2y ago

Have any of you been able to reconnect with your inner child?

On the journey to becoming a productive member of society I had to compartmentalize my inner child.

During my early schoolboy years, he waited patiently for the school day to finish so that he could finally resume his creative and playful pursuits.

As the education became more involved, he had to wait a little longer because of homework.

In university, the complicated assignments, group projects, and late night study sessions meant that he would often not get to let loose until the weekend.

The full-time job, commute, technical projects, work politics, and other adult responsibilities really did the biggest number on him though. Sometimes he would go without playing for weeks, or months at a time.

Today it's as if my adult mask has adhered permanently to my face and I can no longer access him at all.

61 comments

I never left it. I still have a baby tooth, therfore i still am child.
at 53...thats fucking pretty good
- Oh hey, I'm in the baby tooth club! High five!
- I had to surgically remove a tooth because it came at an already replaced tooth. So i guess I'm your nemesis.
  
  If we ever meet we have to duel like in an action movie.
- Thats cool. I have so many questions. Is it visibly smaller than your other teeth? Did the corresponding adult tooth come in? If it fell out now would you still get tooth fairy money?
  
  It looks the sameish, but my teeth are crowded on the bottom anyway so it "fits" better than an adult tooth, I guess? No, no adult tooth underneath and you're goddam right i better get some tooth fairy money (to pay for the implant).

I have all of those rerelease retro consoles and a cheap projector onto an unprepped wall. (Cheap projector and unprepped wall imitates CRT blur really well)
Sometimes when adult life can fuck right off, I skip dinner and get my daughter to bed. Go get a pizza and a block of chocolate in MY car, blast the tunes come home and play Metal Slug on a 3 meter "screen".
I take a moment to appreciate that 15yo me would think that this is pretty badass.

I don't know if this exactly counts... I have embraced having kids wholeheartedly. I jump on the giant trampoline (sometimes when they aren't around). I've rediscovered going to the movies. I am a huge fan of the holidays now. And a bunch of other stuff. I wouldn't have done any of that without my kids.

I don't really have an inner child. My childhood sucked. I have nightmares about feeling angry and scared and trapped like I did as a child. My adulthood just keeps getting better. I'm learning to enjoy life and the world for the first time, and I'm a more productive member of society for it. What you describe is totally alien to me.
- It's also an important trauma processing technique. If you had a shitty childhood like us, it's called reparenting instead.
- Similar. Riding on rollercoasters, watching wholesome cartoons, and reading good fiction don't feel childish to me, they just feel like well-deserved fun. Why associate that with childhood, when childhood lacked freedom?
- You could totally work with your inner child on that basis. Obviously don't have to. But just imagining this little version of you and the hardship they had to endure, thinking about what they would have needed from an adult, and imagining yourself being that adult for your imaginative younger self - that would be very much in line with the idea of the technique.

Honestly that sounds bleak AF.
Why would you ever "compartmentalize" your inner child? That doesn't sound like a real thing, that sounds like whoever influenced you (and/or yourself) making you cut off the things you like for no reason.
During my early schoolboy years, he waited patiently for the school day to finish so that he could finally resume his creative and playful pursuits.
As the education became more involved, he had to wait a little longer because of homework.
In university, the complicated assignments, group projects, and late night study sessions meant that he would often not get to let loose until the weekend.
The full-time job, commute, technical projects, work politics, and other adult responsibilities really did the biggest number on him though. Sometimes he would go without playing for weeks, or months at a time.
You know what's telling about the whole above description that you gave of your life?
You never take ownership or agency. Everything you wrote, you wrote as if it happened to you, and you were just a passive observer with no control over the situation.
Why was your commute so long? Why when work ended at 5pm, did you not have hours to play until you had to go to bed around midnight? Why did you never choose to change your situation?
- Sounds a bit harsh but these are the questions to ask yourself. Too many times people are passive and don't realise they have some power in certain situations.
- Because they made the right choice for the goals they set out to reach. The lack of agency is just a playful way of writing.
  
  It sounds like they made no choices and lived life passively just doing what was expected of them.
  And there is rarely a single path to achieve an objective.

One good part about having a kid is that you get to re-experience all of the fun kid stuff you remember, both as an adult and through the eyes of your kid. You can introduce your kid to your favorite shows/books/etc that you remember (and cringe at some of the stuff you forgot was in there).

My inner child is dead and I killed them in about second year of university because of fear of other people and lack of money for anything beyond food and tuition -> no fun times except for the computer -> depression, unmedicated for 3 years.
And now that I have money, I'm a mess after years of neglect, and I forgot how to have fun, and I still suffer from depression.
- Dude(ess? sorry, idk your pronouns), I feel you and I didn't even get to the phase where I have money yet.

I play and make music, this seems to give me back what i thought i had lost, a feeling of purpose and freedom to express myself.

I talk to my inner child every night. I tell him all kinds of things like:
he's worthless
he will never be enough
he is stupid
It's what my mother would have done
- :(
- Please don't be like that, it won't bring you nothing but pain and suffering. If you had bad parents or a difficult childhood (as I did), then you'll probably want the rest of your life to be as good as possible, right? So, be practical and dont drown youself in negative ideas. Ok? :)
  
  I'm all good. I am just being sardonic. Things were a lot worse for a long time but now I'm unbothered, moisturized, and in my lane

Mixed feelings here, what is an "inner child?" Feelings of exercising creativity and spontnuity don't have to be "compartmentalized"... Just work that into your adult life. only thing that is different otherwise is obviously responsibility, that will never go away. You might have to answer to your wife as to why you chose to spend a whole Saturday watching cartoons, but as long as you make your needs known, that shouldn't be an issue as well.
I'm sensing you have problems communicating your desires(ideas, inspirations, etc) ... other than that, you might be feeling nostalgia. But nostalgia is mostly ignorance. It felt like good times at times because I was ignorant to how my parents struggled.

When I go to the beach I dig deep holes in the sand. Does that count?
- I do too! It's mandatory for guys of all ages to dig holes at the beach. Bonus points for every dad mom boy girl that joins!

Quite a few years ago I used eBay to find some of the toys I had as a kid.. a unique Matchbox car, some original trilogy Star Wars figures, some collector cards. I associate them with my childhood so when I look at them of touch them it takes me back to that simpler time and makes me happy

I never disconnected. I just stopped doing certain things in front of other people.

I don't know your specific work/life situation, so I won't pretend to know what all the constraints are, but if you'll indulge me I want to try to challenge the idea that play is something you can only do away from all the dull stuff.
If you have a "bring your inner child to work day" would anyone notice? And what if it works out for you and you start to smuggle them in every day? It doesn't have to mean acting like a big ol' goofball in meetings, but it could be approaching the stuff you have to do from the perspective of openness, what-ifs and sometimes asking the kind of questions (like "why?") that adults usually don't because they fear it may mark them as someone who doesn't know everything and have all the answers. Or when it comes to tasks that genuinely have fewer creative opportunities, setting small work-related challenges for yourself, achieving high scores nobody else knows about, etc. (I feel like I read a blog post or something about this, but I can't remember what.) Or just having a secret laugh at what five-year-old you might have thought of a co-worker or some situation you observed. If the "adult mask" you mentioned is working for you, then keep wearing it. But you get to decide what goes on behind it.
I don't want to sound like an apologist for working all the time, and you should also be making time for actual play, on your own time, that uniquely benefits you! But I also don't want you buying into the notion that work time, where you spend so much of your life, should be reserved for suffering in a straight-jacket.

I still drink chocolate milk and watch cartoons and play video games and shit in my free time. honestly the key is just learning not to care.
- shit in my free time
  Life pro tip: shit at work and get paid for it. Unless you work at Amazon, of course.

Not completely, but then again I am actually an adult now so that's to be expected I suppose. Three things have helped: humor, games, and dogs. Especially dogs.
- Oh yeah, dogs. I think we all had that one special needs kid in our friend group while growing up, a dog just replaces that 😂
  
  the fuck

There's some reckless recommendations to try psychedelics in here; be cautious with things classified under that name, because there are some VERY nasty chemicals getting pumped out by mafia chemists (some of whom work for large pharma corporations) and pushed under the name of relatively benign substances.
So first off, be sure you know what chemical is actually in the specific pill/blotter/tab you are considering eating.
Second, once you know what you're dealing with, understand the cautions and protocols involved in using that particular one. I won't start rattling them off, the information is out there.
That being said, a gram of mushrooms is safe for nearly everyone of normal adult physiology, and it's pretty easy to tell if you're looking at and gagging on mushrooms.
I was severely depressed at one point a couple decades ago and a chocolate containing a couple grams of mushrooms at a Folk Festival pulled me out of it for a good while and filled my head with thoughts of what was possible rather than what was not.
If you don't smoke weed, try smoking some weed, if it's safe to do where you are. It's more of a momentary thing and if you don't like it, most folks can handle waiting it out. This video is perfect for that situation, IMO. It can definitely be a heavy thing if you go too far too soon, but you'll come back fine with a story to tell, or to never tell.
The more general proposition, which is that these chemicals can kinda shake you loose mentally, is true, but whether that is a good or a bad thing depends on who you are, how in control and confident you feel about life and the world, your immediate environment when you are on them (many end up taking these drugs at noisy parties full of drunkards, which are not the best places to be tripping balls), and many other factors.
For instance, your talk of the adult mask vs the child you cannot find might be exactly what's happening, or it might be words you've put on some other mental block or bit of cognitive dissonance which you do not yourself understand yet. If that were the case, it would be quite possible for a dose of psychedelics to cause your mind to completely drop the veil of delusion, and cause you to look at that reality in the flash of a moment, with no time to mentally prepare for it, and that can be a terrifying experience for some, when reality intrudes on something that they didn't realize was foundational to their understand of the world, and vulnerable in that way.
The long term effects of such an experience can likewise be very good, very bad, or completely neutral. We all have these masses of jelly inside our skulls and actually we are those masses of jelly.
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  This video is perfect for that situation, IMO
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Well I didn't enjoy being a child, but have enjoyed being an adult. Maybe you need to reframe your question? I don't feel like I have an inner child (except when I was pregnant, lol) but have never lost my sense of wonder, the joy at seeing the sky, the garden, hearing music, all sorts of experiences feel so wonderful.
You don't need to be a child to enjoy life. The idea of being stuck in childhood, unchanging, is terrifying. But there is an unbroken line, everything you have done and been is yours, it's you. You are more now, have perspective you did not before, can see things in different ways.
If you are burned out at work, take a break! Sometimes I go in our little gym at work and stand on my hands, getting a different perspective on the world literally.

Yes - and I think connecting with your soul again means having real authentic fun.
Doing what you feel is right, and what you fully love to do.

I feel that. It's hard sometimes. You feel like the real you almost doesn't exist anymore.
Creative outlets help, I think.

I don't know that just sounds like a fake concept. I have no idea what an inner child is supposed to be. Sometimes I'm more serious sometimes more playful but that's just mood.
- Someone never had a Childhood. Sad.

No, but I probably should. I let him enjoy his Saturdays morning cartoons on the floor in my mind with his favorite cereal. I don't have the heart to tell him that pajamas and Saturday morning cartoons may be the Pinnacle moment in life.

Yeah usually in small bursts. If I see or do something I wanted to do when I was a kid it usually comes out a bit.
For example I saw a two hour video covering Adventure Quest on YouTube today and got a rush of nostalgia.
I find it's a lot of the little things.

After losing my best friend and business partner who died from cancer, and avoiding a burnout by an inch, I started taking medication to even my mood.
A few weeks later, the video game Starfield came out. I remember telling my wife "It's the first time in many years that I'm actually excited about something, and really looking forward to having fun".
Starfield was made for my inner child.
- Having a blast out in the settled systems?
  
  Lots. I survey planets just because.

Find something you like and let yourself enjoy it. Nobody's looking. You have one life, why not be as happy as you can?
To answer your question, yes. My inner child is very much active

Having kids really helps, but it’s a long term commitment and they grow up. I loved playing with my kids when they were little. It was definitely part of what made parenting so rewarding

Yeah, I keep in touch. I experienced some deprivation as a kid, so as an adult, I pursue interests with glee. Maybe even to my detriment, but overall I think it's a positive thing to rush toward interesting things.
The flip side is, really draining sometimes, and I push it away in favour of gratification. Could also be a sign of an imbalance in life, if recovering from work-based responsibility doesn't happen well enough, and it intereferes with personal life responsibilites.

I never fully disconnected to my inner child, had a brief period of my life where I tried to act all mature and pretentious and suppressed some habits but slowly diverged back to my natural self.
Today I can confidently say that I am a productive and respected member of society while keeping my inner child up and I'm very very happy with it! So in my eyes it's possible to be both in today's world

Yes, you can take some psychedelics in order to shake your brain out of its decades of set pathways. All children's minds are open and lack set thought patterns and pick up on reality in full. An adult brain is set in its pathways and doesn't do much in the way of processing truly new information. Very few things are able to get people out of their set neurological pathways, psychedelics is one of them. You can also practice meditation and Buddhist or daoist excercises like the whole 'learn to look at a tree without calling it a tree' thing. Honestly though microdosing on psylocibin mushrooms are easier, quicker, and more gaurenteed to give you the results you want. As an added bonus will blast the depression and anxiety right out of your brain if you are suffering from those particular mental issues.

I still catch up with him occasionally but we both got older and now we don't have as much in common as we used to

Yup.

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