~BEING YOU~

This week, I had three adults tell me that they did not know what I was talking about when I suggested that they needed to really nurture their inner child.   The truth is, if one was not nurtured as a child, then of course they would not know how to nurture some imaginary part of themselves that is called an inner child.

John Bradshaw (internationally famous author and workshop presenter) was a major player in the inner child movement in the mid 80s with his PBS series called “On the Family”.  And, Carl Jung referred to our truest authentic self as the “magical inner child”.  So, parenting our inner child is still a necessary part of our own journey and it helps us in “magical ways” to learn to live from our “magical inner child”, which is part and parcel of our most precious and authentic self.

And, it is not easy but it is do-able if one is willing.

Here are four steps that you can take NOW and you will learn to nurture your inner child. But more than this, you will learn to nurture yourself so that the essence of who you are blesses the world with pure love and guiding light.

Here are the steps:

1. Be willing (note I am only saying “be willing”), to discover your most precious self that was present when you were very young, usually before the age of three. You may have to be willing to be a private eye to discover this part of you and if you are willing, you will connect with your preciousness. (I have a wonderful worksheet that I will send to you via email with some major clues about how to discover the precious child that is still with you if you ask). In this first step, there may be a picture you have of yourself as a baby or toddler that reveals the radiant light that is uniquely you. If you can’t find a picture, then allow your imagination to reveal an image.
2. Be willing to own whatever may have happened to this precious part that caused you to think there was something wrong with you. Now, this is NOT about pointing the finger at your caretakers. Really hear me on this; this step is about accountability. This step is as important as step one because the odds that you are continuing to do what was done to you (either overtly or covertly) are very high if you cannot figure out how to nurture yourself. Here are 2 small examples: If you were simply ignored, and perhaps dragged around like a piece of furniture, I bet you do this to yourself in some way that simply reinforces that you do not matter. Another example, If you had a sibling that had different gifts than you (which is always true) and if their gifts were given a higher value than yours, I imagine you either became an over-achiever or an under-achiever to compensate, and I bet you are still operating from the belief that your gifts are somehow “less than” others and therefore you either over-function or under-function.
3. Be willing to stop doing to you what was done to you. If you felt invisible and so you learned you had to over-function in order to even get your needs met in some small way and in hopes of being noticed, you must stop this over-functioning! Your needs will never be met and you, who you truly are, will never be noticed IF you are operating out of a false sense of who you are. Those people whom you over-function around will never see you, they will only either accept that you are so strong that you do not have needs or they will not like your over-functioning and will simply leave you. The truth is, people will learn to treat us as we treat ourselves. This may be a hard fact to accept. Let me say this again: “We teach people how to treat us and it resonates with how we treat ourselves”. One example will suffice here: I had a client, many years ago, whose husband had broken over 100, 000 agreements with her. She was bewildered and they had gone to many therapists before she wound up in my office. She began to cry when I gently asked her if she knew how to keep agreements with herself. That was the beginning of her healing: to accept that she did not honor her own agreements. Thus, when others broke agreements with her; this treatment of her by them resonated with a belief that she was not important enough to have others honor agreements they made with her.
4. Ask your inner child what she needs from you. This step may seem impossible and yet the answer will come to you if you are willing to ask. For example, if you know you were treated as if you were invisible and that your needs were unimportant, then you need to find one area in your life that YOU will make your needs important. It is this simple. And, you do not need to do this in every area of your life. I invite you to pick one area in any of these five categories: Emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual or physical- and find one need that would bring a great smile on your face if you met this need. And, make a commitment to meet that need. Because we humans are like holograms, if we focus doing wondrous self care in one area, it will affect the whole system. I have another great work-sheet about learning to meet your needs that I will gladly send to you if you ask. OR, please contact me about doing my “LEARNING TO LOVE YOURSELF” workshop for your women’s group, men’s group, church group or any group you may be part of.      The truth is this dear friend:

                                                                             BEING YOU is the most important task in your life and the  time is NOW to make a commitment to

BEING YOU.