Dear spriteflower,

I feel for you and I think I know exactly how you feel, because I’ve felt the same. This is something I could have written about myself years ago:

There is a deep, constant self-consciousness that keeps me from singing, dancing, engaging in genuine conversations, sharing who I am, or feeling safe enough to explore the world and be curious about others. I feel that I am lonely but I also feel the deeper suffering of being afraid of who I am, of feeling that the core of me is bad.

At that time I started working on myself and was told to meditate. But I was reluctant to meditate because I was afraid of what I would find within… because like you, I believed I was bad to my core. My inner critic was so strong and I completely believed what it was saying. It came from my very criticizing mother, who was never happy with me, and nothing I did was ever good enough.

I imagine your angry, abusive father had a similar effect on you: of crushing your spirit and making you believe you’re unworthy. Your mother was his victim too, so I believe she couldn’t protect you. Maybe she protected you from physical abuse and took it mostly upon herself (if that was the dynamic?), but she couldn’t protect you from verbal abuse.

And I guess growing up seeing abuse and being exposed to abuse on a daily basis, and seeing your mother helpless to do anything about it, created in you a sense of hopelessness and helplessness… about yourself, about life and the future. Would you say that’s true?

It took me many years till I realized that it is my inner child that got crushed by my mother’s upbringing, like a flower that gets stepped on again and again… and not allowed to bloom… And that this child within me was (and still is) innocent and beautiful and precious, and she didn’t deserve to be treated like that.

When I found compassion for the little girl that I was, who was deprived of love, warmth and emotional support, my healing started. I could slowly separate myself from the inner critic and see the goodness within. I realized there is nothing wrong with me, and that the core of me is beautiful and good!

I hope that you too can find healing because it is definitely possible!

I’ve been in therapy, I journal, I reflect. All the logical things don’t seem to truly get to that core pain. It truly is stored somewhere in my body and I don’t know how to release it or change it. I’ve tried crying and asking myself what that part needs.

I think the core pain is the pain of your inner child. It’s stored in your body but primarily in your heart. What type of therapy did you have?