Ways to Recognize when your Inner Child Sabotages your Relationships-Rachel Devine

The wounded inner child, carrying baggage from past hurts or abandonments, often undermines romantic relationships unconsciously. This is a very scary notion that there are aspects of each and every one of us that we are not aware of, which can destroy a relationship. By understanding your inner child’s dynamics and the way it acts out, you can heal its pain and break free of relationship-destroying patterns. But only when you can understand it, can you really heal its fury and live a happy life. Inner child healing starts with you. And make no mistake about it, we all have an inner child that causes havoc from time to time. Furthermore, those who are just ‘unlucky in love,’ might see a pattern from childhood to adult relationships that explains this dilemma. If you are dating and meeting the same type of dysfunctional person, with a different face, it’s time to look at the inner child. Awareness is the key to solving any issue. Let’s explore all of this together.

Defining the Inner Child

According to psychology pioneer Carl Jung, the inner child represents our instincts, vulnerabilities, feelings, and unmet needs from childhood. John Bradshaw, an expert in the inner child and author of Homecoming, further defines it as “the accumulation of all unmet childhood needs and wants that make up the childhood energies still expressing themselves in our adult lives.” John Bradshaw was an advocate for reparenting our inner child.

This inner child dwells in the subconscious mind, influencing behaviors independent of adult awareness. Our reactions to romantic partners frequently reflect the inner child’s projections. To be clear, the subconscious mind is like a vast memory bank holding all of our past traumas, experiences, and feelings from our inner child. During times of stress or triggers, the subconscious mind or inner child lashes out in very unexpected ways that are often unexplainable.

Inner Child Dynamics

The inner child dynamics are not complicated. There are 4 stages of infancy development. Let’s look at these stages:

The first stage is the infancy stage. This is the co-dependent stage from 0 to 2 years old, where we are completely dependent on our parents for survival. This is the stage where we need a lot of care, nurturing, and love. It’s a time in our lives when we depend solely on our parents for survival.

The preschool age from 2 to 4 years old is the stage of counter-dependence. This stage is often referred to as “the terrible twos.” This is a time when the child wants and needs to assert their ability to interact with their environment. The child is gaining his or her autonomy through co-dependence.

From 4 to 7 years old, there is the independence stage. At this time, a child is becoming independent and doesn’t need his or her parents to do everything, and the child becomes more independent of them.

At seven years old, the child is at an inter-dependence stage of being, which is much more independent from their parents than previous years, and pretty much can do most things for themselves.

All these developmental stages are a crucial time in a child’s life, and if a child does not get their fundamental needs met, there will be issues that develop later on in adulthood.

How we learned to love from birth to seven years old in our family of origin will determine our subconscious imprint that gets embedded in our brain. These imprints will determine who we connect with as a partner. When we get into adulthood, we attract those people who fulfill our innermost subconscious needs. This imprint from childhood is what we subconsciously navigate with when seeking out a partner in life. This is why it’s important to understand that we attract what we are resonating with. Additionally, this is the reason why most people marry a clone of their mother or father!

Recognizing Inner Child Havoc

Some signs your inner child is sabotaging your relationships include the following. These are all reactions to triggers, which would be a stimulus that elicits a reaction stemming from a negative childhood experience.

• Extreme defensiveness or mistrust of your partner’s intentions

• Severe jealousy about harmless interactions

• Constant need for validation and reassurance

• Major mood swings or emotional sensitivity

• Fear of enmeshment or losing yourself

• Panic when feeling alone or abandoned

• Difficulty with true intimacy and vulnerability

• Inability to keep a healthy relationship

• Extreme anger issues or fears

John Bradshaw explains: “The wounded inner child inside many people can destroy loving relationships. Your childhood wounds affect your relationships.” These wounds stem from the inner child’s neediness. This is due to not getting your fundamental needs met as a child, from infant to 7 years old. It is a good idea to explore this time in your life and what transpired. The patterns in our family of origin are usually what we bring into our relationships, friendships and work environment.

Healing your inner child

To short-circuit destructive inner child responses, self-awareness of the triggers through mindful observations of your emotions and reactions is key. The first step is to be aware of the problem and not ignore it. Then intentionally reframe your self-talk. It’s hard to do this in the heat of the moment, but reflecting back on the conflict you had with your partner is key to awareness because you can look at it during a calm time and adjust your actions in the future.

As an example, if abandonment wounds cause you to interpret your partner’s business trip as intentional neglect, remind yourself, “This is my inner child projecting past fears of abandonment. My partner loves me and is coming back.” Recognizing a pattern from childhood that correlates with the adult situation is the first step to healing.

For instance, if your father was working all the time when you were a child, you may have developed fears of abandonment, so your partner going on a business trip could trigger these painful feelings from childhood. Remember, all of your traumas and experiences are locked away in your subconscious mind and will get triggered when stressful events happen that jolt those inner child feelings. When you identify a pattern, you can go back to the time of the trauma from childhood and comfort and love your inner child in a meditation. John Bradshaw boldly suggests we go back to your childhood home and visualize your inner child in pain and comfort him or her. It is the most loving thing you can do for yourself.

Self-love

Self-love is crucial to having a healthy inner child. Cultivating secure relationships also involves reprogramming core relationship beliefs in your subconscious mind—for example, that you are worthy and loveable. Visualization, affirmations, and therapy can help instill self-reliance, regardless of your partner’s proximity or validation. It all starts with a firm, loving foundation in your relationship with yourself. Healing the inner child is crucial, and so is this inner child work. You have to be the one who is strong in your own skin, and it’s important to develop a good-loving, secure relationship with yourself. You can do this with daily affirmations and visuals of being strong alone, so when you are alone, your subconscious will draw on the visualization. I used to do a meditation where I would sit on my higher power’s lap as a child. In my case, I proudly call my higher power God. In this meditation, God would instill in me that I am worthy and loved, and I can never be abandoned because His spirit dwells within me. Of course, you have to use the higher power of your choice. Just imagine your higher power telling you how valued and loved you are, and give you assurance that you can never be abandoned.

Positive Affirmations

These positive affirmations are a good start to changing the negative subconscious to a positive one:

I am happy.

I am loved.

I am strong.

I am secure in my own skin.

I am at peace.

I am a child of God.

The more compassion, understanding, love, and stability you extend to your inner child directly, the less it will act up unconsciously in your relationships. It is like reparenting yourself with much love. You deserve that peace and stability. Using positive affirmations daily is a good start.

In closing, the inner child is a multifaceted issue and really does demand your attention. It is important to explore your inner child, who is very real and a very big part of your life, and try to see the patterns of self-sabotage when they happen. It will help your relationship become happier. Remember, awareness is the key to overcoming any obstacles in life. Having a loving relationship with yourself is the single most important thing you can do to heal the inner child.

Rachel Devine’s new book, Discover the Power of the Secret within - Healing your Inner Child to Manifest your Dreams, is on Amazon now.

Devine Intervention: Inner Healing Center

Wake Up Call! It’s Time to Awaken the Real YOU!

From time to time I think we can all use a wake-up call. Especially when life becomes dull and meaningless. Some of us go from one day to the next in the same mundane routine, with no room for fun or happiness. Days become years, and years become decades, and one might look back and see opportunities that were squandered. What do you have on the back burner of your life that you want to do? What is waiting in the wings that can bring you joy and happiness? And the big question is, what is stopping you from living a life of fulfillment and joy? It’s time for a wake-up call and to discover the real you! It’s time to see an aspect of your life you may not be aware of. Let me clarify what I mean in this article and look at some positive thoughts and manifesting methods that can transform your life! Let’s awaken the real you to reality.

The real you

It might sound crazy, but there is a dual power within that drives your life. You may think that you have full control of your life, but the stark reality is that there is something within that is driving your life in a direction that you might not want to go in. That dual inner power is your subconscious mind and inner child. All of your past experiences, traumas, and feelings are locked away in your subconscious mind. Think about this for a moment. To be clear, you can’t consciously access this part of your brain unless you do some subcortical brain work. However, your life is ruled by your subconscious mind 95% of the time! That’s right, all of your decisions and day-to-day routine are directed by your subconscious mind. This is a fact. So the question is, how do you wake up that part of yourself to steer it in the direction you want your life to go? The next question is: how much trauma and bad experiences have you had in the past that are driving your life today? To make it more complicated, the inner child is part of this whole subconscious dilemma.

Example

In order to be more clear about this, let’s look at these examples:

I will never forget this incident, that is an example of fears of abandonment from childhood that are embedded in the subconscious mind. I was walking my dog, Luke, at the time, and there was a white SUV stopped at the corner for the stop sign. The window was open, and I could hear this man screaming at someone on the phone, saying:

“You are never home; we don’t eat together anymore; you don’t cook; you are such a witch” (although he used the b word), and he was berating her.

I am sure that the more he yelled and became angry, the more she retreated and wanted to stay away from him. It was a vicious circle. And I thought to myself, All he wants to say to her is that he is lonely, feels abandoned, and would like to spend more time with her. But I suspect his inner child, feeling hurt and being triggered by her pulling away, is setting off his fear of abandonment issues from his childhood, so he is lashing out with intense anger, reverting to the way he behaved as a child. He was trying to get his needs met, and she was pulling away, so his anger got out of control. The fear of abandonment starts with fear and morphs into intense anger.

Another example is road rage. As you are driving along, perhaps someone dangerously cuts you off, and you go from fear to rage in an instant. The rage is intense and comes out of left field. What is happening at this point is that your inner child is reverting to a time of feeling fear and is triggered by the danger it feels when the car cuts you off. The inner child in turn is erupting with rage. This rage is what is within you that is lashing out in times of danger.

Subconscious work

The subconscious mind is typically embedded with fears, anger, and neediness from the past. There are several ways to do some work on reprogramming the subconscious mind to become a positive state of being. One way is called brainspotting. Brainspotting is a technique done by a professional therapist that is able to clear away parts of trauma from the past so it does not affect your life today, as I just outlined. This is especially helpful for those with PTSD. However, not everyone wants to go through a therapist to clear the channels.

You could also get a life-coach to help you reprogram the subconscious mind. This is a very good option.

Another way would be to offset the negative subconscious thoughts with positive ones. There are several ways to do this that I will outline in the next section.

Positive tools

Visualization and affirmations are a couple of ways to reprogram the subconscious mind. As you are falling asleep, you are going from a conscious to a subconscious to an unconscious sleep state. Many experts agree that this unconscious sleep state is where we can reprogram the subconscious mind. Let’s say you want to get rid of anger from your subconscious mind. You do that by offsetting it with kindness, love and peace.

Here are the steps:

1. Fall asleep with one image. If you want to be less angry, put an image in your head of you being kind, peaceful, and loving. Love is a strong emotion that offsets many negative ones. You want to keep one image in your mind of you in a loving state as you drift off to sleep.

2. The feelings are what changes the subconscious mind from anger to love. Let me repeat that. The feelings are what changes the subconscious mind. So you want to resonate with loving, kind feelings as you fall asleep, because these feelings will resonate in your unconscious mind for 8 hours. This is a powerful time for changing the subconscious.

3. You want to do this at least for 30 days. You will find that the next day you will feel more loving and wake up quite happy after feeding your subconscious with loving thoughts for 8 hours.

Remember, your subconscious mind drives your life 95% of the time, so it makes sense to always feed it positive rather than negative thoughts and feelings.

Manifesting your goals

Manifesting your goals is another aspect of using positive visualizations and feelings to reprogram the subconscious mind. Let’s go one step further with this, and let’s say you want to connect with your soulmate. You would fall asleep with one image of having met your soulmate. You fall asleep with the feelings of how it would feel to be in a relationship with your soulmate. You would feel loved, secure, elated and happy. You want to resonate with these feelings as you drift off to sleep. Again, you would do this for 30 days and see how that works for connecting with your soulmate in your awakened world.

Say you want to lose weight or end an addiction. You can use the same technique as described above for this or anything else you want to manifest in your world. Remember, your subconscious mind drives your life 95% of the time. Feeding it future goals and dreams is a smart way to bring these dreams into your waking world.

In closing, it is important to wake up and recognize the part of you that drives your life most of the time. The real you is buried in many aspects of your past. You want to live your best life, and in order to do that, it is important to get rid of the baggage from the past of resentments, anger, fears, and neediness. There are many layers of negativity from the past that can be cleared away one thought, one feeling, and one day at a time and get you to a point of living your best life.

Rachel Devine is the author of The Third Road and Lessons from the Needle in a Haystack, both on Amazon. My new book on the inner child and the subconscious mind will be out very soon.

Devine Intervention: Inner Healing Center website