Your Wounded Inner Child
John Bradshaw, from Homecoming : Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child
Buckminster Fuller, one of the most creative men of our time, loved to quote Christopher Morley’s poem about childhood:
The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold
Of being only four years old.Still young enough to be a part
Of Nature’s great impulsive heart,
Born comrade of bird, beast and tree
And unselfconscious as the bee-And yet with lovely reason skilled
Each day new paradise to build
Elate explorer of each sense,
Without dismay, without pretense!In your unstained transparent eyes
There is no conscience, no surprise:
Life’s queer conundrums you accept,
Your strange Divinity still kept. .And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
May make you poet, too, in time–
But there were days, O tender elf,
When you were Poetry itself!
What happens to this wonderful beginning when we were all “Poetry itself”? How do all those tender elves become murderers, drug addicts, physical and sexual offenders, cruel dictators, morally degenerate politicians? How do they become the “walking wounded”? We see them all around us; the sad, fearful, doubting, anxious, and depressed, filled with unutterable longings. Surely this loss of our innate human potential is the greatest tragedy of all.
The more we know about how we lost our spontaneous wonder and creativity, the more we can find ways to get them back. We may even be able to do something about preventing this from happening to our own children in the future.
How Your Wounded Inner Child Contaminates Your Life
I couldn’t believe I could be so childish. I was 40 years old and I had raged and screamed until everyone–my wife, my stepchildren, and my son–was terrified. Then I got in my car and left them. There I was, sitting all alone in a motel in the middle of our vacation on Padre Island I felt very alone and ashamed.
When I tried to trace the events that led up to my leaving, I couldn’t figure out anything. I was confused. It was like waking up from a bad dream. More than anything, I wanted my family life to be warm, loving, and intimate. But this was the third year I had blown up on our vacation. I had gone away emotionally before–but I had never gone away physically.
It was as if I’d gone into an altered state of consciousness. God, I hated myself! What was the matter with me?
The incident on Padre Island occurred in 1976, the year after my father died. Since then I’ve learned the causes of my rage/withdrawal cycles. The major clue came to me on the Padre Island runaway.
While I sat alone and ashamed in that crummy motel room, I began to have vivid memories of my childhood. I remembered one Christmas Eve when I was about 11 years old, lying in my darkened room with the covers pulled up over my head and refusing to speak to my father. He had come home late, mildly drunk. I wanted to punish him for ruining our Christmas. I could not verbally express anger, since I had been taught that to do so was one of the deadly sins, and especially deadly in regard to a parent.
Over the years my anger festered in the mildew of my soul. Like a hungry dog in the basement, it became ravenous and turned into rage. Most of the time I guarded it vigilantly. I was a nice guy. I was the nicest daddy you’ve ever seen–until I couldn’t take it anymore. Then I became Ivan the Terrible.
What I came to understand was that these vacation behaviors were spontaneous age regressions. When I was raging and punishing my family with withdrawal, I was regressing to my childhood, where I had swallowed my anger and expressed it the only way a child could–in punishing withdrawal. Now, as an adult, when I was finished with an emotional or physical withdrawal bout, I felt like the lonesome and shame-based little boy that I had been.
What I now understand is that when a child’s development is arrested, when feelings are repressed, especially the feelings of anger and hurt, a person grows up to be an adult with an angry, hurt child inside of him. This child will spontaneously contaminate the person’s adult behavior.
At first, it may seem preposterous that a little child can continue to live in an adult body. But that is exactly what I’m suggesting. I believe that this neglected, wounded inner child of the past is the major source of human misery. Until we reclaim and champion that child, he will continue to act out and contaminate our adult lives.
I like mnemonic formulas, so I’ll describe some of the ways the wounded inner child contaminates our lives using the word contaminate. Each letter stands for a significant way in which the inner child sabotages adult life. (At the end of this chapter you’ll find a questionnaire to help you ascertain how badly your own inner child was wounded.)
Co-Dependence
Offender Behaviors
Narcissistic Disorders
Trust Issues
Acting Out/Acting In Behaviors
Magical Beliefs
Intimacy Dysfunctions
Nondisciplined Behaviors
Addictive/Compulsive Behaviors
Thought Distortions
Emptiness (Apathy, Depression)
CO-DEPENDENCE
I define co-dependence as a dis-ease characterized by a loss of identity. To be codependent is to be out of touch with one’s feelings, needs, and desires. Consider the following examples:
Pervilia listens to her boyfriend talk about his distress at work. She cannot sleep that night because she is fretting about his problem. She feels his feeling rather than her own.
When Maxmillian’s girlfriend ends their six-month relationship, he feels suicidal. He believes that his worth depends on her loving him. Maxmillian truly has no self-worth, which is engendered from within; he has others-worth, which depends on other people.
Jolisha is asked by her jock husband if she wants to go out for the evening. She is wishy-washy and finally says yes. He asks where she wants to go. She says it doesn’t matter. He takes her to the Viking Barbecue Stand and to see the movie The Return of the Ax Murderer. She hates the whole evening. She pouts and withdraws from him for a week. When he asks, “What’s the matter?” she answers, “Nothing.”
Jolisha is a “sweetheart.” Everyone comments on how nice she is. Actually, she only pretends to be nice. She is continually in an act. For Jolisha, being nice is a false self. She’s unaware of what she really needs or wants. She is unaware of her own identity.
Jacobi is 52 years old. He comes to counseling because he has been in an affair with his 26-year-old secretary for two months. Jacobi tells me he doesn’t know how this happened! Jacobi is an elder in his church and a revered member of the Committee to Preserve Morality. He led the fight to clean up pornography in his city. Actually, Jacobi is in a religious “act.” He is completely out of touch with his sexual drive. After years of active repression, his sex drive has taken over.
Biscayne takes his wife’s weight problem personally. He has greatly curtailed their social life because he is embarrassed to have his friends see his wife. Biscayne has no sense of where he ends and his wife begins. He believes his manhood will be judged by how his wife looks.