Healing Inner Child: Transformative CBT Methods to Address Abandonment

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this presentation on healing the inner child. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this presentation, we're going to learn about the inner child. We'll identify examples of behaviors that can traumatize the inner child and impacts of that trauma on the inner child. We'll then move on to looking at core issues faced by many people with a wounded inner child and finish up by exploring strategies to begin healing that inner child. Who are we talking about here? Well, when children are wounded or traumatized and cannot get comfort, they often withdraw. Well, when that happens, the wound either doesn't heal correctly or it stays open. And a lot of times here we're talking about emotional wounds. But it's important to recognize that emotional wounds are just as problematic as physical wounds. When a similar situation arises in the future, the child still does not have an effective way to deal with it, and they still feel unsafe. This may lead to the development of unhealthy behaviors to prevent rejection or abandonment and try to stay as safe as possible. Unfortunately, a lot of times, the people who enact these. These traumatizing behaviors are the caregivers. And that can create a lot of chaos because the child gets confused. They have this caregiver that's supposed to protect them and love them unconditionally, but they're engaging in all of these hurtful behaviors. Some of these behaviors, physical or emotional withdrawal or abandonment. Now, sometimes that can be because the caregiver has a mental health issue or an addiction issue. You know, there are things that can prevent the caregiver from being able to be physically or emotionally present, but the child doesn't understand that. And it's important to help the child process that in order to prevent it from being a problem. But in this situation, the caregiver is either physically or emotionally absent, or they intentionally withdraw. So if the child doesn't act the way the caregiver wants, the caregiver may storm out of the house or emotionally withdraw and give the child the cold shoulder and not talk to them for two or three days. And. And the child feels very anxious at that point in time because they know somewhere back in their primitive brain that they rely on this caregiver to survive. Other behaviors include shaming and criticizing. When the child doesn't do things right, when the child isn't perfect, when the child doesn't live up to the caregiver's ideals and expectations, there's constructive feedback. But when the behavior is. When the information is shaming and criticizing, especially if it Humiliates the child. Maybe they are shamed and criticized in front of other people, or they are regularly shamed and criticized so the child doesn't feel like they can do anything right, which makes them fear rejection, which makes them fear abandonment. Blaming and guilting is another behavior that can wound a child because, and this happens when a parent blames the child for how they feel, you know, it's your fault that I'm stressed out all the time or it's your fault that your father and I broke up guilting the child. We would be able to pay the rent if we didn't have to get you new shoes every three weeks. There are a lot of things that caregivers can say that can make the child feel like it's their fault that things are bad, which again makes them fear rejection and abandonment. You know, if I'm making things really bad for you, when is it that you're just going to cut me loose? Teasing, laughing at or belittling the child for, for making mistakes, for failures, or even for exhibiting emotions can make them feel self conscious and unsafe. Manipulating the child for their own gain can also be a very toxic behavior. Betraying the child. If they say that I'm going to be at your recital and then they don't show up. And this isn't just a one time thing, it's a regular, I make a promise and I fail to keep it, or I tell you that I'm going to keep something private. Maybe the child shared something very private with their caregiver and then their caregiver goes and blabs it to the neighbors and to everybody else in the family. The child feels embarrassed, ashamed, you know, self conscious, unsafe, patronizing and invalidating the child's feelings also can be very traumatizing. Caregivers are responsible for helping children learn how to identify and modulate their feelings and cope with life on life's terms. We're not born with those skills. And when a child comes to a caregiver and expresses their emotions and the caregiver belittles it and tells them that they're overreacting or ignores them or makes fun of them, then the child not only feels self conscious and ashamed of their feelings, but they also still don't know how to deal with these overwhelming feelings they're having. Enmeshment is another example of a traumatizing behavior. And that's when the caregivers violate the, the child's emotional and mental boundaries and tell the child what they're going to do, what they're going to grow up to be what they like, what they don't like, what they feel, et cetera. And it doesn't matter what the child says. The caregiver is very insistent about directing every aspect of the child's life, and that's very intrusive and again, feels very unsafe because the message the child is receiving is, your thoughts, feelings, wants and needs don't matter. I will tell you what you're going to do. And conditional love. When a caregiver withholds love from a child, when the child doesn't behave appropriately, or when the child doesn't do what the caregiver wants, that is extremely damaging because withholding love is tantamount to abandonment and rejection. So think about which behaviors did your caregivers use, and in what ways do you use them now? And you may be thinking, what I don't want to. We learn what we live. And if your caregivers responded in a certain way, for example, if one of your caregivers, whenever they didn't get their own way, they stormed out, or if your caregivers never talked about feelings or invalidated one another's feelings, then you may have picked up those behaviors because those were the only ones you were taught. Now you can learn other behaviors, but it's important to recognize which patterns you have, which default patterns you have that you learned from your family of origin, that you learned in order to help you stay safe. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a healthy pattern of behavior. So it's important to check those. Think of situations in which these things happen to you. They may not have all happened to you, but some of them may have, what would have been a more nurturing response? So if you came home one day and you were telling your caregiver about breaking up with your first love, and, you know, you felt completely overwhelmed and devastated, which, you know, most people do when they break up with their first love. And the caregiver either ignored it or minimized it and said, oh, that's puppy love. You know, just ignore it, you'll be fine tomorrow, or whatever they said. But they didn't take you seriously. They didn't validate your feelings. They didn't help you figure out, okay, what do I do with this, you know, swirling ball of emotion? Then you are probably left feeling very unsafe and emotionally abandoned. So the question is, what would you rather them have done? Envision them responding appropriately, and this will give you clues about how you need to respond to yourself now. So when you start feeling in the present when you start feeling overwhelmed like you, you've got this huge ball of swirling emotions. What can you tell yourself? How can you validate those feelings and how can you deal with it? What is a more nurturing response that you can do? Because ultimately you're probably going to have to do something that we call reparenting. The wounded inner child learned how to relate to others based on what they had to do to stay safe. They may have developed an inauthentic or a false self. They presented whatever facade they thought was going to get them accepted. So they were kind of like a little chameleon. And they spent immense amounts of energy just trying to be the person that everybody else wanted them to be. Well, that prevents them from being who they are. That prevents them from being authentic. They may be envious or critical. When they were in the childhood relationships, they may have felt insecure. And when people are insecure, sometimes they're envious and critical of others in order to make sure that other people are not valued more than they are. So I'll point out all of your faults just to make sure that mom knows that, you know, know you're imperfect too. They may be perfectionistic. They may have learned that if they do everything perfectly, then maybe, just maybe, they will get love and acceptance from their caregiver. They may be overly conforming, which kind of goes with that inauthentic self. You know, they do whatever the caregiver wants them to do. And in adult relationships, you know, they carry this through. They're overly conforming to the wills and whims of their significant other, even if it goes against what they want. They deny or hide feelings or are passive aggressive. They may have received the message that it wasn't safe to express their feelings because they would be humiliated, mocked, invalidated, patronized, whatever, so they may not feel safe expressing their feelings. So they may deny them, they may hide them, or they may come out passive aggressively where instead of saying, that really hurt my feelings, they may say, no, it's okay, it's all good. You can tell by the sarcasm that it's not all good, but they're too afraid to actually say, yeah, this, whatever happened really hurt my feelings. They may have an overdeveloped parent script. If there was a lot of chaos in the house or chaos in the relationships, they may have had to take on the role of the parent as well as the child because the parent was not meeting their emotional needs, the parent was not meeting their needs for love. So they had to take on both relationships just to try to survive because they were basically living in isolation. Even though they were living in a house full of other people. They may have had to always pretend to be strong because showing emotion, showing weakness or needing something was discouraged or even mocked in their household. They may be distrusting. Well, if you're regularly encountering situations in which you're being mocked, rejected, made fun of, invalidated, then yeah, it's hard to feel safe. It's hard to trust that others are going to be kind and loving and accepting of you. It's hard to trust that you're going to be safe in a relationship. The wounded inner child may have learned to control or withdraw in their prior relationships. If they weren't in control, if they weren't perfect, if they didn't have, you know, everything kind of figured out, then it was unsafe. So it was better to get out. And in adulthood, a lot of times people may react in the same way. They're either in total control of the relationship and what's going on, or they cut bait, break up, run away, get out. And finally, they may act out prior relationships. So if they used to interact in a particular way with their primary caregiver, they may take that way of interacting and project it on their significant other when they get into a relationship. So they may be replaying that old dysfunctional relationship. People with wounded inner children often have low self esteem, secure attachments. Secure relationships help us build our self esteem. If the child never experienced security, unconditional love, validation, acceptance, then yeah, they're probably going to have difficulty looking at themselves and going, I'm all that in a bag of chips and who wouldn't want to be with me? They may have difficulty with emotional regulation. As I said, we are not born with that skill. In order to regulate our emotions, we have to A be able to define them, identify them when we feel them, B be able to down regulate to get out of that default fight or flight mode and C be able to develop skills or have skills to deal with those situations. Once we're in our wise mind, a four year old doesn't have that and we learn that by interacting with our parents. We learn that when we are at the playground and somebody's mean to us and we run to our caregiver and they help us calm down and help us figure out what to do. You know, that is part of that secure relationship, that is part of that learning process. The wounded inner child may continue to have polarized thinking, unfortunately, and we'll talk about this in a second. A lot of Times development in certain areas gets slowed down when people are exposed to trauma. So children may continue to think in all or nothing terms because they are operating mainly in that default mode fight or flight network most of the time, because they feel unsafe, they feel anxious, so they're constantly in fight or flight mode. When you're in fight or flight mode, you're not in your wise mind. You're not in. Let's explore all the possibilities. Fight or flight tends to be very polarized in its thinking. I'm either safe or I'm unsafe. There may be low motivation because of fear of failure. You know, why should I try anything? Because every time I try, I get laughed at, ridiculed, or rejected anyway. They may fear abandonment or just generally have high levels of anxiety because the world seems like a very scary, hostile place. And they may have internalized caregiver coping and interpersonal behaviors. So as we talked about earlier, they may have learned the way their caregiver interacted, they may have internalized those behaviors. So now they have started using those same behaviors in adult relationships. Many times the child's emotion regulation and interpersonal skills development gets stuck at the age of the trauma or aces. So if the child is, you know, not an adolescent yet, they are thinking very concretely, and if they start feeling very unsafe at this point in time, then they may kind of get stuck in that default fight or flight mode, which prevents them from effectively learning new coping skills. The child will feel unsafe, which strengthens the connections between the amygdala and the default mode network when the salience and emotion network. So this is another. When the child notices stimuli that are similar to or reminiscent of prior threatening experiences, it triggers that fight or flee response again. And the person starts reacting in their emotional mind based on that old schema, the brain's going, I've been here before, I know what to do. Many people with a wounded inner child have very similar core issues. One, needing to be in control, inability to trust over responsibility, and perfectionism. High tolerance for inappropriate behavior, sometimes called enabling, neglecting their own needs, inauthentic or an inability to feel comfortable telling people how they feel or being who they are, being authentic, and impulsivity. Maybe they don't play the tape all the way through. So when something happens, they run away, they break up. They just, they cut bait. Instead of playing it all the way through and saying, what is it? How is it that I really want this to resolve? With each of these behaviors or each of these issues, it's important to look back at them and ask yourself, how did this help you stay safe in the past? How did needing to be in control help you stay safe? How is it a result of what you experienced? Based on what you experienced, how did that create this need in you to be in control now? And when your need to be in control is triggered, when you start feeling that you need to be the one in control, is that absolutely necessary now in order to keep you safe? Or are you acting from old messages, old ways of reacting? Are you acting from that child's perspective versus the adult's perspective? So look through each of these behaviors that may have been developed in order to help you stay safe and answer those questions for yourself. Other core issues are the direct result of feeling unsafe. And that can be fear of abandonment, low self esteem, grief, emotion dysregulation, and depression and anxiety. So it's important to think about, how did this issue come about as a result of feeling unsafe? So why is it that feeling unsafe causes you to fear abandonment? And we kind of talked about that already. When children feel unsafe, when they don't feel like their caregivers are going to love them, are going to accept them, then they may fear that they're going to be abandoned. How can you help your inner child feel validated and safe? So when your inner child starts to fear abandonment, and maybe you're in a relationship and you start to feel that, you know, uncomfortable feeling in your gut, and you're like, oh, this, this is going to be bad, this person's getting ready to leave, they're texting somebody else, whatever. When you start having those fears, how can you help your inner child feel validated and safe? And notice the word I keep saying first is validated. Even if that's not happening, that's how the child feels. So it's important to validate that inner child. And note that, okay, noting this feeling in the pit of my stomach, I'm recognizing that my inner Donnellyse is feeling very unsafe right now or fearing that I could be abandoned. Okay, so you've validated that. That's your feeling. Now. What do you need to do to stay safe? The first step healing is creating safety. We cannot begin to experience or explore those wounds until we feel safe. Which means you're going to have to feel safe with yourself when you, you're going to have to feel safe that you, if you feel a feeling, if that inner child starts coming out and saying I'm anxious or I'm angry, it's not going to get invalidated by adult you that says I don't have time for this right now. You're overblowing it. You're out of control. Your inner child needs to know that you're going to take it seriously. We do this by developing a secure attachment with yourself. This is the same kind of attachment you want to develop with other people eventually. But first you need to develop it with that inner child. And I use the mnemonic visceral validation to enhance emotional awareness. You feel a feeling. It's not good, it's not bad. It just is. You're acknowledging it, you're validating it. You're not saying it's right or wrong. You're just saying this is how you feel. Inner child intimacy, a connection to try to understand the child's point of view. Once you acknowledge that feeling, you say, you know, you're feeling anxious right now. Help me understand. Intimacy is when you say, help me understand why you're feeling this way. I'm curious. Help me understand what makes you tick. And that's intimacy. That's allowing the child to share and be vulnerable. Safety and boundaries. It's important to create safety for that child. So when you start acting in your adult self, you're actually protecting that child. Maybe you're interacting with your caregiver and your caregiver starts engaging in some of those old behaviors, shaming, blaming, manipulating. And you notice that and you start to feel anxious, you start to feel angry. That's that inner child coming back out again. And it's important to validate that inner child's and notice, recognize, validate how you're feeling, be mindful of it, and then set healthy boundaries. Because adult you has to form the barrier, has to be the protector of child, you. So you set boundaries and you say, this is not okay. I'm not going to allow you to treat me that way or let them know you hurt my feelings when you did this. Set a boundary, be authentic, do all these things in order to give a voice to that inner child that is now also part of the adult you. This isn't easy. A lot of times in families and relationships, if they are not used to you setting boundaries, if they're not used to you being authentic, there's going to be some recoil at that. So it's important to recognize that and prepare yourself and prepare the inner child for that. Okay, if we do this, if we state our feelings, mom might get really mad. However, we need to give her time to process this. We are able to protect ourselves now. We are not reliant on her, not that we want to be abandoned or rejected. But it's important to recognize how the situation is different in the present time, in the present context, now that you're an adult versus when you were 5, 6, 7, 8 years old. Consistency and predictability is important. Being consistently mindful of yourself, not ignoring, invalidating, minimizing your inner child's feelings. Sometimes because you're too busy and paying attention. Other times, just like you would if it was an actual, you know, skin and bone child in real life, you would take time out and address that child's needs. And it's important to do that for your inner child. Encouragement and nurturing for self efficacy, part of a secure attachment, helps children learn that it's safe to go out of that comfort zone. And if you fail, okay, you fail, come back, we'll figure out how to pick yourself up and, you know, try again. But it is safe to go out and try new things because sometimes you'll succeed. And this encouragement and nurturing for self efficacy is really important. You're going to feel anxious. Everybody feels anxious even if they don't have a wounded inner child when they leave that comfort zone. And it's important to acknowledge that because your inner child is going to be screaming, don't do this. This is not safe. Because it never received support and encouragement from the caregivers. You need to be responsive to help the inner child with coping and problem solving. The inner child may want to throw a tantrum to beat all tantrums, and acknowledging that is okay. But it's also important to help the inner child learn. All right, what is a better way to cope with this? What are our options? Authenticity. To feel feelings and grieve losses. Allowing that child again. You know, when we allow people to be authentic, they are able to be who they are and they are able to express their feelings and thoughts, which, you know, going back to the top, we validate. I remember when my kids were little because we used to listen to those songs a lot on the different Sesame street and whatever. But I remember times just kind of half skipping down the, down the hall at work singing Goober Peas. You know, that was my little inner self just kind of coming out singing Goober Peas. And it was what it was. I was being authentic, but I was also letting my inner child out. And I wasn't ashamed of it. I was like, hey, you know, we've all got to have fun and love. Unconditional love helps enhance the self esteem of you and your inner child. Loving that child, looking back at it and Reflecting and saying, you know what? You are a good child. You may have made some mistakes even as an adult. You may have done some things, you may have made some choices that weren't ideal, but you as a human being are lovable. When you're experiencing distress, explore whether it's from the inner child you or the adult you, and reassure the inner child that you've got this. All right, I know this is scary, but I've got this. I'm your shield. I'm here with you. We'll do it together. Get to know your inner child. Many times when you react in unhelpful ways, you're reacting from the place of the child's default mode. The child is in fight or flee and you are reacting from their default mode, which is based on the skills that they had. So you're acting using an 8 year old skill set instead of a 28 year old skill set. You may find that at work you can engage different behaviors, but your personal life is very different. That's because your default network is programmed differently with different schema for work and personal relationships. When you were a child, when you were experiencing this trauma, you were not working. So personal relationships, friendships, family, that has its own set of memories and rules that go along with it. This is how you act, this is what to anticipate, etc. Your adult self is the one that went to work. So your adult self knows how to act and interact at work. And there are very different stimuli at work that are engaged. So you're working basically with two different networks. And when you're at work, the adult you is often engaged. Start to recognize when your inner child is emerging. And a lot of times you can notice this because you're acting like a child instead of an adult. And what I mean is, you know, sometimes it can be fun to be giddy for a minute, but if you're throwing a temper tantrum, that's probably your inner child coming out. Explore why non judgmentally, why is it that I'm being triggered right now? What's going on? How can you validate and respond to that child so they feel safe? As soon as children are validated and feel safe, they often de escalate significantly. So what can you do to validate and respond to that child? Another way of saying it is what would a parent do if a child was starting to escalate and feel anxious in terms of assessment? Explore yourself. What current behaviors do you have now that you find problematic? Did you learn them from your caregivers? Did they Help keep you safe when you were young, Are they still an attempt to keep you safe, to keep you from being hurt or feeling vulnerable or rejected? What would you rather do instead? So if you tend to yell or throw things or run away or go to sleep or whatever it is you do, that doesn't seem to be helpful. What would you rather do instead? Once you figure that out, envision yourself responding in that way. So if you tend to get into disagreements with people and you have to have control and you get very angry when they don't agree with you and you want to change how you respond, you want to be able to respond more assertively and less defensively, then think about several times when you have responded aggressively and replay that situation in your mind. But this time replacement responding the way that you would like to respond. Envision yourself doing it the new way and repeatedly envision yourself doing that. The more you envision yourself doing it, the stronger those neural networks are. That will be triggered when you start to encounter a similar situation. So if you've practiced a lot, then eventually when somebody disagrees with you, instead of going into fight or flee mode, you will engage that new schema, that new rule for how to respond. Think about what you did not develop or get as a child. Another way of saying that is, what is your inner child angry about still? What are they pouting about? And how can you help them grieve that loss or that slight that's going to involve processing your grief? And that's way easier said than done. You're going to go through a process of denial, sometimes anger, depression, acceptance, and forgiveness. And some people really recoil when I say forgiveness. And I want you to think of forgiveness as a power play. Forgiveness and acceptance can kind of be used interchangeably the way I use them. Forgiveness is saying, what happened, happened, it can't be changed. I am choosing to not continue to have all of my energy tied up, resenting that. I am choosing not to give you my energy anymore. I am choosing not to give that situation my energy anymore because I've got other things I can use it for. Blocks to grieving, though, can include not wanting to confront the realities or destroy the illusion. Sometimes people want to pretend that they had a storybook childhood. In reality, it probably wasn't. But they have worked really hard to convince themselves that it was really awesome. So they may not want to grieve. They may want not want to look too deep because they're afraid that it's going to pull the curtain back. They may fear being overwhelmed when they start processing the grief. And if you're afraid of being overwhelmed, counselors and pastors are really skilled at helping you process grief. They also may fear rejection or abandonment. If they start processing their grief and they start changing, they start being the person that they want to be and validating that inner child. They may fear that their caregivers will abandon them. Some of the behaviors we see people engage in when they're trying to block that grief process include denial. Just trying to believe it was a nightmare, you know, that really didn't happen. My parents really were loving and caring people. Trying to make up stories, trying to explain away or make excuses for why things happened, or accepting all the blame. You know, my parent wouldn't have had to do that if I was a better kid or it was my fault that this happened. Other strategies respect and integrate your inner child. Not just when they're in distress, notice them. Some days you may get up in the morning and think, you know what? I want ice cream for breakfast. Now, that's probably not the best thing to do every day. But every once in a while, maybe you need to treat that inner child. Make a personal bill of rights. You have the right to your feelings. You have the right to your thoughts. You have the right to grieve what you did not have. You have the right to have expected certain behaviors from your caregivers. You get the picture. Take it slowly and be curious. Change is never easy. So start making slow changes. Start experimenting slowly. Really work developing that safe, secure foundation relationship with your inner child. And that's going to take some time. Be curious. When it seems to be going awry or you don't understand why you're feeling a certain way. Not judgmental. Be curious. Don't say, I shouldn't be feeling this way. Say why? Why do I feel this way? Help me understand. Forgive your inner child and your adult for things that you have done. Maybe you have sabotaged relationships. Maybe you have acted out. Maybe you did run away a bunch of times and cause your parents some grief and distress. Okay, you did take responsibility for the parts that are your fault. You know, whatever parts those are, you know, you made the choice to do it, what have you. But remember that in any situation, it's rare that 100% of the responsibility falls on one person. Especially when we're talking about children. When we're talking about children, you know, it's important to look at what other factors were at play and who else bears some of the onus for the responsibility of it. Remorse, you know, if you do something that you regret, you're feeling remorse, okay? You feel bad that you did it, that's healthy. Holding on to that remorse, not so healthy feeling it, that tells you you did something that you're not happy with and you don't want to do it again. All right, so what can you do to rectify it? Maybe you just learn from it so it won't happen again. Maybe you need to make amends. Depends on the situation. And then the fourth R stands for release. Once you've identified it, taken responsibility, felt remorse, rectified it however you can so it doesn't happen again, then let it go, release it. And that is again, way easier said than done. But after you have made up for it, continuing to hold yourself hostage to it is unfair to you and it prevents you from moving forward. Every person has an inner child. We grow up, but those memories are still a part of us. And those hurt memories, those wounded memories, tend to stay stored back in the back and regularly tell us that the world is an unsafe, uncaring place. When the inner child is wounded or traumatized and can't get comfort, it often withdraws and that wound stays open. The first step is to create a safe, non judgmental environment for the inner child to be authentic and learn new skills. Help the child learn that it's okay to be who they are and to feel their feelings and, and you will validate them and you will help them cope. Secondly, identify inner child behaviors and what triggers those behaviors. Whether it's being controlling or critical or acting out in some way, whatever it is, we went through a whole list of behaviors. The third step is to begin to identify and rehearse new responses to old triggers. If somebody contradicts you, if you fear abandonment, if you are feeling vulnerable and are afraid because you're afraid you're going to be hurt and you, whatever it is, how can you react? How do you want to react differently now? Instead of doing X, you want to fill in the blank. Once you identify that, then you need to mentally rehearse it. The more you rehearse it, the easier it will be to call on that new skill, to call on that new response when you're feeling distress. The fourth step is to allow the inner child to identify and grieve their losses. They may be grieving things that are sort of not tangible, like a lost childhood. They may be grieving they the fact that because of their childhood they didn't do things that they wished they could have. Whatever their griefs are, identify them, validate them and help the child or help yourself, your inner child. Process them. Don't disenfranchise their grief. Don't tell them. Well, that's not something to be worried about or to be grieved. If they feel upset about it, it's important to grieve it. I hope this has been a helpful introduction to healing the inner child. I look forward to seeing you next time.