Healing the Wounded Inner Child
Who would have known that the
slights, the rejections, the insults
that children experience would
live on as a voice of limitation for
years to come? You know, the
parent, who in a moment of
frustration tells their child that he
is not as smart as his older
sibling. Or the child who is
benched by the soccer coach
because of a team mate who is
athletically superior. And the
young girl who determines,
through her mind limited by wisdom and age, that she is not as loved as
another. How about the young boy who can never work hard enough to
please his father? Or the girl who endures taunts because of her
appearance?
The emotions from these experiences, and those even more traumatic,
often remain nestled deep inside the subconscious mind, manifesting in a
myriad of ways as an adult. When the adult has an experience that triggers
the emotion from the early trauma, he is likely to respond in a way that
reflects that pain or fear of the event. His response may be considered
irrational or immature by the assessment of others, but the response may
be all he is capable of given that the initial experience seemingly ‘locked’
the emotion into place.
I’d venture to say that most, but likely all adults have heard the voice of
their childhood wounds speak to them, keeping them in limitation in one
way or another. The executive who fears being discovered a fraud and
losing his well-established business…the woman who has a pattern of
dating abusive men… the college scholarship athlete who experiences
multiple injuries keeping him sidelined….the stressed-out working parent
who has multiple physical ailments and diagnoses of anxiety and
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