The Child Within?

A lot of popular psychology, or self help books as they are more commonly known as, talk in terms of the need to nurture the child who lives within us all.  There are so many possible interpretations of this though are there not? Who is the inner child? Are they the part of us who have not reached emotional maturity? Are they the part that simply demands our own needs be fulfilled or we risk a tantrum? Or are they the part of us that have carried with us certain messages we have received as children and not left behind? Maybe all of these parts are one in the same???

To me the child within is not a young and immature side of ourselves, but a part that has become vulnerable for one reason or another.  It might be because of childhood lessons, but it might equally be because of experiences we have had as an adult.  It is a part of us that has become scarred and in need of protection - or at least that is the belief our minds have come to hold.  When our particular vulnerability is revealed our minds interpret this as a signal to curl up like a hedgehog and show our spikes to the world - stay away from there it shouts and screams in its own strange language, you cannot risk being hurt yet again! But strangely in my experience, in order to heal it seems it is the opposite action than the one the mind tries to take that is necessary.

Let me explain a little about how the mind works before i take this thought further - The mind is full of shortcuts.  It tries to be an efficient machine and do things quickly and automatically.  I was trying to explain this to a friend the other day with the analogy of a shortcut across a grassy area - when the grass is walked over enough times it becomes bare and a path appears.  In time the path turns into a rut in the ground where the grass is unlikely to grow. At the same time any other paths become overgrown and hidden.  This is what happens in the mind when we have certain similar experiences - particular neural pathways become a shortcut which tells us what has happened in previous similiar situations.  If our past experience has been a positive one we learn that we have nothing to fear from it happening again, however negative experiences of course lead to fear and attempts to avoid these particular experiences as much as possible.  Repeated negative experiences lead to almost impenetrable forcefields of phobic proportions.

Going back to my thought then that in order to heal it seems it is the opposite action than the one the mind tries to take that is necessary.  What i mean by this is to remember the rut that has been formed in the mind by earlier experiences, and the mind will follow this rut each and every time - it has already learned that experience A = pain and hurt - it tells you it does not need to experience this again to know the outcome.  It sets off the warning bells to say you are treading dangerously close to your vulnerability. Also because the track is worn and easy to follow it will always take you to the conclusion that you need to avoid this area - don't let anyone near there or you will get hurt AGAIN! In this case though what you are doing is re-enforcing the belief that you are vulnerable, and each time you avoid it you are acknowledging the 'weakness'.  In order to heal that scar you need to learn that actually you CAN cope with this experience, you need to start a new pathway in your brain that says experience A does NOT lead to pain and hurt.  This cannot happen when you do what the mind tells you to, because it is screaming at you to avoid it at all costs.

I am not saying taking the path less worn is easy.  Its not! Its full of jungle like undergrowth that you have to beat your way through at times, and your mind will continue to try and take you back to the path well worn.  Even when you make it through to the other end of the new path it still takes effort to walk it again.  Eventually as the new path gets used more frequently it becomes easier and eventually a new shortcut is created.

So what does all this mean for the Child Within? The vulnerable one we all hold inside? It means that the child needs to learn and needs to experience the very thing that its trying to avoid.  It needs someone to point it in another direction and help it lay down another path.  It means the fear and automatic response to curl up and show our spikes is a sign that we need to pay attention to what has triggered that response.  It means we need to be aware of what we are doing and we can choose to stop reinforcing the belief that we have to hide this part of ourselves from the world.  It also means though, that we need to tread with care and deliberation because our ever efficient mind will keep trying to lead us to the same conclusion, the same well worn path that we are used to.

A Journey Through Change

I woke up this morning with a sort of wonderment as to how i had got here........someone mentioned something about birds and bees??? hahahahahaha! No, of course i mean to the place i am in my life right now and how it is different from where i have been, even just from the start of Journal of a Crazy Person.  That prompted a read back over all my posts so far and i have to say i think i have come pretty far! So now i am curious about what has happened to move me from where i was to where i am now.......

Its useful to review changes i think and check really that they are in the direction i want to go.  Obviously the direction i wanted initially was just to stop feeling so flipping awful! Today as i sit here and write i can say, "yeah, i think i have moved that way ok".  I say today, because i am extremely aware of the fact my moods still remain quite unstable. Generally though they are better than they were before which is good news indeed :)

After i started to feel better my direction started to become more complex.  It was about things like work and relationships and finances and all those deeper level things (assuming we are starting with basic needs at the top and working down the way that is!).  I started off really with no direction at all in these areas, simply because i couldn't even give them any head space - all of my energy and resources were taken up simply trying to survive! Now i seem to have found a direction i want to go in with the work situation and i am practically sprinting down that road....in a mental sense of course as i couldn't run round in a circle at the minute!!

I do have my moments of doubt with this one it has to be said, I fluster and panic and question what on earth i am doing quite frequently.  This is not because of uncertainty about wanting to head in this direction but is uncertainty about my ability to do it.  I hear it all the time from lots of different sources, including evidence from my own past and present, that my ability's are pretty high, yet i continue to doubt myself! If i talk about that doubt to people around me it seems (to me anyway) that i am seeking praise rather than the assurance that i really am seeking in these situations.  Despite the fact that i 'know' i can do something it is not false modesty when i say i'm not sure if i can do it.  Its an odd paradox that one, to have confidence yet lack it at the same time!

My direction with relationships is almost but not quite completely missing.  I am starting to build up relationships again but these are limited to a couple of quite new but very good friends.  I do have thoughts that other relationships in my life need working on and most of them need to be completely rebuilt if that is possible.  At the minute i am not really sure how i am going to do that if i am honest as i have lost practically all contact with people who were once my closest and dearest friends.  It happens unfortunately, and the duration and depth of my depression is mostly to blame.  Some responsibility also has to lie with the focus i have had, and continue to have on my work situation however.

I have had to struggle a huge amount to even find that new direction in my work life and i know it has been taking up practically all of my energy and and thoughts.  It is tough to set up a new business, especially in the current climate, and many people find starting off takes up a vast chunk of their daily lives.  I do however believe with me it is more than that - oh that didn't quite come out right - I mean i think the whole work situation i have been through shook me to my very core and so the links between my health and me needing to find a completely new career are extremely close knit.

In summary then, my relationships are still needing a huge amount of work, but my energy is currently focussed elsewhere.  Is this healthy? I have to ask......"probably not" just has to be the response to this - hmmmmmmmm.  This needs further thought!

Finances then, i did have these almost under control at one stage, not sorted by any means, but manageable.  I have since lost my direction with this! It is sort of part of the overall plan of course, but again the focus on starting the business has taken its toll.  I have taken my eye off the ball with my finances and the effects of that are showing.  I urgently need to regain some control in this area or i am going to end up slipping quite far back.  I am struggling to pay attention to different areas of my life at the one time at the minute but i am going to have to try and juggle what mental resources i have a bit better to prevent this becoming more of an issue again.

Oh thats quite odd, i started this post intending on talking about how i got from A to B and instead i end up talking about getting from B to C.  That was a complete turnaround from focussing on the past to the future.  A sort of stopping, taking stock and replanning just took over my thought processes! I'm not complaining, i think it has been good.....it just sort of took me by surprise thats all :).  Maybe i will get to look at how i got here in the next post :)

Foot in Mouth Disease???

Hmmmmmmm, without looking back at my previous post i am guessing it was about truth, so it seems a bit ironic that this post is about opening my mouth and putting my foot in it........I suppose when i think about it, i am simply confirming my confusion about when and how and why (or why not) it is 'right' to tell the truth! 

I upset a friend today! I was trying to be helpful and it all went a bit wrong :( I was also trying to be sensitive to their needs and yet it backfired and appeared to them to be something quite the opposite of sensitivity.  It was interesting to find however, when we discussed it that what i truly thought to be a 'helping action' was possibly more about my needs than theirs.  Perhaps i should try to explain.......

My friend confided in me about a problem they were having and about the impact it was having on their life, and me being me tried to come up with an idea to help - I am a problem solver, I know that - give me a problem and i will turn it over in my head until i can come up with some ideas that might help to resolve the problem.  I am not saying i am particularly good at it or anything, just that my mind works in this way almost automatically.  I will then share ideas, or try them out myself if it is my problem, and this is what i did today.  Nothing wrong with that you might think....but the question going around in my head is about whose needs was i trying to meet?

I hate to see anyone struggling, and this feeling is very much intensified when that person is someone i care about. So does that mean i am actually responding to my own needs by trying to help???? It is like that belief that there really is no such thing as an altruistic act.  This does not come as any real surprise to me i have to point out - the concept of altruism is something i have pondered over many a time!!!! My point here is did i put my foot in it because i was following my own needs to help, rather than actually being helpful? Are the two things even separable???  Do you see where the confusion kicks in???? Have i melted your head yet??? LOL!!!

To add to the confusion of the day, i also had an experience where i decided to tell the truth about something else, to another friend.  It was a day for honesty it seems! Oddly however this truth was the one that i was expecting to backfire to a certain extent:  I had hidden something from this person and decided to fess up to it today.  Yet this truth was met with thanks and worked out very well which did surprise me to a certain extent, but was also good :) It also makes my head go totally dolally though cos how is one truth right and one truth wrong???????? Its not the whose need is being met theory because it was my need to confess that motivated the second truth........

Oh, hold the phone.......friend number one just came back to me and said us being honest with each other is a good thing and we should keep doing it even though it can be a bit upsetting at times!!!! So today the truth wins the bet :) I am happy yet still confused.......I think about things too much - is that what you are thinking??? I know! It wouldn't be the Journal of a Crazy Person without me sharing my mad thoughts now would it????