What connecting With My Inner Child Taught Me about My History of Depression

A few months ago I recorded an inner child meditation for the Creating Money Magic course and something weird happened - it disappeared.

Students asked me what happened to it and I couldn't find it anywhere in my files, I must have deleted it from the course and my laptop.

Students kept messaging me about it and after lots of promises, I finally re-recorded it, gave everyone in the Money Magicians Facebook group 24 hour access to it a few days ago and suggested we all do it together (these are the benefits of being in the group).

We've been sharing our insights from the meditation in the group. Here are mine:

most of Our fears of rejection come from the school playground

I don’t remember much about my childhood, this is why the inner child meditations are so powerful for me.

During one such meditation, I remembered how everyone at school used to tease me and call me dead alive. 

There was a general belief that I sucked at everything, dead alive (they actually called me that as a nickname for years) and creepy because I’d sometimes speak to beings they couldn’t see and I just knew things.

Only certain kids were okay being around me and not many kids liked me.

I was always the last kid to be chosen to be on any team.

Every time I had to do things with other kids I was anxious because I knew I’d never get chosen.

The crazy thing is my best friend was the most popular kid at school and she adored me and would always choose me if she was playing.

But she was in a higher grade than me, which meant we didn't often do things together.

How we process life and events in childhood impacts our emotions our teens

As you can imagine, school was torture for me and by the age of 8, I was already falling into depression, had trained myself to keep secrets, never ask for anything, to rely only on myself and to have very few needs.

I trained myself never to ask for anything, not because my parents couldn't afford it, but because I never knew how they'd react - their emotions were all over the place (far from emotionally intelligent) so I learned to manage them by shrinking into myself.

I felt alone and isolated and was depressed and in therapy buy the age of 13.

My depression resurfaced in 2008 and eventually later lead me to do this work.

The inner child meditation helped me see that my depression started long before my teens and is influenced by how I processed life as a child.

I learned to get love by denying my own needs, refusing to receive anything and becoming a giver.

I feel a little embarrassed that I still get into this mode of giving to get love and it's still hard for me to receive in romantic relationships.

I’d rather give than take and I see how that plays out in all aspects of my life.

In the meditation I remembered my mom telling me that people give money as a way to control us; she explained that this was the main reason that men gave in romantic relationships.

This story has stayed with me and has been playing out in every area of my life - this fear of being controlled if I allow myself to receive.

Even writing this feels so uncomfortable for me and is making me cry, I just want to crawl somewhere and never do this work again but of course that won't happen.

What childhood events are impacting your adult behaviors?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.