Anxiety and The Inner Child
February 29th, 2012 | Posted by in Inner ChildA few days ago I realized that I was feeling so nervous and anxious inside. I had been for a few days. I inquired inwardly to see if something was going on with me relationally, emotionally, or was I picking up something from the greater collective? Whatever it was my body was letting me know that something wasn’t right. The unknown is the hardest thing for all of us eaters. Food is my old way to calm these uncomfortable feelings. Although I don’t gain weight from food any more I still need to handle anxiety when it comes up in the ebb and flow of my life. Are you feeling anxious lately? Are you needing the NURTURING MOTHER inside of you to stay close and let you know that everything is going to be ok and remind you of the wonderful special being you are? Remember its all about connection and healing the feelings of being alone and unloved.
Learning to hold the tension of uncomfortable feelings rather than reacting is essential as you put in the daily actions of saying and doing loving things for yourself. These are some things to try:
“Listen to what your INNER CHILD is feeling and try to nurture her and remind her that she is wonderful, stay close to her and her heart, go for a walk, get a massage, take a warm lavender bath, do something fun, pick healthier foods to eat that are easier on your body and pick more positive things to think.” Patricia Bisch
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback.
I’ve always searched for a ‘nurturing mother’…. My mother was completely overwhelmed with me and my sisters (I have 3 sisters; we were born 1 year apart….). She literally didn’t like me – she felt that I was a real problem child, and that I wasn’t loveable. I grew up being the scapegoat for everyone and everything, and feeling utterly deprived of love. I thought that something was wrong with me, since it seemed so easy for my parents to love my other 3 sisters, but not me. I was the black sheep of the family, and if you would have seen a picture of my family, you would have observed that all had light, blond hair, whereas I was the one with the black hair – how fitting! I believe that growing up without motherly love actually laid the basis for my having a hard time being gentle and nurturing with myself. The only love I received was ‘tough love’ from my father, who could be pretty abusive at times. However, I KNEW he loved me, and that was better than having absolutely no love. I wish, I could connect with that nurturing mother inside me. I find it difficult, though! How do YOU go about it, Patricia?
For the first time in YEARS, I noticed that I was anxious last Friday. Granted, I had a very good reason for it: meeting new people who I knew nothing about. However, I’ve been numb for so long that I just didn’t kow how to recognize the feeling of anxiety anymore… And that finally happenend on Friday. It was ok though, as I was able to notice it and talk about it with my husband. After the meeting, I was still very “high”, so my husband stayed up with me until both of us were able to sleep. I had no idea I could feel such big feelings. Such intense feelings.
Many times, also, I pick up intense feelings from the Greater Collective, as I am an empath. But usually I know they aren’t my feelings. I just don’t know how to handle them without food…. yet.
Hi Sunny,
Thank you for your sensitive and vulnerable asking. At first I would suggest you journal to your inner child and tell her that you the Loving Adult would like to have a relationship with her. When I first started my relationship with my Inner Child she told me that she felt that I was just not that fun to play with and that I was boring. She really wasn’t very interested. She felt that other people were far more interesting then me to play with or listen to. When I asked her what she needed there was nothing that deeply moved her that I gave but there were things that were ok. One of the first things we did was paint together and to this day I still actually love to do it but then she was just ok with it and that was our beginning. The other day I realized that she just wanted my hand on her heart during the day. So many times during the day I just visualized my hand on her heart and of course when you visualize it sends the energy with it. She liked that. I will write a blog about it and you can go to pg. 90 in my Freedom From Food book to read more.
Thank you, Patricia, for your kind answer.
) that I AM loving MOTHER to my Inner Child (yeah!). I just had to change my perception – thank you!
It’s funny – I do my Inner Child work, but I don’t see myself as a nurturing MOTHER when I take care of my Inner Child, even though I do see myself as a loving adult who is there for her. This is almost like having a ‘split personality’, LOL! But you’re totally right – just being my nurturing adult means (since I am female!
What I’ve gleaned from this blog is how much patience is required. I’ve worked with children with disabilities, with kindergarteners, with the elderly, and with the dying, and others have commented on my patience.
But with myself? I will even repress my need to pee so I can finish a project. Imagine doing that to a child? I’m just remembering my Dad did it to me and my brother all the time. He was a compulsive talker and often as my brother and myself were wetting our pants and our mother was begging that we leave, my father would insist on finishing his long monologue with some friend or acquaintance.
I’m also struck by the concept of learning to “hold the tension of uncomfortable feelings”. I believe Pema Chodrin, the meditation teacher, refers to this place as ‘shempa’. It’s bringing awareness to the itch without scratching it, since the scratching will only make the skin sore and tender and not cure the discomfort anyway.
How difficult this is!!! And it seems more difficult for the small things in life than the big ones. I can gear up and utilize my best resources to face a grizzly bear, but it’s the mosquitos that distract me, cause me to lose patience, to swat randomly and wildly…The mosquitos are that anxious, buzzy, groundless quality I often subdue with food.
I’m noting the same pattern with play. Teaching kindergarten and sick children is all about play. I can do it with others. So why do I deprive myself?
Why does Patricia’s account of painting seem like such a brave act?
It’s me again. I was just watching the news and saw the ex-husband of a good friend of mine, looking so alive, so alert, so how I remember him. They said his body was found by a search and rescue team in the local National Park, that he was an avid hiker and had left on Friday and never returned. The news said his family said he had a heart condition:
So there, little Margie. Another death. Like ducks in a row you’ve watched all the men die too young, too painfully. Since birth you’ve been witness to the dark side of men’s souls. Not dark meaning bad or wrong, but dark as in the icy days of winter, the days when there’s no dry wood to start a fire, but people survive anyway because they huddle together, put down their guns, read each other their stories. But this time I want to tell my story with compassion, as fiction, not to be taken literally.
And I see you have no idea what I’m talking about…All you know is that there’s a hole in your right chest, a clutching in your heart. You see images of all the others: your mom, dad, brother, your cousin Judy, Astrid, Cricket, Marlene, Jim, Renee, Larry, Bob, Rusty and, last week, Aunt Helen.
But Aunt Helen was 107. Sometimes I try and imagine how many people she had lost in her 107 years. She couldn’t possibly keep listing all her losses like I just did. At some point she must have accepted the inevitability of death. After all, she was a farmer, and most farmers accept the ways of nature with a kind of grace.
********
The feeling that wants me to eat is what I’m feeling trying to write a letter that is not being written from my heart. I feel awkward talking to you, worried what you may think of me, concerned that reading my words will be like trying to swallow dry chalk dust.
What I am doing here is thinking a lot. I wish I could comfort you in your grief but I don’t know how right now.
One of my big fears is that I’ll be busted for impersonating a grown-up. I actually don’t feel much older than you are. Some parts of my soul stopped growing (they weren’t dead, just stunted). It scares me to admit it. I deeply yearned to comfortably be in the role of parent, but I wasn’t a parent like a method actor would be an actor, but more like someone who put on the costume first and then listened to a lot of experts and studied a lot of other people trying to figure out the best way to fit into the part.
They don’t call us ‘adult children of alcoholics’ for nothing.
I am afraid to show you the sadness I carry inside. I try to cover it up, shelter you from it, knowing you have enough difficulties of your own. I don’t want to overwhelm your world with my emotions, fears, unresolved sorrow, like my parents did to me. Being their child was like being a captive audience in a grand Shakespearian opera, since their pain used to emerge in cursing yells, shouts and wails. The nurses in the hospital where Dad died even told me they called him ‘the opera singer’ because he continued to wail until he died. And I was with Mom when she died. She was spitting at the wall.
I want to save you from all images of histrionics. I will keep my feelings to myself, even if it means, from myself.
*******
(At this point it was midnight. I couldn’t write anymore and couldn’t send this out. It felt inappropriate and I’d already just written too much anyway. Instead I went to bed with the rest of the peanuts and fell asleep. I just awoke at 5:00 in the AM, after dreaming of sending Dick’s 3 young granddaughters a picture book about death.)
******
I wonder if I’d sent this, incomplete and halting as it is, if I’d still have needed the peanuts to fall asleep? I’m going to send it now simply as an experiment, to see it it changes something today, to see if I can fall asleep on my own tonight? I have a feeling just the sharing, in whatever form, might be enough? Maybe tonight I can buy a candle for Dick and be with him in my special space? Maybe it was too soon to talk with my Child? That now is the time to sit in silence, with her on my lap? The time for no words?
It’s now 5:00 in the AM and in 3 hours my son will emerge from his ‘lair’ and I will drive him to the doctor, but he won’t let me meet the doctor and he probably won’t tell me what’s happening. He’s more like me than I am. I’ve heard that the children of children of alcoholics often have the same problems their parents had, even though their parents don’t drink. Even though they just eat peanuts at midnight.
“Stephen Levine wrote of Unattached Sorrow (2005), all those little griefs that we avoid, fail to realize the extent of the loss, or it is just too much for us to deal with. Art can work to heal those unattended sorrows and both consciously and unconsciously, slowly and gently bring us to a place of wholeness in a new world.”
Earl Rogers, The Art of Grief
SO perhaps now is the time to take out the paints, like Patricia did, and leave the words for the wise to tell?
Yes, I totally agree.
Sometimes, I draw a series of impressionistic drawings, lately it has been with crayons or pencils. The feelings come so quickly and easily. With no mind to figure out what to draw or what color to use, I feel one with the process. This last week, I did a series of 4. I feel so satisfied and complete both to begin and to end the process.No words of explanation, no judgment, just a joy!