#innerchildwounds

For me, there are three main steps to healing those young attachment wounds. And some of this is rooted in internal family systems, but I’ll generalize it for a moment because for me, there’s three main components that are required. One is witnessing. The second is a corrective experience and the third is releasing and transformation. And I’ll explain each one of these.

The witnessing is can the younger part share what it’s holding? Because we don’t want the self of the client to say, “Oh, you’re loved. I love you. Everything’s fine. I’m going to convince you everything’s okay.” That’s not going to work. We want the younger part to share what it’s holding.It was really horrible when I was a kid. When I was six years old, I had this birthday party and nobody showed up and my parents were drunk and they didn’t really care. What are the stories this part’s holding? Where did this belief that I’m unlovable, I’m not worth it come from? Okay. My mom was so depressed after my second brother was born and she never paid attention to me. She never paid attention to my younger brother. I felt like she didn’t really care. Or when my sister was born, everybody wanted a girl. Nobody wanted a boy. Let the part share what it’s holding.

It’s all internal. I would say, “Hey, so Jane, what does that little girl want to share with you? What is she holding?” I don’t say, “What does she want you to know?” Because that pulls for cognitive. I say, “What thoughts, feelings, or physical sensations is she holding?” “She’s got a flutter in her stomach. She’s got a feeling of dread. She’s got a memory of being at a birthday party and being all alone with soiled underwear and nobody doing anything about it.” “What else is she holding? What else?” The part starts to say, “Somebody cares. Somebody’s interested. Somebody wants to hear my story.” There is a being with and witnessing, which is very important. What else? What else? What else? Anything else? No, she feels like finally, somebody is listening to her.

Then the second step in that process is a corrective experience. And the corrective experience is internal. Can you love her the way nobody else did? Can you give her what she needed and wanted and never got. She wants a hug. She did get what she wanted from me because I listened to her and I loved her. She wants me to show up every day and check in with her. Great. We’re wanting the second step, which is a corrective experience. The part shares, what it’s holding, feels heard, seen, and known. It gets what it didn’t get internally. And this is all happening in the mind, right? This is all happening in the imagination because we know the imagination is a powerful neuroplastic agent. We get a lot of neuroplasticity through imagination. And then the last piece, once the part inside feels seen, heard, and known, once there’s a corrective experience, then it’s able to let go of what it’s holding.

Because it says, “Oh, she gets it now. I don’t have to hold this anymore. I could release the burden.” And so then we have the part release what it’s carrying. It’s a transfer of energy. Release all the thoughts, the feelings, and the physical sensations out of their body because they no longer need to carry it anymore. They no longer need to hold this experience. It’s witnessed by the self and the self gave me what I needed and wanted and never got. And that’s where the release happens. And it really is physiologic. You’ll see people just, oh my God. She’s throwing it in the ocean. It’s floating up in the air. It’s really a physiological release and letting go of thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations that the part carries as a burden because of the younger experience.

When you get to the stage of release, the way that I prompt the release is “All right, Jane, does that little girl feel loved by you? Does she feel like you see her and get her in a way that nobody else did before?” “Yes. She’s so happy. She’s feeling so much better because there’s been this corrective experience.” “All right, let’s invite her to let go of anything that no longer belongs to her. Let’s invite her now to let go of what no longer serves her, what she no longer needs to carry. Let her release the thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations that she doesn’t need to carry anymore. And she can release them in any way she wants.” I don’t prompt in a direct way. What typically happens is it gets released in some form of nature. It’s a transfer of energy and this is why I say she’s throwing it in the fire.