Adult Me And My Inner Child
This week I started listening to the audiobook version of Rachel Reiland’s “Get Me Out Of Here.” It’s the story of a woman trying to recover from borderline personality disorder through intensive psychotherapy, including several stints in a hospital psychiatric ward. While my experience is nowhere near as intense as hers, I nonetheless find many similarities. Most notably, we both have awakened our inner children by exploring our pasts, and we both perceive a stark contrast between this inner child and the adult the rest of the world sees.
Ms. Reiland says the adult side of her personality is “too tough to be hurt, too independent to care, and too streetwise to ever trust a soul.” Trust is “an open invitation to be screwed.” She goes on to say the adult part of her personality is “one who loathes weakness and sentiment.” As much as that description resonates with me, her description of her inner child resonates even more.
She says “the other fragment was the vulnerable one. I was not nearly as familiar with this one, whose presence seems to have been given life through therapy. Where the adult had erected a barricade of walls and self-protection, the child was the antithesis, a front of raw openness. The child trusted everyone and could not make sense of those who would not return trust and love. It was as if the vulnerability itself, the willingness to be screwed over, would somehow protect her. She was ruled by emotion, always thirsting for love, seeking it anywhere with anyone, and suffering great pain if it weren’t forthcoming. The child was content to be a follower if that would gain acceptance and love. She was as dependent as the adult was independent, and she would give herself up completely if she could somehow only be taken care of.”
These descriptions could have been written about me. When the adult me is in control, and I’m “too tough to be hurt, too independent to care,” I decline my father’s constant offers of dinner or drinks and avoid making eye contact with my mother at family holidays. When the inner child takes over, I cry out for TJ, Kato, Kevin, or anyone who will love me and take care of me, no matter how toxic many of these people have been for me and the dynamics between us have been.
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