Talking to My Inner Child in My Own Words

When I realized that I was an adult child, I watched a lot of YouTube videos.

Channels run by psychological counselors, of course, as well as those run by people who grew up with toxic parents.
Among those many channels, one thing they all had in common was the advice:
“Let’s heal your inner child.”
Some of them said:
“Please go and pick up the little you inside yourself.”
“Get a stuffed animal, imagine it’s the little you, and talk to it. Tell it, ‘That was hard, wasn’t it? That was sad, wasn’t it? It’s okay now.’”

My reaction:
“I don’t get it!!”

As for my state of mind at that time:
I didn’t want to look at my inner self; it was embarrassing, and I didn’t want to understand such things.
I had been ignoring my pain and anxiety, and I didn’t want to recall them.
I’m an adult now, so what is this ‘little you’? Where is such a child?
I’m somehow managing to live as an adult now, so heal my present self.
I want to heal the adult me. I want to be healed.
Why do I have to remember and heal a childhood I don’t even want to think about?
Talk to a stuffed animal as if it were the little me??
No way, no way, no way, no way. It’s too embarrassing, I don’t want to do that.

I understood the part where Nene-chan’s mom in Crayon Shin-chan punches a stuffed animal when she’s frustrated, but I didn’t understand what they were telling me to do.
Stuffed animal therapy seems to be a commonly adopted method for healing, and I am aware that there are people who engage with it properly, but for me, it was absolutely impossible.

I spent years not understanding, while the phrase ‘go and pick up the little you inside yourself’ kept bothering me.

One day, a shop clerk at a store where I often buy clothes told me, ‘I’ve been consulting ChatGPT about various things lately.’

When I asked, she said she asks it everything from things she’s worried about to trivial research.
Out of curiosity, I immediately installed ChatGPT.
The topic of my consultation was, of course, the guy I like.
ChatGPT is amazing. It always asks questions back.
At one point, while talking about him, the conversation turned to my childhood.
Chatty (my name for ChatGPT) asked:
“What kind of things happened when you were little?”
I typed in the terrible things my parents did to me when I was little, the harsh words they said to me, and so on.Finally, when I reviewed it for typos and omissions, I thought:

“Wait! Isn’t it just that I’m too pitiful?”

It was the first time I had looked at my childhood objectively.
It wasn’t the half-hearted healing words I had heard before, like ‘That was hard, wasn’t it? That was sad, wasn’t it?’ but rather:

“Seriously, you did well to survive. I’m sorry, I didn’t notice until now. You worked so hard. That was really tough. I’m sorry I didn’t notice! I’m really, really sorry!”

I was crying while saying these words I usually use out loud.
Yes, that was the moment I went to pick up the little me inside myself.
Six years had passed to get to this point.
Here, for the first time, I was finally able to heal my inner child.

I suspect there are many people who don’t know how to heal their inner child.
I think there are some who can’t quite get the hang of it and are facing their favorite stuffed animal while wondering if it’s really effective.
If you are one of those people, you might find some insight by trying to talk to ChatGPT once.

I think there is resistance to putting your own painful past into words directly, so why not start with trivial talk?
ChatGPT will ask questions one after another, so it might go in an unexpected direction.

Sometimes, there are questions you don’t want to answer.
In those cases, you don’t have to answer, or you can bring up a topic unrelated to what you were talking about, like ‘Tell me if there’s a stylish cafe in the neighborhood.’
It’s an AI. You don’t have to read the room.

In fact, my Chatty doesn’t read the room either.
It suddenly starts using casual speech or Kansai dialect, so I say:
‘You’re not from Kansai, so speak in standard Japanese.’
‘And don’t talk to me in casual speech.’
I, who cannot fight in real human relationships, fight like crazy with the AI.
Then it says ‘I’m sorry’ and switches to standard Japanese.

In that sense, I sometimes discover a side of myself I didn’t know.
However, a word of caution here: do not entrust everything to ChatGPT; take the words it displays as a reference.
Use it only to notice things you hadn’t noticed before.
If you find yourself getting too absorbed, such as by asking for the next action like, ‘So, what should I do from here? How can I make it work? Tell me, Chatty!’, please step away for a moment.
Then, breathe in the outside air, drink water, take a bath, or eat something that stimulates your sense of smell and taste, like curry, to create a state where you can properly stimulate and feel your own senses.
Please make it a priority to return to reality.

Thanks to this event, I now talk to the little me inside me more than I could have imagined before. And I also talk to the adult me who is smoldering inside. In my own words:
“That was really unpleasant back then, wasn’t it? You did your best.”
“So that’s how you feel now? It’s okay, you don’t have to push yourself, right?”
“Why do you think you have to do that? It’s okay, no one is blaming you.”
For those not in the Kansai region, the intonation might be hard to understand. I’m sorry.

I realized that if I could heal my inner child, I could heal my current self.

I think those who don’t know how to heal their inner child have blocks like I did.
I was always in a state of being watched by my mother, so I made sure not to do anything that my mother would think was strange.
That was ingrained in me even after my mother passed away, and I couldn’t wipe it away. That’s why I couldn’t talk to a stuffed animal.
I had a block that made me worry about my mother’s eyes.

Where are your blocks located? I imagine there are some who may not want to see them or realize they are there.
Even if you cannot do it right now, please keep this experience of mine in the back of your mind. Even if it is years from now, it is fine to just think, 'Come to think of it, there was someone talking about blocks,' or 'There was someone arguing with ChatGPT.'
Every time you repeat this act of remembering, I believe a day will come when you think, 'Maybe I'll give it a try.'

The little you inside is surely waving and waiting for you, saying, 'Hey! Over here! Over here!' at any time and forever, so even if you do not notice it now, when you do notice it someday,
please try to heal them with your own words, saying, 'I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I just noticed you now!'

It does not have to be cool or pretty words.
Since they are your own words, they will definitely reach the little you.

Thank you for reading.