Sometimes You Don’t Feel Thirty-Eight. You Feel Eight.

On the moments when something in you goes young, scared, and small

I often think back to the moment I realized, I’m not a kid anymore. I was living out of state at the time, in the thick of parenting while my husband was away more than he was home, military life in the early 2000’s was no joke. It was the kind of life where you hold every single thing together alone and call it fine because you have no other choice.

I had gone home for Christmas and all the adults were around a table playing a board game, Trivial Pursuit I believe. My siblings and their spouses and I were playing and it was the kind of evening that is supposed to feel warm and easy. Nostalgic even.

And then they started teasing me. The way siblings do. Nothing cruel. Just the old family dynamic, the familiar poking fun and laughing and prodding that has probably been happening since we were kids.

And something in me just went.

I pushed back from the table. I left the room. I ended up on the couch, arms crossed, genuinely pouting, tears threatening, furious in a way that felt completely out of proportion to what had actually happened. Yet it felt so familiar.

And then, somewhere in the middle of it, I caught myself.

I am not eight years old. I am a grown woman. And I just ran away from a board game.

She needs to feel safe. Heard. Like she matters. And the person she has been waiting for to do that is you.

The moment you catch yourself

That moment of catching yourself is something that can be difficult to describe. It is uncomfortable and a little humbling and also, if you let it be, incredibly clarifying.

Because what just happened was not really about the teasing. The teasing was the trigger. What happened was that something in me went back. Way back. To the version of me who did not have the words or the skills or the fully developed nervous system to handle being poked at by the people I loved and needed.

That version of me ran to the couch because that was the only move she had.

The thing is, I am a grown up now. I have more moves now. I have a voice, boundaries. I have options I didn’t have then. I can come back to the table. I can tell them to knock it off. I can laugh it off or set it down or say something direct without it feeling like the end of the world.

But in that moment, when my inner child took over, none of those options were available to me. Because I was not operating as a thirty-eight year old woman. I was operating as an eight year old girl.

And here is what I want you to know: that happens to almost every woman I have ever worked with. In some version or another. In some relationship or another. In some moment that felt way too big, too scary, and too familiar.

Have you ever suddenly felt young?

Maybe it was a look your partner gave you that sent you straight back to a feeling you cannot quite name but know in your body.

Maybe it was a tone of voice. A dismissal. Someone not showing up the way you needed them to. Someone leaving, or threatening to leave, or just going quiet in a way that felt like leaving.

Maybe it was being criticized or corrected or talked over or ignored. And the reaction that rose up in you was not the measured, adult response you would have chosen. It was something older than that. More desperate. More scared. More certain that something terrible was about to happen.

That is not overreacting. That is not being too sensitive. That is a younger part of you, your inner child, responding to a present moment situation with the only tools she had when she first learned that this kind of thing was dangerous.

She learned that lesson a long time ago. And she has been on watch ever since.

How old do you feel right now?

This is a question I ask in the therapy room sometimes. Not as a trick. As a genuine invitation to check in and notice.

Because when we are activated, when something has triggered a response that feels bigger than the moment warrants, we are almost never operating from our full adult selves. We have dropped back into an earlier age. Our inner child is the one trying to manage the moment. We have reverted to a version of ourselves that is still waiting for something to be resolved.

Sometimes women can name it immediately. I feel about six. I feel like I am twelve and nobody is listening.

Sometimes they cannot name an age but they can feel it. Something young. Something small. Something helpless. Something that just wants to be held or heard or told that everything is going to be okay.

That younger part is not a problem to be solved. She is not evidence that something is wrong with you. She is a part of you that has been carrying something for a very long time. And she deserves to be understood, not dismissed.

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I went back to the table

That Christmas, after a few minutes on the couch, I went back.

Not because I had fully processed everything. Not because I had done some deep inner work in the hallway. Just because I caught myself enough to know that the couch was not where I actually wanted to be.

I sat back down. I told them to stop teasing me. They laughed. I laughed too, eventually.

But something had shifted. Because I had noticed. And noticing is always where it starts.

The younger part of you is going to keep showing up. That is not a failure. That is just how this works. The goal is not to get rid of her. The goal is to get better at recognizing her when she arrives and in that moment you can give her what she needs. When you can identify when your inner child shows up and is the one making the decisions, you can begin to connect with her and give her the nurturing, protection, and attention she so desperately needs. You then are better able to show up as your adult self and choose what happens next.

You are not eight years old. Even when you feel like it.

And that distinction, small as it sounds, changes everything.

—A

This is the first post in a new series about the younger parts of us that still show up in our adult lives and relationships. Next we will look at how you can sometimes spot this in someone else before you can see it in yourself. Still Valley is a small-group retreat where this kind of work happens in a safe, supported, and unhurried setting. Learn more at stillvalleyretreat.com.