Hi,

Excuse me for interjecting - I want to share with you some things in thinking they may help.

I am a parent of three young children - they have elicited in me a life lesson in learning how to deal with my wounded/magical inner child and emotions. There is a 'technique' called Emotion Coaching. I just read a fantastic book about it. It's written for parents. Title is : 'The Heart of Parenting: Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child' by John Gottman. After reading most of it, I got the bright idea to do this technique with my own 'inner' child....

The technique would seem very common sense and 'practical' to most, for example, respond with love, etc, however; for whatever reason, some of us are 'learning' i.e. remembering HOW to live this way....it can seem especially challenging when we are dealing with intense imbalances.

SO, the technique is:
1. Be aware of the child's emotion (observe it objectively)
2. Recognize the emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching (look at the situation like, "this is a good opportunity to bond with my inner child" as opposed to thinking like this "damn, there she goes again whining and unhappy...I just can't deal with this kid"
3. Listen empathetically and validate the child's feelings (I'll explain a bit below)
4. Help the child verbally label emotions
5. Set limits while helping the child problem-solve

An example might be:
you send an e-mail. The friend doesn't respond. Your inner child starts saying things like "She's so mean for not responding to me". "she must not like me, etc". Your adult, loving parent says, "You sound pretty angry that she didn't respond right away". (this is validating and labeling emotions) Child says "Yeah". Adult says "I bet you feel really hurt about that." (validating & labeling emotions) Child says "Yeah". Give the child some time to express themselves verbally. (listening)
If they don't, continue the conversation.
For example, Adult says "I can see how you would feel hurt because your friend didn't respond to you". (validating again)
Child may say "yeah, I was really looking forward to what she would say because I was so excited to share this news with her. I thought she would be so excited".
Adult says "So you probably feel disappointed that she wasn't as excited as you thought?"
Child says "yeah"
Adult says " I can see that you would feel disappointed and hurt that she didn't respond to your exciting news like you thought. But it's not OK to call her names if she doesn't respond as you like (this is the limit setting). What do you think we could do instead?" (this last question is beginning the problem solving)
Child says "I don't know". Depending on child's age, they may need coaching and suggestions.
Adult says, "Ok, let's think for a bit. I'm sure there are things we can do that you'd like." "Would you like to share the exciting news with me?"
Or come up with another idea.
At this point, you need to feel out the solution according to what feels right and comfortable for the child, keeping ethics in mind. For example, you wouldn't want to encourage the child sending an e-mail calling her a bitch if one of your values is to not name-call.
So let's say the child would like to share the news with someone else, like your Adult self, and this is OK with the 'parent'. The adult would confirm their solution: "OK, Let's send the exciting news to Me."

A core point of wisdom the book emphasizes is that our feelings are not the problem, their misbehavior i.e. negative reaction, is. Also, it heavily encourages the child to think of solutions on their own. this has lots of benefits that I feel are related to self-empowerment.

This is quite lengthy here but I think this is a great tool for dealing with negative emotions. Dealing with our 'negative' emotions is something a lot of folks have severely denied.

You would need to repeat this process as much as necessary. It is noted in the book that is a form of Parenting, a lifelong commitment. It's not a one-time thing. And it makes sense as it takes several years to raise a child. Thing is for us, we do already have a sense of adult responsibility and wisdom.

This can be a way to re-build relationship with the wounded, abandoned child and the loving parent (that they may not have witnessed completely in physical life) we all have within us.

If you like reading books, an excellent book on the subject of healing the wounded child is "Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child" by John Bradshaw. It is a real 'a-ha' about how we are affected emotionally by family dysfunction and gives lots of exercises for re-parenting. I haven't read all of it but I'm sure some of the basics is similar to emotion coaching.

Lori

emotions are not right or wrong they just are. its not a quesiton of the inner child is correct, its just a matter of thats how the inner child feels and it okay that the child feels that way, doesn't mean right or wrong, just that its okay to feel that way, tell yourself that its okay, that how i feel, the emotions are there, its okay to feel, its okay to feel that way, i acknwledge those emotions, they are real, and its okay.

also tell your inner child that you understand that your inner child is actually really angry about something else, things that may have happened years ago, and that this incident is just a trigger for that anger to come out.

its intersting you tell a story about going ot your room instead of your parents. why did you do that? why didn't you feel okay with going to your parents for comfort or understanding in that moment? those are improtant questions you need to ask yourself and listen for an answer. ask your inner child why do you feel so needy and abandoned? why? what do you need? tell your iner child you are there to help.

it may sound weird but i ahve gained healing from sitting quietly with my inner child and just listening and acknowledging the voice and what it says. sometimes it just needs to be heard, other times it needs to know that you will not abandon or repress certain needs, that you will stand up to defend yourself and speak up for yourself and your needs.

i dont know if any of this is helping, its just what helps me deal with my inner child, hopefully it will help wiht yours.

ff