I met my younger self
I meet my younger self often, I sit with her in therapy sessions.
I listen to my teen self scream at me when I make a decision she thinks is too risky. I listen to her fight against how easy I cry now, because that weakness will be a problem at some point.
My younger self tries to keep me safe in a world where I don’t need that any more.
I’m surrounded by people who don’t pick up my weaknesses and throw them at me. I don’t have to push all my emotions down to reduce the surface of attack.
I don’t need to manage everyone else’s emotions in order to survive or be valuable. I don’t need to be hyper-independant.
But younger me still wants me to do those things because they worked for so long and why risk them not working?
I have to talk to her, hold her, let her know I can keep us safe now.
I meet me as a child and we mourn our childhood, and how we should’ve been loved and protected and supported and we weren’t. I listen to her talk about babysitting our younger brother when she wasn’t even a teensager, and what that responsibility felt like at such a young age. How that was how we got positive feedback, so we now feel like love is providing care for others.
We shouldn’t have ever needed these coping mechanisms, but we do. We don’t need them any more.
I’m learning to work with these past versions of myself.
Pushing them away doesn’t help. My past self is the reason I’m here now, so I have to honour that version of me, even when it makes my life a little harder. I’ve learned to care for them, to hear them out but still go and make my own decisions.
It’s really difficult, and it doesn’t always work. Having open discussions with my partner about stuff that really makes me feel unsafe is so difficult, because I’m not used to having those type of converations. Instead my feelings come out in really unproductive ways that cause frustration and anger for everyone.
I meet my younger self often. They’re slowly learning to trust me, and I’m learning to comfort them.