“Most adults go through the world looking for the love, validation, and approval they may have never received from their parents. When the adult doesn’t get what their inner child is looking for, the inner child can take over and the adult can revert to childlike behavior. This can be anything from temper tantrums (and in an adult, this can be quite scary!) that push the loved one away, to sulking in the corner feeling sorry for themselves, wondering why their loved one has left them again. It usually turns into a struggle of self-criticism, blame, and anger directed inward.
‘It’s my fault nobody loves me because I’m unloveable.’ If this resonates with you, the first and best thing you can do is to learn how to accept love, validation, and approval from yourself. This is very difficult and can take a long time with the use of healing exercises (like journaling, visualization, and subconscious release work – Go to abby-wynne.com/healyourinnerwounds). It will take time to grow into a new way of being. You will need to be patient with yourself, just like you would be patient with a toddler.
The Abandoned Child, the Caregiver Child, and the Wounded Child are the most common types of inner children that we all carry around with us in some form or other. As adults, we meet other adults from different families who come with different conditioning, and different patterning. I believe the main cause of unhappiness within relationships is the friction created between adults who have subconscious conditions for love but do not get those conditions met by their partner. Bringing those patterns and conditions into the conscious mind can help smooth relationships a lot, but until we realize that people have their limitations and cannot fill us with what it is we really crave, we will always be fighting with each other.”
