Today I want to talk about my ‘Littles.’ My Littles are basically my inner child at different ages, and how she was stunted in her growth at the time, due to developmental trauma. The importance of recognizing her, and her needs is instrumental in my healing journey of trauma recovery. Human beings all have an “inner child,” which is defined by therapists as that part of our identity which is free-spirited, spontaneous, and creative, while being driven to instantly gratify their wants and needs. If you spend time with a 2-year-old, you can readily see their inner child, full of the verve of life in the moment while telling you directly what they want and how they feel. On the flip side, they can express their negative feelings with illogical outbursts, or be tenacious in striving for the object of their immediate desire. As children develop into adults, the inner child fades into the background, through adolescence, into adulthood.

My earliest memories center around my Mom, which is pretty normal considering that our primary caregiver relationship is the focal point during our formative years. One of the pieces of dysfunction in my world, was having a narcissistic Mother, the constant message that she was perfect, and I was flawed. When I was about four years old, I remember trying to plant flowers. I dug up some tulips with my little blue plastic shovel, and yellow pail. I moved them to another flowerbed, wrecking them in the process. I got my frilly dress all muddy, went in the house to get my Mom to show her the flowers. She hit the roof, ripped my dress to get it off me and sent me to my room, locking me in and telling me ‘little girls didn’t get dirty.’ I ruined my dress that she had spent good money on so clearly, I was “bad.” My joy in showing her the wilted flowers died, fear and shame took its place. The messages became: “don’t try anything new,” and “you are shameful and unworthy,” and “good girls don’t get messy.” From that point forward, getting messy was avoided at all costs, trying new things was intensely frightening, and I never felt able to succeed at doing new things. I wasn’t worthy. If I couldn’t master it right away, I didn’t try at all. My inner critic carried those messages into adulthood, because my Little had been condemned and controlled.

How do I reach that little girl inside who was hurt that day and stopped trying to live in the joy of spontaneity? How do I nourish my Little’s needs? On this journey of trauma recovery, I found for a long time through therapy that it felt forced and fake to ‘talk to my inner child.’ It felt like I couldn’t reach her, she didn’t exist, it was stupid. The time and place of joy and innocence was long gone. When my therapist told me to tell her I loved her, she was safe now and beautifully unique, it didn’t feel authentic.