My Wounded Inner Child Story

Butterfly Oracle Cards for Life Changes by Doreen Virtue — Grief Work

There’s “Grief Work” to be done here as a way of moving forward with your life.

Unhealed grief is compounded by each subsequent loss. Although it’s uncomfortable to mourn and cry, sometimes this is the only path to healing.

Loss is one of the more painful processes of change, yet it can also help us develop compassion and more appreciation for life.

The day I pulled this card for the first time I remember thinking I need to look up what “Grife Work” means. This deck is one of my favorites it’s the images of the butterflies are beautiful, it’s very whimsical and almost evangelical, the only thing I dislike it that 4 cards have the same image of butterflies on it, I’ve haven’t dived in, to research if there is a correlation between the 4 illustrations of the cards Tho.

Every time I picked up this deck, this card always managed to pop out of the deck until one day I finally looked up “Grife Work”.

One of the resources I came across was Dr. Dawn Elise Snipes, YouTube Channel; Mental Health Matters; her channel is entailed to be a resource of tips for depression and anxiety relief, healing from trauma and improving relationships. Although I have watched and taken notes on many of her presentations the one, I will be discussing in this article has been the more helpful one for me as it allowed me to heal some old wounds, that otherwise would have probably taken me years to identify only going to private therapy sessions.

The YouTube video I will be referencing is titled: Healing Inner Child: Transformative CBT Methods to Address Abandonment, it has 2 million views.

During the presentation Dr. Snipes reviews a list of behaviors that can traumatize the Inner Child and a list of behaviors in people with a Wounded Inner Child. She begins with explaining that when children are emotionally wounded or traumatized; if they are not comforted or coached though the steps of Emotional Regulation, they will often withdraw and not develop the skills needed to manage similar circumstances going forward.

She also states that in fact it is the caregiver, who will usually display the behaviors that lead to the unhealthy coping mechanisms.

The topic Dr. Snipes covers in was life changing for me, this 45 min video allowed me to identify theses trauma responses within myself, it made me feel comforted over the circumstances I faced growing up and opened the way to me finding forgiveness, empathy and understanding for my caregivers, their circumstances growing up, but more importantly I was able to develop patience and understanding for myself.

I’m going to share my experience with some of the behaviors Dr. Snipes discussed, the ones that resonated with me the most and about the experience.

Physical Abandonment or Emotional Withdrawal:

Family court awarded my father primary custody of me when I was 11 years old, I went to go live with him and his ex-wife whom he’d bought to the states. My mother did not have natural support systems in addition to battling an addiction issue; I was allowed to be with her on weekends and holidays. I didn’t have a relationship with the ex-wife or the adult children they were nice in the beginning but when I went to live with my dad, everything I did or said was criticized and gossiped about. Although I was 11 years old, I recognized I was not welcomed so I separated myself from them this of course affected the relationship with my dad, we wouldn’t talk much, and our relationship is estranged.

Regular Shaming or Criticizing Especially to Humiliate in Front of People:

I lived with my father and his ex-wife in a modest three-bedroom apartment, their oldest daughter (my half-sister) lived next door with her husband and two children. My nephews and I are close in age and went to the same school, I had an incident with the first teacher I had because the school mistakenly placed me in a bi-lingual class, I told the teacher for months that I didn’t understand her and requested my textbooks in English, but I was ignored until I marched into the admin office and demanded they call my mother. I don’t know the reason for all of that happened, I don’t understand how the courts didn’t confirm I was enrolled in school, in another state, ready to go before placing me in his custody. I think the school had me enrolled as an undocumented child, because all that woman said at the office was “I don’t Know” and I remember my dad being scared to go to the school when they demanded he go. Well anyways I was constantly having disagreements with the teacher, because she would give me bad grades and demand that I write my assignments in Spanish when I was telling her I didn’t know how to write in Spanish. One day she assigned a science paper everyone wrote about a planet, I chose Uranus, this planet has a brother planet or star (I believe) that could be interpreted as a moon, well she didn’t get the interpretation and instead got on me for misspelling the word “brother”. She called my house, and I don’t know what discussion was had but instead of trying to talk to me and get my side of things, these people just went into gossip frenzy mode they talked so much sh*t about how negligent my mother is that I didn’t know how to read or write at 11 years old, Ay dios mio! Well, eventually the day came when I had enough of that teacher and marched my ass to the Admin Office Lol.

Patronizing or Invalidating Feelings:

I’m a girl, we have a lot of parts that go into our hygiene maintain. My mother didn’t work, and her Social Security Check was like $500 in those days, kids in general have other needs besides basic food and shelter. The first year going to school I needed a notebook and my father refused to buy me one, I literally had to use the back pages of one of my nephews’ old notebooks. I would need a coat, shocks, underwear, pads, lotion, ChapStick, everything and I was told I needed to be happy we had running water and electricity. Once the school spoke to my mother I was eventually transferred to another school and would get a bus ride to school; oh lord! Even as a young adult after my mother passed away, I need help for college and my father told me he couldn’t help because he was buying a house.

In the beginning I was really angry, I cried for a few days and then after a few days, I started to feel tons of peace because I was able to come to an understanding that my caregivers were also doing the best, they could with the circumstances at hand themselves. I was also a child with little understanding of the world.

Now I can identify and manage “that feeling” I deny and hide my feelings because I learned it wasn’t safe to express my feelings since they would be disregarded, I now understand that isn’t always going to be the case especially with the right people. I’ve been subconsciously pushing people and opportunities away because of the fear of rejection, for the longest of time.

I choose not to have my energy tied up in that anymore.