Thinking Back
How was your childhood? Do you remember feeling happiness, contentment, and love; or maybe loneliness, sadness, and detachment? Perhaps you can't exactly recall and the boy or girl you used to be is a stranger to you now.
How did you as a child perceive the world? Did the world look clear and understandable, or surprising and menacing? How did Mom and Dad look? Were they close spirits that inspired confidence, calmness and love, or were they distant, stressful, or hurtful figures?
Did you feel like there was someone in your life who really understood you? Was there anyone that really knew how you felt, someone you knew you could feel relaxed with? Was there anyone there that really stood by your side?
The child that we were, is the emotional foundation of our adult life. Our outlook on the world is based on theirs; the strong emotions or feelings that they felt are the fundamental ingredients of our emotional world today. Their pain and the things they tried not to feel explain our moods, our choices in partners, our ability or lack of ability to enjoy, love, and live.
Examining Childhood Lonliness
The Swiss psychologist Alice Miller examines the loneliness we experience as children. Usually, she says, the child experiences trauma when the adults around them (themselves hurt children) don't validate or even notice the child's feelings. At a fairly young age the boy or girl comes to the sad conclusion that they are all alone in the world. Their parents can't see them because they only see the child figure that they wish to see, the roles they have assigned to them - stemming from their own unfulfilled inner child's needs.
In her book The Truth Will Set You Free, Miller points out differences between two kinds of experiences. In one, the child is emotionally alone with no one to stand by its side during times of distress. The adults surrounding them don't want to acknowledge the child's true feelings.
The second example is similar, the child is in distress and the world doesn't acknowledge it, but there is someone in their lives, male or female that recognizes them. This is a person familiar with his or her own inner child, with its perspective and pain, and therefore can also perceive the emotional world of the child in front of them.
The Enlightened Witness
This kind of aware figure in a child's life is what Miller calls 'The Enlightened Witness.' It can be a teacher, grandmother, family friend, uncle, neighbor, or nanny. It can be an adult that acquired the ability to recognize children through spiritual or deep psychological work, or an adult who simply succeeded intuitively to reconnect with their own inner child, heal rifts, and overcome their emotional blindness.
The presence of the Enlightened Witness is crucial. Even if the relationship is not intense or particularly close, even if it doesn't include much talking the actual fact of the witness's existence validates the child's secret emotional life.
With the Enlightened Witness present the child knows that their difficult emotions are real, and that their distress is legitimate and justified. They don't have to deny their emotional world and adopt the adult perspective around them, which is often that their suffering is not genuine or valid.
In the first example, the child living without a witness feels like a prisoner, and their inner world is like a dark room devoid of any light. In the second scenario, with the presence of a witness, the child may still feel like a prisoner, but the room is dimly lit allowing them to see their surroundings. It is not a proper light, and growing up they will have difficulty seeing their emotions clearly. But, as an adult when they begin to engage their emotional world, their patterns and pain, they will see familiar signs once illuminated by that light. The awareness is retained in the heart.
Avoiding Abuse And Hurt
The influence of a witness is crucial in another respect. According to Miller, a child that doesn't have a witness in their life is destined to become an abusive or hurtful person. Lacking awareness of the pain of their own childhood, they disconnect from their inner child, and cannot be aware of the emotional distress they are operating from.
When this kind of person is confronted with a child or other adults they will behave similarly to the adults that had hurt or neglected them when they where children.
In comparison, the child that did have a witness in their life may still have emotional difficulties, but the risk of them becoming hurtful or abusive is low.
The truth about childhood experience is illusive. It cannot be acquired by simply reading psychological or educational literature, but rather by examining your own childhood experiences, and by making a conscious decision to acknowledge the feelings that once felt too painful and scary, even if at first they are not clear or obvious. When you probe deeper, you inevitably discover the pervasive denial of childhood pain.
From Personal Experience
As a kindergarten teacher, I see my main function as being an Enlightened Witness for children. My other responsibilities: teaching, safe guarding, setting a personal example, increasing skills and monitoring development, providing a creative experience, developing social behavior - all of these things are quite important, but secondary to my primary role.
Being a witness is not hard. I just have to stay present to my own inner child and the girl or boy standing before me in the schoolyard. But, sometimes it is easy to forget my role. I can tell when I'm doing wrong. It is when I find myself looking down on the child, when suddenly I am in front of them -i nstead of standing by their side.
When my inner child fails to reach out, or goes to sleep and leaves me as just an adult confronting a child - I notice it. Then, I remind myself of Alice Miller. I remind myself of my own childhood, and the Enlightened Witness that was there for me.