The Tension Between Childhood & Adulthood: Loving Your Inner Teenager

I have been spending some time recently connecting a couple of men to their inner teenagers. This is an aspect that can be overshadowed by the Inner Child when it comes to inner work.

This part of us has the remembrance, the magic, as well as the pain of the Inner Child yet was on the cusp of some very profound changes and life experiences that were hard to process and digest depending on their life’s circumstances.

When we take time to ‘travel back’ to that time in our lives, we may find our inner teenager stuck in a holding pattern, a memory, or a room holding grief, rage, joy, and/or hurt. They were being with something deeply sacred and may not have had the support, guidance, or resources needed to initiate them into the realm of adulthood, magic, and power.

Those that raised them may have very well been stuck in their own inner teenage dynamics that had very little to no healing or processing.

There is a portal that is opened up both hormonally and energetically at that time. Unseen spiritual forces may have had their way with them bringing in all kinds of thoughts and feelings from suicide, to lust, to violence, to apathy. We were such conduits of energy at that time. No wonder it was a roller coaster!

As a teenage boy, I remember being obsessed with the need for female validation through any kind of attention but most specifically sexual. It led me to very heavy feelings of unworth and shame even if on the outside I may have seemed happy. There was a phase of not even talking to anybody and just holding up in my room drawing for hours just to get through the night.

I also felt that I need to try and be like other guys in looks, build, humor, charisma, you name it. It was an inner circle jerk of ongoing comparison and self-condemnation. Without being able to healthfully process it, there left a residue that lingered in the background once the hormones balanced out and life took on a new purpose as a young(er) father. Even in our early 20s, the inner teenager is not far away.

When I started doing this inner exploration, I was invited to feel this part of me realizing how close to me he really was! At the time I remember feeling like I was 14 going on 40. Good lord…even my 40th birthday party was evidence my inner teenager was alive and well in my heart and psyche.

As I started to connect to him, a trove of feelings came to the surface that had been held at bay for years while trying to navigate adulthood and fatherhood. As the feelings came, so much made sense in my adult life as to why I was feeling the way I was feeling and why I had made certain choices. I was still sitting in that tension space between childhood and adulthood, not fully leaving and not fully entering.

As I got to know him, I could feel where my leading-edge father/guide heart energy could hold him in his triggers and needs while not fusing to them and making more self-loving and mature choices, while also not throwing out his curiosity, his joy, his truth, and his power. This is where the healing and integration start to happen.

The inner teenager can be reparented as well as reoriented to something much bigger than his prior experience. He becomes initiated into the deeper mysteries of life and love. He gets to remake himself from the inside out and almost have a ‘second chance’ at an experience of life he thought was no longer available to him. He is free to be and free to explore while also being rooted in maturity and divinity.

It is an ongoing process to be sure. I feel him in and out of my field depending on life’s circumstances. They are all opportunities to continue the healing, integration, and the receiving and giving of love. I honor all of the inner teenagers out there that may still be sitting in their ‘rooms’ waiting for the moment that we come knocking on their door to just sit, listen, and love them back into our fatherly hearts.

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Gabriel Amara is a Divine Masculine Love Ambassador, Divine Self Embodiment Facilitator, HEARTist, and soul scribe.  Visit https://www.divineselfembodiment.com for more information about space-holding sessions and free 45-min intro calls, group calls, videos, community, etc.