Healing Insight 12: Your inner child needs you.
Teal Swan, Overcoming the Past: Trauma, the Shadow, and the Inner Child podcast compliments of Hay House Radio
This insight has proven to me how necessary it is to foster, nurture, and care for that inner child. Your inner child must heal before you can heal. We don't realize that trauma we have experienced or perceived as a child can haunt us for the rest of our lives. Teal Swan made it very clear that the trauma did not have to be as severe as physical or sexual abuse. Just the fact that our inner child perceived it as a trauma of maybe feeling abandoned, feeling alone, feeling unsafe or afraid is enough to keep us stuck. She explains this in her podcast, Overcoming the Past: Trauma, the Shadow, and the Inner Child, compliments of Hay House Radio.
It is enough to keep us attracting the same types of situations in our life. I know that may be hard to grasp but the Law of Attraction is a real law in science just like the Law of Gravity. Please remember, you must process and release emotion not serving you. This is necessary so that you can stop having the same thoughts, feeling the same way, having the same experiences, and reliving the same events from your past.
One activity I did was to create a timeline. The instructions were to start at age five and list any events or memories in five-year increments, to create a list of items to meditate ‘Tap’ on. My first memory was of me refusing to eat spinach. I remember how slimy and smelly the canned spinach was. Yuck! I ate everything else on my plate hoping I could slide by. No luck. My mother insisted I eat the spinach. My dad naturally agreed with my mother. So, I sat there in front of my plate. My two brothers ate their spinach and were excused from the table. But there I was as stubborn as an ox. I didn’t give in, and neither did my mother. I sat at the table for two hours after dinnertime. I can still feel the ice-cold stares my mother gave me as she would walk by to check on my progress. She would say, “The sooner you eat it, the sooner you can get off your chair.” Still, I refused.
I felt the anger, resentment, and frustration build. But still, I just couldn't eat that spinach. It was slimy, cold, it smelled, and it made me nauseous. Even though I knew I was disappointing my mother I just couldn't make myself do it. I really wasn't trying to be defiant. I wasn't trying to piss her off or make her look stupid in front of my dad and brothers. I was sincerely grossed out by the spinach on my plate. I'm sure I expressed all of that to my mother which probably made things worse. That's why I was still sitting there.
It seemed like an eternity. The temperature in the room seemed to drop with the cold stares and the silence between us. I remember thinking, I just want my mom to love me. I just want to be a good girl. I felt sad but this stupid spinach was standing in the way of pleasing my mother. My brothers would pass by the kitchen. They would look at me like oh s*** you're going to be in so much trouble! Their eyes had pity. At the same time, I could feel that my dad was tense. He went and sat in the living room to watch TV. He was so serious. I just kept thinking, I wonder what Dad thinks of me? He's probably mad at me too! How am I going to get out of this?
I could feel the hard chair on my bottom as I sat there. I tried to be comfortable. I was falling asleep at the table when my father finally declared, “That's enough of this, you're done, get off the table and go to bed.” I believe I was six when this incident took place. I often wondered if this spinach incident was the reason the relationship between my mother and I never flourished. I wonder if my mother looks back on this as the first time that I defied her. The first time that I challenged her. The first time that I made her feel so angry at me. I wonder if she just could never get over it and held it against me.
Those are the thoughts I had so many times throughout my life. Those are the feelings I have felt that have made my heart ache so many times. The funny thing is that I actually love spinach now. I eat it several times a week! No, I don't buy canned spinach, only fresh spinach. But every time I eat my spinach I think about that incident and I say, “Look, Mom, I'm eating my spinach, aren’t you so proud of me?” This is just the first of many incidents that I had unprocessed emotions around related to the relationship with my mother. Throughout my life, there were many more incidents, more severe, with more hurtful words and actions between us.
All of these incidents and events were listed on my timeline. Yes, I have meditated ‘Tapped’ on every one of them, many of them multiple times. By releasing the emotion that was connected to all of these incidents throughout my life, I have been able to see the beauty. All the love and all the caring moments that my mother and I shared. Nick Ortner explains it like this: “Tapping clears away what's been blocking you from seeing all the good that happened during a certain memory.”