Healing inner child john bradshaw
Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child — John Bradshaw
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ABOUT HOMECOMING
Are you outwardly successful but inwardly do you feel like a big kid? Do you aspire to be a loving parent but all too often “lose it” in hurtful ways? Do you crave intimacy but sometimes wonder if it’s worth the struggle? Or are you plagued by constant vague feelings of anxiety or depression?
If any of this sounds familiar, you may be experiencing the hidden but damaging effects of a painful childhood—carrying within you a “wounded inner child” that is crying out for attention and healing.
In this powerful book, John Bradshaw shows how we can learn to nurture that inner child, in essence offering ourselves the good parenting we needed and longed for. Through a step-by-step process of exploring the unfinished business of each developmental stage, we can break away from destructive family rules and roles and free ourselves to live responsibly in the present.
Then, says Bradshaw, the healed inner child becomes a source of vitality, enabling us to find new joy and energy in living.
Homecoming includes a wealth of unique case histories and interactive techniques, including questionnaires, letter-writing to the inner child, guided meditations, and affirmations. Pioneering when introduced, these classic therapies are now being validated by new discoveries in attachment research and neuroscience. No one has ever brought them to a popular audience more effectively and inspiringly than John Bradshaw.
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Three things are striking about inner child work,” says John Bradshaw. “the speed with which people change when they do this work; the depth of the power and creativity that result when the wounds from the past are healed.”
We first see the world though the eyes of a little child, and that "inner child" remains with us throughout our lives, no matter how outwardly “grown-up” and powerful we become.
If our vulnerable child was hurt, abandoned, shamed, or neglected, that child’s pain, grief, and anger live on within us. “I believe that this neglected, wounded inner child of the past is the major source of human misery," says Bradshaw
Do you aspire to be a loving parent but all too often "lose it" in hurtful ways? Do you crave intimacy but wonder if it's worth the struggle? Are you consumed at times by anxiety or depression? Coming home to your true self may help.
In this powerful life-changing book, HOMECOMING: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child, John Bradshaw shows us how we can learn to nurture that sometimes needy inner child, in essence offering ourselves the good parenting we needed and longed for.
Through a step-be-step process of exploring the unfinished business of each developmental stage in our childhood, we can break away for the destructive family rules and roles and free ourselves to live responsibly in the present.
"Then," says Bradshaw, "the healed inner child becomes a source of vitality and creativity, enabling us to find new joy and energy in living."
HOMECOMING: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child offers a wealth of unique case histories and interactive techniques, including indexes of suspicion questionnaires, non-dominant-hand letter writing, guided meditations, grief work, and affirmations. Pioneering when first introduced by John Bradshaw, these classic therapies are now being validated by the new discoveries in attachment research and neuroscience. No one has ever brought them to a popular audience more effectively and inspiringly than John Bradshaw.
John's HOMECOMING WORKSHOPS and inner child therapies are used all over the World and have been attended by millions of people.
This book HOMECOMING: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child is recommended for academic, professional, private and public libraries and those searching for ways to really be the kind of person we want everyone to think we are.
People who bought the book HOMECOMING: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child, also bought the 10 hour intensive PBS workshop on DVD of BRADSHAW ON: HOMECOMING-The Inner Child Workshop as well as the Emmy nominated DVD HEALING THE SHAME THAT BINDS YOU.
How to Heal Your Inner Child: 10 Self-Soothing Tips
Inner child exercises — like self-compassion, the butterfly hug, and writing letters to your younger self — can help you heal from painful childhood experiences.
Inner child work teaches you to parent and nurture your wounded inner child.
Painful early experiences often stick with us into adulthood — from being yelled at by a teacher or rejected by playmates to experiencing childhood trauma. You might even feel “stuck” at the age of trauma, unable to move on emotionally without first processing your past.
“Inner child work is the process of re-parenting the ‘littles’ that were neglected, abused, abandoned, etc.
during childhood,” says Dr. Charity Godfrey, LMHC, therapist and founder of Lifescape Integrative Therapy in Ft. Myers, Florida.
“It’s during the formative years of childhood — 0 to 9 years — that we learn about emotions, safety, and who we are in the world and form connections.”
When an experience feels unsafe at that age and no adult steps in to offer comfort, the pain and shame can linger for years to come. Inner child exercises are one way we can access that younger self and offer them the comfort they needed but didn’t have access to at the time.
Your inner child is not a “childlike personality.” Rather, it’s the part of your subconscious mind that experienced and still remembers your childhood moments and emotions, both good and bad.
Above all, your inner child feels safer when they know you’re paying attention to them. It can help to simply acknowledge them, remind them you’re looking out for them, and send them your love.
Even if the conscious mind doesn’t have the words to talk about it, the body remembers trauma.
Supportive physical touch can help you soothe your inner child.
Holding your inner child can bring them comfort. “Rock if necessary,” says Godfrey. “Hold tight to yourself and let the tears flow — or, just as powerful, smile big and know that healing is happening.” You might try doing this for 3 minutes a day.
You can also try the butterfly hug, a self-soothing exercise designed to help people process trauma. Trauma therapists use this technique in Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprogramming (EMDR) therapy.
To practice the butterfly hug:
- cross your hands over your chest
- link your thumbs together to form the butterfly’s body
- position your fingertips just below your collarbones
- tap your chest by alternating the movement of your hands — tapping with your left hand, then your right hand
- take slow, deep breaths and gently observe your thoughts and feelings without judgment
You can find a video of how to do the butterfly hug here.
Bringing yourself back to safe, calm memories can help you soothe yourself when you feel overwhelmed.
Can you remember the happiest moments of your childhood? Maybe it was baking cookies with your grandma or going to the zoo. Spend a few minutes remembering how it felt — the pictures, sounds, smells, and feelings.
Notice how it feels in your body to experience this sense of security.
If you can’t remember a happy moment, it’s also effective to imagine one. What would you have loved to have experienced? Grab your inner child by the hand and go there together.
“Negative constructs, such as “I don’t matter,” or, “I’m not good enough,” are often formed in childhood from mistreatment/abuse during these years,” says Godfrey.
Mirror work can help you move beyond these narratives and work on developing a loving connection with yourself.
Godfrey recommends looking deeply at yourself in the mirror each day and making a powerful healing statement, such as:
- “I matter.
” - “What I want matters.”
- “I will not stay silent.”
It’s not always easy to be kind to yourself. If you tend to judge yourself harshly, practicing self-compassion can help you improve your relationship with yourself.
Research by Kristin Neff, PhD — a leading expert in self-compassion — suggests that being kinder to yourself can reduce anxiety, stress, and depression.
Dr. Neff’s website provides free self-compassion exercises to help you get started, including:
- self-compassionate journaling
- positive self-talk
- self-compassion meditation
- challenging your inner critic
Journaling has mental health benefits, and it can count as inner child work, too. Try writing a letter to your “little” offering the words of support you needed in childhood.
“Don’t delay what you need any longer,” says Godfrey. “State the words in your journal and read them out loud. Read the words you wished you would have heard with love, kindness, and compassion.
”
If you’re right-handed, use your left hand (or vice versa) to let your inner child express themself with a story or a picture. You can also converse with your inner child by alternating between your right and left hand.
This non-dominant hand technique is explored in depth in the classic book “The Creative Journal” by Lucia Capacchione. It contains more than 50 prompts to help you release feelings, explore dreams, and solve problems.
What makes you instantly upset, angry, or fearful? Can you trace them back to negative experiences in childhood? Perhaps your dad never truly listened to you, so now you feel rejected when your partner is too busy to pay attention.
When you identify where this pain originated, reassure your inner child that they are safe, loved, and heard.
Try spending time doing what you loved to do as a child.
Get out the coloring books, listen to music, play with clay, write a story, run barefoot in the grass, or watch an old cartoon.
The important thing is to feel creative and inspired again.
Play is built into our schedules as children — but play in adulthood is just as important.
In general, practicing meditation regularly can help people heal from past traumas. Research from 2017 suggests it may reduce stress and the effects of childhood trauma and improve health outcomes in adulthood.
Inner infant meditation is a powerful meditation developed by John Bradshaw, the pioneer of inner child work and author of the book “Homecoming.” In this meditation, you go back to reclaim your infant self and bring yourself “home.”
You can listen to Bradshaw’s inner infant meditation here.
There are numerous books and online resources to help you on your inner child journey. As mentioned above, “Homecoming” by John Bradshaw is a classic on healing your inner child.
“Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation” by Janina Fisher, PhD, offers insights into how trauma affects the child and adult self, plus ways to heal the wounded inner parts of yourself.
These simple at-home techniques can help support the deeper work you complete with a therapist in session where you can begin to reconstruct your sense of self to say, “I am enough,” or, “I do matter,” says Godfrey.
The Department of Veterans Affairs reports that between 14% and 43% of children experience at least one traumatic event. Of these, up to 15% of girls and 6% of boys will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
People with a history of repeated abuse or neglect may experience complex trauma as adults.
If you experienced trauma as a young child — particularly if it involved your parents or living situation — inner child work might be right for you.
This therapeutic technique allows you to work through the coping mechanisms you’ve developed along the way, so you can finally connect with your true authentic self.
If you have experienced trauma, consider contacting a mental health professional. There are many effective therapies for trauma to help relieve post-traumatic stress.
If you think inner child work could help you, you might reach out to a therapist specializing in this technique.
To learn more about trauma, its effects, and healing, you can check out Psych Central’s Finding a Path Through Trauma resources.
Read online “Return home. How to Heal and Support Your Inner Child, John Bradshaw - Litres
Dedicated to the wounded inner child in my mother, Norma.
To my sister Barbara and my brother Richard. Our inner children know better than anyone what it was like!
To my son John and my stepdaughter Brenda. Forgive me for taking out my wounds on you.
John Bradshaw
HOMECOMING:
Reclaiming And Championing Your Inner Child
Copyright © 1990 by John Bradshaw
This translation published by arrangement with Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC
., translated into Russian, 2022
© Eksmo Publishing Company LLC, 2022
Thanks
To my Higher Power, which showers me with blessings and grace.
Eric Berne, Robert and Mary Golding, Alice Miller, Eric Erickson, Lawrence Kohlberg, David Elkind, Rudolf Dreikurs, Fritz Perls, and Jean Piaget, who shared with me their knowledge of how the inner child develops and what hurts it.
Carl Jung, Robert Bligh and Edith Sulwald, who introduced me to the concept of the wonder child.
To Wayne Kritsberg, Claudia Black, Sharon Wegscheider-Cruz, Jane Middelton-Moz, Renée Fredrickson, Jean Illsley Clark, John and Laurie Weiss, Bob Subby, Berry and Janey Weinhold, Susan Forward, Roxy Lerner and above all Pamela Levin, who deepened my understanding of the inner child.
To Father David Belier, who loved even the worst version of me.
Fran Y., Mike S., Harry Mack, Bob McV., Bob P., Tommy B., Warner B., and Kind "Red" who were the first to receive my wounded inner child.
To Reverend Michael Falls, whose inner child shared his limitless experience with me and helped me get my miracle child back. Our inner children are our best friends.
Johnny Dougherty, George Pletcher, Kip Flock, and Patrick Carnes, my dearest friends who often show fatherly care for my inner child.
Our Mother Mary, Sister Mary Hubert, Virginia Satir, my Aunt Millie, Mary Bell and Nancy, who often took care of my injured little boy.
Sissy Davis, who loves him now.
Tony Burbank for her brilliant and insightful editorial work. Her help is irreplaceable.
To the entire Bantam publishing team, which has no equal.
Winston Laszlo and all those who work at the Bradshaw events in Denver, especially Mary Lawrence. Without them, the seminar on the inner child would not have taken place.
Karen Ferrita, my personal assistant and friend who helps my wounded inner child cope with her worries.
Mark Baker, Barbara Westerman and all the staff at Life Plus for their care and dedication.
And finally, to my sister Barbara Bradshaw, who diligently, day and night, typed and retyped this manuscript, sacrificing her personal affairs.
She has always been my support and selfless friend.
Prologue
I know what I want for Christmas. I want my childhood back. No one will give me such a gift ... I understand how pointless it is. But since when does Christmas have to make sense? It is celebrated in honor of a baby who lived a long time ago and far, far away, and it is celebrated in honor of a baby who lives now. In you and in me. Waiting behind the closed doors of our hearts for some miracle to happen.
ROBERT FULGAM
As I walked among the participants in my seminar, I was struck by how deeply they were immersed in the work. One hundred people, divided into groups of six or eight people, filled the auditorium. Each group was like a separate closed world, the inhabitants of which sat close to each other and constantly whispered. It was the second day of the seminar, we had already done a lot and exchanged a huge amount of information.
And yet, just yesterday, these people were total strangers to each other.
I moved closer to one of the groups. These people listened with intense attention to the gray-haired man. He read aloud the letter his inner child wrote to his father:
Dear Dad!
I want you to know how much pain you have caused me. You punished me more than you spent time with me. And I could endure all these welts and scars, if only we were together as often as possible. And I would not have enough words to say how much I wanted to feel your love. I wish you could play with me or take me to baseball. For you to tell me that you love me. I would like you to take care of me...
He covered his eyes with his hands. A middle-aged woman sitting next to him began to gently stroke his hair, a younger man leaned forward to take his hand. Another asked if he wanted to be hugged, and the white-haired man nodded.
Another group sat on the floor embracing.
An elegant woman in her seventies was reading her letter:
Mom, you were too busy doing your charity work. You never took the time to tell me that you love me. You paid attention to me only when I was sick or played the piano, which made me you proud of me. I could only show those emotions that brought you pleasure. I only mattered when I made you happy. You never loved myself . And I was so lonely...
Her voice broke and she began to cry. The wall of self-control that she had carefully maintained around her for seventy years began to crumble under the flood of her tears. The teenage girl hugged her. The young man said that there was no shame in crying and praised her for her courage.
I have moved to another group. A blind man in his thirties was reading a letter written in Braille:
I hated you because you were ashamed of me. You locked me in the garage so I wouldn't get in your way of having fun with your friends.
I never got enough food. I was so hungry. And I knew that you hated me because I was a burden to you. You laughed at me when I felt bad...
Now I was just obliged to continue. I could feel the last of my own wounded inner child's anger simmering, and I wanted to scream with rage and indignation. The sadness and loneliness of childhood seemed insurmountable. Is it even possible to recover from this boundless grief?
And yet, by the end of the day, the mood in the groups changed to peaceful and joyful. People sat together, some holding hands, most smiling as we did the final exercises. One by one, they thanked me for helping them find their wounded inner child. The bank's president, who had been skeptical at the start of the seminar, admitted to crying for the first time in forty years. As a child, he was severely beaten by his father and vowed to be steadfast and never show his feelings. Now he said he would learn to take care of the lonely boy inside of him.
Even his face softened and looked younger.
At the beginning of the workshop, I asked the participants to take off their masks and come out of hiding. I explained that when they hid their wounded inner child, it poisoned their lives with angry outbursts, overreactions, family problems, addictions, toxic parenting practices, and destructive and painful relationships.
I must have struck a chord with them, because they responded to my call. I felt both excitement and gratitude as I looked at their open, smiling faces. This workshop was held at 1983 year. Since then, I have become more and more in awe of the healing power of the inner child.
There are three amazing benefits to working with the inner child: the speed with which people change, the depth of change that occurs to them, and the power and creativity that unfolds once the wounds of the past are healed.
I started working with the inner child over twelve years ago using impromptu meditation in therapy sessions with some of my clients.
But this meditation led to very impressive results. When people first came into contact with their inner child, they often experienced it very emotionally. Sometimes they literally burst into sobs, after which they told me: "I've been waiting all my life for someone to truly understand me", "It's like coming home", "My life has changed since I became friends with my inner child" or something like that.
Seeing this kind of feedback, I developed a whole workshop to help people find and accept their inner child. I have developed this seminar over the years, mainly through constant dialogue with those who took part in it. This is the most significant achievement that I have managed to achieve in my work.
The workshop aims to help people overcome and accept unresolved childhood experiences and grudges - the wounds that arose from feelings of abandonment, from abuse in all its forms, from the neglect of psychological needs in the developmental process, as well as because of problems in the work of the family system as a whole.
(I'll talk about all this in more detail a little later.)
We spend most of the time in the workshop rethinking our psychological needs that we were denied as children. This is also the main focus of this book.
I know from experience that the concept of gradual development and becoming a person is the most thoughtful and effective way to heal our emotional wounds. I believe that the focus on healing at each stage of development is unique to my workshop.
During the workshop I explain what are normal psychological needs in childhood. If they are not satisfied, we tend to grow into adults with a wounded child inside. In other words, if our needs were met, we would never have turned into "adult children."
After I introduce the participants of the seminar to the needs inherent in each specific stage of development, they are divided into small groups. Then each in turn finds himself in the center of attention of people who express their concern for him.
They give him or her words of comfort and support that a person needed to hear in infancy, at an early age, in the preschool years, and so on.
Depending on each individual's personal boundaries, group members may hug each other, give encouragement, or otherwise acknowledge the significance of childhood experiences. Hearing words of support, which he [1] badly needed in childhood, but which he was deprived of, a person, as a rule, begins to cry. Sometimes it's just a quiet cry, but sometimes it turns into sobs. Part of the old, frozen grief inside begins to thaw. By the end of the seminar, each participant has time to at least partially mourn their childhood wounds. It all depends on where the person is on their journey as they approach the healing process. Some people, before getting to the seminar, already have time to do a lot, others are just starting their first steps.
Towards the end of the workshop, I teach participants a meditation that helps them accept their inner child.
At this point, many people experience a strong emotional outburst. As participants leave the workshop, I encourage them to spend some time each day in dialogue with their inner child.
As soon as people accept their inner child and begin to care for him, his amazing creative energy begins to manifest in them.
Having become one with them, their inner child turns into a source of rebirth and new vitality. Carl Jung called the inner child the “wonder child”—our innate potential for discovery, reverence, and creative being.
The workshop proved that working with the inner child is the fastest and most effective way to achieve therapeutic change in people. And this almost instantaneous effect never ceases to amaze me.
I'm usually skeptical of any quick fix, but this work was the starting point for a long process of transformation. A year or two after the seminar ended, people kept writing me letters claiming that it had completely changed their lives.
I was flattered and at the same time somewhat confused. I really did not understand why the work done had a serious impact on some people and barely affected others. As I searched for explanations, a picture gradually began to emerge.
I first turned to the work of Eric Berne, the creative genius who gave the world transactional analysis (TA). Theory of T.A. puts the main emphasis on the "ego-state of the child", which determines all the impulses that arise in the child in a spontaneous way. T.A. also describes how child adapts to the pressures and stresses of early married life.
The natural or miracle child appears when you meet an old friend, when you laugh heartily, when you are creative and spontaneous, when you are in awe of the amazing.
An adapted or injured child appears when you refuse to run a red light even though you realize the traffic light is broken, or decide to run a red light because no one is around and you think you can get away with it.
Other behaviors of an injured child may include tantrums, excessive politeness and obedience, lisping, manipulation and resentment. In chapter 1, I will discuss other ways that an injured child poisons your adult life.
Although I used T.A. as my main therapeutic model for many years, I have never focused my work on the various stages of development that the inner child goes through in the process of adapting for its own survival. Now I believe that the lack of an evolutionary view is a shortcoming of most work based on the theory of T.A. The development of our miracle child can be interrupted at absolutely any stage. Already as adults, we can behave infantile, choose for ourselves the model of behavior of small children. We can keep believing in miracles like preschoolers, or we can get offended and quit like a first grader who loses a game. All of these behaviors are childish and represent different levels of delayed childhood development. The main purpose of this book is to help you heal your wounded inner child.
0056 at every stage of development .
The work of hypnotherapist Milton Erickson has further influenced my work. Erickson believed that each person has a unique unconscious map of the world, an internal belief system that is a kind of hypnotic trance. Using Ericksonian hypnosis, I learned to naturally connect with the trance state my clients were already in and use it to expand and change the unconscious. What I didn't realize until I got deeper into working with the inner child is that it is the wounded inner child that forms our core belief system. Already in adulthood, plunging into the state of the trance of the inner child, one can quickly and directly change a person's basic beliefs.
Therapist Ron Kurtz deepened my understanding of the dynamics of working with the inner child. The Kurtz method, called Hakomi Therapy, focuses directly on our core. The core is a reflection of the structure of our inner experience . It takes in our earliest feelings, beliefs, and memories and is formed in response to the stresses of the world around us during our childhood.
The core is illogical and primitive, and at the same time is the only way by which a magical, vulnerable, dependent and limitless child is able to survive.
Once the core is formed, it becomes a filter through which all subsequent life experience passes. This explains why some people keep choosing the same type of destructive romantic relationship, why others' lives are like a series of repetitive traumas, and why many of us don't learn from our mistakes.
Freud called this urge to relive the past "compulsive repetition." The great modern therapist Alice Miller defined it as "the logic of the absurd." Both concepts are justified when you understand how our core defines life experience. Imagine that you are wearing sunglasses without taking off: no matter how much sunlight is around you, you will perceive only what the filters will allow you to see. Through green glasses the world will appear green. You can hardly see bright colors through brown glasses.
Obviously, if we ever want to change, we will have to change our core.
Since it was our inner child that formed our initial life experience, getting in touch with him is the surest way to immediately change the core.
Working with the inner child is a new and important therapeutic tool and is very different from the therapy of the past. Freud was the first to understand that our neuroses and disorders are the result of unresolved childhood conflicts that recur throughout our lives. He tried to heal the wounded inner child by creating a safe environment that would allow him to emerge and express his unmet needs to the therapist. The therapist then assumed the role of parent so that the wounded inner child could resolve his inner conflicts and thereby heal his wounds.
Freud's method required a huge investment of time and money and often caused an unhealthy addiction in the patient. One of my clients came to me after ten years of psychoanalysis. Even when I was already working with her, she continued to call her previous therapist two or three times a week to ask for his advice on the most trivial matters.
The psychoanalyst really became a good parent for her inner child. However, he hardly cared about her. Rather, she depended terribly on his opinion. Genuine concern would help her gain and use her adult powers, which are needed to raise her inner child.
In this book, I will offer you a new way to get in touch with your inner child, how to get back in touch with him and take care of him. You must do everything I suggest to you if you want to make real change. It is the adult part of you that can decide whether or not to do this work .
Even if you are stuck in the state of a child, your adult self will still know what stage of life you are at and what you are doing.
Your inner child will experience everything in the same way as he experienced it for the first time in childhood, only this time your adult "I" will be there to protect and support him when he closes unresolved once important problems for himself.
This book is divided into four parts.
Part I is about how your miracle child got lost in this world and how childhood wounds continue to poison your adult life.
Part II will take you through each stage of your child's development again and figure out what you really needed to grow up in a healthy way. Each chapter has a questionnaire to help you determine if your inner child's needs have been met at a particular stage. Then I will share with you the techniques and methods I use in my workshop to help bring back the inner child at every stage.
Part III contains specific corrective exercises that will help your inner child develop and thrive, learn how to get other adults to meet some of your inner child’s needs in a healthy way, and build protective boundaries for him as you work on the intimacy of your inner child. relations. You will learn how you can become the caring parent you never had as a child. When you learn to take on the role of a parent in your attempts to heal the wounds of the past, you will stop forcing other people to play the role of your parents.
In Part IV you will see a healed wounded child making way for your miracle child. You will learn how to access his untapped talents and realize that he is the most creative and transformative power you have. Your miracle child is the part of you that is most like our Creator and can lead to a deep relationship with our unique self and with God as you understand him. This is the most profound healing of all, offered by the greatest teachers of our faiths.
Along the way, I'll tell you my own story. When I first began this work twelve years ago, I could not have imagined the changes in my mind and behavior that would result from getting to know my inner child. I have always belittled the influence of my childhood and have been obsessed with idealizing and protecting my parents, especially my mother. As a child, I often said to myself: “When I grow up and leave here, everything will be fine.” As the years went by, I realized that things were only getting worse. I noted this in other members of my family more clearly than I could see by looking at myself.
Ten years after I beat alcoholism, I found myself still addicted to my addictions.
One rainy Thursday I suddenly felt what Alice Miller wrote about her own inner child in her book The Body Doesn't Lie , I made a decision that fundamentally changed my life: to let the child lead me.
That day I made the decision to come back and protect my inner child. I found him terrified out of his wits. At first he did not trust me and did not want to go with me. It was only through persistent attempts to talk to him and prove to him that I would not leave him again that I began to gradually win his trust. In this book, I will tell you about all the stages of my journey that allowed me to become a friend and protector of my inner child. This trip changed my whole life.
The book Return home. How to Heal and Support Your Inner Child
Homecoming. How to heal and support your inner child
John Bradshaw
Trauma and healing.
Psychotherapist Stories
John Bradshaw, a famous American psychologist, was one of the first to describe how the inner child develops and what could hurt him in our childhood - from infancy to adolescence.
In his iconic book Homecoming, Bradshaw helps to overcome and accept childhood unresolved hurts and resentments—wounds from feelings of abandonment, abuse, neglect of psychological needs, and “poisonous shame”—feelings of inferiority instilled in childhood trauma. .
The author's unique method of healing a wounded inner child will help you rethink your childhood with wisdom and calmness and free yourself forever from pain rooted in the past.
John Bradshaw
Homecoming. How to Heal and Support Your Inner Child
Dedicated to the wounded inner child in my mother, Norma.
To my sister Barbara and my brother Richard. Our inner children know better than anyone what it was like!
To my son John and my stepdaughter Brenda. Forgive me for taking out my wounds on you.
John Bradshaw
HOMECOMING:
Reclaiming And Championing Your Inner Child
Copyright © 1990 by John Bradshaw
© Battista V.D., translation into Russian, 2022
© Eksmo Publishing LLC, 2022
Thanks
To my Higher Power who showers me with blessings and grace.
Eric Berne, Robert and Mary Golding, Alice Miller, Eric Erickson, Lawrence Kohlberg, David Elkind, Rudolf Dreikurs, Fritz Perls, and Jean Piaget, who shared with me their knowledge of how the inner child develops and what hurts it.
Carl Jung, Robert Bligh, and Edith Sulwald, who introduced me to the concept of the wonder child.
To Wayne Kritsberg, Claudia Black, Sharon Wegscheider-Cruz, Jane Middelton-Moz, Renée Fredrickson, Jean Illsley Clark, John and Laurie Weiss, Bob Subby, Berry and Janey Weinhold, Susan Forward, Roxy Lerner and above all Pamela Levin, who deepened my understanding of the inner child.
To Father David Bellier, who loved even the worst version of me.
Fran Y., Mike S., Harry Mack, Bob McV., Bob P., Tommy B., Warner B., and Kind "Red" who were the first to receive my wounded inner child.
To Reverend Michael Falls, whose inner child shared his limitless experience with me and helped me get my miracle child back. Our inner children are our best friends.
Johnny Dougherty, George Pletcher, Kip Flock, and Patrick Carnes, my dearest friends who often show fatherly care for my inner child.
Our Mother Mary, Sister Mary Hubert, Virginia Satir, my Aunt Millie, Mary Bell and Nancy, who often took care of my injured little boy.
Sissy Davis who loves him now.
Tony Burbank for her brilliant and insightful editorial work. Her help is irreplaceable.
To the entire Bantam publishing team, which has no equal.
Winston Laszlo and all those who work at the Bradshaw events in Denver, especially Mary Lawrence. Without them, the seminar on the inner child would not have taken place.
Karen Ferrita, my personal assistant and friend, who helps my wounded inner child cope with his worries.
Mark Baker, Barbara Westerman and all Life Plus staff for their care and dedication.
And finally, to my sister Barbara Bradshaw, who diligently, day and night, typed and retyped this manuscript, sacrificing her personal affairs. She has always been my support and selfless friend.
Prologue
I know what I want for Christmas. I want my childhood back. No one will give me such a gift ... I understand how pointless it is. But since when does Christmas have to make sense? It is celebrated in honor of a baby who lived a long time ago and far, far away, and it is celebrated in honor of a baby who lives now. In you and in me. Waiting behind the closed doors of our hearts for some miracle to happen.
ROBERT FULGAM
As I walked among the participants in my seminar, I was struck by how deeply they were immersed in the work. One hundred people, divided into groups of six or eight people, filled the auditorium. Each group was like a separate closed world, the inhabitants of which sat close to each other and constantly whispered.
It was the second day of the seminar, we had already done a lot and exchanged a huge amount of information. And yet, just yesterday, these people were total strangers to each other.
I moved closer to one of the groups. These people listened with intense attention to the gray-haired man. He read aloud the letter his inner child wrote to his father:
Dear Dad!
I want you to know how much pain you have caused me. You punished me more than you spent time with me. And I could endure all these welts and scars, if only we were together as often as possible. And I would not have enough words to say how much I wanted to feel your love. I wish you could play with me or take me to baseball. For you to tell me that you love me. I would like you to take care of me...
He covered his eyes with his hands. A middle-aged woman sitting next to him began to gently stroke his hair, a younger man leaned forward to take his hand. Another asked if he wanted to be hugged, and the white-haired man nodded.
Another group sat on the floor embracing. An elegant woman in her seventies was reading her letter:
Mom, you were too busy with your charity work. You never took the time to tell me that you love me. You paid attention to me only when I was sick or played the piano, which made you proud of me. I could only show those emotions that brought you pleasure. I only mattered when I made you happy. You never loved me myself. And I was so alone...
Her voice broke and she began to cry. The wall of self-control that she had carefully maintained around her for seventy years began to crumble under the flood of her tears. The teenage girl hugged her. The young man said that there was no shame in crying and praised her for her courage.
I have moved to another group. A blind man in his thirties was reading a letter written in Braille:
I hated you because you were ashamed of me. You locked me in the garage so I wouldn't get in your way of having fun with your friends.
I never got enough food. I was so hungry. And I knew that you hated me because I was a burden to you. You laughed at me when I felt bad...
Now I simply had to continue. I could feel the last of my own wounded inner child's anger simmering, and I wanted to scream with rage and indignation. The sadness and loneliness of childhood seemed insurmountable. Is it even possible to recover from this boundless grief?
And yet, by the end of the day, the mood in the groups changed to peaceful and joyful. People sat together, some holding hands, most smiling as we did the final exercises. One by one, they thanked me for helping them find their wounded inner child. The bank's president, who had been skeptical at the start of the seminar, admitted to crying for the first time in forty years. As a child, he was severely beaten by his father and vowed to be steadfast and never show his feelings. Now he said he would learn to take care of the lonely boy inside of him. Even his face softened and looked younger.
