My Frozen Inner Child

Our inner child within

Early Life

I was born in 1969 to young parents who were experiencing their own struggles. As I result I sensed, and I feel it was this way even in utero, that the world wasn’t necessarily a safe and secure place. I was a planned pregnancy as far as I am aware but I was a distraction from the underlying problems in their marriage. I now know I was a highly sensitive and intuitive child and my desire for answers and understanding must have been hard for my parents who could barely make sense of things themselves. My feeling the lack of safety and stability led me to become very guarded and I internalised my feelings, partly because that was safer for me and partly because that is what I saw around me from my parents. I was in a constant state of hyper-vigilance throughout my childhood, being a good girl, trying to please and take care of everyone. Me, the child, my inner spirit was slowly but steadily freezing. It was my intuitive, protective response to the trauma I was experiencing that I could neither fight nor flee from. This response is one of a number of basic human responses to trauma and if you feel that this is true for you too, you are not alone.

I think there was a bit of me still conscious and not frozen when I left home to go to university at 18, full of hope that on my own in the world I would find my safe place. I would be able to experience life on my terms and begin living. However, I hadn’t learned the skills to function in the wider world, like how to get on with people, how to stand up for myself, how to have my own views on things and not be afraid to be heard. I could cook and clean and look after young children, I was good at maths and I knew how to put everyone else before me and make sure they were happy whilst abandoning anything I might need or want. These are pretty basic skills that I didn’t learn, never mind how to function as a highly sensitive person, and it was a confusing and often scary place. The freezing of my inner self continued.   

Adulthood

I threw myself into getting my degree, then my work and partying hard in London during my 20s. On the outside I looked like I was having a fantastic time, and I was to some extent, but I was disassociated from my inner self so a lot of the time I felt pretty numb. I look at photographs of myself over the years and I don’t really see me. I see a body that I know other people know as me but when I look for my essence I don’t see anything at all. Emptiness. I didn’t see it at the time but knowing and feeling what I do now I can really see the emptiness in those photographs. It makes me feel so sad and angry at times.

Throughout my 20s, the freezing and the disassociation continued until my early 30s when a couple of things happened that reinforced the numbness. I felt like my life was always going to be like that. I kept picking myself up after each failed relationship, the end of each job (as I moved around, unable to settle), after each disappointment. Work was my focus and that kept me going but it was a high pressure environment that resulted in yet more damage to my already frazzled nervous system.  Luckily, I somehow managed to meet a decent man in my mid-30s, we got married and had two children and my focus became all about the kids and their needs. As I cared for my boys, the inner part of my that craved to be looked after couldn’t stay quiet anymore and in 2017, after I suffered major sight loss, that inner part burst out and brought chaos to my life. My marriage, my work and a lot of my friendships were plunged into crisis and I had a breakdown. Actually I now call it an unravelling, after devouring the books of Brené Brown. It was messy but now, some four years later, I wouldn’t go back. I am so much happier and content living a very different life. I have a much clearer idea of what is good for me and the insight to avoid the sort of toxic situations I have tolerated in the past.

So what did I do?

I learned how to soothe and nurture that young part of me, I have allowed time and given space to listen to it, understand it and care for it. If it needed a cuddle and a day wrapped up in a duvet, that is what I have given it (me). I bought a cuddly giraffe one day at a motorway service station because it had a cute face and that very young part of me wanted something to hug in bed at night. For about 3 months I slept with that giraffe and slowly my young inner part was soothed. If it was something the little me didn’t get as a child, I tried to find a way to give it to myself now. I became the parent the little me never had.

I also learned how to soothe my frazzled nervous system. I read a lot and learned about the effects my constant state of hyper-vigilance was having on my body. I really cut down on alcohol and caffeine as it seemed like a good start. I learned to breathe deeply into my abdomen, slow down my exhale and be still. I started yoga to help with stretching, breathing and connection to my body. To feel my body, what it is capable of, to respect it.

Slowly I have integrated that young inner part of me with the adult part of me and we are whole. Definitely for the first time as an adult and probably a long time before that. This has allowed me to trust my body, trust the adult me to look after me, advocate for me if necessary. My inner self has learned that the world is not such a scary place with the adult me looking after it. Like a block of ice at my core, my inner self has unfrozen. It hasn’t been linear, there have been times of real thawing, where the ice block has shrunk significantly, followed by no shift at all, then a patch of refreezing before a chunk just fell off.  It has been gradual and frustratingly slow at times. The unfreezing and the integration I have experienced has been the real power and beauty of my healing. I still have much to learn, and one of my favourite sayings is “every day is a school day”, but I know that during the last four years I have come so far. I haven’t always been aware of what I was doing, of what was happening, but now the fog is clearing I am able to articulate what has happened better.

 I write this in the hope that it will make sense to others who need to heal so they too can have courage to embark on their own healing journey. Everyone’s journey is different so yours may look nothing like mine but the important thing is that you heal.

September 2021