Getting To Know Your Inner-Child

This is the story of Karl, so I hope you're sitting comfortably. Kyle was born and during that time her mother may have been stressed. All right, so whilst Kyle was in the womb, she may have been a little stressed. The mother, and that may have impacted on Kyle's brain, may or may not have happened, but for some people that may have happened. And even the birthing process can be stressful for poor little Kyle, which could impact on her stress levels. I'm just going to make sure you can see her. There we go. All right. And then the first five years, even the pre verbal years, are very important to Kyle and how she processes the world around her and her attachment styles. You may have heard of attachment styles. It's how you connect with the significant others in your life in terms of do you feel anxious when there are people around you who you love or you feel loved by and how you connect with those people, do you feel anxious for their love and care and attention or do you feel like you want to step away from that and you're not engaged with that? These are different attachment styles which impacted on Kyle as well. And because of those different factors, different stress levels, her upbringing, many different things. When Kyle became a teenager and a young adult, she felt that she had a very busy mind. She didn't know what to put it down to, but she felt she had a very busy mind and that impacted on her ability to process information, process the world around her. She felt regularly quite stressed and anxious, but she was able to cope with life. And in order to cope with life, with whatever background she had, she was joined by some friends who helped her three. And some of those friends included Sam the fireman. So Sam the fireman represents her safety seeker who would protect her. So Sam would say, don't worry, I will protect you. I will realize the world's a dangerous place and we don't want to re trigger any of those feelings we had when we were a child, but we didn't feel protected. So what I will do is I will take care of you and I will watch out in the environment for any lack of safety, any dangers and be hyper vigilant on the world around me and that will take care of us. And what happened was that helped Kyle temporarily, but it actually made her more anxious and hyper vigilant of the world around her to try and keep safe. Then another part said, don't worry, I will take care of you. And this became the helper part. And the helper part says, stand back, Kyle, don't worry, I Have a strategy. We learnt that as a child. If we help others and put other people's needs first, that kept us protected and approved of. And so let's engage with that strategy to protect us. Because we know when we help others, people approve of us, they're nicer to us. So the helper strategy became a helper. Then another part came along, which was the achiever part, Leo the Lion. And Leo the Lion said, hey, Kyle, I know that you're finding this hard, but we learned as a child. If we achieve things and do super well and are super conscientious in the world around us, guess what? People approve of us and people are nice to us and we get the love and attention we need so that will protect us from danger. There's dangers in the world. And Kyle thinks, this is great. I've got all my friends helping me, protecting me from the world around us and stopping my childhood wounds from being triggered. So that's another protective part comes along. And then even the inner critic comes along. Melissa, the cheerleader, comes along and says, hey, Kyle, I've got a strategy. Let me criticize you and put you down. Because if I do that, then I'll get there first before others do, because they did that when we were young. So I'll protect you from other people putting you down and criticizing you. So that became another little part that was generated inside Kyle to protect Kyle. So all of these different parts got created. And another part which also attempted to protect Kyle was the Cake Monster. Some of you may remember him from last time. The Cake Monster said, well, Kyle, sometimes you have these difficult emotions, but don't worry, we'll use distraction and numbing as a way of keeping away the pain. We'll become almost hedonistic sometimes try and feel pleasure from the world around us in order to protect us from those difficult emotions. And that he can do by could be any kind of addiction or any obsession, or even working too hard as a distraction away from those difficult emotions and reactions to the world around us. So all of these became strategies and ways of handling the world for Kyle, the inner child.