“I am just like my mother! At home, I put suffocating boundaries around my daughter and I drive my husband freakin' crazy with my nagging. At work, I've been promoted twice in last year yet I feel like a fraud and at night, I have terrifying dreams where I strangle somebody to death.”
Miriam is a top lawyer in a huge German company. She's on a see-saw; her mood, her productivity, the quality of her care for her children all fluctuate wildly. Sometimes she is over the moon, sometimes she has thoughts of death and bloody murder. Up-down-up-down.
Miriam isn't wrong: she really has become her mother.
When we are traumatized by a childhood protector, disassociation can occur when a piece of our soul breaks off. This is the piece that compartmentalizes our pain. This resolves the otherwise unbearable betrayal between our childlike love for our parent and the trauma inflicted upon us by the very same parent.
And ultimately, we blame ourselves; this disassociation allows us to take the side of the perpetrator. Plain and simple, this is a childhood survival mechanism.
And that trauma doesn't have to be active, just as often it can be passive neglect and a lack of care…
Under trance, we enter the scene of a memory where Miriam was picked up after kindergarten by her mom. She tells her mom her head hurts. Her mother offers no reply, and continues to drive. I ask grown-up Miriam to alter the memory. I have her sit by little Miriam in the back seat, and give little Miriam a hug and ask her young self how she feels.
Grown-up Miriam spontaneously starts to cry. Surprised by this unexpected reaction on her part, she nearly comes out of the trance. She jolts up on the couch and tells me: "Wow. I did not know it was this bad."
We go back to trance, and it turns out little Miriam knows her mom is jealous of her. And in a jealous mother, there is no love or gentle touch for little Miriam.
Back in the car, grown-up Miriam establishes control of the situation. She lets little Miriam know that she is coming with home with her. Grown-up Miriam tells her mom off, who looks quite relieved to be free of little Miriam.
Together grown-up and little Miriam go find a safe place: a little cabin in the woods with a fireplace where they play, hugging and laughing together.
Finding, connecting to and making peace with our inner child can make for the most profound shift in our lives.
We can access joy, play, innocence and love again through our own little one. Miriam's life has already taken a new turn. Maybe for the first time in their lives, she and her 5-year old daughter have connected authentically when she started loosening up. An open and honest line of communication has opened up between her and her husband.
After three sessions, her life is different. No more dreams of strangulation. She can breathe and she can let other breathe too.
She is ready for her journey, her own full life can begin, now.
Are you connected to your inner child? Do you feel a calling to be? Send me a note!