Are there situations which make your inner child angry frightened with an emotion which you don’t understand? As a child you need to see good emotional self care strategies modeled by carers..So if your care givers were distracted by their own unmet needs it’s less likely you’ll learn good self care.
If you recognise this in yourself, my tip is to try Inner Child work to connect with and re-parent these emotions.
How to reparent yourself
To connect with your inner child imagine how you would support a real unhappy child. You’d probably be kind and try to help them by reassuring and listening to them. So connecting to your inner child is no different, and your frightened inner child deserves your attention.
Take a moment to think about what it would be like for you to meet yourself as a child. Try to connect with that child. One method you might try is to use a journal and write down what you might say to her.
How I successfully used Inner child work
I used this method to open a dialogue with little me. So when I asked little Sarah why she was angry, she responsed with ‘I feel like no one can see me, I feel shaky about what happened today’. I was able to reassure little Sarah, ‘You’re not alone Sarah, I’m here and I can see you and I see you’re frightened. I’ll do my best to take care of you when you’re frightened’. By practising this work, I came to understand that my anger as an adult was directly related to my parents consistently not doing anything to change a situation that made little me (and them) feel fearful. As a result I was able to start re-parenting myself.
Inner Child work is a simple but powerful tool which helps you to gain important insight into how a lack of emotional care as a child affects you today. By talking to, and most importantly, listening to little you, you’ll become a kind, loving and non-judgmental parent to yourself.
This article by Diana Raab contains more information and includes some books you might find interesting Click here
For further reading about anger
Is controlling your anger the answer?
Can saying yes lead to feeling angry?
If you get angry and impatient with yourself, using harsh words towards yourself that you wouldn’t say to a good friend, it’s time to start improving your relationship with you.
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