Conversations With Cinthia

How old do you feel inside?  Today’s discussion is not primarily about extreme dissociative symptoms but about the common circumstance of having internalized who we were as children and carried it into adulthood with us.  Lots of us have parts that feel younger, parts we might think of as an “inner child” or “teen-aged self” that are still part of us.  These can be fun and can help us with our sense of play, spontaneity, etc., and this situation works well as long as our adult selves are in charge of our lives, making adult decisions and performing adult tasks.  But problems appear when our child-like parts are running the show, leading us to act like emotional children in adult roles and bodies; in fact, many people are so unaware of the possibility of emotional adulthood that they don’t even realize they are functioning as emotional children.  Conversely, we may so repress our younger places that we have trouble playing, having fun, or being silly even when it is appropriate to do so.  Do you have an inner