To Love Me Is To Love My Wounded Inner Child

On the slow burn of healing in relationships

This essay is for anyone tired of their wounds showing up in relationships. I want you to know, you are not alone and every part of you is lovable.

I consider myself a very self-aware and emotionally mature human being. I wrote a book on healing. I’ve cultivated a following of hundreds of thousands from making content about self-empowerment. I’ve gone to therapy nearly every week for 10 years. I’ve sat in multiple plant medicine ceremonies. I meditate. I journal. I practice self-care. And still, my childhood wounds show up in my relationships when I don’t want them to.

An example:

I am occasionally terrified my friends and partner secretly think I am annoying and too much. This is because I spent a lot of my childhood being told I was too sensitive and too weird. When I came out as queer and my parents rejected me, that experience compounded this “too muchness” and a belief took residence in my subconscious that the people I love will eventually realize I am too much to love and abandon me. Therefore, I need to limit how much I share and what I ask for.

For the sake of this essay, let’s call my childhood wound of believing I am too much, “Chi Chi”.

My years of healing has helped me understand Chi Chi and I’ve made a lot of progress with her. (Chi Chi has she/her pronouns btw)

I know that my past is not a prison and I deserve to be loved for who I am.

But I wouldn’t be honest with myself if I didn’t acknowledge that Chi Chi still impacts my choices.

On a group thread with a couple of my friends last week, I shared some of my deepest fears, insecurities and also talked about a traumatic experience I had as a kid that I had never revealed to them before. In the moment, it felt really healing. They responded with so much kindness and compassion.

However hours later I was laying in bed trying to go to sleep and I felt a pit in my stomach. I shared too much. They must have been so weirded out. I grabbed my phone to reread what I had told them. Oh no. Why didn’t I stop myself? I’m so annoying. They just felt sorry for me, that’s why they kept responding. I bet they are happy I finally stopped texting.

Chi Chi had returned. And she was out for blood.

Why? Because when I go beyond the patterns she has ingrained into me—i.e. push through the fears of being too much and let myself be vulnerable with other people—there is always backlash from her. And when she has taken over, I don’t realize it’s backlash for being brave. I just feel humiliated and embarrassed. This particular night last week was really bad. Probably because I had shared such tender memories. I felt so raw and so ridiculous. I cried into my pillow.

Can I just say? I am so sick of Chi Chi! I want to be free of her! She makes me feel like shit! She sabotages my happiness! She takes a perfectly healthy experience and turns it toxic.

I don’t want my childhood wounds to keep haunting my relationships. I’m 42 years old. Enough already!

The other day in couple’s therapy during a particularly exacerbating moment when I realized Chi Chi had once again tried to convince me that asking for something I needed from my partner was going to end in rejection, I said “When are my childhood wounds going to stop showing up in this relationship?” To which our therapist responded very calmly, “Never”.

Ummm, what? I can’t say I fully believe that. I mean, I don’t want to believe that! I want Chi Chi to go away!!!

Ok, now I feel bad. Because, truth be told, I care about Chi Chi. I don’t want to hurt her feelings. She’s been through so much. She’s trying to protect me from the heartbreak she (we) felt all those years ago.

And as annoying as Chi Chi can be I also have to admit I am proud of her. She has taught me so much about empathy, compassion and patience with the people I am in relationship with because I can more easily recognize when their childhood wounds have shown up, aka their Chi Chi’s (or whatever they want to call them or not call them because let’s be honest, most people are not giving their trauma a name.)

I’ve also noticed that some of the closest people in my life have very similar Chi Chi’s because we have been through a lot of the same struggles. And we have a particular talent for validating each other in the ways we need it most.

The following morning I told my friends on the group thread about my spiral of insecurity for sharing so much with them and how it triggered an old wound of mine of being too much.

To which they both responded