DAY 8 – The anatomy of self-abandonment, briefly | 100 DAY SELF-ATTUNEMENT JOURNEY

“I don’t go to therapy to find out if I’m a freak. I go and find the one and only answer every week. And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think. That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink. But, oh, how I loved everybody else, when I finally go to talk so much about myself.” – Dar Williams

Hi everyone. Today is Day 8 of my 100 Day Self-Attunement journey and I chose to write a brief blog post instead of posting a video. Thanks for being here. Today I meditated for about an hour total and focused again on inner child work. I started with a guided meditation focusing on self-love (I couldn’t connect to it) and I switched to another one after about 5 minutes. The next one I found was 32 minutes long and it was an awesome one – click here to take you there. 

During my session today with my holistic emotional healer, we spent some time talking about me connecting to my inner child on a more frequent basis to forward the healing process, including feelings of safety. This prompted me to write about today’s topic of self-abandonment. I will write about it briefly today because this is a concept that is going to be interwoven throughout my videos and blog posts on this journey.

The goal of inner child work is to expand and strengthen the connection to self, which simultaneously prevents self-abandonment. Self-abandonment occurs when you disconnect from your present truth, including the emotions you are experiencing. If we numb or avoid our emotions or the physiological sensations associated with them instead of attuning to and honoring them, we are abandoning ourselves. This quickly becomes a vicious cycle:

1. We don’t like what we feel in the present moment, and we run away into distractions that are usually self-sabotaging (addictions to alcohol, drugs, nicotine, food, entertainment, work, shopping, sex, anger, blame, people, co-dependency, etc.).
2. After we engage in these self-abandoning behaviors, we usually feel self-hatred and use more of the self-sabotaging distractions in order to numb and avoid the truth of the present feelings of self-hate.
3. With enough time, this becomes automatic, dominates our lives, and further disconnects us from ourselves.

Why do we do this?

We do what we know and what feels familiar. We mirror the same behavior towards ourselves that our parents displayed towards us. When we come from abandoning households where caregivers consistently mirrored contemptuous, intimidating, rejecting, etc. body language and behavior towards the child, the child grows up internalizing and believing that she is “unlovable,” “defective,” “unworthy,” etc. This builds a home deep within a child’s psyche and body and lives there until detected by the grown-up adult self usually after years of unhealthy, self-sabotaging behaviors.

How do we heal?

By practicing self-love, self-forgiveness, self-compassion, and self-awareness, of course. You and I know very well that this is not as easy as it sounds, right? If you haven’t been programmed to think and behave in these ways, you will need to work on reprogramming your internal software to align with these healing and self-loving practices. We can’t do what we don’t know or haven’t learned. Learning how to love ourselves takes practice and is essential in the healing journey.

This includes forming an understanding of why you do what you do by being aware of your automatic thoughts and behaviors and how they relate to your unresolved past wounds. What past perpetual situations caused you to bury your emotions that are now your triggers?

I will delve deeper into these topics during my 100-day journey, but for now, let me leave you with this:

Once you have identified your unresolved emotional wounds and begun the process of healing, you will still be faced with the same triggers, but you’ll know and understand that you now have a choice on how you want to act. This will include tuning into yourself and the needs of your inner child. Your inner child needs you, it has always needed you. Now as an adult, you have the choice and the honor of re-parenting your inner child. You shift your internal programming by listening, taking care of, and loving yourself, which simultaneously allows you to listen, take care of, and love your inner child. Because it’s you. You have always wanted to be heard, seen, and protected and knowing you can give yourself everything you never received is a manifestation of your chains being broken.

Let me know how this post resonated with you. Email me at vi@healthylifewithvi.com or connect with me on Facebook at Healthy Life with Vi.

Thank you, I commend your courage, and I will see you tomorrow on day 9.

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