Emotional Composting: What to do with the sadness, grief and anger of the inner child

Why we need to feel it to heal it.

So often, our inner child is still holding on to painful emotions that had no where to go when we were younger. If you get really quiet or still you can often feel them as a quiet hum or even a mounting sense of panic. As adults, we generally have a thousand unconscious mini-strategies to manage this. But I am reminded of that Joseph Campbell quote: The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. 

What I have witnessed in my work with clients is that simply being present with the raw energy of our inner child’s unfelt, unheard, unwitnessed emotions without repressing, distracting or judging has this incredible magic to it that I like to compare to the magic of composting. 

Composting, of course, is the process by which we take natural matter which is old, decaying, even rotting and through the mysterious alchemical wisdom of the Earth, let it turn back into something that can nourish and create the conditions for new life. 

Composting is a little bit messy. It needs air. It produces heat. It has to be tended to to work properly. All of this can be said to be true to the alchemical process of composting our emotions as well. Let’s break down what those mean in this context:

Messy
Being human is messy. It just is. We like to pretend otherwise, but learning how to not “keep it all together” for a minute is part of the medicine here. This is about embracing what it means to be human. 

Air
Breathing really helps. Notice what the sensations are in your body. Send your breath there. 

Heat
As you stay with the sensations, you may notice sensations of tingling, of heat, of movement. This is all part of the process. Conversely, you may notice yourself getting cold. If you can stay with that, heat usually follows, which I think of as the indication that stuck energy is starting to move. 

Tending
Part of the medicine of emotional compositing is really finely attuning to what is happening for us moment by moment. This is so important because in many cases it was our parents inability to properly attune to us in childhood due to their own busyness, overwhelm or unhealed trauma that is at the root of what we are trying to heal in this work. In those childhood moments where our parents couldn’t attune to what was happening for us, our child selves - feeling terribly alone with big feelings - were often left to conclude that either there was something wrong with the feeling itself, or something wrong with us ourselves. 

By really paying attention to what’s arising in us without judgement, we give our inner child the experience that they needed but didn’t get; an adult who cares about them staying present and available to provide a strong container to feel what’s true as well as comfort, love and understanding while they do. 

To do this work it can be very helpful to work with an experienced practitioner of some kind. We often have strong mental habits of shutting down, repressing or distracting when we start to feel big things. Having a experienced witness there to help guide us through the process, and to provide noticing and encouragement if we start to shut down or move into overwhelm can greatly aid the process. 

Emotional Composting turns Stuck Emotions into Increased Vitality

Emotions are part of our vitality. When we have to shut down some, we tend to mute all of them, even the good ones. So the end result of all this work is increased vitality and joy at being alive. You gain a sense of being more at ease with yourself. No longer needing to stay distracted or busy to keep 2 steps ahead of painful emotions you’ve spent a lifetime learning how to not feel. When we are no longer afraid of what’s inside us, a natural confidence starts to emerge 

When we have the confidence to know how to be with our own feelings, we no longer have to spend so much energy running from them, repressing them or distracting from them. We can be more alive.