Recovering Frozen Parts of Ourselves

 When we experience trauma as children, or even as adults, we may not have the tools, skills, or understanding to process what has happened to us.

Sometimes, we simply do what we need to do to survive.

We push our feelings aside.

We learn not to talk about what hurts.

We become good at carrying on, even when something inside us is still hurting.

Perhaps parts of us become frozen in those moments—not literally frozen in our bodies, but emotionally stuck in experiences we didn’t know how to understand or work through at the time.

I have discovered many of these frozen parts of myself over the years.

Parts of me that were afraid.

Parts that felt ashamed.

Parts that learned to stay quiet, please others, or prepare for the worst.

Parts that never really had the opportunity to feel safe enough to let go of their fear.

For a long time, I didn’t fully understand how much of my childhood I was still carrying.

I knew what had happened. I could talk about it. I could explain it to other people.

There is a difference between knowing I am no longer that frightened little girl and feeling safe enough inside myself to stop living as though I still am.

Lately, I have found myself wondering about the chronic pain I have been dealing with.

Could my body be trying to get my attention?

Could there be parts of myself that still need to be heard, understood, and cared for?

I don’t know but I am curious about the connection between the pain I feel physically and the emotions that have been rising to the surface.

I have noticed how easily physical pain can awaken old feelings of helplessness, fear, and being trapped.

Perhaps, alongside seeking answers for my physical symptoms, I can use this time to listen more compassionately to myself.

To notice what I feel.

To recognize when an old fear has been awakened.

To meet the little girl inside me without asking her to hurry up and heal.

I have spent so many years helping others understand their childhood wounds. I have taught inner-child work, explored my own recovery, and learned so much about the ways we adapt to survive.

And yet, I am discovering that there may still be parts of me waiting for my attention.

That doesn’t mean I have failed at healing.

Healing is not a destination we reach once and for all.

It is an ongoing process of discovering ourselves more deeply, meeting what we find with compassion, and learning new ways to care for the parts of us that once felt alone.

I don’t want to force those frozen parts of myself to thaw.

I don’t want to dig for memories or search for explanations that may not be there.

I want to create enough gentleness and safety that whatever needs my attention can emerge in its own time.

No pressure.

No judgment.

No demand that I figure everything out today.

Just a willingness to listen.

Maybe recovering these parts of ourselves is not about going back and changing what happened.

Maybe it is about bringing the love, understanding, and protection we have now to the places within us that never received enough of them then.

I cannot change the little girl’s past.

But I can be present with her now.

I can let her know that her feelings matter and that we can face what comes one day at a time.

Perhaps this is another part of finding our way home.

Not searching endlessly for what is wrong with us, but gently welcoming back the parts of ourselves we had to leave behind in order to survive.

And perhaps, as I continue this journey, I will discover that there is more of me waiting to come home than I ever realized.

What’s Under Addiction?

 Reflecting on my history, I can see that addiction of some kind has been present through much of my life.

The forms may have changed, but the pattern often remained the same.

And this morning, I found myself asking a question.

What is underneath addiction?

What was I trying to find?

What was I trying not to feel?

And what parts of myself was I afraid to meet?

I hung tightly to my addiction to men. It wasn’t always the same man, but the attachment was there. I wanted someone beside me. Someone who could make me feel loved, protected, and safe.

Looking back, I wonder how much of that longing belonged to the little girl inside me who had spent so much of her childhood feeling alone and afraid.

Perhaps she was still searching for the safety she had never been able to count on.

And it wasn’t only relationships.

I can see how many of my behaviors followed an addictive pattern. There was something I wanted to feel, something I wanted to hold on to, or something I wanted to escape.

I didn’t always understand what was driving me.

I only knew that I wanted to feel better.

So this morning, I decided to trust my intuition and look beneath the behaviors.

What is under addiction?

Pain.

Sorrow.

Fear.

The very emotions I grew up feeling.

Could it be that, in so many different ways, I was trying to get away from feelings that had been with me since childhood?

Perhaps I was searching for relief without fully understanding what I needed relief from.

Perhaps I was trying to fill an emptiness I didn’t know how to name.

Or perhaps I was trying to quiet a frightened little girl who had never learned how to feel safe in her own world.

When I look at her now, I don’t see someone who needs to be judged.

I see a little girl who wants to feel good.

Who wants to feel safe.

Who wants to feel loved.

There is nothing wrong with those needs.

They are the needs of a child.

But perhaps she learned to look outside herself for something she desperately needed inside: a sense of worth, a sense of belonging, and the feeling that she was going to be okay.

I wish I could go back and tell her that she never needed to earn love.

That she didn’t have to hold on so tightly to someone else to be worthy of being loved.

That her pain did not make her weak, and her fear did not make her broken.

She was simply a little girl trying to find her way through feelings that were too big for her to understand.

And perhaps the woman she became continued searching for ways to make those feelings go away.

Today, I am beginning to understand that looking beneath addiction is not about finding more reasons to blame myself.

It is about discovering what was hurting.

It is about meeting the feelings I may have spent years trying to escape.

And it is about learning to offer that little girl something different now.

Compassion

Understanding.

And a love that doesn’t require her to abandon herself.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers.

I am still discovering what lies beneath the patterns of my life.

But perhaps the questions themselves are leading me somewhere new.

Maybe I no longer need to ask only, “How do I stop this behavior?”

Maybe I can also ask, “What is hurting inside me, and what do I need?”

If I am willing to listen for the answer, perhaps that is where a different kind of healing begins.