It's totally my fault | Lessons in inner child work from my actual child part 2.
“I’m sorry Mom, it’s totally my fault.”
“It’s not your fault buddy, it has nothing to do with you.” I said, hoping the concern wasn’t bleeding into my voice, but knowing it was. I glanced in the car mirror to see my 4th grader pondering what I had said as he peered out the window on our way to school, seemingly oblivious I was watching him.
“I hope we get the elf back today.” He pivoted the conversation dizzyingly. “We lost it yesterday because the class was bad on Tuesday, but I wasn’t there.” He paused. “I still think it’s my fault we lost the elf.”
Oh, I realized, not such a different topic for feeling guilty his father and I snapped at each other this morning.
“How could it be your fault if you weren’t even there?” I calmly went to the logical answer. But then I realized that he wasn’t being logical. He was an actual child expressing a feeling. And, like the work I’m doing with my inner child, that feeling needed to be addressed before the logic could work.
So I backtracked, “Why does it feel like it was your fault?” I asked.
“Because maybe if I was there I could have stopped the rest of the class from being bad.” He expressed.
“Oh buddy, you know that isn’t true,” I defaulted. Then stopped again. “Remember how we talk about automatic negative thoughts in therapy? This is a great example of that. You were not in class. That is a fact. But you FEEL at fault because those automatic negative thoughts are putting it there. It’s up to you to pull that apart and choose different feelings. Ones that are kind to you, which are ones in which it isn’t your fault.”
And then I remembered the power of positive reinforcement: “I’m proud of you buddy, you are doing hard work to help train your brain to be different. Some adults can’t even do this.”
Including me. I thought. And paused.
How is what I just said in my own head any different than that entire conversation I just had with him?
So reframe - I AM doing the work. And doing the best I can at it.
Perhaps school started a little earlier today for both of us, he and I, than we knew.
💙
You can read part 1 on Medium.
Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash
