no subject

[lotesse]

Okay, after that introductory blather: I'm working on dealing with my angry inner child.

The woman I'm working with practices shiatsu, but I don't actually know what the lineage of the program we're doing is; we've been talking about Campbell, a bit, some kind of Jungian thing, she's sort of Caroline Myss-y. She helps me protect and elevate a space where I can be honest about the things that I know in my spirit. I like working with her, because she lets me use my own words and images, and I feel like when I tell her no or want to adjust understandings she listens and quickly groks my objections. She praises me for being brave. It's nice.

The last few years, I've been haunted by this sense of my inner child. A lot of the inner-child stuff that's out there is about accepting the child, or forgiving the child, but I've had the opposite problem: I see my child self as a blaze of power, and I'd been feeling like I'd gone and killed her, her pale ghost would show up sometimes to rub my nose in what I'd done. We're angry at me for losing ground to stupid stereotypical enmeshment with a man; we were supposed to be better than that. She's a snob, really, thinks we have to be held to a higher standard.

So at this point I guess I've got help to break through some of the frozen horrified paralysis I'd been experiencing when I'd seen myself as her murderer, and she and I are maybe going to have a bit of a fight now? Hopefully it will be one of those productive ones where things get hashed out, and I'm hoping it will help me understand why I've been experiencing so much self-perpetuating emotional pain.

I will write more about the child's anger, what language she uses and what I think she might really be angry about underneath, later, but this is all I can do for tonight. It's been awfully hot here the last few days, and the north wind didn't roll in last night until after 4 am, so of course I didn't sleep, haven't slept. Starting an essay on A Wizard of Earthsea, which is, you know, apt. Rereading Le Guin's excellent "The Child and the Shadow" first.

Comments

[highlyeccentric]

I do not go in for pyschoanalysis, but I feel you on the 'my inner child had so much going for her that i lost' thing. :s I go through phases of deliberately cultivating childish (in general, but also specific-to-me child traits) behaviors, trying to re-gain things I lost track of, and also assert... continuity? I need to know my adult self is rooted in my past self, somehow.

[princessofgeeks]

I am cheering for you!

[lotesse]

it means so much to me that you are :)

[staranise]

Ohhhh wow, that, um, sounds.... pertinent. I'd love to hear anything you want to say on the topic.