How your inner child shows itself.

Inner child is a vague concept for most people and with great respect for it. It requires a more in-depth insight into the dynamics that lie within you and all the inner children that you yourself carry.

Your inner children are the children who, when you were growing up, had to hide themselves, be what others wanted, or who had to suppress themselves in order to adapt or not "bother" other people.

Every time a child experiences being wrongly misunderstood, belittled, ridiculed, etc., the child freezes the moment this experience overtakes them.

If this happens to your child often over a long period of time, you may experience some of these frozen, immature parts of yourself as an adult. Like me, you have probably also reacted inappropriately in a conflict or argument and thereby behaved somewhat like a child or a big teenager in these situations.

It's been as if they still exist deep inside you, and they do.

They do this to everyone, but not everyone is familiar with this.

I can give you a personal example from myself.

I grew up with parents who taught me unconsciously to have to defend or explain my mere existence, my thoughts, feelings, attitudes, etc.

The more I could defend or explain myself, the more calm I would possibly feel and the risk of stepping over the invisible line was significantly reduced, as was my day.

When I was growing up, clearing up misunderstandings, explaining, and defending myself was the safest everyday tactic to avoid getting into trouble.

That's why, at almost 47 years old, I still have a certain need to explain myself, or defend myself at the slightest misunderstanding or conflict.

This was for me until a little while ago, still an unconscious mechanism that I did automatically.

I have taught myself this so as not to be misunderstood, scolded or get into conflict.

It was learned to "smooth things out" and ensure peace in my childhood home.

Although it may seem harmless to some, for others it may be a way in which, in their view, others may think that I am trying to "smooth things out" for myself because they think I may have done something wrong or because they think that I am guilty of what they believe inside themselves about me in the situation in question.

This is about more than you might think.

For me it's about a hitherto unconscious mechanism where I try to explain myself so as not to be forever misunderstood or to not get into more conflict. I haven't shown that the reason was that, but I have clarified that through a lot of my own therapy with my skilled therapist.

From the recipient's perspective, it's about projection, because the recipient has a preconceived idea of what this explanation and smoothing from my point of view means to them, depending on what they add that I explain and smooth over all the time.

Another perspective is that I have now been proven that there is a limit.

There is a limit to what I need to explain, what I should explain and why I need to explain myself at all.

If it is a healthy friend I would possibly have a conflict with, where I choose not to explain or "smooth it out", then one can expect that the other person should ask for an explanation or articulate what we are going through together, in order to clarify what is up and down in our possible conflict.

That's why boundaries are super important and existential for navigating life with healthy people around you.

Boundaries are not learned naturally in my life.

That's why I have this blog and write books.

A person without boundaries is a person who, by definition, would be "run down" countless times over and over again throughout their lives, by people who have no regard for others or anything but themselves.

That's why, among other things, I've always been in unhealthy relationships of all kinds.

The more I heal, the more I think

“Shit, I've just been an easy victim”

It is associated with an incredible amount of grief and sadness.

Both that I have never been taught these very "fundamental things" as a human being, but also that there are people who actually just don't give a damn about others, including me, as long as they just get what they want out of the situation.

It makes me sad to be in such a world.

❤️

Is it my own fault????

No

I don't know, I don't know.

I don't know the concept of "colors" if I only believe that "black" exists and have never seen or heard of anything else.

I don't blame anyone, I choose not to be a victim, but a survivor and with an important learning.

A hard lesson that has had the purpose throughout my life of introducing me to situations/people with the wrong "agendas" so that I could learn more about what I absolutely do not want in my life and what I want more of in the future.

I choose to use all my failed relationships as a mirror on myself and on the world.

All of these failed relationships have forced me to look inward and look at a lot of unknown dynamics within myself.

Now that I have been working on myself for many years, I am stronger than ever.

I guess I can partly thank all these failed relationships and myself for that.

Remember that there is always a learning experience in even the most devastating and vulnerable experiences we have or have had in life, it's "just" about perspective❤️