Calming our Naughty Child Inside

Here's a different way to look at our stress.

What if we could see it as the stressed naughty child inside of us that clambers for our attention? Long ago this child was born inside us, often as a result of a difficult event in our little susceptible young minds.

We might have matured as adults, but some part of us is stuck in the past, creating that pattern of thoughts, emotional tension and behaviour. That part kind of got stuck and didn't mature alongside us, even though it is still part of us.

We do all sorts of things to avoid or deal with that stress our child inside displays to us. We give it plenty of negative attention in the form of ignoring it, fighting it, suppressing it etc., and, like the naughty child, it ends up ruling us, and stopping us really living life to the full.

Often it's a crisis such as illness, addiction, relationship conflict or depression that can make us stop and examine the stressed child. Sometimes, even these crises have to be experienced over and over, and medical treatment failing or a new relationship create the same old problems.

Actually, the stressed child is not the 'devil inca
ate' though we sometimes call them our 'inner demons'. That younger part of us made certain conclusions and decisions during that difficult time in our lives that helped us make sense of and cope with what was going on at the time. Things like 'I'm not as good as others' in response to a failure, or 'I'll never get over ....' or 'I'll have to make up for being bad' keep the child stuck in the past and keep the program running in our subconscious mind, and all we know is that we feel panic when we get criticized or anger when we are ignored or guilty when we have to say no.

In traditional therapy, we would try and identify when the stressed child was born and try to understand it. This is fine, but takes a long time and isn't easy to do on one's own, but, like when you talk to the stressed child, it stops stressing.

In energy therapies, we just aim to calm that stressed child as quick as possible. When a child keeps tugging at you looking for attention, any good attention will calm them and bring out the best in them. Bad attention will just keep it stressed.

Next time that immature part of us causes stressed feelings, instead of thinking, 'This should not be happening!', we could try imagining us and it working together arm in arm to help us. I suspect that as a result of that alone without any fancy therapy it would start to grow up quite quickly and stop stressing itself and us!

For all the quick calming measures though, see my website: www.stressalte
atives.co.uk.