5 Tips for Nurturing Your Inner Child During the Holidays

Hey there, everybody. And welcome to 5 Tips for Nurturing the Inner Child during the Holidays. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this video, we're briefly going to review what the inner child is. For those of you who are unfamiliar, we'll talk about what's unique about the holidays for children and your inner child. And finish with five tips for nurturing the inner child during the holidays. But first, please remember to subscribe so you're notified every time we release a new video. So what is the inner child? The inner child is very simply a collection of memories and beliefs about the world that you formed as a result of childhood experiences, especially before the age of 12, when formal operational thought begins. Now, why is the age of 12 important? Well, because when prior to formal operational thought, children tend to think much more concretely, they base their expectations, their analysis on what is right in front of them. They have difficulty hypothesizing about alternatives. Why so and so may be depressed besides what's in front of me or besides me, they still tend to be more egocentric. Not as much as when they were very, very little, but even up till the age of 12, children tend to think take things a lot more personally than they do as they start to get older, as they move into formal operational thought, and they can come up with alternatives for why this might be happening besides what's right in front of their face. It's important to remember that inner child, inner children can be happy and securely attached. Some people have very, very happy inner children, and that's wonderful. Or they can be traumatized and insecurely attached and everything in between. So it's important to recognize that everybody has an inner child. And most people have an inner child that has some wounds, has some things that bring grief to them that may come up periodically when they're an adult. It doesn't mean their inner child was traumatized and has all kinds of problems. It just means that that memory, that particular memory that that inner child is holding is still problematic. The child was never able to process that. So let's talk about holidays from a child's perspective. And I have a couple of mnemonics in this presentation. You know, I love my mnemonics. Family gatherings. For a lot of people, holidays surround center around family gatherings or lack of being able to attend family gatherings. The mnemonic I use here is braced. And for a lot of people, that makes a lot of sense because they have to brace themselves before going to family gatherings. But why can this be stressful or distressful? To a child. Well, we'll start out with B for boundary violations. When people get together, a lot of times they are, they give hugs or they may say things that violate emotional boundaries. You know, they tell people how to feel in a particular situation. They tell people how to think about certain things. They may violate physical boundaries by giving hugs when they're unwanted. For example, environmental boundary violations are also very common. If you're visiting somebody's house, for example, then other people may go through your stuff. I know that is a common complaint in, in many families that especially younger children will go through older children and other people's stuff. And that's a boundary violation. And it can make people feel sort of unsafe, like they have no privacy, no sanctuary. Rejection is another issue during family gatherings where people present themselves and maybe well meaning adults, maybe not so well meaning adults, but whatever, address them and tell them that they shouldn't be dressing a certain way or they should be more advanced than they are, or they should be doing this, which goes along with those boundary violations. But they're rejecting the child for who they are. They're rejecting the child for what they're thinking, what they're feeling. And that can feel very unsafe and devastating abuse. And you know, I had to put it in here because unfortunately is a, it is a reality. But there is verbal abuse and there is also physical abuse that can happen during family gatherings. And some people, whenever the holidays come back up again, the memories of that abuse come back up again. So your inner child may be triggered and feel unsafe because they remember that in the past when they would go to family gatherings, bad things would happen. Comparisons. And this kind of goes along with rejections. But a lot of times in family gatherings there are unwanted comparisons instead of, instead of accepting and loving people for who they are, where they're at, they are compared to other people where, well, your cousin Benny is doing this and your sister is doing this. Why aren't you doing that? And it can make people feel very rejected, very uneasy. The environment itself can be very chaotic when in family gatherings. It can be noisy, it can be overly smelly. For people who are hypersensitive to smells. It can be chaotic and difficult to get good rest, which can be very, very stressful for a child who doesn't feel like there's any safe place for them to go, where they can decompress, where they don't feel like there's any safe place where they can go, where they can be a kid. They have to be on their best behavior and that can be really stressful for children and especially children with anxiety or adhd. And a lot of times children are put into these situations and their particular nuances, their particular needs are not really considered. It's like you're anxious, you're depressed, you've got social anxiety, you've got adhd, whatever, it doesn't matter. We're going to grandma's and we're going to hang out with our 45 relatives whether you like it or not. And that can feel very overwhelming to a child and, and it can cause a great amount of anxiety and distress and then just disrupted routines having to not be at home with your stuff, with your pets, with your normal routines. Especially for children who thrive on routine, this can be very anxiety provoking and distressful for them. Going to an airport for children who have social anxiety that kind of goes back to the environment can be very overwhelming as well. So we need to brace ourselves for family gatherings. We need to be aware of what the children in our lives and the inner child in our life has experienced and what they need in order to feel safe in the present moment. Parental distress is another issue that children often experience during the holidays. Parents are often, or caregivers are often pulled in multiple directions. They are trying to go to bake sales and holiday plays and holiday parties and this, that and the other, and they're frazzled. Plus they're trying to do holiday shopping and holiday cooking. So there can be a lot of time demands on caregivers which leave them feeling frazzled and emotionally and sometimes physically unavailable to the child. And the child's kind of left out there going, hello, what about me? Finances is another source of parental distress during the holidays. And we know that a lot of holidays be beginning with on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. There is a lot of emphasis put on the commercialization of holidays. And for people whose finances are particularly short, it can cause a lot of grief and anxiety and stress and whole lots of feelings for the caregivers if they're not able to buy the things they know their children want. If they're not able to buy the things they need, for example, to make a holiday dinner, you know, they just can't afford the cranberry sauce or the turkey. That can be very disheartening and demoralizing to not be able to, to do the basics. Grief. A lot of times holidays bring up grief for caregivers and sometimes for children. You know, hopefully children haven't experienced a whole ton of losses in their little lives to this point, but they may have, but Adults very often have. And the holidays may remind the adult caregivers of their unhappy holidays. It can remind them of losses, the fact that their parents or their grandparents aren't there. It can remind them of a lot of things. And it can bring up unresolved grief or even grief that's been resolved. But grief doesn't just go away. We don't just resolve it and all of a sudden, poof, we don't think about it anymore. It just becomes more about remembering the good things, hopefully. But this grief can also keep caregivers in the present from being emotionally available to their, to their children. And it can keep adults in the present from being emotionally available to their inner child. They may try to just turn off that grief and like, I can't. I just can't deal with it. And we also see mood and substance use issues as a result of all this distress. Radical. Really ramp up a lot during the holidays, which again, can contribute to a lack of emotional and, or physical availability to the child. It can contribute to more neglect. It can contribute to more emotional and even verbal or physical abuse to children from caregivers who are just completely stressed out, completely devastated and overwhelmed. And then we have disappointment slash grief. Children, when they're disappointed, it's a loss. They didn't get something or they didn't have something that they wanted and they may grieve not getting that. And, and for children, we've got to reflect on what that means because they see all their friends getting all these presents and maybe they didn't get anything or they only got one or two things. And it may make them feel like they are not part of the group. It may make them feel like they're not good enough. You know, why didn't I get that much stuff? Why didn't I get that particular toy? And for older children who are more indoctrinated, I guess, into what I call the Hallmark holiday idea, when they don't have that, when they don't have a happy family gathering. And this is promoted from the when the Gr the Grinch Stole Christmas to Yogi's Christmas Holiday to, you know, so it's promoted in cartoons as well as, you know, all of those Hallmark Lifetime movies that make the holidays seem like they are just going to be the best thing ever. And a lot of people see these unrealistic presentations of the holidays and think that's supposed how it's supposed to be. And then they feel disappointed afterwards and they, they start grieving because they didn't have the holiday that they should have the hot. The holiday that they were supposed to have according to the, to the media. That's not what they had. And when this happens year after year after year, people can start to feel. Feel like they're not worthy. They can start to feel like it's must be something that has to do with them. So what do we do? Notice your inner child in the present day. What are their holiday triggers? So when you're walking through the store, when you're watching television, when you're flipping through channels and you see different, you know, movies or TV shows that are on, notice how that triggers you? I do. You have happy feelings like, oh, I want to watch that, or I want to see that, or I want to be exposed to that. Or do you have distressful triggers where you start feeling anxious or angry or depressed? This is true not only for media, for things that we see for going around in the stores and things that we see on the shelves, but it can also be for things that we hear like Christmas carols and holiday songs, and for things that we smell like cinnamon and the ever popular pumpkin spice. How do those things make you feel? And for the ones that bring up pleasant or rewarding feelings and thoughts and energy, great. Let's increase those. For the ones that bring up unpleasant or distressful feelings or thoughts, let's make a plan how to protect yourself against them. So for example, maybe you don't do as much channel surfing. You get a playlist and in your queue online and those are the shows that you're going to watch. Or you go back and find old shows that like sitcoms and things that you used to like to watch and you skip over the holiday episodes. Maybe you don't go into the store as much because when you walk into the store, you're just bombarded. You know, as soon as, actually as soon as we got past Labor Day, they started putting up Christmas decorations around here. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, we haven't even gotten to Halloween, let alone Thanksgiving, and they've already got all the Christmas stuff out. And that can be really devastating for people. So thinking in what ways can I minimize my exposure to, to this stuff? You can do click and pull in a lot of stores so you don't actually have to go in and be exposed to all of those kiosks and displays. You can just get. Order your stuff and go pick it up without having to go into the store, without having to see the commercialization of it all. But get cur. Get curious and get Creative about ways to prevent or mitigate the distress that you might feel when it comes to holiday parties. Maybe those bring up bad feelings for you. Okay, so what can you do to address it? How can you set healthy, effective boundaries in order to cope with it? Maybe it's one of those things at work where you're expected to go and that reminds you of when you were a child and you had to go to Thanksgiving or Christmas or something at a family member's house and you knew it was just going to be overwhelming. So now that gets triggered in you when you have to go to holiday parties, which you assume are also going to be overwhelming. Okay, so if you have to go, if it's an expectation, which sometimes it is, how can you minimize the impact? Taking a supportive friend with you, for example, minimizing the time you spend there, Finding people at that party or get together that are safe to associate with, or my favorite, get involved. If I am working on making sure the buffet table stays stocked or something, then I may not have to be inundated with trying to make small talk, which is not something I do very well. Some people plan an anti holiday and sometimes your inner child or you are just not ready to go there. Your experiences over the holidays have been so traumatic, so devastating that you're just not ready to experience that yet. Maybe you had a bad experience, you know, a trauma last year or the year before. Maybe it wasn't during your childhood, but you may not be ready to jump right back into that holiday because it is too raw. It's like ripping off that band aid and pouring alcohol on it. It's just, you're not ready to go there yet. And that's okay. That's where it's important to set our boundaries and be compassionate with ourselves and say, you know what? I'm not ready to do this yet. If you do decide you want to have a rich and meaningful holiday, think about as a child and even as a an adult in the past, what were your favorite parts of the holidays? I love the smell of fall, and I can't tell you what causes it. I'm sure there's, you know, scientific explanations for the smells of fall. I love this. Seeing the leaves change and seeing the leaves fall where it's still colorful before it gets all brown and glicky. I love the first snow, you know, that's beautiful to see. I love seeing cardinals that are feeding from my feeders on, you know, freshly fallen snow. That's beautiful, you know, so those are some of my favorite parts of the holidays. Think of what your favorite parts of the holidays are as an adult, but also what were they as a child? If we're going to nurture your inner child, we got to get in touch with it and say, what did you like to do? To this day I still watch how the Grinch Stole Christmas during the Christmas holiday season and listen to particular Christmas playlists on my on my mobile device. But I digress. What did you wish would have been part of your holidays? Maybe you always wanted to have one of those big family holidays with routines and rituals and you know, where it was just hallmarky. Well, okay, how can you make that happen? Now maybe you don't have a big family. I mean for us, for example, we don't have any family in the state and all of my family, with the, the exception of some distant relatives have passed on. So, you know, I'm not inviting a whole bunch of, you know, cousins and everybody over to have Christmas or Thanksgiving. But I do invite friends over. You know, just because they're not blood relatives doesn't mean they're necessarily not family. So how could you, thinking of the things that you wish would have been part of your holidays, how could you make that happen? Now what were your least favorite parts of the holidays and how can you, you help your inner child feel safe and prevent those? Now some people, one of their least favorite parts of the holidays was not being able to figure out the right gift. There's a lot of pressure in some families on getting the right gift and that may be too stressful for some people or not being able to afford the gift that they want to give or having to be around a lot of people if you're somebody who has social anxiety. So what are some of your least favorite parts of the holidays and what can you do now as an adult? You can parent your inner child. You can help make sure your inner child gets those needs met. Now you can do the same thing for your real life children if you've got them in your life. You can say what exactly are your needs and what would you like this holiday to be like? And let's talk about how we can maybe compromise or synergize and make this happen. And create a vision board. Identify the people, things, activities and experiences that are important in your rich and meaningful holiday. Is it important to you to go to church? Is it important to you to go caroling? Is it important you to, to you to decorate and make it look, you know, just super holiday esque? What is important in your rich and Meaningful holiday, focus on the parts that you already have or you can make happen. For example, if you want to make your house look extremely festive for the holidays and you don't have a lot of stuff to do that yet, well, maybe you can work on crafting some things and start adding to that collection every year. So that's something that you're working toward. And again, maybe you wanted to have a large gathering for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving's my favorite holiday. Who can you invite? How can you make that work? Where you feel like you are surrounded by the energy that you want to be surrounded by on the holidays, and for difficult parts of the holidays, explore compromise or coping. You know, if there are people, things or activities or experiences that you really don't want to have or they're unpleasant, how can you either avoid them or cope with them? Virtual visits. If you're. You're not going to be able to be with your family, maybe you can do a FaceTime with them during Thanksgiving dinner. If they can't be there in real life, if you're having to go over somewhere and you expect it to be conflictual, having shorter visits, maybe having a plan that you're going to go here for, you know, an hour and then you've got to be somewhere else. How are you going to maintain your boundaries? You know, explore, rehearse how you're going to feel safe in those environments where you feel like you're heard or at least respected. And for some people, getting social support, going to some of those gatherings or getting social support so you're not alone can help you get through some of those difficult parts. If you don't have that big, you know, a huge family that you want to have or huge gathering that you want to have, or even volunteering, sometimes volunteering where you're working with children who are in shelters, etc. You may be able to kind of let your inner child come out to play and experience Christmas with those children. So you're not necessarily experiencing it, but you're seeing it through their eyes and you're able to experience some of their joy. Please help us continue our mission to make practical tools available to everyone. I know money's tight for a lot of people, and one of the best ways that you can support the channel for free is to share share on social media, send it to your friends, whatever you can do. The more eyeballs we get on the videos, the more able we are to continue producing content. You can donate@docsnipes.com donate. You can join the YouTube channel@docsnipes.com YouTube or you can purchase a super thanks on any videos that are particularly helpful. Holidays are often advertised to be about children, family and loving gatherings. In reality, they're often about seeking validation, acceptance, and sometimes vindication. Going saying, you know, this year I'll show you. I'll be the one that gets the best present or I'll be the one that is the star of the show. Even people with very awesome caregivers may have inner children with unhappy memories around the holidays. Sometimes crap just happens and it's important to recognize when that inner child when you start feeling feeling depressed or icky in some way, look back and see is there a memory? Is there something that this is bringing up for me right now that I need to be compassionate with myself because it's bringing up a painful memory. It's important to become aware and respond to your hurt inner child to to support your mental and your physical health. If you start ignoring that, it's just probably going to end up coming out like, you know, Mount Vesuvius, or you may start withdrawing into a deeper depression. But either one of those, whether it comes out as anger, anxiety or depression, it's going to have consequences on your physical health. And we all know not only are the holidays a time for being stressed for time and all that kind of stuff, but it's also a time when we're connecting with people from different areas and flu bugs are going up and sickness is going up because we're encountering germs that we don't have immunity to. And the more stressed out you are, the lower your immunity is. So if for no other reason than to stay healthy, be compassionate with yourself, and be compassionate with your inner child.