Grow Up Your Inner Child
Growing up isn’t always easy.
Some days, I find myself wishing that the world would rearrange itself to nurture me. To embrace me. To care for me.
Those days, when I’m feeling “little,” I also tend to be more fearful. More fragile. More reactive.
These are also the days that I find myself more reluctant to be honest or direct, because I’m afraid of others’ reactions. My more vulnerable child-self is in charge.
The same is true for you. When you can’t hear my requests or my boundaries, or you can’t honor what is important to me without retaliating, manipulating, coercing, or trying to make me feel bad, your child-self is in charge.
In our journey toward more compassion, let’s recognize this reactivity as simply the survival strategies we learned as children. Noticing that we’re replaying these power dynamics from childhood, we can then embrace them as opportunities to love ourselves, accept ourselves and grow ourselves up a little more.
When we get triggered and reactive, let’s practice loving up our inner child.
Let’s see our reactivity as a childhood fear of punishment and then work compassionately with that. In loving ourselves up, we help ourselves mature into more empowered ways of being, and we finally help those little selves grow up just a little bit more.
This is how I began responding to a recent question that came in on my weekly Q&A call, Conversations from the Heart.
The question was about how to deal with some challenging dynamics that surfaced when co-parenting with an ex-partner.
The conversation dives into some scripting for how to maintain our boundaries, ask for what we want, and avoid slipping into defensiveness. We also talk about who to give power to when it comes to defining who we are and mapping out a path to healing.
You can watch the video here:
These difficult situations can always be golden opportunities for taking a closer look at ourselves, finding the places in us that get hooked on others’ criticisms, and getting to know and love every part of who we are — as we are today.
As the video wraps up I say this, and it’s worth repeating here:
I’m not an object to meet your needs, and I don’t see you as an object to meet my needs. We are sovereign beings who are here to love and be loved in our fullness, and none of us needs to be perfect and healed and enlightened before we are capable of that or deserving of that.
Love is not something that we earn by becoming “healed enough” to finally be “worthy enough.” Love is the fundamental, baseline principle that we emerge out of and exist in.
Looking for a supportive, empathic, and growth-oriented community for learning and practice? Consider joining my free Q&A calls, Conversations from the Heart. We meet every Wednesday at 10am CT via Zoom. Click here to learn more.
Dr. Yvette Erasmus is a psychologist, teacher, and consultant who specializes in transformative education for human healing and growth. Synthesizing mind-body medicine, somatic experiencing, diversity and inclusiveness, nonviolent communication, and integral-relational-cultural psychology, Dr. Erasmus integrates core insights from multiple wisdom traditions and offers various programs for community learning as well as one-on-one consulting. To learn more, visit yvetteerasmus.com.
