I believe we are all our ages/selves. My first memory is of being lost and having to cross a creek and not being able to; I can remember looking both ways and wondering where the bridge was; I knew what direction it should have been visible in but it wasn't there (someone moved the bridge? :-) I was two and too young to understand "corners" (the creek bent) But I can "feel" my thought processes, to this day at 61 years old. I "knew" where the bridge "should" have been.
The impact on me of not understanding and thinking "like a two year old" is still there. The problems I had as a two year old, I cannot "feel"/experience as an adult because I was not an adult when they happened to me!
A better example, perhaps, is my stepsister, who is 13 years older than I am; when I started first grade, she was starting college. We use to drive to her college and I met her friends, roommate, sorority sisters, etc. She'd have dance parties at our house and I was dressed up (she taught me to curtsy :-) and allowed to sit on a stool on the doorway and watch for awhile. I was 5-7 (she married when I was 8).
One of her sorority sisters died of cancer 10-15 years ago (I knew her well when I was 5-7) and her husband, my sister had dated back in college in the mid-1950's and she eventually married him. Well, I'm having a heck of a time, still! I'm 61 but my memories of him are those of a 6 year old
Here we are two adults together but I keep thinking I should look up to him, be in awe of him. When they married, at the reception dinner all my sister's sorority sisters were there, in their early 60's at the time, and I couldn't understand why she was hanging out with all these old ladies until I realized that I viewed my stepsister and her college friends as being 19 and me 6, LOL.
That can happen in less helpful ways; my two year old self did not get across the creek, I decided it was too wide for me to jump and I was afraid to take off my shoes and socks and wade across because the sea monster might get me! Where did I get a sea monster? My favorite book of the time, Dr. Suess'
McElligot's Pool http://www.amazon.com/McElligots-Poo.../dp/0394800834 had a sea monster at the end. However, when I was in therapy, I bought the book and my T and I went through it and the "sea monster" at the end of the book turned out to be a happy, friendly whale! At the time I got lost and tried to cross the creek when I was two, my mother was in the hospital for several months with a fatal brain tumor and I was "protesting" by withholding my feces (who's got "control" now, Dad? :-) and my father was giving me enemas. I learned about this "battle" from his sister, my aunt. But the upshot was, I converted the happy, friendly, whale into a "sea monster" that was going to get me?
As children we do that; we can't understand and only have limited resources. The inner child is the one that both "knows" where the bridge should be but can't find it and has to do the best they can with the situation at hand. Once one grows up, one can figure out where this inner child hit a snag and realize how well that self dealt with the enormous problem they were given and how "now" they can see it all worked out well, it was "enough". I wasn't "wrong" not finding the bridge; I couldn't find the bridge because Piaget proved I could not see around corners yet. My situation with my mother in the hospital and father "attacking" me needed strong emotions/understanding so I took my favorite book and my wonderful imagination and gave myself a sea monster.
It turned out that since I was thwarted finding my way across the creek that I ended up sitting down and bursting into tears. My heroic father came along, looking for me as I was "missing" (I'd followed my three older brothers then given up and tried to turn around and go back home only was at an angle from where we started) and he jumped the creek, picked me up, and I lived happily every after. He was not the sea monster, he obviously saved me from the sea monster. It wasn't my fault
(I did not have to think of my father, the only one keeping me from death and destruction with my mother gone, negatively, I converted that difficulty into a threatening book character, containing it quite well, such a wonderful, clever child :-)
It is in looking at one's experiences as a child, from that age (which one has to as that was the age one was) and admiring the way that child dealt with the problems (admiring as an adult who can see/understand it now) and realizing that one IS that child and just as clever now, as then (haven't changed, I still am a wonderful, clever child :-) that inner child work is done, I believe.