What is your view on inner child work?

I, personally, have found tremendous benefit in it. Comforting my inner child has been the key to healing my amnesia. Eg: in the above example, I had to get past the memories of hiding in terror from those "sex education classes" to access the memories of singing conversations with my father. After comforting that terrified child and validating her terror, she was able to lead me to the rest.

Oh boy.
I have atheist issues.
1. I have faith but no "religion".
2. My dad was a proclaimed atheist and that just makes me view many an atheist with a jaundiced eye--are they truly without-theism or are they realllllly angry people who hate GOd for not magically saving them from their lives like a wizard in a fairy tale, and take it out on the rest of us? (Which is the case with many "atheists" in his fam---and with a former acquaintance's atheism---if GOd's so great, why does bad stuff happen, etc. like God's a magic wand waver or something and free will is no part of it and... yeah.... Issues ahoy for me!)

I think it's great you have good memories of your dad. I have some of mine. but mostly I have lessons I learned. The fear of screwing up goes back so far that I can remember being four and thinking I'd get in trouble for not knowing how to fish.

But.... yeah, sometimes marital stuff with my Hubby does hold a key to something, so I hope you can sort it out....

And gentlest hugs to you and your inner child.

Let's see where she leads you this time, I guess. The image you started with, of yourself running down the street trailing dandelion fluff, is so lovely and idyllic. What strikes me is the utterly unexpected nature of the reaction you got. Right? It's one thing to do something you know is forbidden or naughty. But to be ecstatically bonding with beauty and nature, and suddenly you are confronted by extreme rage for no reason you could have imagined or foreseen, is very traumatizing. This kind of thing happened to me all the time and has totally destroyed my trust in myself and others. I never know when I'm going to suddenly find out I've done something unforgivable without ever having meant to or expected to.

My philosophies on "seizing power" from my PTSD triggers revolves around separating the triggers from the memories. Not all people who love their carpet grass would treat a child with a handful of dandelions like public enemy number one. One man did that. That memory is not the only reason I do not like bio-engineered grasses, but I don't need to be over-come with fear and loathing every time I see a toxic lawn. I have taken back my power from that particular trigger. I think. I am still pinging from the re-emergence of that memory this past Sunday. I think. Still lost in the aftermath. Still sorting...

I will probably never be able to fully embrace Atheism or paganism for my own comfort after my father's brutal introduction to it, but having sorted the trigger from the living realities allows me to stay objective in the here and now when exposed to them. My father's use of the words does not need to reflect on the entire group. My father and his buddies traumatized me. The drum circle down the road or the earnest young man trying to convince me to give up prayer had nothing to do with it. They were not there and should not be convicted as if they were.

Seizing power from my triggers is about being able to keep reminders of traumatic events in perspective and not losing myself in fear and resentment with every reminder.

arfie, I'm glad you spoke of this. I became an ordained minister to become a hospital chaplain, but it's a miracle I would even want to approach the God topic pro or con. It was used as a central tool in my family abuse as atheism was central in yours.

Just as you said you mean no disrespect to atheists (and I don't either, at all), I don't mean any disrespect by naming the group my family belonged to: Pentecostals. I am still friends with Pentecostals even today after everything that happened. So I'm well aware that there are plenty of good Pentecostals, and what my family did with Pentecostalism was use its name in vain.

The main feature of Pentecostalism is its emphasis on the Holy Spirit part of the Christian trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Unfortunately, in a home with severely bipolar parents who were untreated and refused any science-based help, discussions of spirit became very unholy. It was their own interpretation, mind you.

The evidence among Pentecostals of being in sync with the group is to speak in tongues in the Spirit. I saw it many times and it looked like a joyous experience. Even now I am not judging whether it is real or a hoax. That is not for me to say any more than I should judge Buddhist meditation.

But I was a shy kid, and as I passed the age when all other kids seemed to come of age and speak in tongues and be accepted, I just didn't have that experience. Many church services ended with the whole congregation gathered around me with their hands on my head praying fervently for me to have this breakthrough. It just didn't happen. I wouldn't fake it, either, because I wasn't rebelling. I respected the experience I'd seen in others too much to falsify it even for approval and group & family acceptance.

Then my mom lost patience, and she sat me down and calmly condemned me to hell. She informed me of a Pentecostal belief that I grew up to find out isn't generally held. Yet at the time I didn't know that, so I believed her word was God's.

Her belief was that forgiveness of sin to save us from hell was chronological when it came to the trinity. It is written in the Bible, she said, that the Father in the Old Testament forgave humans. Therefore, we know when we pray to the Father we are forgiven and He doesn't send us to hell for sins against Him. Likewise, the New Testament speaks of the Son and that He forgave humans. So when we pray to Jesus we know He doesn't send us to hell for sins against Him, either. It is written.

But, my mother said, that's it. The Bible ends there, and is no third Testament in this Bible saying the Holy Spirit forgives sins at all. Therefore, she said, anyone who sins against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven by the Father or by the Son nor even by the Holy Spirit itself. If you sin against the Holy Spirit, you are condemned to hell no matter what and no one on heaven or on earth can forgive you. You will never be saved, no matter how hard you pray, no matter how many good works you do in life. If you "grieve" the Holy Spirit, as she put it, your fate is sealed to end up in hell.

Then she told me I had "grieved" the Holy Spirit repeatedly by not speaking in tongues when the congregation had gathered around me and laid hands on me for that purpose. She was ordering them to stop praying for me now, and commending me to hell. I was 9 years old. I never tried it, but from 9 years of age on I wondered if mom wanted me to commit suicide to get my pointless life out of her way and just go straight to hell young. My father bought me a double barreled shotgun, and it was kept stored underneath my bed.

I refused to consider suicide, so that's when the beatings started every week, and never stopped. When I went away to college, I got beaten when I came home on breaks. Whenever anything happened to me in the war zone where my family served as missionaries when I was growing up, that was the Holy Spirit's punishment, too. When I was 52 four years ago and collapsed from chronic kidney failure at a family Christmas gathering at her house, I got punched in the face because my CKD was the Holy Spirit's punishment, too. This even though a few years before I had been my mother's primary caregiver when she went through treatment for cancer.

2 years after my mother pronounced me hell bound at age 9 I was molested by a pedophile. I was 11. I told my mother, hoping she would comfort me and find help for me after being raped. She told me to shut up and take it. It was punishment for "grieving" the Holy Spirit, and I should never mention it at church because it would damage her reputation.

So I don't believe atheism or Pentecostalism or anything faith/lack of faith is meant for the use our parents put those beliefs to. But it is unique in that it enhances the soul destruction child rape brings to every soul. I grew up knowing my mother looked at me as a hell bound loser at best. No matter my good report cards, my good behavior, any talent I had, any love, I was a failure on my way to hell from age 9 on. There was no point in nurturing me, and every point in making life hell for me now since God had me headed for hell later.

I can imagine your conflict with your husband this week would awaken the childhood stuff about atheism. Whenever I'm judged by somebody I love I remember I was nurtured to believe I only deserved hell in return. That gets triggered in me, and I have to muster self esteem from that triggered place. I admire you for sharing it and working on it day by day. I am sorry sharing back has meant such a long post, but I hope sharing back helps so you know you're not alone.

My dad didn't really justify anything. Neither did my mom, though she mostly stopped being physically abusive after I was about 8.

I'm glad that there was never any frame around the sexual abuse. He just did it until my grandma moved in and he couldn't anymore.
At that point I became a nuisance again, but by that time I'd learned to hide a lot in my own room.
I stopped asking for affection that I would not get. I shut down. My weight ballooned. The kids made fun of me. Dad still hit me. This was my fault.
My parents used me as a marriage frustration valve long enough that I was convinced every bad thing that happened to me was my fault. I was ashamed of existing. I wanted to die in fifth grade.
By sixth I wanted to kill myself. By high school I was convinced I contaminated the people around me and needed to be killed.

h,

Ouch, what a statement:

"My parents used me as a marriage frustration valve"

I'll bet that one speaks for a lot of us here, too. So clear, and so sad. Gentle support to you on that insight, my friend.

Gentle support and validation, hylie. Each one of those sentences reek of mechanisms by which your personal power was stripped from you and ground in the muck and mire. Family tradition? Adults attempting to regain power stripped from them by stripping that power from the next generation? Just guessing...

Healing hopes that you will be able to take that power back in healthy and beneficial ways. Getting it into clear, simple statements is a healthy first step in the World According to Arf.