My Inner Child Collapsed
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Who are you without your story?
I didn'tknow what to do.
Can someone's inner child die?
What was happening to me?
Was it serious or just a temporary delusion, a lucid dream or vivid Soul experience?
The breakdown before the breakthrough.
A few of my other blogs relate to this moment in an indirect way as well as offer my experience with Life post this collapse.
Here I want to share more of the details of my experience of this collapse/breakdown before my breakthrough in case it connects a few dots for you or someone else on a similar personal journey.
This one might require a tea or coffee companion as you peruse and read through.
Getting Frustrated At Healing
At the end of 2024 I found myself getting frustrated more and more, with healing, the process of it, the plethora of information on it, my continual seeking of different remedies and modalities, the counselling course I hadn't yet completed, healers in general, the claims, the anecdotes of others and most of all my seemingly lack of 'healing' I wasn't experiencing - the list goes on.
I love all the healing arts, theories, remedies, modalities and more but I was getting to a stage where I really couldn't tell you anything was working on me at all. I didn't have a good testimonial of my own healing so how could I be a healer or a helper to another.
It was very very (internally) frustrating. It was starting to taint my view of a lot of life and my pursuit to be a practitioner. I was creating or amplifying a limiting belief of "If I don't have my own healing testimonials with the modalities I was learning, how could I be of use to anyone else at all". To me - that's imposter syndrome or otherwise 'fraud'. I didn't want to be a charlatan.
So I decided to book in a series of appointments with my Holistic Counselling teacher. I had tried many other paths to date. So this time I thought "I'm going to the head of the department of healing", to get dosed in the medicine I was learning - straight from the teacher I was learning it from and this time I was going to be the case study, the client.
I booked a series of sessions as this works best for me to maintain my commitment as well as ensure time with my teacher/counsellor - as her time is limited with waiting times of a month or more.
After the second session, my collapse happened.
It was a very vivid experience almost with technicolour vision of something going on within but also of not knowing what was happening, what I should do or not do. I was in the experience but also a witness to the experience.
To be very clear - my collapse was not initiated or instigated from what my teacher/therapist did, but rather as my inner child was "unhappy with the adulting from the adults in the world" (this is the best way - from hindsight of this experience - I can describe it for ease).
I thought I knew what I was seeking counselling for yet I don't know that I was very articulate about it. Each session took a different course of action than I expected. I'm actually in a way ok with this as I personally believe every experience in life and especially when seeking counsel - shows you, teaches you something valuable of yourself.
And I do love to be a client - I love being cared for by a counsellor or therapist. It's always a learning experience for me to be at the receiving end of therapy. Each session is never enough and I always want more.
So after this particular session, I realised I was cranky, sad, frustrated, deeply mad angry that I still couldn't seem to get remedy for what I was seeking.
I had 'been in therapy' for a few years now with on and off sessions and many many modalities and even enrolling to do a Diploma of Holistic Counselling to learn about it first hand - yet I still couldn't get to the bottom of this thing I wanted to crack the code for within me.
I knew my attachment style and source of attachment injuries.
I knew about trauma, nervous system dysregulation and regulation techniques.
I knew my Human Design and core wounds but it still wasn't enough.
I knew about our spiritual existence in a human body.
I've done somatic psycho-therapy, reiki, kinesiology, cranio-sacral therapy, and much more.
I knew and know a lot and have done a lot, but it still wasn't enough.
My collapse was dire.
It started out as some sadness and disappointment that I couldn't get any healer to offer me true healing. My mind went on overdrive with thoughts telling me all these things I didn't need to hear at this time.
My heart started to ache, my body wanted to cease moving, my whole being was going into psychological / emotional collapse and physical collapse. The kind that moves your body to the bed, a flat surface, to cry all the tears your body has at the ready, to go into those dark and deep places within that I hadn't visited for decades.
I put myself to bed early and cried myself to sleep feeling completely hopeless and helpless. I hadn't felt this way for a very very long time.
A vision or delusion?
The following day, I was still heartbroken and sad but was able to get out of bed and feel sorry for myself. It was a sunny day and a simple remedy for many ails is to get some sunshine out in nature. The easiest way for me to do that was to lay in the sun in my small backyard. In this instance a dose of sunshine wasn't the cure, but it was a start. The sun is so healing and touching the ground with my feet and hands reconnected me electrically to the earths healing properties.
As I lay in the sun, with tears coming and going - this vision was occurring, it took the next 24 hours to play out. As new vision details came through, I would write in my self-reflection journal so I could one day look back and recall my experience - and offer to share it here.
Read more...
Through my tears and hurt heart, the vivid vision was becoming louder in my minds eye. It was like having a parallel experience. I was sad and crying on the outside, but having a vision, a journey, a vivid dream on the inside.
This vision was of what my inner child was going through.
She was a small little girl, collapsing. She was all alone in a forest, lots of tall trees, the earth solid beneath her feet. It was quiet, sunlight was shining through the tree tops but barely.
Once she realised she was all alone, with nothing and no one, the light started to fade.
The trees started to blur then disappear into the darkness. The earth became bigger under her feet until there was nothing left except the earthly dirt and darkness all around her and consuming all that existed.
She could feel nothing on her skin, no breeze, no breath, no sound, no movement. There was nothing at all. No one to come and get her, no one coming to be with her, no one or no thing. She was truly truly wholly alone. Strangely she wasn't scared or fearful, if anything a bit emotionally empty and unsure.
Within, there was a sense that the world was way too big for her, the world was too much, there were no ends, no boundaries, no walls, no separation from her and rest of all existence. She didn't know her place in this exponential expanse of all there is, where to be or who to be with - this was the overwhelm. She could feel the openness and never ending expanse of the whole universe and it was way too much for her small body.
There was a moment when in her world turning to darkness she realised it was just her and the earth beneath her feet. The hard dark earth was all that was left to comfort her. That's it. That's all the comfort she was offered. The ground, the hard ground that she could no longer even see - just feel.
So with all her might, under the emptiness and nothingness, she decided to lay down on the earth, to beg the earth to swallow her up so she could disappear into the earth with no trace. If that is all that is available, she begged again for the earth to take her - as the only means of comfort.
It was the only available option - rather than stay in the dark on her own. The only means of being embraced to feel what it's like to be nurtured - to be embraced by dark hard earth, not really comfort at all. Is that all the comfort, care and nurture she deserved? If so, then she was ready for the taking.
Take me earth, I'm ready.
I made sure to write down my experience so I could remind myself to take it to my next counselling session the following week. At this time, I didn't actually know what to do with this inner child vision. I had no idea if an inner child can actually die. I started to be concerned that I was again helpless to my own inner parts or what if my inner child decided to disappear on my watch and I had no idea what to do. If she goes, does that mean I go?
So I went about the following days as per usual but with a dreary energy and withdrawn interest - a form of disassociation.
My inner child remained in catatonic freeze state.
"In every adult there lurks a child— an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education.
That is the part of the personality which wants to develop and become whole."
Carl Jung
What happened next?
In my next session with teacher, I present my experience to her. At first I was sharing it like it was 'something that happened and I was ok', but in the sharing of it, a new layer of emotion and insight came up along with all the feelings about the experience - the sorrow of my own sadness that I even had this collapse. I wasn't ashamed of it, but rather sad that I couldn't even help my own inner child when she was lifeless in my own (minds eye) arms.
In a split moment I was called to put on my brave courageous big girl pants and tell my teacher/counsellor that in fact, I was angry, I was angry that what I received from her in the last two sessions 'what we did - wasn't it!' (wasn't the remedy) to my issue. I had no idea what the remedy was, it was like my body was talking now, not my mind.
I had never shared such a truth with a practitioner before, saying what I truly felt - about their service to me - but in this micro moment, I thought if I don't bring this up, I'm holding up any possibility of further healing and authenticity for my own Self and sake.
The Truth is behind authenticity. I was afraid to say my truth and yet had a sense if anyone could handle it, it would be her so I told her.
...
Her response to my emotional declaration of my anger and frustration and sadness surprised me - yet it was soothing and healing - and now I actually giggle at it. Oh how we build stories in our head.
The response she offered was "great, it shows you have passion for yourself, that there is more to what you are seeking''. It was a validation that my emotional response and my courage to speak up for myself was actually correct.
I had no idea what her response would be and feared it could be disastrous for me - that's what I feared the most. I have limiting beliefs about speaking up and speaking out at authority figures - as in right to their faces. It hasn't gone well for me in the past, in my old conditioned life. And a new me is emerging.
Her lack of shock at what I told her about our prior sessions - was a healing moment in itself. There was no attack or offence taken. Sometimes the gift a practitioner can offer you is receiving your expressed authenticity and in return offering you validation, a healing statement. In an instant your inner world can be soothed.
To be correct. To be validated. To be heard, to be felt, to be seen, to be witnessed.
In that very moment, all of this occurred.
A possible solution
For the remainder of this session we worked with my inner child. A solution was offered.
To have my adult Self ask my inner child if I could be with her until she 'came to' - to let her know we can give her what she needs.
In the session as I was being guided, the inner child vision was still very much alive within and I had a direct input to be in the vision as my adult Self. Like a lucid dream.
I - as my real life adult Self - was able to be with my inner child as she lay with the earth and very very slowly return with some vitality after being catatonic for some days now. The trees in the vision came into light. The sunlight began to shine again through the trees. Colour started to come alive - slowly, very slowly.
It was a vivid and real experience like it was happening in real life - not just in my mind or minds eye.
Read more...
I was guided to ask my inner child if she wanted her own space, some walls, a boundary of sorts from the large space of the whole world, to offer her a home, a womb, a cave, a cubby, a place she could call her home - all hers. However she wanted it. However she needed it. With whatever she required or needed within it.
A lovely reminder my teacher/counsellor offered
was that Mother Earth was there for her - if no one else was.
Strangely, it was obvious Mother Earth was there for my inner child, but I hadn't felt it in a supportive way until it was validated by another. Yes - Mother Earth was there for her, my inner child was being held by Mother Earth. Mother Earth was unfailing beneath her feet - literally solid as a rock with some dust on it. Mother Earth didn't need to swallow her up, maybe she and I needed to be embraced by Mother Earth - fully and embrace her in return.
We (teacher/counsellor and I) did this slowly for the remainder of the session and I could feel aliveness coming back to my inner child and my present Self. By the end of the session I again felt alive, here, present and no more sadness or anger. At the end of this session I was invited to consider actually making a real life home for my inner child - to go through the process of creating it into reality.
At that moment I loved the idea but had no idea how to do that. I was shown an example image and straight away I knew what there was to do and I still had no idea how to do it.
I took the next few weeks (or months) to create a home for my inner child.
I'd never seen it done before, there weren't too many examples online and I hadn't created anything like this before at all - not even as a child. The next day or so I collected some items from our yard and across the street from some bushland, I began having ideas of what I wanted to create but still needed to figure out exactly how to do it.
Time to bring back childhood arts and crafts - literally.
I made the structure for the design and abandoned it for some weeks - not knowing how or what to do next. But then I gathered the motivation and committed to finishing this creation - for the sake of my inner child.
What would happen if I actually built this home for her and follow the movement of how to do it, as the inspiration came to me - for her. I wish I had of taken 'construction' photos, but I didn't think of it at the time.
The wounded inner child within has unmet needs.
It is these unmet needs that reach through our present Self to seek connection, seek healing -
until they get healed, get met.
The unexpressed hurt otherwise called trauma can often be the wounded child seeking acknowledgement, reconciliation, healing, to be soothed.
When our inner child's needs get met - then the adult Self can lead Life again.
And this is what I created for my inner child.
Made from paper mache for the foundation flooring using brown paper bags. Stripped branches of shrubs for the wall structure, more paper mache for the walls and covered in napkin with leaves and flowers.
There is a large leaf for the awning. I made curtains for the front entrance and used a broken flower head wreath over the entrance archway. I made a broom from hessian thread. Inside she has a bed made from a large sea shell, a table made from a wooden spool. I made her a book to draw in.
The fairy reading a book I've had in my bookshelf for years and now she has a friend. I purchased a doll, small size from Kmart that had long hair similar to me as a child. Not showing in the photo are some draws and other items inside along with fairy wings in case she wants to play. Yes that is a puppy at the front entrance and a seashell ornament as well.
My inner child now has her own home, her own solid walls, a boundary from the rest of the world, a place, a cubby, a cave, a space to call her own and have in it all that she needed and wanted.
It is her safe space, her womb from Mother Earth to rest, restore, reconnect.
I've displayed my inner child paper mache mud hut in my office/craft room and currently moved it downstairs to another area of the house where she overlooks some of my crafting activities. My inner child and I as the present adult Self - do things together now.
And now...
This process seems to have a positive effect on me as my creative endeavours have taken the lead in my life and my energy levels are...different. There is a settling within me as well. There is much more detail I could share but this story is getting too long now.
I've since had the other sessions with my teacher/counsellor (there were 5 sessions) and there were other underlying issues that came about as part of the aftermath of my inner child receiving all this attention. Healing is like a ball of string, it just keeps unravelling.
That may be another story I share one day. We also worked on parts / Internal Family Systems that were feeling left out. That was also quite insightful and helpful.
And the new chapter, new version of me after this collapse is still evolving, transforming and unravelling.
Maybe I've finally got a real personal anecdote to share of my own healing journey after all.
xo Kylie
March 2025
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