The Rabbit Hole | Part Four | Inner Child Healing & The Subconscious Mind

Let me tell you a little story of how I met my Inner Child….

I had always struggled with romantic relationships from the first time I started dating guys.  The worse I was treated the more attracted I was to the guy and the more I got treated nicely the more I was put off him.  So, it was a vicious circle in all my relationships no matter what my partner ended up being like. If he was nice to me, I would sabotage it and if he was dismissive of me, I would do everything in my power to make it work including losing myself in the process.  I was not capable of having a healthy loving relationship. Love to me meant pain. If I didn’t feel pain, it wasn’t love…. crazy, right?!

For all those years I thought I was just unlucky in love, I never once stopped to think it might have something to do with me.  That I might be subconsciously choosing these dynamics that were causing me such pain and distress.  Why would I even think such a thing because surely, I would never ever choose to cause myself such trauma, would I?!  Well thankfully eventually I was shown that this was exactly what I was doing…

I had a very painful episode a year ago regarding a romantic interest, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak. The one that made me sit up and realise that maybe it was me that was the issue, that I needed to start taking responsibility for the choices I was making, choices that were very obviously not in my best interest.  I started to see that maybe I was causing this pain to myself.  I ached for a healthy loving relationship and I knew if I didn’t dig deep within, I would never find that in this lifetime.   By then I had already kick started my healing journey, so I suppose I was ready to step up and face whatever I needed to face in order to move forward. So, I put it out to the universe in meditation that I wanted to find a healthy romantic relationship and I wanted to clear all the blocks that were currently holding me back and I would do whatever it would take to do that no matter how uncomfortable it would feel. I was ready to face up to this and I was determined.

A few months later, my Spiritual mentor and friend, Fiona Greenheart (she’s back :)) called and asked to meet me for a catch up.  I was at the stage where I thought nothing could shock me (if you’ve read my other blogs, you’ll see why I had that attitude), wrong…prepare to be shocked once more!!!

So, once again Fiona was back with another very important life changing message. This time it was from my beloved Dad that had passed away 2 years previous.

If you haven’t read my other blogs, I’ll quickly explain that Fiona gets messages from Spirit, is clairvoyant, clairaudient, clairsentient and a medium.  My Dad appeared to Fiona one evening when she was at home.  I had spoken about my Dad to Fiona in the past, but she had no details of our relationship apart from the fact I adored him and that I had been deeply affected by a long-term illness he had up until he died.  Basically, my call out to the Universe to guide me to find true healthy love had been answered in the shape of my Dad in Spirit coming to Fiona with a message for me that truly blindsided me.

My Dad told Fiona that he was the reason that I could not manage to have a healthy relationship.  Straight away I said to Fiona, ‘no that’s not possible my Dad was a great Dad’.  She said, ‘he said you’d say that’. So, Fiona proceeded to tell me that when I was a child my Dad used to treat me one minute like a little princess and the next minute, he would ignore me.  My Dad had a very traumatic childhood (I won’t go into this) and this had a big effect on how he emotionally dealt with his own relationships and so he ended up in this yo yo (tug of love) situation with me.  My Dad’s advice was that I should get some form of therapy but mostly to do with reprogramming of the subconscious mind because even though I don’t remember this as an adult (I could only remember a healthy version of our relationship), these memories are hidden deep within the subconscious and that dynamic then continues to play out through adult relationships whether I was conscious of this or not. He said this is exactly what was happening to me.  I was subconsciously seeking out romantic partners that I would find that same dynamic with and so I would get bored if that tug of love situation was not there.  It shocked me to the core.  I would never have figured this out on my own.  I would have gone through my whole life wondering why I couldn’t find real healthy love.  

I was overwhelmed with this new information, but it made so much sense and I was so unbelievably grateful to my Dad (and to Fiona of course) for coming back and giving me this message.  It’s not easy for our loved ones in Spirit to come back to Earth like this so this meant so much to me.  I was not going to deny this, I was fully taking this onboard.  Awareness is the key to healing, and I felt so blessed to have been given this information in this way.  

Fiona then introduced me to Inner Child Therapy.  The other interesting thing about this is, the day before I went to a Kundalini yoga workshop and it happened to be all on inner child healing and I thought at the time ‘I had a great childhood, I don’t need to do Inner child healing, this workshop is wasted on me’  but I believe my intuition led me to this workshop in preparation for the message that Fiona was bringing to me the very next day.

What is Inner Child Therapy?

The Inner child resides in the subconscious. It is a part of us that is pretty much frozen in time, it can be playful, creative and imaginative but if it is a wounded inner child, it can cause deep distress in our adult lives and relationships. A wounded inner child plays out in adulthood as self-sabotage, tantrums/overdramatic behaviour, co-dependency relationships/unhealthy relationships and many other negative behavioural traits because of feelings of not being good enough, fear of rejection/abandonment, low self-esteem, the list goes on.  If you are experiencing any of this then chances are you have a wounded inner child and you would hugely benefit from Inner Child Therapy.  Basically, we operate from the subconscious mind until the age of about 6 or 7 so this means we are highly malleable in those years (it’s only after this age that the conscious/ego mind kicks in) so if you as a child experienced any sort of trauma even if it seems trivial to you as an adult, this trauma stays in the subconscious mind and then acts out in adulthood or seeks to find the same dynamic nearly as if your wounded inner child is looking to win what it lost as that child and the majority of times this is all happening without you consciously knowing  (which is what was happening to me).  These issues will keep occurring until you become aware of your wounded inner child and shine light on that part of you that is suffering in silence.  You can do inner child therapy work yourself or you can go see an actual qualified therapist that specialises in inner child healing.  I personally did it myself because I had someone guiding me, I had the tools and I was already practicing healing techniques by that time.   A list of what I did/do:

• Homecoming, Reclaiming & Championing Your Inner Child by John Bradshaw – I started with this workbook given to me by Fiona. Through the guided meditations within this book I had the most profound meditation of my life where I met ‘little Yvonne’ at the age that I was most wounded and just by saying hello to my younger self in that meditation and telling my younger self how much I loved her and I would always be there for her, there was a massive shift from that point forward.   I can’t really put this experience into words, but that simple meditation had some seriously positive effects on me straight away.   Different things for different people but this really worked for me.
• Inner child journaling and guided meditations. Check out  The Holistic Psychologist she is an expert on Inner child/subconscious healing work https://yourholisticpsychologist.com/
• I look after myself as if I were a child… I am parenting myself and it feels wonderful 🙂 
• UPDATED 2022: I offer a 1:1 8 week Inner Child Healing Program which can be done online or in person in Brighton/Hove, UK. Click here for more information.

What is my Subconscious Mind?

We have two minds, the subconscious mind and the conscious mind. The subconscious mind makes up 95% of your life and only 5% is coming from the conscious mind.  As mentioned above the first 7 years of a person’s life operates only from the subconscious mind, which is in the Theta brain state and this is basically a hypnosis state so children under 7 are just observing and downloading what they see and this is creating the program for their adult years. After this age, the subconscious then works by repetition so that is how we learn new things, i.e., driving a car, learning to play an instrument etc. We can then also reprogram old belief systems from our childhood that do not serve us.  Therefore meditations, hypnosis, repetitive affirmations are used to heal and reprogram the subconscious mind.   It is important to note that if your conscious mind and subconscious are in conflict over an issue, the subconscious mind will always win over the conscious mind so that’s why it’s important to understand how the subconscious mind operates so you can control it instead of it controlling you.  

It’s also important to understand that the subconscious mind never sleeps, and it is always listening and absorbing what is going on even when your conscious mind is asleep or just distracted.  It also does not know what is real and what is not, and this can be used as an advantage or disadvantage so always be mindful of what is going on around you, if it’s of a repetitive nature (ie advertisements, negative news repeated over and over).

Conclusion

I’d love to conclude that after all this subconscious healing and reprogramming that I have now found my soulmate, not just yet 🙂 However, what I will say is that I have swiftly walked away from several potential romantic offers that had signs of the old dynamic without a second thought and that was the biggest sign for me that all this healing is indeed working. I’m no longer attracted to that dynamic and that is such an amazing feeling.  UPDATE: And I am glad to say since writing this blog several years ago now, I have experienced a loving, healthy relationship, this relationship highlighted to me that my core wound of abandonment and rejection was still there but this time I was able to work through that receive love without running a mile 🙂 and so I continued my journey of inner healing. Each relationship is an opportunity to become more conscious of your wounds and your programming so that you can heal the wounds and write new programs so that you can keep becoming a better version of yourself.

Three things are striking about inner child work. The speed with which people change when they do this work; the depth of that change; and the power and the creativity that result when the wounds from the past are healed’

-John Bradshaw-

If this is a dynamic that is familiar to you, I urge you to investigate inner child work.  I can’t express enough how relieved I am that I was guided to heal that part of me, and I just hope my story encourages anyone else out there that is tormented by relationships to do the same.   Please reach out if you want to discuss any of the above. 

In Part 5, I discuss my journey with Reiki, and I get to interview my lovely Reiki Teacher Jenny Murphy.  The healing journey continues! 

In the meantime, thanks for reading and as always I hope it helps you in some shape or form on your journey of self-discovery

Best wishes

Yvonne

xx

This is how I appeared in that profound Inner child meditation.  I came across this photograph shortly afterwards.