. But I had already looked there! Still I was sure. I went back and saw that somehow, my purse had fallen off the desk into the trash can right next to it. I smiled and God did too! I decided that he wanted me to write this column and I did.

There is another P.S. I post my columns on the Inner Bonding website and then, in a slightly modified form because of the way that writing evolves, here. My little girl LOVES this column! I think it is because she feels really, really IMPORTANT here!

What Did You Learn from Watching Your Parents Fight?

     In the wonderful  book NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, there is a chapter on the effect of parental conflict on children.  They point out that what is really important is not the intensity of the conflict per se, but rather whether children see this conflict resolved in a healthy, loving way.  Conflicts that do not get resolved, or conflicts where the parents hide the fact that they are in conflict from the kids (who know anyway) and therefore hide the resolution as well, are deeply frightening for children.  It got me to thinking that the beliefs we form about conflict, based on what we saw growing up, have a huge effect on our relationships now.

      When I looked back to my childhood, although I did not exactly see how my parents resolved their disagreements, they were always resolved.  There might have been angry words (which were not hidden from the kids), but there was never any violence or the possibility of it, and fights were always over within a day or two at the most.  There was not even the thought that my parents would split up as a result of a fight, and there was no alcohol involved, ever.  I realized that I came to believe that although conflict was to be avoided if possible, once it occurred, it SHOULD be resolved and it should not take that long to do it.  I suspect that my father gave himself up a lot to resolve conflicts, and I think I carried the idea that there was always a winner and a loser (someone who was right and someone who was wrong), but later I came to believe that resolution would involve understanding each others’ positions and compromising if necessary to end it. When I was married, I was always baffled that this did not occur, but now I think I understand this better.

               My ex-husband had a very different experience of conflict between his parents.  Conflict was his father, usually inebriated, going off on his mother for some offense.  Conflict was scary for the kids because his father was out of control and potentially violent.  Often the kids were targets as well.  Nothing ever got resolved; it just went away at some point, simmering until it was triggered again. His father was always the winner and his mother was always the loser, always the victim. Eventually, because separation and divorce were never an option in his devoutly Catholic Indian family, his parents lived out their lives together in a state of total disconnection, barely speaking, but each playing their assigned roles in the household.  Only when he died could she begin to reclaim herself after years of abuse.  So, for my ex-husband, this was the way, unconsciously, that conflict was, and we lived it out.  Nothing was ever resolved, because I would not give myself up completely like his mother did, and he, like his father, could not lose by admitting to doing anything “wrong.” We would just reach a truce and reconnect after days, or in subtle form weeks, of hostilities, until the next time. He was operating from a completely different belief system about conflict and this possibility never occurred to me.  It also never occurred to me that I was operating from an expectation, which is a form of control.  My perspective seemed so obviously correct!

     I thought it might be useful, then, to ask what we came to believe and expect as a result of seeing conflict between our parents.  Perhaps this checklist will be useful in dialoging with your guidance and/or your partner about your beliefs.

• Is an ideal relationship free of conflict?  Are you a failure if you cannot avoid it?
• Can conflict ever benefit a relationship?
• Is it possible to feel safe during conflict, or does it always that mean someone is dangerously out of control or that the relationship is at risk of breaking up?
• Does conflict mean that your partner does not love you?  Is it possible to simultaneously love someone and be in conflict?
• What is it okay to do or say during a conflict?  Are physical or psychological threats acceptable?
• Is trying to get someone else to accept your point of view the same as speaking your truth?
• Are you obligated to continue communicating when you and/or your partner are deeply in your wounded selves?
• Is it standing up for yourself when you punish someone else because of a conflict?
• Is every conflict a power struggle that has a winner and a loser and cannot be resolved until someone gives themselves up?
• Is it shameful and embarrassing to be in conflict?  Should it be hidden at all costs?
• Is it okay to have unresolved conflicts?
• How long should conflict last?
• Can conflicts be resolved if one or both partners are drunk?
• Do you know what it would look like to resolve a conflict with your partner in a loving way?

      I am not sure what would have happened during my marriage if I had come to understand the old beliefs that each of us was carrying about conflict.  If I had not been so busy trying to get him to take my inner child by connecting with me, maybe I would have been able to embrace her heartache and helplessness over his choices and seen the ones I was making as well, instead of making it worse by trying to control his.  I understand this now.

     Inner bonding is a process that gives us the tools to re-examine our old, unconscious, programmed beliefs about conflict in relationships and to become free make new choices when conflict does occur.  It allows us to be compassionate for ourselves and our partners and for their and our old beliefs.  It allows us to handle conflict without giving ourselves up or demanding that our partner do so instead.  It allows us to choose to become and be with people who are of fundamentally good will, not eager to blame or win, but eager to engage from a place of trusting that the other person too wants to find a way to lovingly reconnect.  Inner Bonding allows us to accept with deep sadness when this is not their intent and make choices from there, instead of endlessly trying to have control over what we cannot control.  I believe that conflict is inevitable in close relationships when we care enough to stand up for our inner kids, but by healing our old beliefs, conflict can more likely be a gift to both sides, a path to healing and intimacy, instead of a curse to be avoided at all costs.

The Vital Need to be Received

I have just finished an excellent book called “Nurture Shock” by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. One of the chapters is about why some children learn to talk easily and quickly, learning a lot of words, and others do not. Certainly, many parents are eager to help their children develop and even buy DVDs that are supposed to expose children to language in that hope that they will learn it faster. Yet, when studied, it turns out that these DVDs have zero effect in promoting language development. It turns out that when interactions between parents and babies are studied, the babies who learn language more quickly are those whose parents respond to their communications rather than those whose parents attempt to drill their babies and get them to respond to THEM.

Today, I was thinking about this in more global terms. I was thinking about how essential it is that our parents respond to us on the deepest level when we are babies, tuning in to our emotions, to our bodies, to our energies and harmonizing with them. I remember the excitement of becoming able to do that when my babies were little, drowning as I was in oxytocin, the hormone of connection that Mother Nature makes available in such abundance in nursing mothers, human and non-human. The need for this level of connection among mammals is primal, and yet most of us never had it and our mothers did not either. In a way, doing it with our babies and experiencing that it was possible was deeply healing for us.

I suddenly realized that most of our mothers had a very deep wound, a deficit, because they were never truly received in this intimate way. As is the case with all of our deficits, we spend our lives trying to get what we never did from someone else, trying somehow to complete ourselves, and we often give the job of giving us what we never got to our children. I saw that when I was a baby, my mother was busy trying to get me to receive HER. Therefore, communication was pretty much one way. When my children were babies, they would actually cry when she tried to interact with them, because it was so one way, as she was trying to get them to receive her without responding to their body language and cues. Eventually, I went into resistance and refused to take the job of receiving her (and by default anyone else) which of course triggered her and caused her to blame me for her pain, but I think other children do wind up taking the job which is the other side of the same thing.

The relevance of this to Inner Bonding is huge. I realized that when we are in our wounded ego self and trying to dialog with our Inner Child, often we are still trying to be received, but this time by our own Inner Child. We get really uncomfortable with just being there to receive what our Inner Child needs to tell us. We try to get him or her to perform in some way, just as our parents did. Instead of receiving, we fix. Instead of listening, we talk. We do the same in our outside relationships, so focused on trying to be received by the other that we do not begin to receive them.

In the process of healing with Inner Bonding, we access a source of spiritual guidance and we finally do have a reliable way to heal this wound of not being received. We don’t have to DO anything to be received by guidance. It just IS. But at the same time, I suspect that unless we can connect with and embrace this wound and with the fact that being received was our birthright, we may sometimes have trouble experiencing being totally received by our source of spiritual guidance too.

So it might be useful to tune into this dimension when doing Inner Bonding. Am I truly receiving my Inner Child or trying to get him or her to receive me? Can I stay connected enough to my Inner Child when I am with others so that she or he feels received, or is it easier to receive other people and tune out my own Inner Child? What do I do when other people are not open to receiving me? For me, there were a lot of “AHA!’s” in these questions, and a new tool to access a deeper level of healing. I hope this turns out to be true for some of you as well.

A Rough Landing and Then an Epiphany

I was flying into Washington DC last week for an NIH study section meeting. At the end of the flight I had been listening to a beautiful healing meditation, but then it was time to “turn off all electronic equipment!” So I grabbed the American Way magazine from the seat back pocket and started working on the Soduku puzzle (the “easy” one, I am not very good at Soduku). I got so distracted that by the time I noticed that the descent had been turbulent and bumpy, I was feeling queasy and basically awful. The rough landing (as one passenger remarked, “I guess he hit the flat spot on the tires”) and the unnecessarily abrupt deceleration added to my misery. I desperately, as one does in these situations, wanted to feel better and quickly! Suddenly, it dawned on me that if I was feeling awful, my little girl inside was feeling just as awful and needed my help. So, for the first time, instead of focusing on getting over feeling bad, I reached out to her just as I would do with an outer child. I opened my heart to how bad she was feeling, held her and just stayed in compassion for her. Immediately, as if tumblers were falling in a lock, I saw three things. Click! I saw how it was when I was little and feeling bad physically. How my mother just wanted to fix me, to get me to stop feeling bad as soon as possible. My feeling bad did not cause her to feel any empathy or compassion. If anything she was annoyed, because she had to do something about it. Then, click, I saw how I had treated my own children when they were feeling bad physically. Sure, I cared that they were hurting, but if anything my heart did not open and I went into my head trying to fix them and when that did not work, I too became annoyed. Click, the third tumbler fell into place as I realized that I had done exactly the same thing to my own little girl, trying to fix her and even subtly judging myself if I could not stop feeling bad quickly. Somehow, although I had learned through Inner Bonding to be there for my little girl when she was was feeling bad emotionally, feeling physically miserable remained stuck in another category, to still be handled by my wounded self. But this time was different. And what was amazing was that by the time we got to the gate not only was I no longer feeling sick, my little girl and I were actually feeling really great! Ordinarily I would have gotten to baseline in about 45 minutes at best. Click! I do think I am finally starting to get this Inner Bonding, taking full responsibility for your feelings, business!

Do You Believe that You are Supposed to Suffer?

The concept of suffering and especially unnecessary suffering, suffering due to ignorance, has always been very powerful for me. Any knowledge that promises to prevent suffering fascinates me. Thus, the trajectory of my passions from teaching Lamaze, to research, to Inner Bonding with a few interesting detours in between. I am not so much passionate about getting people to accept my point of view (anymore), as about trying to make sure that people who are open to hearing it know that they have a choice to not suffer. I know that this is part of my soul’s purpose.

My mother, on the other hand, had a very different passion about suffering and self-sacrifice. She saw it as a way to become more deserving, as a kind of wealth and entitlement. I remember when Arthur Miller (whom my parents vaguely knew) divorced his wife to marry Marilyn Monroe, my mother’s reaction was basically that he was a terrible person because he was leaving the woman who had suffered and sacrificed with him when he was not yet a success. My mother grew up being reminded often by her mother of how much suffering she had gone thru to have her (“19 hours on the kitchen table”). My mother was also deeply traumatized both by the depression and by the Holocaust. The magnitude of the unavoidable suffering caused by these things was enormous, but as a result, my suffering and distress as a little girl were hardly worth noticing (and I got that message). Consciously, that did not make any sense, but I did not realize that I had absorbed her message that my suffering was not worth paying attention to, that I should just live with it, since it was not so bad on a relative scale.

As a child, I was consciously in a continuous state of low-level suffering and aware that not everyone I knew was suffering, while simultaneously I was being shamed for not being willing enough to sacrifice myself. This was relieved only when I got away from my parents and spent blissful times at summer camp. I had no idea, until I began opening to my core feelings thru doing Inner Bonding that it was not low grade suffering at all, that I was actually in agony the whole time. But my point is that low level suffering felt normal to me. Fast forward to my intimate relationships and especially to my marriage which actually took place at an Inner Bonding intensive. At first, things were really good, but as time went on, the suffering time became a higher and higher percentage of my life and I was starting to get sick from the stress. But here’s the thing, instead of saying to myself “Hey, you are suffering, something is wrong here,” without realizing it, I just accepted it as normal, as something I was supposed to live with and just accept while hoping that somehow it would get better.

Many of us were taught the value of suffering as part of their religious upbringing. Christianity, with its focus on the suffering of Christ and the suffering of a large array of martyred saints is an obvious example. The message was that God will love you to the degree that you are willing to sacrifice and suffer for him. I grew up in an atheist family, so in my case the message was that my mother would love me under the same rules and I refused to comply, without realizing that the message had sunk in anyway. I suspect that is true for a lot of people.
One day, during the period right after my husband left, I had a conversation with spirit and I posted the big question. “Am I supposed to suffer?” And spirit did not hesitate to answer. “Of course not. I don’t want you to suffer.” The blinders fell from my eyes instantly. I had not even realized that I believed that suffering was something God wanted me to do, and I became aware of that false belief and its terrible consequences. Suffering is actually an alarm, just as the pain when you put your hand on a hot stove is an alarm. You are not supposed to leave your hand on the stove and (surprise!) you are not required to just accept the pain and observe it. Suffering is a message from your inner child that you are not paying attention, that you are not taking loving action on his or her behalf, and you need to do something. Suffering is not a way to serve God or to gain points. And if you don’t take action the suffering just keeps on increasing and you feel less and less, not more and more, loved.

At the same time, I can hear you wondering, “Don’t people learn from suffering?” Yes, of course they can choose to learn from it and they do learn from it, but I submit that choosing to suffer through self-abandonment is no more helpful than the very similar idea that “Only if I judge myself and treat myself harshly will I ever achieve anything.” Just as you would never deliberately inflict suffering on your dog, or a friend, or a partner, or hopefully your real children, and hopefully would never decide that the suffering you inflict is good for them, I suggest that your inner child’s suffering, inflicted by your wounded self, should serve as a powerful message that impels your loving adults to take action by doing an Inner Bonding process. I know now that that if am suffering, something is off. My little girl is infinitely grateful, indeed ecstatic, that we found Inner Bonding, because now we do have another choice and she does not have to live in suffering anymore. For someone who came to learn about using knowledge to help prevent unnecessary suffering, it doesn’t get any better.

When Is It Loving to Give Your Inner Child Away?

When Inner Bonding clients describe situations where they have made someone else responsible for their worth, their specialness, their lovability, etc., I often suggest that this is the same as if your real child came up to you and said “Mommy (or Daddy) am I lovable?” And you responded, “I don’t know. Let me ask the neighbor. “ Clearly, this would be absolutely devastating for a real child, and it is just as devastating for your inner child. A term for to this kind of inner abandonment is “giving your child away” and feeling how painful this is can be (and was for me) a watershed event in truly taking responsibility for our inner child’s needs.

Recently, however, I was doing an Inner Bonding session with a client who described just such a situation. She was at an event where a woman who had been her dance teacher was also present. There was a long history of her giving the job of making her little girl feel special to others, and this dance teacher was one of them. More than that, this dance teacher had been totally inconsistent in her responses. My client was miserably aware, during this event, that the old pattern had reappeared and completely aware of how awful this felt to her little girl. But, this time, instead of my usual approach of trying to stop the behavior of giving her little girl away, I was given a new approach.

I suggested that there was absolutely nothing “wrong” with the desire to give her little girl to someone else to make her feel special – that the problem was actually her choice of recipient. I asked her to remind me of the name of her spirit guide. “Ben,” she said. “Okay,” I replied, “how would your little girl feel if you gave her to Ben instead of to your dance teacher?” “She would LOVE it!!” She loves to be with Ben. She trusts him completely.” “Does she feel special now?” “Of course!” My client was overjoyed!

“Let’s try this in a real situation,” I suggested. “Let’s go back to that scene with your former teacher and see how it would go if you brought Ben along.” “Oh, it would be completely different,” she said. “Wow, so when I don’t know how to make my little girl feel special, I can ask Ben for help, and then the two of us can give her what she needs.” “Yes,” I replied, “anytime.”

So maybe this will give you another tool in your toolbox. If you notice the impulse to give your inner child away to someone else, to get love, to get safety, to get validation, to get anything and simply noticing that does not change anything, maybe, instead of struggling with it, you can go with it and use it as a doorway to connect to someone who can really help you, your spirit guides. I am guessing that your inner child will not mind this at all and I would love to know what happens when you try it.

My Little Girl Who Feels Everything

Recently, at a Reiki circle, someone told me “On the surface, you seem so relaxed but there is a part of you that is really anxious.” That sounded true. Indeed, I had had glimpses of that, especially in the fact that is hard for me to feel 100% relaxed. Also, I have been aware that there is a very young part of me that is always on guard and probably has been since I was born or even before that. She may even be the reason that it takes a long time for me to fall asleep.

Although I have thought of myself as being relatively insensitive emotionally, I have been aware of being sensitive in other ways. I cannot stand loud noises and loud music. I cannot stand uncomfortable clothing or an uncomfortable bed. I cannot eat just anything, indeed I am sensitive to several foods. But I did not connect this in any way with emotional sensitivity and always saw myself as relatively unflappable.

A couple of weeks later I was at a party with friends, relaxing and listening to music. I became aware that a couple had gone to the kitchen to talk and I could hear that their tone was negative. Suddenly, I was astounded to feel that a part of me was totally panicking because of the possibility that this couple was having a fight. But instead of telling myself that there was nothing to worry about or doing something about it on the outside, I choose to stay present for the feeling. My very young little one was truly scared. I resolved to really stay connected with her for the rest of the evening. What I found out was that this part of me reacts to everything and reacts INTENSELY. Indeed, she fit the definition of “a highly sensitive child.” Every noise, every interaction was so intense for her. It was hard to stay with the intensity of her feelings and I noticed myself wanting to go into my head or wanting to fix something on the outside, but each time, I pulled myself back and just held her. I did not know what else to do. This was not about anything I was telling her, this was about what she was telling me, which is that she feels EVERYTHING. I did not even know how to make her okay, whatever that is.

When I connected with spirit, I could feel that God is totally in love with this little girl, but that did not really help her at the time. All I could do was realize that what was important was how I reacted to her distress, that she needed me to react by opening my heart not running away, that if her feelings got more intense, I needed to just hold her tighter and that is what I did for the first time ever.

I was amazed to realize that when I was very small, I WAS actually highly sensitive. Maybe we all are. But I learned to manage my feelings by checking out very, very early. Before I had many words. This little girl whose little body I was holding so tight felt like she was a toddler at most. By the time I was 2 or 3, I was already in my head, already becoming unaware of the anxiety inside.

Just holding her was as far as I got that night. The next day, I wondered what more I could do. Suddenly, I realized that I was thrilled to have discovered this little one and I was astounded to realize that not only is God totally in love with her but I am too! Bringing love and compassion to her suddenly became easy precisely because I am so in love with her. She really needs me, more somehow than my older inner kids. I remembered, too, how it was when my sons were little. For the first year and a half or so, I was totally in love with them, my heart was wide open. But something happened after that and I shut down. I think I understand why now.

I would like to report that “Hallelujah, I am healed” but that would be premature. It is still easy to bypass her feelings by believing that I am relaxed and calm when she might not be. But I understand Inner Bonding at a much deeper level now. As I struggled to stay with my little girl’s feelings that night, I watched my wounded self try to distract me and I understood what Margaret has been telling us for so long, that all of our wounded behaviors, all of our addictions are ways to manage, to avoid feeling these really difficult feelings. I know on the automatic level this is still happening but with a difference. The difference is that now when I do notice my wounded self in action, for example when I want to say something negative about someone else, I immediately know that this must be happening because I am abandoning this little one. Once I notice that, reaching out to her from the part of me that is in love with her has become easy. But much as I am aware of not quite being there yet, I do notice something else which is that she is happier and that I am happier inside. I may not have completely broken the habit of tuning her out, but now I AM in love and at the same time someone is in love with me! So a different Hallelujah. It does keep getting better and better!

The Other Day I Asked My Little Girl a Question

When I was growing up, I learned to be “okay” by numbing out and keeping busy. I thought it was who I really was, except that I always knew that something was missing. Two days ago, at the LA Advanced Inner Bonding Intensive, I asked my little girl how her days would have been while growing up if she were not using her protections. My 7 year old self showed me a movie that started with her waking up and knowing that there was no one to connect with and feeling unbearably lonely. She then showed me how each moment, each interaction was filled with heartbreak. No one saw who she really was but at the same time her parents made her up and punished her accordingly. She showed me closed hearts everywhere, invasive energy, no joy, everyone in grim survival model. She showed me her little body in continuous shock with no one to comfort her. Then she showed me a movie clip that ran over and over in a continuous loop, the voice of my wounded self saying “In order to be safe you have to check out” and then a jump cut to her sobbing in grief as she hears this awful pronouncement.

I understood why, when I was married and used to wake up several hours after my husband did, I would immediately find him and try to hand my little girl to him so that she would start the day with some connection. He was almost never available to to take her and so I would start the day feeling disappointed and proceed to try to numb out enough to feel okay. I remembered how joyful it was when my sons were babies and even older to greet them in the morning, to share that “I am so happy to see you” energy. I understood what a blessing it is to have my cats who open my heart when greeting me in the morning or coming hang out with me. Someone to share love with! I don’t have to numb out for the moment.

I wish I could say that now, just two days later, having felt the deep grief that I am causing by running this old wounded program, I am no longer doing it, but at this point the change is more that I am aware of it. My little girl told me that one thing she wants is to connect with me in the morning when we wake up, yet I have woken up the past two mornings and checked out by looking forward to reading my e-mail, checking the Inner Bonding site and Facebook so that I can maybe get some connection. Only when I was actually sitting at my computer, did I even realize what had happened, that I have already checked out. Each morning I had a deadline, I was in a hurry, making something else, which turns out to be habitually protecting against the pain of how I am treating my inner child, more important than being with her. At the same time, as I write this, I have been holding my little girl and inside she is crying with a deep sense of relief at finally being truly understood and with profound sadness at what a terrible loss it has been to live this way.

I remember that there was something else I was shown at the intensive that I had forgotten about, which is what it will be like when I start to remember to wake up in the morning and connect with my little girl. My little girl has shown me a happy, delightful imp, already connected to her spirit friend. Being with her will make my day! Somehow, I have had the false belief that I will wake up to an unhappy and demanding child, even though that never happened with my own children. So waking up with my happy imp is something I can completely look forward to (and therefore am more likely to remember to do). In fact it will be MUCH better than reading my e-mail! I know we have a long way to go to completely block all the “checking out” programs, but I am looking forward to what is going to happen tomorrow morning!!!

And that was supposed to be the end of the column, only it wasn’t because my little girl told me that she would rather that I STAY connected with her than check out and WRITE about staying connected with her! Whoops! I am just so glad that she can tell me now. We are both so glad I asked!

Learning to “Just Say No” to Abuse

In a recent session with a client who had suffered significant childhood abuse, we were dealing with an incident where her husband, also an Inner Bonder, had become completely overwhelmed and had angrily told her to “Shut Up.” Her little girl was very frightened by the incident and her wounded self was trying to protect her by telling her that everyone who gets angry is an abuser and that she needed to keep her guard up at all times. Not surprisingly, that was frightening her little girl even more. It started a conversation about what defines an abuser.
Here is what the definition was for me. An abuser is someone who refuses to take responsibility for his or her feelings and blames someone else (the target for them). The abuser feels completely justified in punishing his or her target for what he or she believes the target has “done” to “cause” his or her pain or shame. All of us have had the experience, I suspect, of being triggered into moments of feeling like this and at least wanting to act this way. The thing that distinguishes an abuser is that he or she never moves to any true acknowledgment of his or her own role or into caring about the effects of his or her actions on the target, although in some situations the abuse is followed by remorse, either as a manipulation or because another part of the abuser’s personality has shown up. Often though, the feelings of the target about what happened remain permanently irrelevant, because the abuser remains convinced that whatever he or she did was completely justified. Happily, my client’s husband did not fit this mold.
For some of us, childhood abuse is obvious. We were beaten or tortured or rejected or molested. But what I have become increasingly aware of is the more subtle abuse that occurs in so many families, including mine. Although I was spanked on occasion, most of what I experienced was blame and yelling and humiliation. When I look back on it, there was not one occasion when either of my parents said “I am sorry I yelled at you. I lost it. I was upset about something else.” In fact, the general attitude was “Stop crying or I will give you something the cry about.” The energy of blame was continuous. My highest priority was to try to avoid getting blamed. Not fun. The important thing though that I have realized recently is that I still believed that other people had the right to blame me, especially if they thought I had done something wrong and that my only options were to convince them that I had not intentionally done anything to hurt them (Good luck with that one!) or, more recently, just listen with compassion.
What I have realized now is that I do not have to give anyone the right to dump blame on me. I really do not have to listen to it, period. Even listening to them with compassion was actually not taking good care of my own little girl. This was a revelation which, not surprisingly, made my little girl very happy. I was in a relationship in which there was often closeness. My friend was very caring about me and my feelings, except when he got triggered which was probably every couple of months. When that happened, we had days and weeks of dark energy and horrible e-mails trying to get me to see what a terrible person I am and why that is causing his pain, a continuation of our old pattern when we were married. I was no longer reactive or defensive, but I would “allow” him to blame me, to throw that energy at me. At no point did he ever take any responsibility for his own feelings or show any remorse for his actions. I realize now that because I was so used to being blamed, I was willing, for a long time, to simply accept being abused this way as a condition of our friendship and just be in compassion for him and hope that would help. Margaret Paul talks about how we stay in relationships to learn and then one day we have learned what we need to learn and then it can be over. It never occurred to me that what I finally needed to learn is to simply not allow myself to be abused under any circumstances, but this last time that it happened, I finally got it. My little girl and I are wildly grateful for this powerful lesson. The conversation between us is over, because being abused is never worth the trade off. I have finally learned to “Just Say “No.”