I had a woman member of our faculty come to my office. She was hysterical. I waited until she could speak. I couldn’t imagine what could have caused this much distress. As she was sobbing, she blurted out: “I just yelled at a student. I sounded just like my mother. I swore I would never be like her for I know what it feels like to be on the other end of her tirades.”
When you go about finding your inner child of the past, it is usually a mix of the challenging and the soothing. I have students who arrive at my office after an angry conversation with a parent who will say, “I am never going to be like my father. I mean it!” I will usually point out that their parent will always be affecting and influencing them even if you rebel against them. They become the reference point for what we like or don’t like about others.
I have had students, and I have one in mind as I write this. He had by all accounts a terrible childhood as his father was an angry alcoholic who undercut his self-esteem at every turn, but he channeled the parts of his mother which gave him courage and perseverance. He couldn’t do that until he came to grips with how he was treated by his dad. As fate would have it, he and dad reconciled before his dad died. He was an outstanding football player and no one would have guessed that he lived under a tyrant for he found a way for his inner child to thrive. He emailed me from a plane as he was about to land in enemy territory in the Middle East when he was in the armed forces, and let me know that although he was, understandably fearful, he knew that after a lot of work on his inner child of the past with me and others that he would prevail, and he did. He is now a family man who is an incredible husband and father.
What you find in your inner child of the past is not in and of itself good or bad. It all depends on finding it and doing something with it that helps you and others. Everything in life is a two- edged sword. It can help you or hurt you. In counseling we call this sublimation. Taking everything that parents or life serve up to you and make it helpful to you and others. I will give you an extreme example that I referenced in an earlier blog to highlight my point.
Amy Gutman, President of Penn, announced with great excitement that one of Penn’s students, MacKenzie Fierceton, ’21 received a Rhodes Scholarship. But she wasn’t any regular achiever. According to the “Penn News Release” and an article in the Inquirer, November 24, 2020, by Joe Holleman, “She was like no other. She was among the first in her family to go to college as a low-income student. She was queer. She bounced from one foster home to another throughout her life.” During her junior year in high school, she was in a toxic foster home where she had to live on friends’ couches for weeks at a time. Only two percent of foster children graduate from a four-year college. So how did she not only graduate from college but achieve one of the highest awards given? I believe that the answer is found in a statement she made after receiving the Rhodes Scholarship. “I would have traded all of this to have been adopted and have a family and have had that experience and that never happened. I have healed from all of that, and I can carry it with me now in a way that feels very empowering.” She was fiercely passionate in her pursuit of knowledge. It is where she found joy! Teachers and schools were her families. She will give back to her community as she seeks a PH.D. in Social Policy from Oxford University.
Her inner child of the past did not include a family let alone a father and mother so she created one in education. Notice that she would have given the Rhodes Scholarship up if she could have had a family.
Life is a two-edged sword is a statement that goes along with another channeling truth. You can’t have it all!
If you think you can, the door to your inner child of the past will never be unlocked. Keep in mind the first moral statement that inner child of the past makes when it grows to be able to talk is, “It’s not fair!”
Never has been fair! Never will be fair! That’s the key that you put in your hand to unlock the door to your inner child of the past. Go with what you got! Everybody else is in the same boat!
You know all those happy faces on Facebook. There is always a story behind the story.
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