Addressing past traumas and emotional wounds can improve adult behavior and mental health. This approach is prevalent in inner child work, which is used in psychotherapy to help individuals reconnect with their childhood experiences and emotions. While I’ve not engaged in this work in a therapeutic setting, I’ve certainly spent a great deal of time examining my past traumas and learning from them.
My childhood experience of abandonment and psychological abuse created a bully in my brain and is partially why I struggled with a daily drinking habit. But we can all learn to escape that oppressor.
Emotion Shapes Our Learning
The emotional intelligence work of psychologist Daniel Goleman and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, who explored the connection between emotion and reason in his book Descartes’ Error, emphasizes the importance of emotions in shaping our thoughts, behaviors, and learning processes.
Moving Away From the Traumatized Inner Child
We can heal the inner child and change our habits and trajectory. I am talking about people—like myself—who are not physiologically dependent on a substance, such as alcohol, but who use it to make themselves feel better. That need to feel better can grow into a daily habit. The goal is to heal the inner child so we don’t need a crutch or a drug to deal with everyday issues or challenges. We can find a healthful, happy, sustainable way forward.
But we don’t change where we’re at. We change our trajectories.
Start by asking yourself: Where do I want to be in six months or one year? What am I willing to do to get there and how do I start making those changes? Start small, but be consistent. Consistency is vitally important.
Feedback, Not Failure
This is key. Let’s say you want to cut back on a bad habit, such as overdrinking. I wanted to reduce my nightly drinking habit to only imbibing on special occasions. You must define what those occasions will be. Sometimes you will stay the course and meet your goals. Other times, you will not. When you don’t reach your goals, give yourself compassion. The urge to overdrink, overeat, or take a drug that you promised yourself you wouldn’t can be very hard to resist. Here’s how it worked for me recently.
I felt celebratory. I’d worked hard all day and felt a “reward” was due. So, I made a gin and tonic from the bottle in the garage that a dear friend had forgotten to take home after a party. When my husband came home, I told him I was enjoying a G&T. He asked, “Could you make me one?” Of course. We had our drinks in front of the fireplace and had a lovely catch-up on our day.
However, one drink might have led to a triple. OK, the buzz was sweet for a while, but when I started to feel a bit out of my body, I didn’t like it. And then, it was too late. Damage done.
I woke up the next morning really disliking myself. The urge had taken over the night before, but I needed to find the feedback in the experience and not wallow in the failure.
I asked myself: What can I learn and take forward? I realized that when I let the urge lead me, I feel like another person. Who is she? What drives her? Is she the woman I want to be in a year? These are good questions. I then said to myself: Take your time. Let me know when you have the answers. I love you.
This compassionate questioning has helped me keep to my alcohol-minimal goals. Had I beaten myself up for a night of overdrinking, I would have increased my stress level and possibly made another episode of overdrinking even more likely. I came away from my compassionate self-questioning with calm and resolve. My goals are easier to achieve.
Finding Peace Is Possible
With practicing dry nights, drinking on “everyday” non-occasions just doesn’t have the allure it used to. That’s a very good thing. It’s all about moving forward. And I will. Mostly sober is my default, and it is empowering. Being empowered by alcohol-free days enables me to reach goals that I may not have thought of or assumed were unattainable. What are some of those goals you might have?
Incorporating some planned alcohol in our lives is neither good nor bad. We must find our own peaceful relationship with alcohol. We get to choose our thoughts about what that glass of wine with our spouse or partner means. Without judgment. But our decision must allow us to feel peaceful. We get to choose how we think about it. We have power over our thoughts, and the more we practice compassionate questioning and the more we get help from the many experts available, the more we can rely on our own judgment to guide us in the right direction. We can find peace and release from damaging habits. Our inner child can be healed.
