Do you know how responsible you are?

#1: Healing my inner child

Sep 29, 2024

This story is a part of my inner child healing journey. This post provides a detailed explanation of the context of the one you are about to read here.

Have you ever asked yourself how responsible you are in your own life? I was faced with this question as part of my inner child healing work, and honestly, it wasn’t easy to answer. But with the help of a few guided steps, I began to understand who my responsible self was and how she played a vital role in healing.

To heal my inner child, I realized I needed the support of my responsible adult self. The inner child work asks us to connect with this adult self as a first step, because it's our responsible self that will help guide our inner child through the healing process.

But then the question popped up: who exactly is my responsible adult?

For a long time, I thought a “responsible adult” was defined by having a family of four, a rich home, and financial freedom. That's how most of us were raised to see it. But through my past inner work, I discovered that there’s a much deeper sense of taking responsibility—for yourself and for others—beyond the external symbols of adulthood.

For years, I neglected this deeper responsibility while holding on to a victim card. I’d often tell myself, “I could take responsibility if only...”

I had freedom.
My parents allowed it.
I lived in this place.
I had more money.
Someone truly understood me.

But behind this portrayal of self-pity, I knew deep down that I was avoiding responsibility out of fear—fear of messing things up, fear of judgment, fear of losing support, and sometimes simply a lack of clarity.

Ignoring that inner voice for too long can lead to breakdowns, and I experienced one myself. That's when I learned to take responsibility for myself the difficult way.

Defining Responsibility for Myself

For me, taking responsibility means listening to that inner voice and acting on it. But is that enough? I realized I needed a clearer image of a responsible adult to orchestrate my healing process from within.

A simple definition I found helpful is:

"The part of you capable of thinking clearly, in touch with reality, that postpones a present pleasure for long-term gain. It estimates the consequences of certain acts."
– Dorothy Corkville, Celebrate Yourself

This really helped me to start visualizing my responsible adult self. To make it more concrete, I followed a few steps in a healing exercise.

Pre-Healing Exercise #1: Visualizing My Responsible Adult

Step 1: Identify Responsible Role Models
I began by listing people in my life whom I consider responsible, both real and fictional, and noted the qualities that made me admire them. I came up with 13 names. Interestingly, most of these people embodied values that aligned with my own.

Step 2: Create a Visual Representation
Next, I created a collage of people with these characteristics. This visual representation served as a helpful reminder, and I printed it out to stick in my scrapbook.

Something I tried my best to relate to the ideas in my mind. Not perfect, yet satisfying.

Step 3: Reflect on My Past Acts of Responsibility
I looked back on moments in my life where I did take responsibility. Though I had fewer examples than I would have liked due to avoiding responsibility, the few times I did step up gave me a surprising sense of peace, no matter the outcome.

Step 4: Define My Responsible Adult Qualities
Having identified what I value and who I admire, I listed the ten qualities that describe my responsible adult self. Here's what I came up with:

Fair-minded and tries to understand both sides of a story.
Acceptance of what is.
Ready to help.
Able to empathize.
Vulnerable.
Courageous to follow their own path.
Open to learning from mistakes and correcting them.
Guides others with what they've learned.
Self-control.
Balanced.

Step 5: Rate myself for each of these qualities.

Finally, I needed to rate each of these qualities and how far I embrace them in my daily life. If it were a couple of years ago, I’m sure I would have a poor persona with no clue why. But now, with better awareness about myself, I am actually proud that I embody most of these qualities in my life. Without even being completely aware of it or naming it.

What I need to do now is work on those qualities that I’m lagging on and use them as a whole to assist my inner child in an effective way.

In the end, it felt empowering to have a clear image of my responsible self as a guide. This detailed vision helps me distinguish the voices of my inner child from the adult I strive to be.

And yes, I said voices—because I’ve realized that we might have more than one inner child from different stages of life, each with unmet needs specific to that time. So, to calm the inner chaos, we need a strong image of the adult who will guide these different parts of us.

This exercise helped me do exactly that.

The preliminary steps don’t stop here; there are two more things I need to help with.

Pre-healing exercise 2: Give form to your Higher power.

Regardless of how responsible you are, sometimes you seek a higher power to help you sort things.

We refer to that power as God, the Universe, the Higher self, or just the Higher power. The next exercise is about giving a form to my higher power and making a connection with it.

For this, the author gives a guided imagery exercise. So I had to record the guide given. Close my eyes and listen to it to visualize.

The image I saw was of a woman. It was surprising to me because, in my culture, God was often referred to with a male perspective. But this image of an elderly woman, with strong eyes and a warm smile, wearing an off-white saree with dreamy ornaments felt so connected.

I’ve always yearned for a motherly figure to guide me and help me when I feel like giving up. I recognized that this vision could be linked to my want for a protective woman figure in my life. I wanted to share my vision with you. I pushed Leonardo AI to show you the almost-close version of the vision I had. And she was like this (I would say 85-90% similar to that in my mind):

The purpose of this image of a Higher power is to guide the responsible adult when called for help. Also, the author suggested a material thing to connect with this higher presence. I chose this:

And it was the closest thing that I had that I could associate with the image.

Now the last exercise before starting the actual healing journey.

Pre-healing exercise 3: Find the garden of your past.

In this exercise, I had to envision my past as a garden using the given guided imagery. This condition of the garden should represent your past life that you are trying to heal from.

Again, I recorded myself reading the guide. And listened to it as I meditated upon it. The garden that I saw was something like this:

It was a square plot with a short wooden fence on all four sides. There was a tree in the center with a cement platform around it. A thick bunch of creepers entangling it tightly. There were several yellow lily-like flowers around the platform, one hibiscus plant behind the tree, and a few wild roses here and there. The rest of the garden was filled with tall grass, weeds, creepers and climbers. It was messy, disorganized, and definitely not how I’d keep my garden.

So I drew a picture of it for you to get an idea:

And this is an image that is constantly going to change as I work on myself. As a result, I expect more painting projects in the future.

So, this is the work I did this week. And I’m excited to move to the first stage: the infant stage of healing, which I will talk about more in the next week.

If you feel like following my story or just want to support me, you are one click away from it.

Also, question for you:

What is the one (or more) quality(s) that would make you describe someone as responsible?