What Does the Child Archetype Have to Teach You

What does the child archetype have to teach you?

The child archetype is often referred to as the ‘Guardian of Innocence’. She connects you to your untapped creativity and at her core she believes that anything is possible. She forms your perceptions of safety, security, nurturing, attachment and family. Her core issue is focused on dependency and responsibility.

There are many expressions of the child archetype. The magical child, abandoned/orphaned, wounded/abused, Divine, eternal boy/girl, and invisible are some of the most common expressions. All aspects of the child are present within you but some will be more engaged than others. No matter what aspect of the child archetype expresses through you, the core issue is always dependency and responsibility.

Your child archetype and your relationship with her, has informed the way you have engaged or not engaged with life from childhood through adulthood and is still influencing you.

Ideally, if a child was to experience mature guidance from birth through the three seven year stages of life, they would be a responsible interdependent adult by the age of twenty-eight years. However, the patriarch is not a nurturing culture that fosters being responsible or interdependent, hence generating many wounds. These wounds have been passed down through intergenerational stories by your ancestors and will continue to be passed down until someone decides to break the pattern. As a result of this intergenerational trauma, there are many wounded children inhabiting adult bodies that have not learned to be responsible or interdependent. What the world is experiencing in 2021 is refection of these wounds. The wounds within oneself are projected onto the outer world. It may be hard to see one’s own intergenerational wounds but when they are projected onto the world stage, they are there for all to see if one chooses to see the reflection.

One of the most common expressions of the child archetype is abandonment.

It is also one of the core patterns of victim consciousness (survival consciousness). In my previous Heart Centred Practice, I shared that the victim, the prostitute and the saboteur protect the child. Her survival is their focus. All the survival patterns that were explored in the Heart Centred Practices thus far, are rooted in the wound of abandonment, the story of ‘not enough’. The first step to unstick from the survival consciousness story of ‘not enough’, is through self-awareness of your survival archetypal patterns and how they are expressing through you.

The story of “Not Enough” has the wound of abandonment/separation at its core. You are bumping up against the abandoned child when you don’t feel enough to:

· Belong

· Be valued

· Be worthy

· Be loved

· Be different than the tribe

· Be your authentic self

· Be in your Soul power

· Be sovereign/autonomous

The fear of being alone, has power over you and leads you to prostitute, victimize and sabotage yourself to prove

you are enough to belong.

This fear is understandable as humans are an interdependent species and being alone does not support human health and well-being, however, neither does survival consciousness. The options are to stay stuck or expand your consciousness.

Being aware of your child archetype and how it is expressing through you is instrumental in healing your intergenerational stories and the wounds associated with them. It supports you to unstick from survival consciousness and expand into greater levels of consciousness that enable you to be in your soul power, to be sovereign. Your child archetype has so much to teach you and she is waiting for you to show up.

Awareness

One of the most common ways the abandoned child expresses through the adult self is through self-abandonment. Every time you victimize, sabotage or prostitute yourself you are abandoning yourself. The healing journey is one of self-love and it starts with loving your inner child.

For example, when I first connected with the abandoned child that expressed through me, she was in a cell, in a dark dank dungeon. I was repulsed by her and kept my distance. She was dirty, her clothes were torn, her hair was a tangled matted mess, she was starved for nourishment and love. Her eyes were pools of sadness and she sat slumped against the bars that kept her confined. There were some wounds to heal before I fell in love with her and allowed her to be integrated. In the healing process, I discovered that she is a brilliant teacher. She revealed how much I hated myself for not being enough and for not being loveable. She helped me understand how I by abandoning her I was abandoning myself, growing the wound and creating more pain and suffering for myself. She taught me how to love myself unconditionally and to know that I am enough. She continues to teach me to step into my creative power and to believe in possibility. Every day we take a page from Alice in Wonderland and imagine six impossible things before breakfast. We share unconditional love, joy and lots of laughter. She is beautiful! Her wound has healed and she now expresses her enchantment, her magic. She is the embodiment of unconditional love.

My healing process began with the awareness that the abandoned child was expressing through me. Until I became aware of the abandoned child, the wound of abandonment was buried in my unconscious and it attracted the opposite of what I longed for in my life.

Self-awareness practice

Closing the gap between reacting unconsciously and responding consciously.Meeting Your Inner Child

I used the abandoned child as an example. I encourage you to begin this exploration with an open mind and see what aspect of the child shows up. As you work though this process over the next month, your child will reveal herself to you and you will begin to develop a relationship with her and whatever aspects she expresses.

Supplies: paper and crayons

1) Find a quiet spot where you feel safe and won’t be disturbed. Close your eyes, quiet your mind and invite your inner child to connect with you. Be patient as she may take time to reveal herself.

2) When she does, spend some time with her and then with your non-dominant hand draw a picture of your inner child. A child expresses through pictures so allow this picture to unfold from her. She will reveal how she sees herself.

3) Sit with the picture and allow it to speak to you. If you attach your story to it the picture will not reveal its wisdom.

4) Be aware of patterns of feeling and thinking that are coming up for you as you sit with your picture. Record them in your journal.

5) Be aware of the colours and the symbolism in what was expressed in the drawing.

6) Is there anything else your inner child wants to add to the picture?

7) What do you know now that you didn’t know before this time of connection with your inner child?

8) I suggest connecting with your child at least twice a week and allow what she wants to share unfold through a drawing, repeating steps 3-7.

You are on the journey of developing an intimate relationship with your inner child. Be patient with yourself and her.

Resources:

Caroline Myss

Recovery of Your Inner Child, Lucia Capacchione PH.D