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The only way is to recognize, realize and resolve our childhood tragedies, psychologist Natalya Inina believes. “Not judging parents and not looking for someone to blame, not trying to pretend that childhood was cloudless and wonderful, not trying to live unloved or endlessly looking for someone who will finally please – to take and please yourself by meeting your inner child.”
How to get out of the usual mechanical life-survival?
Natalya Inina: Adults are afraid to face their inner child. The psyche is a complex mechanism. We not only remember who was ill in the family, who treated whom, what tragedies we witnessed in childhood. The child is a totality. He passes everything through him as his own experience. People often tell me: “I don’t love my inner child,” which means that a person has identified himself with the accumulated negative experience, with his inner monster, with his Shadow. And my task is to disidentify the client. That’s when a huge amount of energy is released, that’s when a person becomes free. And the “mechanical life” ends by itself. However, it happens, and often, that the neurosis goes away, but the neurotic behavior remains. This is already the choice of the client, conscious or semi-conscious. There is a moment in reflection when it is time to stop, stop exploring, and allow the client to make spiritual choices for himself. This is the point of personal responsibility. A person may well live a pseudo-life, and this will be his choice. Certainly not because he is bad. Only because he lacks support to go in a new, unusual way. All the therapist can do is bring the client to a state of psychological comfort. But no one can force to move on, there is no such possibility – to push a person onto the path of spiritual growth.
Read more:
- Childhood is not the most carefree time
- Question to the expert: “Can I tell my children everything about my childhood?”
Can a person himself put things in order in his childhood, his house?
N.I.: Maybe. But it depends on the level of injury. If the injuries are deep, then entering these memories alone is both painful and scary. This can be done with a psychologist, with a close friend, with a priest. Another question is that this must be done, and not when the situation has already become completely unbearable (the family is collapsing, there are problems with the child, depression, etc.), but earlier, so that there is enough strength for this work. We must remember that there is help, and if it seems that you have run into a wall, then no, this is most likely not a wall, but only a door, and you need to open it.
Read more:
- “Our childhood gives us freedom”
Is there any universal advice for those who are very afraid to talk to a psychologist and even a priest?
N.I.: Usually this fear is associated with a lack of experience of trust. It does not exist, it was not formed in childhood, when openness and the ability to trust were much stronger. Or formed as negative. But adults can create this experience for themselves, give it to themselves. I will not give another piece of advice: choose someone you somehow trust and tell.
Read more:
- Linor Goralik: “Our childhood is a story of refusing temptations”
How do you communicate with your “inner child”?
N.I.: For example, you are offended. Children are offended, but adults are not. Resentment is a childish reaction. If you are offended, then it’s not really you, it’s a child inside you. And you can take his hand, console him and allow him not to solve adult problems, but solve them from your adult “I”. Then you will disidentify with your inner child and experience a state in which he trusts you, and you love him.
Is your book The Trial of Childhood based on true stories?
N.I.: In any case, that was the original purpose of the book, I immediately tried to make the text therapeutic, because it is impossible to accept everyone who needs help. Summarizing, analyzing, I really could help a lot more people. This is not just a book, this is a confessional story for me. It was scary to open up and be ourselves, but when it happens, we find peace. When we risk being ourselves, we really meet people, it is a meeting on an unusual level, deeper, more honest. The story of my childhood has come to an end. I think I met my childhood as it was, in all its fullness and honesty, not too bad or great. I think now I’m ready to live my adult life.
N. Inina “Childhood test” (Nicaea, 2016), more details at the link.