Resurrected Child: A Positive Approach Towards Reparenting Your Inner Child
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” --Corinthians 1:12
We are born into this world naked. Naked, until the moment we are introduced to our first pamper, put into a onesie and swaddled in a blanket. Mentally, we have no point of reference. We have no experience or frameworks to guide what we should do next. We act by crying, we act from what we do have: instincts. Spiritually, we are as pure as we'll ever be in this world. Maybe that’s why we all congregate at the news of a newborn's arrival? It’s not just that we are celebrating a new life, but also because we realize that this human doesn’t yet know pain, lies, or defeat. Newborns are untethered, with absolutely no control over whether they are being welcomed into love or betrayal.
Early Childhood Influences
Our early relationships or attachments are understood to be vital to our physical, mental and emotional growth. If a child is not cared for with consistent love and nurturing of needs, the impact can be catastrophic. Feelings of being unloved and the consequent insecure attachment to a prominent figure that fails to survive childhood, contributes to a blurred view of self and others. Resulting in adults who interact in this world with a skewed sense of self, seeking toxic relationships, and likely, an abandonment of their true purpose. At the heart of what one experiences when they are not nurtured with love and care in a consistent manner is betrayal trauma (BT). It is necessary for any adult who has lived through such an experience to grow in their acceptance of these unloved parts, to return to their childlike self and re-parent themselves. Thus, it is important for an individual to be cognizant of their past and the ways it may be impacting their view of self and the world presently.
Why is this an issue?
Adults, for the most part, have the freedom of choice. If we don’t like something, most circumstances afford us the ability to make a change towards a situation that better suits our needs. We are not guaranteed happiness, but we are all granted the ability to pursue happiness. Such freedom does not exist early in life. As children, we are each the products of our environments. We are helpless in an unloved environment, clinging onto the relationship we have with our caregivers even when they are unhealthy. As an infant or child, the absence of love, sustenance, and care from our parent figure is equivalent to death (“Effects of growing up,” 2018). Think about that: death. We associate death with the absence of the heart beating, air filling the lungs, and blood flowing through the body. What if death, for some, occurs far earlier than the moment we take our last breath? Death, for some, comes in the form of the absence of love and trust in our most primitive years.
“One of the singular challenges of recovering from a childhood in which your emotional needs weren’t met is identifying the damage. I know that sounds hugely counter-intuitive, but it’s true; it’s complicated by the fact that you can’t heal a wound you can’t see” (Streep, 2019). What we have, once we grow in our awareness to understand where we may have been deprived and how that is impacting our present circumstances, is a lived experience. We have a story that we may or may not be re-telling or reliving through the avenue of our mind. Authors Peter Levine and Ann Frederick (1997) states this: “...we may unknowingly and repeatedly create situations in which the possibility to release ourselves from the trauma trap exists, but without the proper tools and resources most of us fail” (p. 21). Not only are we unable to pinpoint our own place for healing, but on our own we can repeatedly put ourselves in situations where we attempt to exit the trauma of an unwanted experience, but without any success.
Parenting Others + Yourself with Love & Attention.
Experts Oswalt, Reiss, and Dombeck (n.d.) propose the following ways for parents to encourage love and affection in their children:
demonstrate love through touch (hugging, tickling, wrestling, and cuddling)
daily verbal affirmations of unconditional love (which also extends to the acknowledgement of positive behaviors when noticed),
inclusion through proper relationship activities. On the latter point, the authors state, “the important goal accomplished here is that young children feel included and part of the larger family home” (Oswalt, Reiss, &Dombeck, n.d., p. 1).
along the same lines, it is recommended for those who have missed the phase of unconditional love as children, to return to themselves and re-parent their inner child: providing yourself with unconditional love, to care for yourself in a way that you’ve always yearned for inside. (“Effects of growing up,” 2018).
Keep Hope Alive.
There is hope. Resurrection after death is possible. “I believe that we humans have the innate capacity to heal not only ourselves, but our world, from the debilitating effects of trauma” (Levine & Frederick, 1997, p. 21). No one can go back and turn the tide of their experiences, the way they were parented or raised, and what they received or did not receive. However, when we grow ourselves towards a place of awareness and we are willing to return, with courage, towards moving our lives forward, re-parenting the inner child is possible.