Rebirthday #9

Or: Not letting certain parts of me flatten my sparkle! 😁

In case you don’t know, I look at 3/20/13, the day I went inpatient for suicidal thoughts, as my Rebirthday, because it’s the day this healing journey began!

Wow wee, as the years go on, some things get easier, some things get harder, and more and more comes up to be healed. I so often feel stuck and ashamed of where I am (or am not) in life… COUGH…

But milestones like the Rebirthday are great because they force me to slow down and acknowledge the significant-but-hard-to-quantify shifts that have happened over the years.

When I started therapy in 2013, I approached it as I had school. If I did all the things and worked really hard, I would “get better,” right? So I journaled all the time, I read all the books, I was completely in my head and out of my body, and it was great. I was working really hard, and so I was deserving of my therapist’s time and attention, right? I was getting all whole and healed, right?

…Right?

In 2013, I had zero awareness that this pull to do all the “right” things and stay out of my body was not the entirety of me, but rather the effect of the different inner parts of me that sometimes took hold.

I have a Good Girl part who feels like she has to calibrate to what other people need or expect in order to be lovable. The Good Girl seems to be entwined with a High Schooler who (as I did in actual high school) throws herself into academic pursuits to achieve her way to worth and avoid feeling.

The attentive Good Girl and drill sergeant High Schooler make a great team. They work so hard to protect me from a third part: a young inner child who is really really scared.

The problem is that they can’t actually work or ignore away her pain, and so it crashes down on Adult Me when I least expect it.

Last summer, I started having anxiety attacks as I tried to “reenter” the world, post-2020. The young inner child really enjoys having control over her environment, so not being able to leave the house during Covid was actually perfect for her. She was so terrified to have to give all of that up that she would suddenly become the dominant inner part, screaming out for attention.

This meant that I would agree to do things in 2021, and then childhood fear and panic would blindside me, and leave 2021 me a confused, crying mess.

My therapist and I began talking about how I could take therapy with me into these difficult moments, which led to the practice I mentioned here: channeling my therapist’s calm acceptance of and curiosity about my emotions. I don’t meditate, per se, but I suppose this has become a sort of meditation, a going-inward to find peace.

It was not therapy homework. It was not something with big “should” energy behind it. It just grew organically out of our therapy conversations.

When I’m blindsided by strong emotions now, it has been really helpful to consider who (what inner part) is crying out for attention and what she needs. Or, what she needed back then and did not get. (I don’t journal a ton these days, but this also makes a 10/10 journal prompt.) Then, I can go into this sort of inner therapy room for comfort and understanding.

It has taken years of therapy and healing work for Adult Me to have some capacity to empathize with and attempt to “parent” these inner children, rather than run from them or scream at them in frustration. I have no clue what I’m doing a lot of the time, but, thankfully, I am learning from my therapist. Offering my inner children the same calm acceptance and curiosity that Adult Me gets in therapy has been a great start.

If any of this resonates with you, please know that you are inherently worthy, and that healing is possible—even if you are resistant to meditating, feeling/being in your body, loving “difficult” parts of yourself, etc. I struggle mightily with all of those things but am slowly embracing them in my own way and in my own time. 💜