@nnekaatto

3 years ago

What an interesting experience, this was! It didn't quite go how I was expecting, but it went exactly as it needed to. My inner child presented herself to me as my 12-year-old self. The best way for me to describe her is "plucky." She's curious, witty, and fun-loving. She makes me smile. The true hypnosis had barely begun when I was brought to a memory of a camping trip that I had taken with my Grade 7 class, where I was on a canoe in a life jacket with an older male camp counsellor, far out into the lake. I couldn't swim, and this was distressing to me at the time, but they assured me that everything would be okay. Even still, I was nervous. And the camp counsellor was saying things to me that my younger self didn't understand at the time yet made me very uncomfortable - but my adult self, immediately, knew what was happening and could sense the danger. I was reliving the scene as my younger self, looking through her eyes, and I could feel her fear - OUR fear. And all I hear in my conscious mind is, "I'm not safe! I'm not safe!" So, despite Michael's earlier instructions (it hadn't even reached the point where we could enter a memory yet), I somehow, as my adult self, went in the memory and grabbed my inner child, leading her away from that man, and we both continued listening to the meditation instructions together. I could feel her disposition changing. She, immediately, felt at peace and showed me her true nature: her plucky, curious, witty self. As we went on, "further down", she would comment on things we were seeing, ask me questions about what was happening, and was just, genuinely, excited about this little journey we were going on. She was happy to have left that canoe on that lake. When we arrived at the "memory bubbles" and looked on into the different scenarios playing out in each bubble, she would smile and laugh, pointing at certain ones, saying "I remember that!" But the one bubble, the one memory, I was really drawn to was the one from which she wanted to escape. I reached towards it - but she objected in a stoic manner, all smiles gone. "I don't wanna go back there," she said. But I knew I had to. There was something there that I needed to face. So off we went. Now, I'm the one sitting across from her in the canoe. I look back into her face, and she's SO scared. Her eyes are large and filled with dread, anxiousness, and worry. Instinctively, I reach out to hold her face in my hands, stroke her hair, try to comfort her a little. I call her "sweetheart", hug her, kiss her forehead, tell her how amazing she is, how proud of her I am. I assure her, with all of my might, that nothing that has happened is her fault; she's done her very best, and I'm so proud. I tell her how much I love her, how beautiful she is. I tell her of all the challenges that she's going to overcome - and that, one day, she'll even get to sing on a stage when she's older. She looked back at me in amazement. "You're really nice", she said to me. "You're like someone I can trust." When I asked her what message she has for me, all she said was "I love you. I feel like you don't really hear that a lot, so I wanted to tell you." Then I asked her if there's anything I can do for her? And she answered, "Don't leave me." I smiled and assured her that I never will because she's a part of me, and I'm a part of her. Strangely enough, though, she didn't recognize me as herself; she thought I was someone else, entirely. She looked at me, shocked, and said, "You're so pretty!" And I told her, "so are you. You're beautiful. Never let anyone make you believe otherwise." When the time came for her to give me a parting gift, she gave me this character that I used to draw, called "Da Tomato." Just as the name intended, it was a stylized red tomato with wacky green hair and a big smile on his face. To her, it was a symbol of "doing whatever you want and being happy." I then asked her what I can do, right now, in my adult life to be happy. And she looked at me, confused. "Why are you asking ME that?" Like, why would an adult need to ask a child about how to be happy? Shouldn't they already know? She then shrugged and added, nonchalantly, "Just be happy." When it was time to leave, and as I saw her walking back to the rest of her fellow campers, I quickly called back to her: "Tell the other counsellors what that man said to you!" I hope she heard. It was almost like she was waiting for me to rescue her. And in a way, I think I did. Thank you so much for this, Michael. It was extremely enlightening.

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