Eating Disorders- What’s Your Inner Child’s Story

Choose To Be A Hero/Heroine? (Article 3)

There is power in writing and telling your story because it helps you discover and begin healing your inner child. This can then lead to healing your eating disorder or other painful behaviors. What are you going to choose, victim consciousness or hero/heroine?

I was lost in the freezing cold -I couldn't breathe- I was underwater –thrashing. This image haunted me in a way that I could never understand. I only feared men and any anger they displayed in the slightest twitch of their lips or jaw. In my subconscious, unknown to me, this memory ruled every interaction I ever had with men.

In my early 40’s I did intuitive drawings that revealed an image of a toddler drowning underwater. Trekking deeper into my past, as I wrote my story I found this; the memory of my father who was an alcoholic still in the backwoods of the Olympic Rainforest bordering the Puget Sound Bay. He had been drinking and had taken my older brother and myself in a small rowboat to fish. I had said something that angered him and he hit the side of my head tumbling me into the frigid cold northwest waters.

As I processed through this memory I was able to speak up to men and authority figures. I am ever grateful for my past and the new found strength and awareness.

Start to choose to begin your story by writing what it was like when you were a child, write what happened to you , and what is it like for you now. It is a process of trusting whatever comes to mind and writing it without judging it, without thinking about all the could haves, just begin to want to trust the process of clearing your soul. In other words you can view your story as having a heart to heart talk with yourself. In telling your story write about what is important and meaningful, confusing, conflicting or painful in your life. You can choose to courageously risk sharing inner thoughts on paper and discovering more about yourself. And by doing this you begin to heal yourself and your inner child.

Furthermore it has been documented that sharing your story with supportive others can increase the healing. Dr. Charles Whitfield talks about this process as giving a gift to yourself, in his book A Gift To Myself. According to Alice Miller, “Problems cannot be solved with words, but only through experience, not merely corrective experience but through our revisiting of early fears, sadness, and angers.” And so taking your time and writing your story is the next step in inner child healing.

John Bradshaw, in his book Home Coming -Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child, calls this work original pain work. He states that if original pain work was understood and used as treatment it would revolutionize the treatment of neuroses in general and compulsive addictive behaviors. From my many years of clinical practice and using the very techniques I'm writing about I agree that it is the most effective treatment.

So what would you need to begin to write your story?

1. Find a supportive person to hear your story or group or therapist.
2. Make a strong commitment to write and finish your story in approximately four weeks.
3. Find a private place to write.
4. Set a time aside each day at the same time.
5. Take your time each day to write and invite the feeling s to come up and write about them.
6. You can have your childhood pictures near to help you remember.
7. Have a support person or accountability partner available to talk with you as needed.
8. Be willing to share your story many times, even though your feelings are hard to express.

If you commit to writing and working through your pain and grief by sharing, participating and experiencing the suffering from your past, you then can begin to release it. When you complete your story it is the hero/heroine’s journey. Or you may choose to remain unaware and this can lead you to resenting others, or blaming yourself, or blaming others. Or even choosing to stay unaware can lead to stress related illnesses. If you choose to stay in unawareness it can prolong your suffering and keep you in what is called the victim cycle or even the martyr/victim consciousness. Is that really what you want to do?


Yes, this work can be emotionally painful, and yet when you complete it you truly will be able to be pain free.