He's Just Not That Into You; Ergo I Love Him

Inner child work is a funny thing. It is a strange realisation that there is a version of you that is still a child. This child is a mental store of emotions and experiences from childhood. These then become the lens that we see the world through and can lead to our choices. The behaviours can be the wounded parts of childhood that were compartmentalised into a narrative or meaning. We can see wounded and childhood put together, and a defensive wall goes up that I had a great childhood. It never takes away from that, but as we know, we feel all emotions. We also witness all emotions growing up, so in all of us, there may have been a moment that we attached meaning to without necessarily having a strong feeling of wounding.

One of my inner child narratives that I will come into in a moment was that I was broken, having grown up in a family background that experienced trauma textbook definition. I now am very grateful for my origin story. When the work began; I could pin the tail on the donkey straight away; this is what my inner child is upset about. But there were also small moments outside this experience where narratives were picked up also. To give a brief background, I grew up in a house where one parent had an issue with alcohol; this led to certain behaviours when alcohol was involved and certain consequences based on these actions when the separation finally occurred. A very pragmatic and fair way, but it is not only my story, and I am also not fully ready to share it with the big wide internet. To summarise Parent 1, I felt I was not chosen by; and Parent 2, I became the caregiver.

The Love Drug

So within my boundary of information giving away, I became desperate to feel chosen and subsequently loved, and I felt love was earned through looking after others. I know what you are thinking it sounds like a Disney fairy-tale ending (these are all a load of crap and have a lot to answer for). I will give a brief timeline of my love life, but I will disclaimer it with these are my perceptions. Disclaimers out of the way, let’s use some classic Friend’s title format:

The One with the first love of enmeshment

I briefly alluded to this in my blog on Envy and Jealousy. We first kissed at age 17 in a nightclub (if you read that without saying ‘in da cluuub’, you are much more mature than me), and we last kissed at age 27 before we finally broke up for good. When I left for London after University he broke up with me. We were then the classic on-again-off-again for 3 years, before one final year of trying that was a year of pure co-dependency at its finest. If he was not happy, I was not happy. If he was not happy, I was constantly trying to fix him. If he was not happy, it was my fault. These narratives were not helped with the fact that he was not at an emotionally aware part of his life either, with his own origin story. In the on-again-off-again times we also had:

The One who told me I was only good at Accounting and Blow-jobs

Self-love and worth were not high at this time. I continued to sleep with him though, as he would confirm my belief in myself at the time. Which was that I was not worthy of love. I really wish I could give this version of me a giant hug.

The One who was the friendzone definition but I just wanted to be love

This was after a particularly bad ‘off-again’ time with my enmeshment love. After copious amounts of alcohol, we slept together. This in no way disses him as a person, but rather me and who I was at the time, but I know myself I had zero romantic feelings for him. He did not want to be with me either. However, once he voiced that it was mistake, even though I 100% logically felt the same, well I decided only naturally that I actually really liked him. It is amazing the power of the brain how you can convince yourself you like someone.

The One who I did not really like, until he ghosted me and then there was no stopping me

I knew he fancied me. At the end of every single date from the first, he would ask ‘do you want to come back to mine?’. I knew sleeping with me was top on that priority list. The only time my heart would race was when he would stop texting me. So, I slept with him to try and ‘keep him’ (so much hugs for this girl too). He ghosted me. Despite having zero feels other than anxious attachment, the not chosen one was felt deep in this one, and I suddenly believed that I liked him and that I had been the one to push him away.

The one I met on a mountain and I went on a rescue mission for

This one actually makes me giggle. After the enmeshed love finally ended, I went off and climbed Kilimanjaro. Which I will come back to in another blog because the life searching journeys are a different kind of story. I met someone within the group, and we had a kiss on the last day. He then would message me with thoughts of coming to visit. He was German and also needy, and I fully went into saving mode with that one for some time.

The one who told me exactly who he was, but I preferred the version with my rose tinted glasses

The last one in the current timeline. I was so convinced that I had healed myself at this point. I now see that at any point in my life if I am convinced, I am healed, then I most definitely am not. It is a journey that never ends but just maybe is not as overwhelming at certain times. He told me time and time again who he was. Maybe not upfront as bless him, he waffled a lot. But through his actions I knew exactly what was happening. So, I bought a pair of rose tinted sunglasses from the ‘I can see what I am doing but I am going to ignore it for a while’ aisle and off I went. Needless to say, it ended or in reality probably never even began.

Attachment Theory and Archetypes

I will not go into attachment theory too much as I think it has come to that stage of being mainstream (and slightly everywhere at the moment). Levine and Heller (2019) summarised three attachment types in their book Attached. These are developed over childhood and can often then control our adult life attachments.

Anxious: Self-doubt of being too much or too little, difficult to separate yourself from who you are dating and their life, terrified of losing them

Avoidant: Terrified of anyone getting too close.

Secure: Ah the Holy Grail.

These were built around Bowlby’s initial theory of attachment. Infants are biologically based to develop attachment. If there is sufficient attachment figure, then we end up securely attached. If there is not a sufficient attachment figure in childhood, we can end up insecurely attached. He saw a critical period of developing attachment being between 6 months and 3 years.

One thing that I do not think is often portrayed in the Instagram posts galore on attachment theory is the criticisms. As someone who has struggled most of my life with narratives, placing myself in a bracket of a theory sometimes can be at my detriment. For example, in that rose tinted glass situationship, I knew all about attachment theory and I had labelled myself as anxious so I then would almost twist this to work in my favour. “Oh he hasn’t messaged me in five days, that is your anxious attachment getting worried about that, I do not need someone to consistently contact me”. Reeks of bullshit, doesn’t it? Some of the limitations are that it boxes behaviours into categories, it is oversimplified, the experimental evidence was limited and there was the potential for cognitive bias to be involved. But it does give an important basis for thought.

Nicole LePera, the holistic psychologist on Instagram also does some great work around behaviours Archetypes on Instagram and in her new book ‘How to do the work’. They include:

The Caregiver: I was excellent as this one. Love was always doing for others. Rather than just being. The constant need to look after everyone.

Life of the Party: The need to be centre of attention and the need of validation from others, love is loud and falling fast.

Hero Worshipper: Supressing our inner greatness, everyone else is great at love, I am crap at love. The broken narrative falls in here.

The Yes Person: Does not think of who they want as a partner, but happily accepts any form of love in a yes. Also needless in love. Also really good at this one (not that it’s a competition or anything but I have 3 down).

BUT and it’s a big but (hehe), it is most important, and it took me a long time to realise this. They are behaviours. Even attachment theory is a behaviour. It is not a definition of who I am. This is where inner child work comes in.

Inner Child Work

In childhood we are egocentric. What this means is its impossible to separate ourselves from others and even the environment. Eventually as our brains develop, we can begin to separate ourselves from the environment through developing object permeance. That mind blowing moment when we realise that Mam has not disappeared during peek-a-boo with the hands. Egocentric thought however continues as our brain develops.

This means that if a parent is coming home angry or stressed, it is difficult for a child to separate that it is not a reflection of them. If the parent is stressed, the child will infer the stress is them. As concepts of money, jobs, marriage etc are not fully developed yet. As children we are co-dependent, to our caregivers which is necessary to survive, but we can also pick up narratives. In my case my narratives became ‘I am not chosen’, ‘I need to work to have love, feel seen’ and the one that plagues us all ‘I am not enough’.

It was a bit of an eye-opening experience when I was forever thinking of how I attract in emotionally unavailable men, when in fact we are mirrors, so I was very much emotionally unavailable myself. Disassociation/numbing were part of my coping mechanism which will come back to in another blog Numb Encore.

For this blog, every time I would feel someone slip from me my inner child would throw a version of a tantrum and react. In the relationship of enmeshment, there was more than one moment where I knew we were not meant to be together, and it was unhealthy, but I had this huge fear of being alone and unloved. I had an almost automatic reaction of attachment. The rose-tinted glasses relationship I rang him in September in the first instance to break up with him as I knew it wasn’t working. Once he said same though, my immediate reaction and words changed to oh we can make it work etc as the fear of not being chosen overtook. He is not choosing me, make him love you. Does not sound too healthy does it?

Inner child work is finding those moments in childhood that you resonate as wounding and giving your inner child what she needs now. My inner child still shows up in tantrums. There are times I come home from dates and I think briefly ‘maybe I shouldn’t have said that’. Trying to think of a role or persona I could have portrayed. I see her, my inner child, though and in one releasing statement of; I know you think for them to approve of you, that will bring you happy but I choose myself and to show up as my true self and I trust in myself because of that.

I am not a person with anxious attachment. I am not a caregiver; I am not a yes-person. These all behaviours that stemmed from my inner child needing healing. It is so easy to label ourselves or self-diagnose based on Instagram posts. Behaviours are just the same as emotions, feelings and thoughts, they do not define us. If a child does something ‘naughty’, they are not ‘naughty’. It is just a behaviour. Equally though to do the inner child work and find the behaviours which are coming from that unhealed part of yourself, that moment you can separate; it is so freeing. Obviously this is all about love, but inner child work can also be involved with money, career, procrastination, friendship, social anxiety, the list is endless. Our sufferings are all subjective.

Depending on how someone works often you will use a picture of yourself as child to resonate to. Mine is always this one of me and my sunflower that I grew. How I sum up my inner child work is: What happened to you that you felt your sunflower dim. How as an adult can I let you release that fear so that you can blossom and grow?