According to John Bradshaw, author of Home Coming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child, the process of healing your wounded inner child is one of grief, and it involves these six steps (paraphrased from Bradshaw):
1. Trust
For your wounded inner child to come out of hiding, he must be able to trust that you will be there for him. Your inner child also needs a supportive, non-shaming ally to validate his abandonment, neglect, abuse, and enmeshment. Those are the first essential elements in original pain work.

We’ve all encountered them at some point – and maybe, at times, we’ve even been one of them: that person at work who corners you in the hallway only to protest a new policy, wail about the inadequacies of a co-worker, grumble about pay or whine about the lack of lumbar support in their office chair.

Most of the time, the easiest way to deal with these encounters is to simply tolerate the grumbles and complaints. But at some point, the objections, peevishness and continual negativity become too much to handle; they begin to detract from your work day, impact your mood and leave you feeling drained at the end of the work day.

According Robert Sapolsky, an author and professor of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford University, exposure to negativity can disrupt learning, memory, attention and judgment (The Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2012).

My parents grew up in the coal-mining city of West Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Both of my grandfathers were first-generation American coal miners, and both died of coal-mining related diseases. One lived in Old Cranberry, while the other lived right up the road on the corner of S. Broad St. and the new-fangled road (“Can do Expressway!”) that brought cars from the then-new interstate into town.

When we visited, I have many fond memories of sitting on that front porch doing what people did back then — watching the cars go by and talking (although, when you’re a kid, it’s mostly the adults doing the talking).

If you looked across the road, all you could see were the shale banks of the long since-abandoned coal mines.

A waft of pipe smoke drifted up from my grandpap’s (pictured above) pipe.

And like most kids, I wanted to be anywhere but there.

We’ve suffered through more than a few bad years of a worsening economy. While things have leveled off a bit in the past two years, it’s hardly “good times” for most Americans (and much of the rest of the world is actually even worse off, especially many of our friends in European nations like Greece, Spain and Ireland).

And while there’s a lot of bleakness on the horizon, there’s also some rays of hope.

I was watching 60 Minutes last night and a repeat story came on from March about the turn-around of Chrysler at the hands of super-CEO Sergio Marchionne. Here’s a guy that really challenges your current beliefs of what it means to be a workaholic. When he’s not working at Chrysler, according to the story, he turns around and flies back to Turin, Italy to take care of Fiat.

He saved 54,000 Chrysler jobs (with the help of our government) and has said he’s since added more than 9,000 new ones.

On the first page of the book “Cutting Loose: An Adult’s Guide to Coming to Terms with Your Parents,” by Howard Halpern (same guy who wrote “How to Break Your Addiction to a Person”) a good friend wrote: “This was a key book for me in therapy. I really learned how to relate to my family and let go of many unhealthy expectations.”

That was before I told her I was disturbed by a family situation that was triggering some of the anxiety I felt in my childhood.

Halpern writes:

We’re adults. We’ve got all the credentials and scars to show for it. … But a grown-up is supposed to possess himself, to be his own person, to make decisions according to his wishes and his best judgment.

Too often we find that this is not the case with us. Frequently we are so limited by habitual ways of acting and thinking, so needful of the approval of others, and so afraid of their disapproval that we don’t own ourselves at all. We are like a corporation that has gone public, and other people own controlling shares. And for many of us in that position, the biggest shareholders are our parents. [...]

The parent-child relationship is a primary source of who we are, and the mutual emotional attachments are derived from countless interactions, conscious and hidden memories, and profound feelings that go back to our days of oneness with them.

Last week in therapy I began to understand that — the parent corporation thing, and how it plays out in your adult years — with an unexpected clarity. I even named my issue.

Otto von Bismarck, the German statesman, once said that “Love is blind; friendship tries not to notice.”

It’s a lovely sentiment, and often true. When you love someone, after all, you love all of them — the cute, sweet parts and the ucky, evil parts both. When you’re really good friends, you notice all that stuff but try to look past it, even though you don’t have to.

Somewhere between “just friends” and “old married couples” lies the means of getting from one to the other: dating. Dating apparently was invented by underworld minions to ensure that only the species’ best would get together to procreate.

Girls, you know that old saying, “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince”? Have you figured out what to do when 1) they’re all frogs and 2) you don’t want to kiss any of them? Besides despair that a prince exists, I mean.

It’s quiet in the house. The low hum of my computer’s fan is gentle white noise — like a cozy warm blanket for my mind. Rumblings of the furnace kicking off break the silence and snap me back to reality.

It’s a gray day outside — foggy, drizzling, with showers coming and going with each passing hour. There’s still a distinct chill in the air, as though spring can’t make up it’s mind, although I know summer can’t be far behind.

The table is set.

These words are written.

It’s the perfect day for the bad news I prayed would never come.

I love the smell of cow dung.

I was reminded of this recently during a bicycle ride in the outskirts of the city. Despite the beauty of the bucolic area, I had been experiencing the training ride as long and strenuous — until I caught the distinctive scent of cow manure.

The odor instantly conjured up very specific happy memories from childhood, reminding me of something I had loved. I found myself inhaling deeply to rediscover a brief glimpse of yesteryear, felt a sudden jolt of joy and then pedaled on with renewed energy.

This reflective moment allowed me to have a connection with some positive emotions, which took me away from the strain of the task at hand and permitted me instead to immerse more fully in the present activity with confidence and enthusiasm.

I suspect that what I had experienced in that moment, at least in part, was being in a state of “flow” and that I was having the sensation of being “in the zone.” This is the mindfulness and positive psychology concept which is believed to channel energy into a feeling of spontaneous joy. A flow experience involves focusing deeply on nothing but the activity itself.

When I was 13, my piano teacher made me play Beethoven’s “Sonata Pathetique” at a …

The other week, I read Steve Martin’s memoir of his time learning and doing stand-up comedy, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life. I loved it.

It’s a terrific example of one of my favorite kinds of books: someone coming into his or her vocation. I love reading about why people become interested in particular subjects or skills, and how they master them.

Just in the last year, I’ve read several outstanding books of this type, such as E. O. Wilson’s Naturalist, Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume One, Rosanne Cash’s Composed, Patti Smith’s Just Kids, and Eugene Delacroix’s Journal.

Do you have any suggestions?

As a woman living with bipolar disorder, I understand mental illness-related stigma. I understand the damage it causes and the impact it can have on a person’s quality of life. But I cannot tell you that I understand the stigma associated with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is, without a doubt, the most stigmatized mental illness.

Bipolar disorder often is associated with intelligence, creativity, highs and lows. But schizophrenia is viewed differently. Society often is confronted with negative imagery: A homeless man or woman, dirt under their fingernails, mumbling to themselves; bars on hospital windows where they are confined and, above all, violence.

The stigma connected to schizophrenia, and to those who live with the illness, is different from that connected to people living with depression or bipolar disorder. It is harder to shatter; it is harder for people to understand.

Stepping out and putting a face and a name to my illness was anything but easy. But more people are doing this, and in doing so, we can lessen the stigma.

I wake up at the same time every single day. It is 6 a.m. The birds sing outside my single-paned window, and my partner sleeps beside me. I close my eyes and work to will myself back to sleep: It would be nice to sleep until 8 a.m., maybe even 9 a.m. But I get frustrated and I get anxious and soon I have made my way to the kitchen where I make myself strong coffee and sit in front of my laptop.

But I’m forgetting something. It’s important, I’m sure of it.

I sip my coffee, turn on my laptop, and remember: My pills.

I cannot forget to take my pills. Disastrous things happen. Things I try to forget and things that keep me up at night. It’s never easy living with bipolar disorder but the medication keeps me stable, most of the time, and that is invaluable in and of itself.