tldr; I used to be skeptical of this "inner child" concept... but I've changed my mind!
I saw a random post somewhere recently (maybe facebook?) that said something along these lines: "If you notice you're irrationally upset about something, it's your inner child reacting". Hmm. Well, first thing's first, I don't have a therapist. I can't afford one. I want one to try and help with my depression and anxiety, but the other side of me is like, "I don't have childhood trauma so I don't need one, I'm okay". (I feel like that thought process is exactly why I need one... LOL.)
While I actually don't have any childhood trauma in the way you'd expect when hearing that term (probably imagining the worst), I'm sure the way my childhood panned out has made marks on me in some ways. I moved for the first time when I was 6 to a whole new large city from my tiny military town, and we were forced to live in a hotel (apartment?) for a while before we could move into our home... I got bullied at school... My sister was born a year later, and suddenly I got less attention (naturally)... My dad was gone sometimes for work... My mom eventually started going to school to be a pharmacy technician.
Enter: Anxiety.
I remember having a full-on meltdown one day leaving the hotel/apartment on my way to school. I remember seeing the building tower over me in the car, the smell of my mom's perfume (which I like now but can still feel the anxiety when I smell it), how scared I was and how desperately I wanted to stay home. I didn't realize I was being actually bullied until much later - I was 6, I didn't know the term yet or how to spot it. My elementary school went from kindergarten to grade 8, and a bully named Michelle (her real name because fuck her lol) would make us pay to sit anywhere on the bus that wasn't in the first few rows. I remember her being much taller than me, she had short, dark brown hair, and she was a bigger girl with a 'tude. She had a mean voice and ruled the school bus. At school she'd tell me my friends hated me, so that I'd have to hang out with her or I'd "be lonely and nobody will ever like" me. I think I eventually realized that my friends in fact didn't hate me, and I'd try and leave her to see them but she would always block me into a corner. When she'd "kidnap" me at recess I was the only one to ever hang out with her so now I think she was really lonely back then. Which is why she became a bully. Huh.
It got to the point that me asking my mom for money for the bus no longer made sense, which made her come to my school to "have a chat" with Michelle. She ripped her a new one in the principal's office. Michelle fades from my memory after one or two of these visits. I was only at that school for two years before moving again, so maybe she was in grade 8 and graduated from that school in my first year? ...or I just forgot about it. I don't think it ever really happened to me again after that, (except for my neighbour "T" when I was 16 but she was just a bitch, not really a bully) and I've been to 5 more schools since then (from grade 3/4 until college - we moved every few years).
unrelated side note - whenever I say "grade 4" instead
of the american way "4th grade", i laugh because it's
something i still get teased about after living in colorado for
five years and my two best friends being american. LOL
I also remember some of my mom's side of the family coming by to pick me up once to go see The Lion King on broadway, and I had another meltdown. To this day, Mom chalks it up to separation issues. This was my second or third panic attack in my life something I wouldn't realize until I had another at 18 while my dad was moving out after my parents separated.
Remember the days of not having panic attacks and anxiety or are you normal?
If you said no, same. #millennial.
Anyway, my life was pretty basic aside from moving every few years. Plenty of kids get bullied worse and for way longer than I did (this is what we call "comparing" - don't do that. That's like saying "I'm getting married today but I can't be happy because someone out there is at a funeral today"). Plenty of kids are neglected, hit and otherwise abused at home. Plenty are homeless. Or don't have families. Or food, money, shoes, clothes. So I sometimes feel guilty at the thought of hiring a therapist who could instead use that time on someone who "actually" needs it.
So, I have had anxiety since I was 6. But I've had depression since I was 16. I also haven't been "clinically" diagnosed because my family doctor (another non-American thing to say lol) is useless and I don't trust her. I moved again when I was 16 and was shoved back into Canadian life and culture. I had to learn how to be Canadian again. What the fuck is wheeling? What's a puck bunny? and missing out on ultra-Canadian traditions like skating on the Rideau Canal in the winter, the Bonhomme Carnaval in Quebec, or tapping maple trees and making syrup candy in the snow. I was so used to the hand-over-heart thing during the pledge of allegiance that I still did it out of pure habit during the Canadian anthem when school or a hockey game started... I wasn't prepared for this.
If you've ever seen a movie about the new kid at a new high school and it didn't go well, that was me. When you enter a new, catholic, uniformed high school at 16, one which happens to be the oldest English catholic school in Canada, everyone already has their cliques and friend groups, and nobody wants you. Moving ripped me away from my home of 5 years (the longest I've ever been in one place since my hometown), my friends, my school, and my boyfriend of 2 years... Add that to some culture shock and you've got a depressed teenager cocktail. Remember, I haven't seen a therapist, so any conclusions I make are based on (potentially incorrect) epiphanies I come up with in my head, and some introspection and reading about things. I'm pretty sure the reason I have attachment issues is because I've moved so many times... perpetually the new kid. I think the reason I have anxiety is because of the lack of control I've had over these changes since I was 6. I think the reason I have depression is because of all of the above, in addition to having been on birth control since I was 13, which is a major side effect of the pill. Another story for another time is why I think my bicornuate uterus is linked to endometriosis, potentially explaining why I almost failed grade 8 because the cramps kept me home so often.
Combined, these all give me different moods/reactions at different times to the weirdest shit. Sometimes someone will say/do something, and I'll immediately well up and have that feeling in my throat like I'm gonna just lose it. I've always been able to recognize that this is an irrational reaction, especially if it's not a negative thing being said/done, so I laugh it off, but sometimes I'll be watching a show or a movie or a clip from a concert and just start bawling because someone smiled...?
This is why I need therapy. I can't control those emotions, and when I should be crying, like when we had to put down our cat Noodle two years ago, I couldn't cry. I sat in bed that night, devastated and so upset, but I couldn't even force myself to cry, which made me twice as upset. But remember: "If you notice you're irrationally upset about something, it's your inner child reacting". My justification for these issues just falls to taking things as they come like I had to when I was a kid because we moved so much. There was nothing I could do about it, nothing I could control other than the layout of my bedroom, and so I think in some ways I just get numb... but again this is something a therapist could help me figure out.
All that being said (← this is a phrase I hate thanks to Love Island-type shows lmao), it's clear that I need to work on myself some more, but what do they say? The first step to recovery is acknowledgement of/admitting you have a problem. I've been able to do that recently, and now I just need to find a good-paying job that will allow me to fix myself with therapy and see if that's my missing piece. 😊
I also encourage everyone else to do the work on themselves too.
I preach it all the time but usually it won't just come to you, you have to work for it!
xx,
Comments