We, so-called adults are not truly adults at all, and we have to examine this fact we have become a weird self constructed mess.

At The Stages we have a different philosophy for our life. We come to focus on the child within as a perfect, healthy, living entity.entity. Thats why we call it the CHILD WITHIN not inner child which is the parental false selfs method of acknowledgement. We, so-called adults are not truly adults at all, and we have to examine this fact we have become a weird self constructed mess. We all get older. Anyone, with a little luck, can do that. But, speaking from a recovery viewpoint, this is not adulthood. True adulthood hinges on acknowledging, accepting, and taking responsibility for loving and re-focusing on our own child within us. For most of us, this never happens because we have long forgotten the language of our childhood. Instead, our child within has been denied, neglected, disparaged, abandoned or rejected. We are told by society to "grow up," putting childish things aside. To become adults, we've been taught that our child within represents our child-like capacity for innocence, wonder, awe, joy, sensitivity and playfulness and this message must be stifled, quarantined or even killed. Our child within is angry, very very angry, Pissed off, venge-filled and often hurt, wounded cowering in the shadows locked in a basement. Our child within comprises and potentiates these qualities. 

We, our child within holds our accumulated childhood hurts, traumas, fears and angers. WE the "Grown-ups" are convinced we have successfully outgrown, jettisoned, and left this child within--and its emotional trauma--long behind. But this is far from our truth as we begin to find out as we work on The Ten Stages Course of Recovery and start to uncover our real truths in our recovery. Do not expect your child within to be thankful that you have unlocked its prison after a lifetime of ignorance and abuse. Its like a mistreated dog it bites and it bites hard. That is why we have a studied course, not a self help group of dissociated children we are not a feel good society.We have to deal with the reality of long term personal abuse, yes we have learned the language of an abusive parental society that rules by its jails and institutions of dysfunction and at the stages we must replace that language of mis-information and abuse to be able to finally enter into a discourse with the child within and re-connect with our freed personality. 

The Ten Stages is a studied recovery course. It is a source of reconnection a method of unlearning and a reintroduction to our child within which leads us back to our one true intuitive voice.We start to learn and come out of our protective dysfunctional shell and reclaim our lives.