The Man in the Mirror Project - The Inner Child

For many of us we grow up and have come to believe we are adults now and not children.  My grandmother used to tell me, however, that she still felt inside as if she was 17 when she was 83.  I completely "get" that.  Our bodies may make us look older but inside remains the same emotional body makeup that we had when we were young.  We can change some things but others seem to creep up from seemingly out of no where and sometimes we are left questioning "where did this come from?"

I used to have a friend that moved to Texas a few years ago.  She was able to leave everyone behind she said and stopped smoking, lost weight and began a new life for herself.  She was gone for several years and when I spoke to her she was proud of her new life and her ability to break free from her past.  She moved back to Michigan and said when she saw her family she was brought back to the same place immediately.  She started smoking again and feeling the same way she had before she left.  All her work, she said, was gone.  What happened?

This is the power of the inner child.  Some things will happen in your life that will literally put you back to your childhood.  Not by way of imagination, but in a way of feeling.  If you were made to feel guilty for expressing emotion, lets say, then when you express it now you will feel guilty as well.  Sometimes we think that we are responsible for others behavior and try to change them.  In essence, we are trying to make up and change what we should have had to begin with; encouragement perhaps, love and support.

Sometimes receiving all of what we need from a parent may be expecting too much.  They too had childhoods with scars that have yet to be seen.  So in order for us to heal we have to take the reins and begin to value our inner child.  We need to look at him or her through the eyes of an adult.  Someone who is caring and concerned for our welfare.  When we do we might see a different image of ourselves than we had before.  We may see a helpless child reacting to the circumstances of their life in the best way they could.  If you are continuing in this pattern it is here that you can break it.  Noticing how you may have coped as a child, how you felt and how those feelings and thoughts creep into your present life will help you to break free.

In yoga we say to journey inward and just "notice" how your body feels.  In a sense this is doing the same, except we are working with our emotional body here, not just our physical.  So just "notice" how you are feeling when you get upset or down with yourself.  Then try and recollect a time when you were a child when you felt the same way.  Sometimes these are clues to breaking the cycle.