Story time…
Each summer my parents would send my brother and I to spend a week or two with our grandparents. I loved staying with my Mimi. She was a widow in her 60s who made sure our time together was good, quality time. She came from humble beginnings in rural East Tennessee – 3rd grade education and a distinct Appalachian drawl when she spoke.
During one particular visit I had an experience with her that isn’t a warm fuzzy memory. It was scary, and had the potential to be traumatizing. As all children, you can imagine that at age 3 I wasn’t always “on my best behavior.” I don’t remember exactly what I did, but I distinctly remember my grandmother getting frustrated with me and threatening to “set me on fire.”
“I’m gonna set you on fire” is one of those lovely Southern indicators that a spanking of epic proportion is on the way. Add in her Appalachian accent, and I misunderstood what she was saying. As a small child with a small child’s insight and intellect, I thought she was literally going to start a fire and sit me on top of it. My cheeky reply to her threat was, “Well I won’t sit on it.” Lucky for me my response made her laugh and the spanking was avoided, but imagine what would have happened if that response only served to fuel her anger and she followed through with the threat. My grandmother was a safe space for me in many regards, and had never hit me before. If (through the eyes of a three-year-old who worshipped her) she had just threatened to “set me on fire” and then broken that sense of safety, how would I have felt? The panic of being threatened with physical pain, especially without knowing the reason why I was being punished, plus losing the feeling of safety with a beloved adult, what kind of anxiety could have manifested from that? I’m looking at all adults who are still scared of getting in trouble here…
All the little things that happen during childhood impact the adults we are becoming and/or have become. I had a client once who came into my office with his wife for marriage counseling. Her complaint was that he didn’t communicate. At all. He literally would not talk at the times she desperately wanted to hear his voice and thoughts. I looked at him and asked, “Who taught you it was not safe to talk?” He thought for a moment and began telling various stories about things his father would do and ways he would treat him as a child. “Eventually I stopped talking because what was the point?” As a child, he began to believe it was easier to stay quiet because his words were not important.
When we grow up and enter into new chapters of our lives, those old beliefs and behaviors don’t magically disappear or fix themselves. He carried the belief that speaking his truth was pointless and he wouldn’t be heard into his marriage. The unhealed, unheard 12-year-old inside him still kept telling the grown version of him that communication was not a useful tool available for him. Can you imagine allowing a 12-year-old dictate the dynamics of your marriage? How about a 3-year-old? Yet this is the very thing that is happening within all of us at any give time if we haven’t worked on healing our inner child.
We continue to have people come into our lives to test our beliefs developed in childhood. Each time it’s an opportunity for us to realize a certain belief, or way of thinking doesn’t work for us anymore. I know for myself when I’m tested, I can feel that anxiety, the old familiar warning that something is going on that I don’t like. But what I’ve started realizing is that what I don’t like is continuing to behave the way I did as a child to avoid the conflict. What I really want to do is speak my mind, stand up for myself, say no, etc, but I would stop myself. I stopped myself because 12-year-old me believed that it’s a waste of time. I would just be a victim again.
There is an adult version of you and a child version of you all residing in one body. Like Russian dolls. Conjure the image of an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. Now replace one with the adult you and replace the other with you as a child. The adult you is saying “I want this experience,” but the child you is say, “whooooa don’t you remember when x, y, z happened?”
As children, because we have very limited power, ability, resources, support, knowledge, etc., we often were made to feel like victims of our situations. I have no power, therefore I’m powerless. I’m powerless so I must protect myself however I can even if that means not using my voice or avoid everything that makes me feel unsafe. When we grow up and enter new chapters of our lives, those old beliefs and behaviors don’t magically disappear or fix themselves. We don’t always realize the power we have, and carry this victim mentality into adulthood with us.
Take time this week to reflect on the events of your childhood that shaped your beliefs. How do these events continue to affect your decisions and behaviors? What messages does your inner child tell you?
Unbound Light 