In the last few months, I’ve done plenty of research into mental health in the hopes of ‘curing myself’. **While far from an easy task, I like to view every piece of knowledge I gain as a tiny piece of the puzzle, each one bringing me a step closer to feasible mental peace in my everyday life.
If you’re on a similar journey, I’d highly recommend learning the science behind our brains and our anxiety; I found that once I’d discovered why my brain does what it does, self-compassion came naturally. It helped me make peace with the fact that, even if I don’t always like what my brain is doing, there’s usually a reason for it, and I can often figure out what might stop or lessen it. At first, I found it hard to accept that I’ll likely always be an anxious person who overthinks, but it’s the way I respond to my overthinking that decides whether it rules over me or not.
When I discussed this idea with my therapist, he gave me a piece of advice: make friends with your overthinking voice. The logic is that the overthinking is usually trying to protect you, normally due to negative childhood experiences, and it doesn’t understand you’re no longer a child in need of constant danger warnings. I tried following this advice, but the problem was that I’d become anxious by the very appearance of anxious thoughts, leading me to think, “Why are we still worrying about this? It’s stupid and I don’t need to!”, and eventually, “Oh my God, I’m going to have this anxiety forever!”
I pushed his advice aside, but when I remembered it later and really thought about it, I began to imagine myself as a child, crying in the corner after being reprimanded. It broke my heart because it made me empathise with my inner child, and I felt guilty for being so mean to her. Months before my 2nd birthday, I spent 12 days in intensive care fighting for my life, and here I was having a go at that innocent girl for trying to protect me. I couldn’t keep doing that.
How could I be mean to that?
As we’ve just learned, I know that making myself feel bad for feeling bad wouldn’t help the situation, so I forgave myself for the previous mistakes in my healing journey. I fully committed myself to my therapist’s advice of making friends with my overthinking, treating it as though it’s my inner child, which, in a way, it is.
A realisation that tied in beautifully with this was the thought that if little me could see me now, she’d find our life so bloody cool. I’ve got a car, a big bedroom with a double bed (after 15 years in a box room), tattoos and piercings, dyed hair, money to (reasonably) buy what I want, I’m going back to uni soon to live with my friends without parents. How cool is that?
This revelation pushed me to live and see things differently. Now, when I’m doing something, even if it’s mundane, I think about what little me would feel if she were doing it. For example, I might be in my online French lesson feeling bored, until I think of how cool she would find it that she speaks advanced French, and can even afford one-to-one tutoring. It’s a way to put a positive spin on life. (Fun fact: did you know anxiety sufferers are shown to have higher IQs? Every cloud, right?) When I catch myself in negative self-talk, I realise I’d never say those things to anyone else, least of all my child self, and I switch my voice to a kinder one. This voice nurtures the overthinking and diminishes it with time.
Another idea I’ve adopted is switching up my routine. Have you ever noticed that time feels faster as we get older? One reason is that we establish routines where our days blend together, unlike in childhood when we’d constantly experience new things. So, the reason I do it is not only because I loved novelty when I was little, but it also makes time feel slower. For me it could be visiting somewhere I’ve never been before , cooking a new food, anything really.
I would often forget to apply this whole practice at first and when I remembered, I’d say to myself, “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE TALKING TO YOURSELF LIKE YOU’RE STILL A CHILD! WE’RE NEVER GOING TO MANAGE THIS!” But thankfully, with time, it’s become more innate. I even keep a picture of little me in the back of my phone case on which I’ve scrawled, “Make her proud!” When I look at it, I ask myself whether I’m making her proud, and if I happen to be spiralling, it snaps me out of it and anchors me back in the present.
There’s a whole world of things you can do to heal your inner child I haven’t yet tried. A lot of healing comes from exploring early experiences and how they shape the way we see the world now. There are countless journaling out there that I’ll definitely be trying. For now, though, I’m taking it one step at a time, and I think the one I’m taking now is a good start: I live every day to make my little self proud — she deserves it.
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