A Mans Guide To Inner Child Work

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Welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Connor Beaton here. And today this is actually a video that so many of you requested because I mentioned it in a previous video about disorganized attachment. I'm going to be doing a man's guide to Inner child work. What actually is that? Now, for the purpose of today's conversation, I'm going to be talking and referring to this as fathering yourself, fathering the boy that exists inside of you. And there's a great quote by Friedrich Nietzsche who said that what is hidden in the father is revealed in the son. What's hidden in the father is revealed in the son. And that quote is going to be important for some of the stuff that we're going to talk about later on. But one of the things I'll just say right here is that it's very common that the thing or the things that your father lacked are the things that the boy in you is actually needing for you as a man to contribute and give to him. So I'm going to say that again because it might sound a little like, what? But I want you to write this down and give you a question in a second. The boy in you, the things that your father lacked are the things that the boy in you, the younger version of you, that younger subconscious part of you, is looking for from you. So as an example, if your father was a flaccid wet noodle that had zero connection to his anger, never stood up for himself, never had boundaries, the boy in you needs you to be somebody who is able to set boundaries, who's able to say no, who's able to develop a robust spine that can stand up for himself, that can stand up for that boy, because otherwise that boy is going to feel like he has to do it all the time. So that's just a bit of a context and container, because sometimes inner child work doesn't really land with a lot of men. They're like, I don't know, but like, inner child. I don't, you know, is this gonna. Is this really for me? So think about it as you are fathering your younger self, you're fathering that boy inside of you. And so a great question that you can write down right now is, what was my father missing? Or what did I need from my father that my younger self is needing from me? What did I need from my father that my younger self is needing from me? And again, that can be compassion, it can be discipline, it can be love, it can be empathy, it can be a whole bunch of things. So what is inner child work? I'm going to go through a couple different pieces. I'm going to talk about what inner child work is, why it's relevant and important, and I'm going to give you some very specific exercises that you can deploy and in order to begin to work on that younger self and kind of reclaim that boy, okay, and integrate him into your personality and integrate him into your psyche. So the concept of the inner child refers to the childlike part of your subconscious mind that holds all of those emotional wounds, fears, unmet needs, the pain of neglect or abandonment or criticism that, that you've tried to either disconnect from, or that you didn't know how to deal with as a child. All right, so if you went, you know, if you were an 8 year old boy and your parents went through a really nasty divorce, that 8 year old boy probably didn't know how to deal with that. Seeing the yelling, seeing the screaming, you know, not seeing dad or mom in for sometimes weeks at a time, he didn't really know what to do with that. And so it would have left a lot of question marks, especially if he wasn't supported properly through that experience. And it will interrupt the way that you go through relationships as an adult. So inner child work involves connecting to, beginning to understand.

Beginning to reconcile with the pain that that younger self felt. Because in all of you, there, there is your younger versions, right, they don't disappear. 5 year old you hasn't disappeared still in there somewhere. 10 year old you hasn't disappeared still in there somewhere, right? The angsty teenager that was listening to Metallica and punching holes in the wall, still in there, right? Still a part of you. So part of this is about reconnecting to that much younger self and beginning to understand what, what did that younger version of me really need? Because for most of you, and this is why this is important, okay? This is why inner child work is important. What happens in relational conflict, right? So for example, my good friend and mentor Dewey Freeman has this great saying, we're wounded in relationship, we have to heal in relationship. What that means is that in your adult relationships, the conflicts, the challenges that you go through in your marriage, in your relationship with your girlfriend or your boyfriend, those challenges are oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes those challenges are connected to a pain, an obstacle, a hurt that you felt early on in life, in one of your early attachments as a child, your relationship to your mom, your relationship to your dad. So another example on this front, if you keep Getting into arguments with your partner and you think that they're, you know, they're too harsh, they're too critical, and then you really start to sit with it. And you were a boy who was criticized a lot by his mom, you probably have a high level of sensitivity to that. And maybe as a boy you never felt like you could stand up to her. And so you didn't develop the boundary and the skill to be able to stand up to your mom. And, and how that shows up in your adult relationships is you still don't stand up to your partner and you develop a ton of resentment towards them and you have a high level of sensitivity towards their disappointment, their frustrations, if, you know, if they want anything done differently, their criticisms, there's just a high level of sensitivity to that. So being able to develop the skill of standing up to them, setting a boundary, being able to receive disappointment sometimes from your partner, which is absolutely necessary in relationships, is going to help you parent that younger self that comes online. Because a lot of the times, and this is the last thing I'll say about this part, and I'll move into, you know, what do we actually do? A lot of the times you regress developmentally when you get into conflict with your partner. All right, so what do I mean by that? When you get into an argument that pokes at or hits on that pain from childhood, that feeling of abandonment, that feeling of neglect, that feeling of being hyper, criticized or never enough, when that part gets activated, right, Your partner says something that pokes at that, like, oh, I never feel like I'm enough, you regress developmentally. So you move from being that 28 year old, 35 year old, 55 year old, 65 year old man back down into that 5 year old boy and you begin to respond from that 5 year old boy, you become overly emotional, maybe you start to attack their character, you start to pout and shut down.

All sorts of things, right? But what happens is you regress developmentally and that's because the pain is not from that 35 year old self, it's from that five year old version of you that, that needs somebody to look after him and that somebody is you. So why is it important? It's important first and foremost for being able to heal trauma. If you experience trauma as a kid, right, abuse, neglect, abandonment, all those things can have a traumatic impact on a child. And that child again will live inside of you and will need a caretaker who is the adult version of you.

Healing emotional wounds, being able to address some of that Childhood hurt. If you were bullied as a kid, if you had a lot of fear as a kid, that that wasn't tended to, right? Let's say you kept having like reoccurring nightmares, but your parents would like lock you in your room and no one really supported you as a kid with that fear or with the shame that you were dealing with. Inner child work can be incredibly helpful for improving your sense of self esteem and your sense of self worth. So a big thing that happens is when you are early on in life, this is where your sense of self esteem is starting to develop. You know, once you enter into being sort of five or six, you're starting to develop this curiosity for how well can I do things right? How well can I jump off of this, how well can I color? How well can I write? How well can I ride my bike? And what can happen is that in those formative years of development, your sense of self worth can be really impacted again through criticism, through events that have happened in your environment. And that younger self will be holding on to that pain of I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough, there's something wrong with me. And again, it's not the adult version of you. It's not the 48 year old corporate executive or a construction worker that's standing there like, I'm such a piece of crap, what's wrong with me? It's that younger self that had the wounding happen way back when. And so the importance of inner child work is that we work with when the wounding happened. Okay, that's really important. We work with where the wounding happened because we can talk about it conceptually as adults and as adults we can intellectualize, rationalize our way around it. But when we can connect the pain of what that must have been like as a child who didn't have all of these beautiful, you know, cognitive abilities to be able to rationalize, like, oh, my dad said that because he was an asshole and his father beat him. Or you know, my mom said that because she was an alcoholic and she was drunk all the time because of her trauma as a child, you just didn't have that conceptually. So we need to work with where and when that hurt occurred. The next thing is that you are going to dramatically improve your relationships because when you are not responsible for the pain that your inner child is carrying, that younger version of you, it gets offloaded and outsourced onto your partner. So very, very, very common that people who are in relationships where dysfunction is happening, what's really going on again, this isn't every single time, but what happens quite a bit is that you project the hurt from that younger self onto your partner or you expect them to take care of it. You expect them to tend to, you expect them to, you know, nurture you and caretake you back into healing. So really important that as you do this inner child work, you can move more into a place of maturity. You will no longer be projecting that childlike expectation onto your partner, hoping that they're going to save you, they're going to fix you, they're going to constantly validate you and your experiences. You'll actually have the tools and the skills to do that for yourself. Because again, when you look at this from the frame of fathering yourself, it's generally the pieces that you needed from your parents. So those are some of the real reasons. I mean, there's. The other one is like you're gonna, you're gonna be able to release some playfulness and some creativity that are often boring. Bound up in this imagination is another really big one. I've noticed that when I work with people around doing really focused, intense inner child work, oftentimes what happens is that their imagination starts to come back online in a really beautiful way. Because usually imagination gets co opted by the pain and the trauma that you experienced in childhood. And what I mean by that is that when you experience a traumatic event as a kid, whether it's a small one or a really big one, right, you're getting bullied at school, criticized at home, you don't feel like you fit in and belong. What that does is co ops your imagination to look for all the ways that it might show up and happen again in your adult life. Because trauma co ops that energy in your imagination to try and make sure that it never happens again. And so your imagination turns into a kind of, I don't want to say enemy, but it turns into this tool that is constantly imagining all of the ways that you might be hurt or betrayed again, or abandoned again, or abused again, or neglected again. Instead of a tool for imagining positive outcomes, creative outcomes, positive possibilities, it gets co opted for just imagining all the, all of the crap that, that might go wrong. Okay, so now that we have what child work is, inner child work is, and why it's so important and what can happen on the other side of that. I'm gonna give you a couple different options for how you can begin to do this work. Now some of this work I really just strongly recommend doing with somebody that is skilled in it, right? Cause there's nothing like being led through it. There's some exercises that I can't exactly give you via this video, but I'm going to give you some ideas that you can begin with. So number one.

Is reconnecting to your inner child. Now, you might. I don't know if you can actually see this, but this is a picture that I have on my desk, and this is a picture of me as a boy sitting in a bucket having a bath on the balcony after digging in the dirt endlessly. So what I want you to do is to find.

An ideal photo of your younger self and a photo that represents the deepest part of your younger self that you loved. So for me, I love this picture because I look so happy, I look free. There's innocence there. You know, it's very, very playful. I'm like sitting in a bucket. I got a band aid on my knee. So I want you to go and find and just connect to a picture of your younger self. So you might need to connect with your parents and, you know, get some photos and whatnot, but find a photo that really resonates with the highest version of your younger self or the is sort of embodies the most beautiful or innocent or playful or loving or kind version of your younger self. Where when you look at that picture, you're like, oh, that kid wasn't effed up. You know, like, he wasn't so upset. And just try and find a photo that you can connect with. And maybe it's not so much about, you know, that kid wasn't effed up, but that kid, you know, was in a good space. And I really love and can connect to that child. So find a photo. And that's step number one. Step number two is begin to reconnect to that younger self. So start to recall childhood memories. Reflect on some of your memories from your childhood. The good, the bad, the ugly. Some of your most positive, fond memories. Now, for some of you that have either had trauma or, you know, just have had events where certain things unfolded that you don't remember a lot of your childhood, this is where photos. Talking to your family members, talking to your siblings, talking to your parents, talking to your aunts and uncles, those types of things are really going to help to inform and fill in. And the things that you're really looking for are, what was I like? You know, what was I going through? What was I questioning? What did I really enjoy doing? Who did I like being around? And if it works for you, you know, you can close your eyes, you can kind of visualize, you can spend some time trying to just recall some of those memories from being a kid. Really just what you're doing is building the foundation of the relationship with that younger self. Because for many of you that have never done anything like this, that younger version of you is probably going to feel so far away. You know, what, what he was like, what he did, what he enjoyed, who he liked being around, what he didn't like, those types of things, they're going to feel far away depending on how old you are. The next thing is that you can begin to sort of visualize that kid. And some people find it helpful to try and draw, you know, draw an image of them, to find a picture of them, to try and connect with family members about them. And so just start to really get a sense of like, what was that inner child like? And then list out some of the characteristics of that kid. So what was that younger version like? Like for me, I was super playful, really high energy, kind of mischievous, didn't mind getting into trouble, loved to be in nature. And so really try and get into outside of the memories, like, what was that young boy actually like? Now once you've got that foundation and you feel some type of connection with him, this is where you can start to go deeper. So the next layer that you can start to work on is a bit of a dialogue with that younger self. And what I recommend is you can either journal, which is going to be much easier, or if you have somebody that you can work with that does something like ifs internal family systems or parts work, or you know, does like somatic processing, gestalt, attachment theory, attachment based work. They can guide you through some inner child practices that can help you. But this exercise is really helpful. So there's two ways to do the journaling exercise with your inner child. Number one, I call it the pen pal. And the pen pal is that you write a full letter to that inner child. So it's just from you as an adult, hey, I'm 36. This is what's going on in my life. This is how things are going, this is how things have unfolded. Just kind of like everything that you want that younger self to know, what do you want that younger self to know? And then what do you want to know from that younger self? And then you're gonna set it aside and you're gonna leave it for however long. Half a day, a day, two, three days. Not too long though, don't like wait months, and then you're gonna sit back down Pen and paper, and you're gonna read that letter back as if you were that younger self. And then you're gonna respond and you're gonna write a whole letter back to your adult self and you just repeat this process as, as often as you want. Usually I recommend that you do this for a month or two and that will really give you develop a much stronger bond with that younger version. And what you're really exploring in this pen pal situation is what did they need? What did that younger self need? What do they need from you? What have they been disappointed in by you? What do they need you to develop more of to in order for them to feel taken care of? What do they, what do they, what does that younger self want you to know about what it was like for them growing up that didn't really ever get acknowledged by mom, by dad, by the people that they were surrounded by? And then you are trying to reinforce that child. Here's what I'm doing, here's the action I'm willing to take. Acknowledging their experience, acknowledging that it was challenging for them, being able to reinforce what you're working on as an adult to parent them and really work with them. And then the other option, if you don't want to do pen pal, is that you just do like a straight up conversation. So you can have a piece of paper and you ask a question and the inner child responds. And then, you know, you respond to that and you just have this back and forth dialogue. I really like the pen pal situation. I think I've seen that work better than just the more dialogue oriented version. But that, that back and forth can also be helpful just depending on, on you and what works for you. So try both. Or if you feel a gut instinct towards one versus the other, then go for that. The next thing is about really re parenting. Now you've probably heard this word a lot. I like to call it fathering yourself, right? Fathering yourself that you are fathering that younger boy inside of you that needed attention, that needed validation, that needed whatever it was that you needed growing up. So fathering yourself really is about identifying what that younger version of you needed and then being able to create a system and a strategy to support that younger self. Now some of this is going to be very clear and direct and some of it's going to be much more vague and ambiguous. So for example, if what your younger self needed in his household was compassion, you are going to have to embark on the journey of starting to be more compassionate with yourself. That means setting boundaries with tearing a strip out of yourself whenever you get something wrong. That means having more. More willingness to lean towards self forgiveness and developing the compassion that that younger self just did not get within the household. So here's what I want you to do. Number one, step number one, identify. And through that last exercise of the journaling, the pen pal or the dialogue, you should have a sense of what some of the things are that your younger self actually needed and is needing from you. So step number one in the reparenting is what are the key or what are the core things that my younger self needed from my caretakers that he didn't get? So what are those things specifically? Did he need compassion? Did he need validation? Did he need somebody to just play with him once in a while? Cause he was fricking lonely? Like, what did he actually need? Step number two is what emotional needs did he not get met? So what emotional needs did he not get? Compassion? Did he not get words of affirmation? Did he not get somebody that knew how to be firm with him and help him develop discipline? What was actually missing for him? And then step number three is beginning to deploy those behaviors and looking for opportunities in your adult relationships to build that, to develop those missing areas. So again.

If your younger self needed a dad to stand up for him, where in your life are you not standing up for yourself that you can do so right? Maybe you aren't setting very good boundaries in your relationship. You just chronically say yes to everything. You're like this notorious people pleaser. That is a great place for you to begin to just, okay, I'm going to start saying no once a day. Just once a day. I'm going to say an active no with no explanation. I'm not going to say why I'm doing this. I'm just going to say no. And so you start to parent yourself. You start to father yourself by providing that younger version in you with the things that he needed in your life today? And that might also look like, you know, visualizing him in a conversation, right? If you're in a relationship and there's conflict and that younger self was terrified of conflict because conflict was loud and volatile or violent when you were growing up in your household, you can visualize when any type of conflict happens in your life, visualize taking that younger self, putting him behind the man in you. Because what can happen again when. When we go through ruptures in our adult relationships, what often happens is we regress. We regress psychologically to that younger self and we become that boy who's like, oh crap, I'm terrified of conflict. I don't want to be here. I'm shutting down. Get me out of this situation. And so you can visualize having that boy standing behind you like, nobody, like, you're good, I got this. I'm going to have this conversation. You don't have to worry about it. And you start to connect to the more mature, adult, masculine energy within you that is protecting that younger self from the challenge and the conflict that's unfolding in your life. So you start to, you start to deploy the things that you know that that child needed younger in life. Lastly, well, there's a couple more steps, but the next one is finding opportunities for play and creativity. So you can ask the question, what type of creative expression and play did my younger self need that he didn't get? And this can be, you know, maybe you wanted to paint when you were younger. Maybe you wanted to learn how to draw sort of like realistic drawings. Maybe you wanted to learn an instrument or learn how to dance in a certain way or I don't know, like learn how to recite Shakespeare. I don't know what it is for you, but connecting to that younger self and how he wanted to play and how he wanted to be creative and then beginning to give yourself time to do that. So you might want to say, okay, younger me always wanted to learn how to play the guitar. So I'm going to buy guitar and I'm going to schedule 3230 minute blocks a week where I just start to learn the basics and I connect with that younger self that I'm intentionally just going to play. It's just about having fun. It's not about becoming B.B. king or John Mayer. It is just about me having a little bit of joy in my life that allows me to be playful and feel youthful and feel creative. And so you carve out specific time where you kind of just get to be that kid and you get to be a beginner at something. You know, as adults we can get so rigid because the expectation is that when we embark on anything, we should be exceptional, straight out the gates. And when you're a kid that's, you know, hopefully you have the freedom to just suck at something, to just be really bad at something in the beginning. And as you take on this exercise of finding creative, playful time, you create a distraction, free, mindful space for play, which is very, very important even as adults.

The very last piece is to really reflect as you go through this journey. Try and keep a journal of how this progress is going to, you know, try and see if you can listen for the voice of that younger self, that inner child that pops up sometime and is like, man, thank you so much for handling that conflict. Or, that was great. Thank you for dealing with that. Or, you know, I really loved playing guitar today. That was so much fun. And just notice what that inner child is saying. Does he need something different from you? Is he validating how you're showing up? Does he appreciate how you're standing up for him and for yourself? So keeping a journal as you go through this process to just refine and get a sense of, you know, how are you doing? How is that younger self responding? And then the last piece, honestly, is really about finding somebody that can help you work with this inner child. Because the reality is, is that if you experienced a lot of heavy pain in your childhood, trauma, abuse, neglect, abandonment, it's likely that as you get in touch with that younger self, you're also going to get in touch with a lot of the really heavy emotions that that younger self had to feel and that that younger self received that he didn't know how to deal with. And that can feel overwhelming for you even as an adult, like, oh, I'm connecting with my inner child, but what I'm connecting with is this well of grief or this really deep sense of loneliness or a really big amount of fear in lacking trust towards relationships and other people. And that can be challenging to deal with, to say the least. So having somebody that can guide you through certain exercises can be very, very, very helpful. Because again, and the last thing I'll say is that the inner child work is really about acknowledging and healing that younger version of you that still exists within your emotional and psychological landscape. And a big part of that is kind of signaling to him, to that younger version of you, that you have the capacity to be with whatever he's experiencing, the frustration, the disappointment, the hurt and the pain that you are willing to sit with him and feel those things that likely other people were not there for him with. So man it forward. Share this episode with somebody in your life that you know could use it. Share your comments and your thoughts below. If you are watching on YouTube, make sure you share this on Instagram. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel as well and hit the bell icon, because otherwise you won't get notified that new videos are dropping. As always, until next week. Connor Beaton signing off.