My Inner Child Made Me Do It

Imagine you are in a fight with a loved one, and they say something reactive and mean, while raising their voice. After things have calmed down, they tell you:

“I’m sorry, my nervous system was activated.”

or

“My fight or flight response went into overdrive and the dysregulation I felt was difficult to manage.”

or maybe

“My inner child felt unsafe.”

Notice how you feel as you read these. What is your initial response, internally? How do you feel towards the person saying this to you?

Now imagine the other person, instead, said:

“I’m sorry, I felt attacked and assumed you were shaming me, and it made me want to shame YOU. That was shitty of me.”

or

“I felt so angry at you and wanted you to really feel it. I could have handled that better.”

or

“There’s a part of me that likes to feel superior, and when you pointed out my mistake, I was pissed at you for exposing my flaws. So I retaliated.”

How do these responses feel? How do they feel compared to the initial ones?

I have a hunch. It’s been growing over the years, as the first group of responses has entered the lexicon. I hear them from patients, individual and couples; I hear them over coffee or happy hour with friends, telling me about a recent fight with a spouse or coworker. I see the first group of responses on Instagram reels, usually authored by other therapists or coaches.

My hunch is that the first group of responses, while likely starting from a desire to put language to our most emotionally overwhelming moments, and to prevent us and others from going down shame spirals, have become a collective defense.

A defense against the more grimy parts of our minds, the not so pure and innocent parts of our selves.

Freud emphasized in his theories that we, despite being the most evolved species, are still mammals. Our minds are built for survival first, then reproduction. So we are aggressive, and lustful. We are selfish, so that we don’t starve. We are also cooperative, and have the capacity for sacrifice, love and attachment. Most of us would like to incorporate these latter qualities into our sense of self, while conveniently forgetting the former.

Or if the former exist, they exist in those people: another race, political party, perhaps. Or maybe my spouse or crappy co-worker. They are the ones who can be aggressive and selfish. I just want to get along and be kind! I cannot help it that my inner child gets dysregulated sometimes!

This type of speaking is a net negative, I think. At least when it becomes a pattern. It’s a way of evading the parts of ourselves that make us feel ashamed. But when we are overcome by shame, we disavow the cause, and when we disavow the cause, guess what? We cannot adequately work on those parts of ourselves that may be good to work on.

This doesn’t mean that we need to flagellate, beat ourselves up emotionally or become cruel to ourselves. I think this is part of what the “nervous system and inner child” crowd fear. That taking responsibility will turn into self-shaming. But there is a third way. Yes, it’s difficult. Most people swing between abnegation and over responsibility. The middle path is almost always the most difficult, but ultimately the most fruitful.

Whether religious or not, we are all sinners. There can be responsibility and grace, together. In fact, no grace is necessary unless there is something to forgive.

Like most things, our families of origin often laid the first blueprints for us here. In some families, apologies are felt as a humiliating acknowledgment of inner Badness, giving a license to further shame the apologizer. For some families, the very emotions of anger or pride are seen as evidence of Badness. Many families need someone to blame, always. Conflicts aren’t an attempt to be understood or negotiate an outcome, rather, they are a battle where someone will win and feel vindicated, and someone will lose and take on the sense of Badness for both parties.

Yes, we have nervous systems and a flight/fight/freeze response. We have parts of the psyche that can feel young, and we can regress to childlike states in affect and behavior. It is indeed good to understand these parts of our minds and bodies! But maybe, just maybe, we also like to use this language as a way to position ourselves as helpless or innocent. And maybe, just maybe, this can be a bit of bullshit.