As a child, I had a right to feel safe and secure. We all have the right to feel the same way. It is up to our parents, to make sure we’re in an emotional and physical safe environment.
Safety
But safety isn’t just someone protecting us physically from harm, making sure we have a roof over our head; safety means protecting us emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, which are inherent to us, as human beings. Not feeling safe, affects the psyche. It is a wound that is often repressed, but its impacts are far reaching and profound.
Do we really understand?
I'm not sure innately we always understand how to question what we go through. For us to feel safe, for us to grow emotionally, and spiritually, we should work with our inner child. Start by getting yourself into a reflective space, and learning to reflect on your childhood through the early years.
Some questions you could ask are: how did you feel as a child? Did you feel safe, loved and wanted? Did you have a sense of belonging in your family? Were you encouraged to be you? What is your current relationship with your inner child?
Our Inner Child and our Adult Years
Not everyone understands the correlation between their inner child and how they function in their adult years. But our behaviour, our neuroses and aversions, may be explored by us communicating with our inner child.
The inner child lives within us, in our psyche. When our inner child feels comforted, when all is well with our inner child, we will feel inspired and safe.
I half-jokingly say that my inner child is frozen in carbonite, but in a lot of ways that is true. Nobody seemed to worry about how we were feeling as kids, so we did what we had to do to survive.
I'm sure that's why I get so annoyed when people whine at times about how tough their childhood was, when they don't have a clue as to how horrible it could have been.
We never felt safe and nobody really had our backs so we'll never know what we could have done or accomplished if things had have been different.
I need to work on taking care of my inner child and letting him out to play once in a while, no matter what people think.
Thanks Randy. Yes, it doesn't matter what people think. What's important is what you think.
You may not know what you might have accomplished if things had have been different for you as a child, but I believe that as the adult you can start to build on your life and make new changes.
You talk about your inner child and I think that important. Talk to your 'inner child' Randy so you can explore how your young self felt.
We may grow and mature as adults, but the issues we have will always continue to be issues if we don't deal with them.
We may feel emotionally less safe in those times.
Did I feel safe, loved and wanted as a child? No, I didn't feel anything I just got on with things away from my family, which I knew to be dysfunctional.
I spent as much time as possible away from the house doing whatever I wanted to do, with whomever. I grew up independently pretty quickly without needing emotional support, which is just as well as there wasn't any to have.
Thanks. Yes, a generation on and parenting has changed. That said, with work on ourselves I believe we can change some of our early emotions.
I do think it is important that no matter the upbringing, as parents we don't allow the mistakes of our parents to repeat with our own children.