When I find myself in a vulnerable position I may feel loneliness, sadness, grief, guilt, anxiety, disappointment, shame, fear, embarrassment or anger.

In my final year of college I failed an assignment on one module.  Dyslexia meant writing assignments were a challenge for me.

I was given this news in a child’s play therapy room which the college uses for counselling sessions for children. Sitting there in this room, on a lower chair than the lecturer, I felt anger and deep shame. I instantly recognised the feeling of shame from my schooldays.  I never felt good enough academically back then. I also felt really angry towards the person giving me the news.

When I felt grounded enough I asked the lecturer for a moment. We all have an inner child, because we were children first. In this moment my inner child –‘Little Ger’, needed to speak. I took a teddy from one of the shelves in the room and said “‘Little Ger’ is feeling low and disappointed and needs a hug right now because he didn’t do very well in school. He also feels angry at you for giving me my results in a play therapy room because it reminds him of his old classroom”. I instantly felt much better and told the lecturer he could proceed. This inner child technique that I teach clients is very powerful when we say it to ourselves quietly in our mind (as I was in a room full of psychotherapists, this was an exception and it allowed me to vocalise my inner child out loud as they understood). It can soothe the nervous system very quickly if emotions from the past become activated and we feel overwhelmed.

When an uncomfortable emotion feels very overwhelming it is usually associated with a painful memory from our past and we may find ourselves acting out and afterwards wondering why we reacted so much. Our nervous system has been hijacked. These reminders of the past are everywhere. One minute we are having a great day and the next we feel irritated, annoyed, upset and reactive towards another person or a situation we find ourselves in. Without awareness of what is happening for us and helpful techniques to soothe ourselves these emotions can begin to dictate our life and become destructive to relationships.