In 1990, educator and counsellor John Bradshaw, wrote a book called “Home Coming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child”
It was his view that when a child experiences trauma, unless she has somebody to share the experience with, to discharge the painful feelings, the trauma gets locked within her. At such a young age, she lacks the tools to understand and process the experience and, for the sake of her continued survival, she needs to bury the experience and just press on.
When we hear the word trauma, we tend to imagine the sharp end of things; sustained physical or sexual abuse; harrowing neglect; or the witnessing of violent or disturbing events. But a child can be traumatised in more subtle but no less harmful ways; a consistent or sustained lack of love; being made to feel shame for the way they are; biting criticism or being blamed for some dysfunction in the family into which they were born.
As the child lacks the mental wherewithal to challenge their parents’ view – to them their parents are infallible and always infallibly correct – they conclude, “I must be at fault, deficient or broken for them to speak or act towards me in that way.”
It’s Bradshaw’s view that for the adult that the child becomes to heal, she has to experience the sadness, rage or fear that the trauma evoked and that she was forced to bury. It’s never gone away. Just festered beneath the surface giving rise to bouts of anxiety, depression, addiction, panic, inertia and despair.
I should know.
The 3 year old who your dad hit and shouted at, who your mum blamed and shamed because he wanted to explore or try on her shoes is still there inside. He’s still stuck, alone and with all these painful feelings going around and around in the closed circuitry of his psyche. And the only way he can get your attention is to have you experience these feelings, too. And sometimes it takes until you’re 47 years of age before you start to truly pay attention to him.
But that’s ok. He’s not going anywhere. Just waiting for your to turn towards him.
Waiting for the love that will heal you both.
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