Tag Archives: Inner child

Parenting yourself.

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

child

Learn like a child.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Learning the lessons, you didn’t get in childhood.

Many adults discover that there are things they should have learned in childhood, that they missed out on. Whether your parents didn’t know, weren’t any good at parenting, or just weren’t as available as you would have liked them to be, you may need to go back and fill in those missing lessons. Even people who say they came from wonderful homes may find there are some lessons they should have learned in childhood that they still need to learn.

Below are some of the lessons of parenting you may need to work on to develop yourself. Studying the lessons of parenting helps many people in recovery to fill in the gaps and become the mature person they want to be. Here are some of the things adults should do and not do with children, and that you need to continue to do or not do for yourself in adulthood.

Don’t yell at yourself.

Yelling at children is likely to increase their anxiety. High anxiety can be protective if you live in an uncertain world. Too much anxiety is harmful. Yelling at yourself undermines your self-confidence and destroys your self-esteem. The things you tell yourself come true. Don’t call yourself names, put yourself down, or yell at yourself about the mistakes you have made. Learn to talk to yourself in a supportive, comforting way.

There is little evidence that you can make someone try harder by yelling or criticize them. There is lots of evidence that continued negativity will make people give up trying.

Communicate with yourself.

It’s important to pay attention to your wants and needs. Listen to your feelings and your thoughts. Many people find it helpful to keep a diary or journal. Writing down your thoughts can help to clarify them. If you are afraid of things, pay attention to those fears.

There are no right or wrong ways to feel. Your feelings are a valuable source of information.

Don’t dismiss your thoughts as unimportant. Your opinion on things matters. Especially pay attention to physical sensations. Learning to eat when you’re hungry, drink water when you are thirsty, and sleep when you are tired are important parts of self-care.

Practice patience’s with yourself.

Don’t expect that you should be able to master a new skill the first time you try. Don’t push yourself to do things before you’re ready. Be patient with yourself. Don’t confuse patience with not trying. Encourage yourself. Nurture yourself.

Allow yourself to relax.

Machines that are run too fast, too long, breakdown. You’re not a machine. You will need to give yourself enough relaxation and rest time. You do not need to spend your whole life driving yourself to do more. Giving yourself time to recharge your batteries. Life is a journey, enjoy the trip. There is a reason humans are called human beings. Don’t define yourself as a human doing.

Acknowledge your achievements.

Good bosses know that you can motivate employees by recognizing their efforts. Appreciation can be more motivating than money. Unfortunately, many parents forget to praise their children. People who are told their contributions are valuable are motivated to work harder. People who never receive any praise or acknowledgment eventually give up trying. Learn to accept compliments. Each day watch for the things you have done well and reward yourself for your achievements.

Remember to love yourself.

It’s hard to love other people when you don’t love yourself. Practice each day some self-compassion. Love should be unconditional not something that’s earned or bought. If you grew up in a home where love and affection conditional, based on what you did, work on loving yourself unconditionally.

Remember it’s never too late to learn the lessons of childhood that you will need to be a happy adult.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Creative people stay childlike.

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Original

Creative.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Extremely creative people nurture their inner child.

What is an “inner child” and why do we say that you need to get back there to foster creativity?

The idea of “inner child” work comes and goes. I think of an inner child as a developmental process. When you were young you were more in touch with feelings, more aware of not knowing things, and maybe more open to experience. Many of our adult problems come from lessons that we learned or failed to learn as we grew up. If something happened to you and you concluded that was the way the world was, then from then on you lived your life based on that belief.

As a child for whom everything was new, you were more open to new experiences. Creative people practice returning to that place of not knowing and are more readily able to see things from new perspectives. If you can suspend your beliefs about what is and what has to be then you can see what might be. Here are a few ways in which a childlike view of not knowing, allowing your thinking to return to a more childlike or inner child state can boost your creativity and help you find new solutions to life’s challenges.

Keep asking why.

Children, early on, do not have fixed beliefs or interpretations of why things are and why they happen. The small child’s favorite question is why. The older we get the less we think about things. We come to believe that things are always the way we think they are. We adopt a stance of always knowing and become reluctant to admit we don’t know. We stop asking the why questions.

Practice each day asking yourself why? Why do things happen? Why do we do things this way? Remember to also ask “What” questions. Look for what could be that you have not created yet.

Daydream more.

The dream state is one in which all things are possible. The laws of time and space do not apply in the dream. In daydreaming things that appear unconnected may suddenly reveal their connection. Daydreaming increases the possibilities. Logical thinking reduces possibilities and makes them conform to the known rules of how things have worked so far.

Learn all you can.

Little children, many of them, are sponges. They are constantly learning. Remember that old saying that people use only a small portion of their brain. Truth is that we use all our brains but there are vast spaces where we have put very little. Use the rooms in your brain as workout centers, not as hallways leading to the same old conclusions.

Your brain needs furnishing just like your house. Fill your mind with bright shiny ideas and watch the creativity soar.

Apply what you learned from one place to somewhere else.

A major source of innovation is taking an idea from one area and applying it somewhere else. Creative people find that taking an interest in other aspects of life increases their creativity.

Nothing is a failure if you did it.

Innovation requires a lot of trying on new things and learning from them. Life experiments need not be failures if you learn from them. Continuing to insist that there is one and only one way to do things keeps you stuck. Consider the risks but make sure you try out new things whenever possible. If you learn from the experiment then it was not a failure it was a learning experience.

Curiosity did not kill the cat. Stay curious.

Contrary to popular sayings curiosity did not kill the cat. Being curious is how the cat catches the mouse. You will never find new things if you always look in the same old places. Cats die not from curiosity but from not looking and missing the oncoming car. Keep your eyes open and looking for the unexpected.

What can you make from that pile of stuff?

Our modern throwaway culture has encouraged the concept that we need to get rid of things and then get new. Some things do wear out or become obsolete. What we often forget to do is to “repurpose” the things we have. Reuse and repurpose things for creative solutions.

Things look different depending on where you are standing.

Keep looking from different angles till you see something new. Have a problem or situation that is not working out the way you want it? Try looking at it from all possible perspectives. Ask a lot of what-if questions.

Play well with others – be a team.

Most of the great inventions we praise as breakthroughs were the result of one person building on another’s work. Creativity is not plagiarizing or copying but it is seeing the merit in an idea and then making your contribution on top of that idea. Teams are often more creative than individuals. They can each see things from a new angle with a different knowledge base.

Want to be more creative? Spend some time with other people exploring their ideas and knowledge, then see how borrowing their viewpoint would alter the problem or project you are working on.

Don’t censor your thoughts. Let them run free.

Birds look a lot different when they are flying than when they are caged. Ideas do not show themselves to the best advantage when forced into rigid rules. Let the idea go where it wants. Do not chase it. Just watch where it goes and make note of how this idea would look if it were allowed to be a free-range idea.

Play till you drop. Do not let go of an idea until you wear it out.

Most ideas, especially novel ones, have more applications than they ever get allowed to visit. When you see a new idea, yours or one that is just new to you, play with it. Let it explore your mind. How could this idea change things?

To think hard you need naps.

Pushing harder and longer are OK for routine tasks but for creative endeavors, you need your brain working at peak efficiency. Thinking longer and harder does not maximize new thought patterns. Get plenty of rest, take naps or breaks, and learn to practice your self-care. A well-rested mind goes running off in new directions.

There are two very different kinds of focus, “pinpoint” or staying on task and diffuse, scanning or looking all around kind of focus. A well-rested mind has the energy to explore new settings and ideas.

Go where everything is new.

Seek out the new and when you are a child it is all new. Reconnect with your child mind.

Novelty promotes creativity. Travel, take a class, or explore anything new. Break out of your specialty and explore new topics and disciplines. To maximize creativity learn a new language, or develop a new skill. Take a different route to work or a different mental path.

Is there another way to show you that?

There is no right way to tell your story, sometimes you need to sing or draw it out.

People use different learning styles. Some people learn better by listening, auditory learners. Others learn by seeing, visual learners. Movement, kinesthetic, is the preferred learning system for some. Anytime you process information via a new system you can get different results.

Various learning styles make use of different parts and pathways in the brain. For maximum creativity use other parts of your brain. If you read and write a lot try using your visual system and draw out your projects. See if enacting a typical interaction with a client will create new ways of seeing your problem.

Have to? Do not!

Doing what you want to do is more fun than doing what others say you have to. People who love what they do are more productive and creative. Looks for a way to make your job fun. Get reacquainted with the things that made you interested in your occupation in the first place.

Not finding anything to motivate you? Then it may be time for a hobby or vacation. You may also need to switch assignments or positions. Some people find that a period of time working in a different department or on a different task re-energize them. Sometimes it is just time to get retrained for a new segment of your life.

There are some of my suggestions for increasing your creativity and making what you do all those hours we call work more rewarding. Do you have any other suggestions that you could share with the rest of us?

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Inner Child a Twin?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Is your inner child a twin?
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Are there times your inner-child can’t get along with its siblings?

There has been lots of discussion, and more than a few books over the years, about having an inner child. That part of us that is leftover from childhood, who may have those emotional hurts and pains which have failed to heal properly. There are even some therapists who advertise that they specialize in “inner child work” by which they mean they work with adults on the emotional healing and growth that should have happened in childhood but as an adult, we realize still needs to receive attention. What about the times this approach does not work? Why won’t my inner-child go along with this program?

If you feel like you need to cry or scream like a little child why don’t you do it?

Now the very rational among us tell us that there is no inner-child hiding inside us. We can perform x-rays, ultrasounds, cat-scans, and all manner of other tests, and still no one seems to be able to find that inner child lurking in there. You can’t locate that inner child so why do so many so persistently feel that one must be present?

One way I have tried to work through this inner-child stuff is my continued belief that there are certain lessons, emotional ones, and intellectual ones, which I need to learn in life. If I did not learn those lessons at 8 then I will still be working on them at 80. Eventually, we all need to learn lessons and master emotions.

That might work if I could decide what that lesson was, what is the right answer that I need to arrive at for a happy life. Then I could study until I get it right. Wouldn’t that be reassuring? It may be that there is no one answer for so many of life challenges because you may have more than one inner child, inner twins, or an inner family and those needs may be in conflict.

Our language has expressions that describe not one inner child but a whole inner family.

Do you ever find yourself thinking – part of me wants to do x and part of me wants to do Y? Do you say “on the one hand I think yes and on the other hand, I think No?”

Could one of the conflicts inherent in being a human be that feelings and thinkings are just not all that clear-cut? Some experiences are bitter-sweet. Sometimes you feel like laughing and crying at the same time. Could it be that the flaw in so many of these personality tests is that you have not one inner you but two or more inner you’s? Let’s look at some examples of inner dilemmas.

Are you an Introvert or Extrovert?

Me? Part of me is an introvert and part of me, my inner-self’s twin is an extrovert. I like being around people. I enjoy teaching and public speaking, this is the extroverted me.

But the other inner me likes to write, a rather solitary introverted behavior. There are times that I need to be around others and there are times that I need to spend some time alone watching the wind blow through the trees and the birds sing.

Which is the real me? Well, both are me and the longer I live I have come to believe that it is not in discovering the one and only one inner-me. Mentally healthy living is about embracing the various aspect of my own inner worlds.

Are you a Thinking or Feeling person?

The rational thinking part of you worries about why you are not happier. The feeling part of you wonders what you need to do to be less anxious. Occasionally I start to wonder just what I think about the way I am feeling. How do I feel about what I am thinking? Do you ever do that? Do your inner children sometimes all start acting up at once?

Life, for me anyway, turns out to be a whole lot more complicated than just figuring out what my inner-child thinks, feels, or wants. Sometimes I have a family full of inner children all competing for my attention and wanting their needs met. Is it just me? Or do others of you out there sometimes think your inner child must be a twin or, heaven forbid, a set of quintuplets?

Can you see how you might have competing conflicted inner you needs and those needs are all real and all part of you? Sometimes the way to work with your inner child is to become an inner adult, love all the parts of you. Sometimes you will need to mediate between all your parts and sometimes you will need to decide which part gets its needs met just now and which part will have to wait a while.

How about yours? Is your inner-child an only child or are there other members of your inner family?

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Can’t find your inner child

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Inner child.
Picture courtesy of pixabay

Have you misplaced your inner child?

The idea of having an inner child, and inner child work, comes and goes. Somehow this idea strikes a responsive chord in people even though there is scientific proof that there really is no inner child in any of us.

By inner child, we do not mean that there is some little creature lurking in us waiting to be fed. That makes for great Sci-Fi movies but not much reality.

All your “parts” do not grow up at the same rate.

What we should be looking for are those developmental stages, those things you should have learned as you grew up that somehow you missed out on. Look also for those good qualities that you left behind in your efforts to be “all grown up.”

Memories can be feeling instead of facts.

Not all our memories are filed neatly away in our heads. Some of those memories are emotional ones and those are kept throughout our bodies.

We know if you act in certain ways you are more likely to have certain feelings. Get a group of people together and have them laugh for no good reason and before long you will all be feeling happy.

So where do these phantom memories, those emotional pains from long ago, come from if not from some theoretical inner child.

Your inner child did not get everything right.

One way of explaining this inner child legend is that many adult problems are the result of things that we learned between the ages of say 5 and 15 that may have worked then but do not work now.

What if the things that you learned emotionally in 3rd grade about the opposite sex or about yourself turn out to not be true?

The person who is repeatedly told they are fat, despite looking perfectly normal, even a little thin, is likely to grow up thinking they are fat and to repeatedly try to diet and lose weight. If you learned the untruth that you were fat as a child you may develop a truly terrible adult eating disorder.

Unfinished business.

Some counselors call this unfinished business, those experiences of pain, sadness acceptance, and rejection that we learned in childhood, but are not able to work out as we transition into adult beings.

One danger in doing too much of the so-called “Inner child work.” Is that the more you go over a lesson of something you got wrong, the more firmly entrenched that wrong answer becomes embedded in your brain.

If you keep telling yourself “I am stupid” because as a child people repeatedly called you stupid or fat head, you may develop a personal story in which you continue to tell yourself that you are stupid. And as we all know stupid is as stupid does.

Pay attention to your self-talk.

For good or bad our brains believe what we repeatedly tell them. So if you tell yourself you can’t, you will not be able to. If you tell yourself you can, you very likely will be able to do so, as every little child learned from that little engine.

Be careful what you tell your brain you will be able to do. If you tell yourself you will fly make sure you head for the airport not jump off a roof and leave the gravity-defying to hard flapping of your arms.

If you sometimes find yourself crying like a little child for no apparent reason. If you have very immature feelings at times, don’t pay for a cat scan to find your inner child. Instead, go back and look at the things you should have learned at each developmental stage and then if there were emotional lessons you did not learn, work on them.

Did you outgrow fun?

One other thing that people mean when they say they have inner child work to do is that they had some characteristics when they were young and they have lost them along the way.

If life used to be fun and it isn’t anymore. If you used to be more creative and you have lost that skill, then get in touch, not with the behaviors of the little child, but the emotions and the ways of seeing.

Practice a child-like mindset.

Try looking at everything in life as if this was the first time you had seen it. Begin each day with that curiosity you once had and you will find that everything will look new and fresh again.

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Inner adult vs. inner child

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By David Joel Miller MS Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Sad child

Sad.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Have your inner people made peace?

Lots of people talk about their need to do “inner child” work. Not many tell me they need to work on their inner adult. You need to get these two parts of you to live in peace. One rule of parenting is that parents need to be parents and children need to be children. Make sure your “inner family” gets its roles straight.

Don’t let your inner child take over running your adult life.

Your inner adult needs to run the adult parts of your life. We all have those childish parts of us. They have their good and their bad. Preserve that childish wonder about life. Children experience everything for the first time. Keep that open spirit. Children can be very creative. They can also be very selfish and hurt.

The inner child may need to cry and grieve over the past. They can stay stuck in the pain and the not wanting things to be the way they are for a long time. That childish part of you wants things to have been different.

The inner adult needs to recognize that now is not then. The past may have made you who you are but you don’t need to continue to live in the past. You need to find ways to stop letting those childhood experiences control your life now when it is the adult in you that needs to take the lead.

The inner child is that unknowing part of us that sees possibilities instead of rules. For a child, the soup dish might also make a good hat. The inner child knows that a box makes a great toy. The inner child can cry for hours over dropping a cookie in the sand.

The inner adult becomes a censor, they know toys are for playing and boxes are containers to put things in. The inner adult may be less creative unless they force themselves to stay open to other possibilities.

The inner adult is the one that picks up the sandy cookie and throws it away. The inner adult is the one that goes and gets another cookie or tells the self that “self you really don’t need another cookie.”

Your inner child does not know how to forgive its self for making mistakes. The inner child can be so afraid of criticism that it punishes itself before an adult can punish it.

Your inner adult will need to tell that inner child that it was OK to make mistakes. Your inner adult is the part that does the forgiving, the letting go, and discovers that you are far more than the sum total of all the errors you have made so far.

The inner adult can have compassion and can care for the whole of you.

One way you know your inner adult is in control is when your behavior begins to become more mature and responsible.

Inner child and inner adult are only two of many possible roles you may enact each and every day. Sometimes you will be a parent or partner. Other times you will be an employee or a boss. None of these roles is the full and total you.

Get all these roles, all these potential inner selves to cooperate and work together on the same team. Just make sure when it is time to be a responsible adult you have the inner adult in control of the actions.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Is your inner child missing?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Child walking with adult

Inner child.
Picture courtesy of pixabay

What would happen if you were able to find your inner child?

Most of us have some hurt and pain from things that happened when we were young. Some people have deep wounds and traumas, others have regrets and disappointments. Much has been written about working on your inner child issues. Some of us are looking to find that little child in us that needs loving and nurturing. Why is this process so hard?

Behaviorally oriented therapists and mindfulness practitioners might both agree there really is no inner child in us, though they conclude this for very different reasons. There is that sad, anxious wounded, and immature part in many of us, which seems to say that there was something missing in our childhood, something we long for and need to be complete. Why can’t we find that inner child and give them a hug or a swift kick in the pants and solve this problem?

Behaviorists might tell us that there really is no inner child. Yes, I know that if you x-ray me there is no little creature lurking in there. They tell me that all I have are those memories of what it was like when I was a child. Not very accurate memories, I am told, as I was really young and got those facts wrong. That explains things sometimes, for a while.

Then something reminds me of that thing that happened that Christmas when I was 5 or the hurt from middle school and suddenly that little child part in me wants to cry.

Scientists assert that sometimes just trying to look at things changes them. Try to photograph a subatomic particle, start to measure it and you might change it. Looking for things alters them. I know that turning on the light in that old warehouse, the one full of cockroaches, results in them all scurrying for hiding places. The more light you shine in there the harder the roaches are to find.

Is my inner child like that? Does looking for him somehow change him?

The mindfulness people remind me there really is no “me.” No-self they call it. There are lots of past selves and hopefully some future selves but right now the only me is the one I perceive and I know that this me will certainly change. The me of 1970 is not the me from 1990 and so on. Why is it so hard to let go of the notion that there is this one immutable me and become open to getting to know all the possible “me’s”?

So that friend from elementary school, she doesn’t exist anymore. Her place has been taken by a senior citizen with the same name and some of the same memories, but not the same body. My child is an adult now and my cat; she is not the same cat from way back when.

So while looking for an inner child may be tempting, it may be a whole lot more productive to spend some time getting to know the person you are today before another day passes and you find you are changing again.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

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