“If, as a child, you didn’t feel seen, heard, or understood, it’s likely that you will be triggered when people don’t listen to you, misunderstand you, or dismiss your feelings.” -Carlotta Elle

I want to start doing some “inner-child” healing and I searched up some prompts to aide me in writing about this. I found this question and I felt like this blog was the perfect place to answer it to the best of my abilities.

“What characteristics or traits did you have as a child that you still have? Which characteristics did you have but ‘grew out’ of? Why was this? Do you remember? Were you ever told to hide certain parts of you that others deemed ‘childish’? How does this make you feel now?”

There are characteristics and traits I possessed as a child that are definitely still part of who I am now, sometimes…I think. I was diagnosed as ADHD as an adult and it definitely gave me a lot of clarity for the things I experienced as a child but I honestly am sitting here struggling through the idea that maybe I need to start doing more “inner-child” work. This question is hard to answer, but only because I feel like I do not know how to word my thoughts. I know the answers to this, but I feel disorganized in myself and in my thought process to fully write this out. I usually don’t share my writing process or thought process with my readers as much as I wish I did, so I guess this messy, weird, confusing post is going to be either a success or a flop. So, here goes nothing.

As a child, I was very curious. I had a question for everything. I wanted to know more about a lot of things and to be honest, that part of me is still present today. I am very curious as a adult. I want to know more, I want to actually understand the entire process and concept of things instead of just taking everything at face value. I always wanted things to “make sense” I suppose, but I am finding out that it’s sometimes hard to get all of the answers I am looking for as an adult.

Throughout my childhood and even extending into my adult life, I’ve been made to feel ashamed for wanting a deeper and/or a more meaningful understanding of things. I’ve been ridiculed for asking questions that some might view as “stupid” questions. I simply find myself apologizing or warning someone before I ask something that the question might indeed be a “stupid question.” As an adult, I feel like more people remind me that there are no “stupid questions.” I also know that as an adult, the depth I search for in things can be hard to grasp for those who may not feel as deeply as I do.

In the discussion of depth within my soul, I’ve recently spent some of my prayers asking God to help me become less “deep” of a person. As I write this, as I think about this, and as I really am sitting here processing the fact that I have been asking God to fundamentally change who I am, I am just feeling incredibly disappointed in the person I am starting to become.

I used to fear the depth I had, in fact, I used to hate it. I used to wish I could feel much less than what I do and to be able to live my life like “normal” people. I remember in my childhood always feeling like I could not be “normal” like so many other people. As an adult, I realize none of us were “normal” and we all had our own struggles, whether we displayed them internally or externally. To be honest, it was recently, I had someone that truly means a lot to me express to me that they wish I could be “normal.” I’m too “deep.” I was asked “why do you have to make everything so deep?” I proceeded to feel as if I am failing in this particular area of my life because I apparently have nothing but time to create scenarios in my head that are not real and I feel too much. I don’t know, but I can tell you, I felt so…defeated. I still do feel defeated. Like, here I am again, feeling like I am not “normal” because I feel my emotions so deeply or because I think so in-depth about everything.

In order to make someone else happy which, in turn I think will make me happy (wow, as I write this out, I feel incredibly irritated at the mindset I’ve started to come up with). For some reason I have found that if I please other people around me, I will feel okay within myself. I’d almost rather deal with the discomfort of changing WHO I am versus the discomfort of changing WHERE I am. I hate change. Change is my worst fear.

Basically, I feel as if I am being asked to fully suppress the person I am, the person I have always been, and the person (at one point in time) I was starting to actually accept. I always felt insecure about feeling things in ways other people could not understand. I felt and still feel this sense of embarrassment that my emotions can run deep and I can become very reactive or angry or upset with small changes in someone’s energy. I am very intuitive, I can sense the change in someone’s energy very quickly, and sometimes before they even realize their energy has shifted at all.

I hate unpredictability. I hated it as a child and I hate it now. I have tried my best to grow out of this fear but to be honest, I think this fear will always be deep-rooted and is a pain I need to work through. I have severe abandonment issues to the point I am ashamed to even admit here on this blog. It’s that fear of being abandoned, the fear of not being good enough, the fear that I will become attached to someone or something that was never really mine to begin with, it is all of those thoughts that sit on my mind constantly.

Let me interject here by saying that I lived a pretty stable and good life as a child. I had solid and amazing parents that I wish I could find the words to thank them for all that they’ve done and still continue to do for me. However, no parent has a rule book, and every parent also has their own emotions to manage on top of the emotions of a child. I do not fault my parents for anything, simply because I have so much grace and understanding for them as an adult. Being an adult with my own un-healed pain and trauma and fears, I could not imagine being a full-time parent at the age I am. I had much different views of what my life would look like at this age, but I truly believe that God has a plan for me at this point.

I’ve been told that feeling things so deeply and emotionally reacting to that pain is “childish.” I just want to say to all of my readers who feel as if someone has judged or questioned you for wanting to embrace a more “free-spirited” or a “cheerful” energy in your life, then they must be have something deeper going on that we may not be aware of. I remember being that person to put someone down for being a cheerful, youthful, and hopeful person. I was jealous that I did not feel those feelings at the time so I projected my pain onto them and I took all of their joy away to give my misery some company. I used to feel like a dreamer, but I think my sparkle went away and I wanted others to dull their sparkle in order for me to feel like I could shine.

To those who might be the dreamer, the thinker, the feeler, the free-spirit, the optimistic person, DO NOT allow the opinion of those who are envious of you to determine the opinion that you have of who you are. This concept is probably one of the hardest parts of life to embrace, in fact, I am still working through this myself. It’s hard, but I think this is such a fundamental mindset to reach for while moving forward in our own healing journey.

Alright, back to my post. OK, I will admit it, maybe…I feel angry. I might not feel angry all of the time, but when I dig a little bit below my surface, I can find that emotion first. I hate that emotion, especially given the amount of emotions that could describe it better. But, on the surface, I feel frustrated. I react with the anger, but 99.99% of the time in my own case at least, anger is an emotion used to deal with the emotions I might actually feel about something. I know that anger I feel is actually below the surface, all the way to my core, which is the feeling of disappointment. I feel confused. I feel like I am trailing behind in who I want to be and where I wanted to be in life. I feel scared. I feel hurt. I feel inadequate. I feel like I am hard to love. I feel a lot of things. Anger is just the surface emotion that comes out when all of these feelings hit me at once and I cannot process them in the right way in a moment of reactivity.

Sometimes I want to feel all of the feelings, the good, the bad, the sad, the happy, the fearful, the excited, the disappointed, the grateful, and all of the feelings in between. It takes me time to feel comfortable sharing my inner thoughts with someone but once I feel comfortable, I want to feel safe sharing all of those thoughts with them. I want to be able to just simply be…myself, unapologetically, embracing all of the emotions that I feel each and every day.  It’s as if I have to suppress who I am to please other people and to be honest, I have felt this way for most of my life. I often wonder if this has created this sense of frustration within me that may contribute to my poor, emotionally charged, reactions to most situations. I have experienced this since I was a child, to my adolescence, and even today as an adult.

The best part of writing is that I feel the emotions as I write them. I feel this sense of processing as I talk about things. I also share these posts to have something in my future to look back on, but also to let people out there know that it is okay to feel the way you feel. I also want people who read my posts and if they ever feel as if they can relate to know that they are not alone in this journey through life. I appreciate all of those who read things I write, despite how “all over the place” things might be.