A Message from my Inner Child

     Last night I couldn’t sleep and needed to do some inner work to settle down. Did you know that we all have inner child(ren) within us? No, if I cut myself open no little child would be found. But all our experiences, thoughts, and feelings have been recorded within a part of ourselves and the part that holds the memories from long ago is the inner child. Charles Whitfield (Healing the Child Within, Health Communications, 1987) defines inner child as “that part of each of us which is ultimately alive, energetic, creative and fulfilled; it is our real self -- who we truly are.”

     I have been doing inner child work for many, many years—connecting to younger parts of myself at many different ages. In fact, in order to have lost the thirty pounds

(see Blog Post “ My History with Weight and Dieting” before starting on HCG, I HAD to do inner child work.  Here is an excerpt from my book, EATING MY HEART OUT: Confessions and Recovery of a Closet Eater:

     “…. one day I asked if I had an inner child who didn’t want me to lose weight. A little voice piped up, “Yes, me!”  I asked the voice why she didn’t want me to get smaller and she warned me that if I were tinier I wouldn’t have power, would be invisible and just fade into the background. As the adult, I gave empathy to this young part and did some re-parenting work with her. I asked her if she thought Zoe (my then four year old granddaughter), had much power and my inner child agreed she did. I then explained to my child within that Zoe is quite petite, at age four and a half she is the size of a three year old. My inner child was convinced—it is possible to be a smaller size and still have power. Zoe has become my role model for being little AND mighty.”

     So last night when I couldn’t sleep I spent time connecting with my inner child. I asked her how she felt about my blogging and she didn’t like it one bit. She wanted to keep everything secret and hidden and not let others know about my actual weight and foods I am eating. She thought that I was not accepting her because of her weight and I had to reassure her and give her empathy. The message she wanted me to write for everyone to read is: “TELL THEM THAN BEING FAT DOES NOT MEAN BEING BAD AND BEING THIN DOES NOT MEAN YOU’RE GOOD. “

     She wants everyone to understand that she was not BAD for eating too much and weighing too much and needed the food to cope. I reassured her that she was not bad and that she found comfort in food and that isn’t bad, it just had consequences on the scale.  I gave her lots of empathy. Not only did  I reassure her that she is not bad, but I told her that I don’t think anyone is reading these blog postings anyway……and she felt much better.

     I asked her how she was doing with the limited amount of food and she said it was okay. Then I told her that I would allow her to lick the plate clean if she wanted (when no one else is with us!) and she was delighted.

     This morning I got on the scale and was down another 0.6 pounds. I think the dialogue with my inner child helped and I know that I need her cooperation in order to succeed. My intention is to check in with her everyday before I do a posting.