Inner Toddler

 In your anger do not harm yourself or others.

I'm doing a course through a meditation app on better understanding the anger within myself. One of the exercises is to think about the things that make you angry and locate where that anger lives in your body. The last time I listened to a lesson from the instructor, which was a couple of weeks ago (I am not, if anything, inconsistent), she was talking about our "inner child." I've always thought of her an my "inner toddler." Most of the time she doesn't want to transition. For example, she doesn't want to leave the house, get out of bed in the morning, take a shower, get to work. She's very vocal in my head, but that's a post for another day.

Today, she told me that she was scared when I got angry. She was scared that I was angry at her. When I get angry at myself, it's to my current older self. I told her, with the utmost care, that I was never angry at her. When I'm angry, it's usually directed at injustice in the world, something in my immediate life that is not working out the way I had envisioned, planned or hoped (this is usually directed at myself), or a boundary is being crossed by someone. Often I don't even recognize that there was a boundary that I should have set up so I'm angry, again at myself, for not setting one.

So yeah, a lot of the time I am angry at myself, at my own failure. So I told "toddler Tina" that I am not angry with her. I am trying to protect her or I'm angry that I can't protect her or have failed to protect her. But I'm never angry at her. She smiled. And now, as I'm writing this, she told me not to be so angry at myself.

She's probably right. It probably doesn't help me "be better," or "fail less." It just scares her and when you're scared you can't learn.

"And a little 'toddler' will lead them."