Healing Inner-Child Wounds Caused by Abandonment or ACEs

You. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on healing the inner child. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this presentation, you're going to learn about the inner child, examples of behaviors that can traumatize the inner child. So we're talking about behaviors that caregivers do. And when I say caregivers, I'm not referring necessarily to the primary attachment figure. I'm not. I'm referring to teachers, to nannies, to grandparents, to parents, to anybody who cares for the child. We'll talk about the impacts of trauma on the inner child and how it often results in behaviors that are characteristic, if you will, in my opinion of cptsd. We'll talk about core issues faced by many people with a wounded inner child and strategies to begin healing. I do have a lot of videos, and some are shorter videos on the inner child that are on the YouTube channel if you search for that. But this is one of those that we're going to do, sort of a deep dive. Who is the inner child? That's the basic question. What are we even talking about here? When children are wounded or traumatized and cannot get the comfort they need, they often withdraw. Sometimes, or usually that means the wound stays open. It's never. The child never moves to integrating it into understanding, why did this happen? How did this happen? Am I safe now? It just sits out there. It's like, oh my gosh, this happens and I'm unsafe and I don't know when it's going to happen, if it's going to happen again or how to deal with it. So that child just sits there going, oh crap, there's this threat out there and I don't know how to deal with it. When a similar situation arises to whatever traumatized them in the first place, the child still doesn't have an effective way to deal with it and they still feel unsafe. So let's talk about a child that grows up in an environment in which the caregivers are extremely critical and rejecting. And we know that children need one love, acceptance, consistency and. And the ability to feel safe even when they make a mistake. So when a child doesn't get that and they're constantly being bombarded with these conditions of worth, caregivers telling them that they're only worthy if only worthy when or they're not worthy if they are imperfect, they're not worthy if they are emotional, then the child has all this stuff and goes, okay, so I don't know what I need to do to be loved. I Just know that there's these checklists out there and the checklist seems to be getting longer. This leads to the development of unhealthy behaviors to prevent rejection or abandonment and try to stay as safe as possible. Children. A six year old can't go out and go grocery shopping, can't go out and rent an apartment, pay an electric bill, all that stuff. Children are dependent on their caregivers. They are dependent on their caregivers to be attentive, to meet their needs, to not be neglect, neglectful, to not be abusive. And when they're in an environment where their caregivers are neglectful, abusive, chaotic, they don't have anywhere to turn. So they try to make the best of it. They try to figure out, okay, how can I survive this hurricane that is my life when I don't have the skills, abilities and opportunities. Obviously a six year old is not articulating that in their mind, but that's what they see in, we see in their behavior. Behavior is communication. Behavior is always communication. And we need to examine what is the child trying to say to us when they act a particular way. When an adult throws a childlike temper tantrum, a lot of times that's their inner child kind of coming out and acting that way. So it's important for the adult to look back and go, okay, what part of my, my past, my history, what trauma just got triggered right now that caused me to react in such a, unusual or not grown up sort of way? Examples of traumatizing behavior that often gets internalized by the child. If the child is abandoned by an, by caregivers, especially by important caregivers, including the primary caregiver, caregiver, the child internalizes that. Remember, children think dichotomously. All or none. You love me, you hate me. I'm worthy, I'm unworthy. There's, there's no middle ground. They think in all or nothing. And they think in personal terms, it's because of me. If the sky is blue, it's because of me. If you're in a good mood, it's because I did something right. If you're in a bad mood, it's because I did something wrong. If you're around and you are paying attention to me, it's because I did something right. If you are angry or drunk or something else, it's because of me. And if you leave, it's because I wasn't good enough. And that those are the messages that the child in their primitive little brains, and I'm not being condescending. To children, they literally think differently. But in the child's mind, they have to come up with an explanation for why did this happen? And most of us remember, if you've had children or you've had little siblings, you remember when they go through that stage of why, why is the sky blue? Why does the cat, the cat meow instead of bark? Why this? Why that? Children, from the time that they are brought into this world start trying to make sense of this world. At first it's cause and effect. I cry, caregiver comes or I cry, nobody comes, I'm out of luck. But they start developing these. When X happens, Y happens. And remember, that's very concrete thinking. That's very immature cognitive processing because it's not considering all the other options or all the other possibilities. That's not it. Again, that's not a ding against children. That's just how they think. So it's important for caregivers to talk with their children. Maybe a caregiver has to go to treatment or, or go on a trip or gets deployed or something. Okay, well, it happens. Explaining to the child generally, repeatedly, hey, little Jim Bob, I am not leaving because of you. I love you and I am leaving because this needs to happen. Emotional withdrawal. They come home, they've had an awful day at work, and little Jim Bob runs up to him and says, oh, pick me up, pick me up, let's play. Come on, come on, come on. Which, you know, most of us have that experience with our kids that they're glad to see us when we return. But if the caregiver says, no, just go do something, I can't deal with you right now in kinder or not so kind terms, then the child feels rejected. They don't like me, I don't deserve attention, they don't want to spend time with me. When in reality, the caregiver was exhausted, had a bad day and needed to decompress for a minute. How do we deal with that in effective environments, in effective families? The caregiver is going to explain to the child because again, the child doesn't know what questions to ask. You know, why are you in such a God awful mood? Kid's not going to say that probably. And the child is not going to understand, they're going to assume it's their fault. So it's important for us, each time it happens as caregivers to say, you know what, I'm not feeling well today and I'd love to spend time with you, but I'm not up to doing that or I had a really bad day at work and I feel very overwhelmed or whatever word the child understands. And I need some time to get my thoughts together or I need some time to think for a few minutes and then we can play. So the child knows you're not rejecting me. You are having to do something for you. Not only does that help the child process what's going on in a different way, but it teaches them self care. Omg, what a concept. All right. Shaming and criticizing and blaming and guilting, we'll just. And teasing, laughing and belittling. We'll do those all together because they kind of overlap each other. Some caregivers do this in jest and I remember one example of my grandfather doing it in jest. When we were eating and I took more bacon off the plate than he thought I should have, he said, well, in front of the entire family, well, aren't you a little piggy? Sorry. And I was paranoid, literally paranoid about how much I ate in front of people for years after that. Because every time I would start to eat in front of people, I would hear my grandfather's voice in the back of my head, well, aren't you a little piggy now? He was a very kind man in general and I don't believe he meant it to be mean. I think he was just kind of making an observation and a joke in a sort of not so kind way. But I internalized it as a small child. I internalized it. So we have to be aware of the words that we say. And as adults, if we have a wounded inner child, we need to hear and notice who is saying those words. Is it coming from ourselves or is this something that a caregiver or a family member said to us when we were younger? They shamed, they criticized, they blamed, they guilted, teased, laughed at, belittled us. For some reason in some families that is how they communicate. It's can be very dysfunctional if the people don't understand that it's a meant in a joshing, light hearted sort of way. And those of us within skin may internalize it. So it's important to be aware of what we say and how we say it and how the child with their multitude of experiences they've gleaned in three, four, five years is going to interpret it. I'm an adult, I know what I mean and I have the ability to consider different possibilities. I interpret things based on my more than half a century of experiences. I interpret things much differently than a five year old. And so it's Important to step into the shoes of that five year old and say, oh, is this something that I should say? And if you already said it, is this something that I need to explain? Is this something that I need to not do again and talk with the child for, maybe even apologize if the child felt self conscious for something. And you remember, I think it was last week, we were talking about attachment styles and insecure. Attachment is created by caregivers who are rejecting critical and sometimes even teasing or humiliating the child. And that creates a child that says, oh my gosh, people are going to embarrass me and reject me and make fun of me and if I do something wrong, which means I'm not lovable in the child's mind, they start putting those things together. Manipulating the child is another thing. And I mean, let's admit it, as parents, caregivers, we do tend to manipulate kids a little bit. If you take out the trash, then you can watch 15 more minutes of TV. That's behavior modification. What we're talking about with manipulating is you need to do this for me or I won't love you anymore. Or if you loved me, that's my favorite, I'm sarcastic. If you loved me, you would. No, we need to not try to guilt and manipulate children that way because that teaches very unhealthy dynamics and the child starts internalizing it. Well, if I don't think that's right, if I don't do that, then it must mean I don't love them and then they're going to be upset and they're going to be angry with me and they're going to reject me. So, oh my gosh. So you see how it can work in a child's mind. And it all comes back, all comes back to am I safe, am I loved, am I accepted? That's how a child thinks. That's what's most important to them in their formative years. That they're not thinking about what's my career going to be or you know, what do I need to do to get out of this place until much later in, in their development. Betraying a child is also traumatizing. If you tell them, oh, we're going to do this. And then we don't, okay, sometimes things come up, we're going to go to Disney World. Oh, no, you know, one of us got called out or something happened and we can't go. All right, that's unfortunate. And the child may briefly feel angry and betrayed, but it's important to help them recognize we're not doing this because we're mad at you or because we don't love you. We're doing this because blah. Betrayal from a more sinister point of view is when the caregiver does something for their own best interest at the expense of the child, whatever that may be. Patronizing and invalidating the child. Again, those kind of can go together where the caregiver just says, yeah, yeah, you're upset, you know, whatever. It's not that big of a deal. We've all heard that, whether we were children or adults, we had somebody tell us, I see you're really upset right now, but it's not that big of a deal. Although them's fighting words in this household because it's invalidating. And when the child feels something, they may not know how to articulate it. They may not know what they feel. They probably don't know how to deal with it to feel safe. And when the caregiver says just, you know, ignore it, or I'm ignoring you, because it's really not that big of a deal, the child is sitting there with they, with what they feel is a huge albatross that's terrifying to them, and they're going, well, what do I do with this? Then the caregiver sees it as a little tiny baby chick and you know, just put it back in the nest, whatever, it's fine. But again, the mind of the child, so the child feels rejected. The child feels like, oh, my feelings must be incorrect or, or I don't deserve to be comforted. I don't deserve to be protected. Enmeshment is when the caregiver, you know, lives through the child. The caregiver tells the child what to think, how to dress, what to eat, when to go to bed, when to get up. Okay, you know, when the child is really little, there a lot of those things we've got to set boundaries and help them do in an enmeshed environment. The child never breaks out of that. The child is continuing to live in the shadow of or by the puppet strings of the caregiver. And that communicates to the child, your thoughts, wants and needs are not important. What is important is what I tell you. Your thoughts, wants and needs are. So when they get away from the caregiver, they don't have any clue what their thoughts, wants and needs are. And developmentally, most of us go through a period where we want to start becoming independent. We want to take initiative, we want to try new things. And when those desires are thwarted, we may start to feel angry or when those desires are thwarted, when somebody tells us you can't do that, then we may feel like, well, if I try to do something that's not approved of, then I'm going to be rejected and that means I'm unsafe. And all of this kind of sums up with conditional love. I love you when I love you when you do the right thing. I love you when I'm in the right mood. And a child doesn't respond well to that. It makes them feel anxious if they're like, well, I'm not loved all the time. Now you're not. You're not laying out all the rules. Clearly they keep changing or adding more. So I'm not sure. I'm always on this uneven playing field trying to figure out what is it that I need to do and who is it that I need to be to get your love. And that is the crux, if you will, of the wounded inner child. The inner child is. Has been prevented. Go back to Erickson's stages of psychosocial development. The child has been prevented from developing initiative. The child has been prevented from becoming more independent. And they've developed a sense of guilt and fear of abandonment if they don't follow these ever changing rules of approval. Please like and subscribe. And if you have friends who would benefit from this video or from this channel, please share the channel. YouTube.com Doc Snipes all right, so when a child goes through all of this stuff, what happens? And remember I said at the beginning, behavior is communication. The wounded inner child learned how to relate to others based on what they had to do to stay safe. They created their relationship map as a child learning, you know, very clearly or as clearly as they could what they needed to do to stay safe? And it was was different with healthy individuals versus dysfunctional individuals. It was different in some situations versus others. That's really confusing for a child. It's really confusing for a lot of adults. And what happens is the child starts to develop a sense of unsafeness. That when the child feels unsafe and unable to escape, that's traumatic. They feel unsafe and powerless and unable to escape that. Those are the core conditions of, for the development of complex ptsd. As we go through these behaviors, I want you to think, do these behaviors, are these behaviors seen in codependency? Are these behaviors seen in what we diagnose in the US as border Borderline personality disorder? Are these behaviors developed by very young children to survive very chaotic environments in their childhood as and result in what we now diagnose as CPTSD So which diagnosis would you use? What are you looking for? And as you interact with your clients and you see some of these behaviors, how might it be something from their childhood, some memory, some lesson they learned from their childhood that is saying, if you don't do this, you are going to be abandoned. All right, so the inauthentic false self, this is the chameleon. This is the child that is going to do whatever they need to do in order to get. Get approval from the person that's in front of them. And they may sort of seem like they're lying a lot, but what they're often trying to do is get approval, not get rejected, not get hurt emotionally or physically from their different caregivers. So what can we do about this in adulthood? Well, obviously, encourage people to develop an authentic, true self. Start becoming aware of who they are, what they want, what their thoughts, wants, and needs are in the present, and when they start feeling anxious, when they start feeling the need to be inauthentic, examining that behavior and going, where's this coming from? Why do I feel like I need to fake it in order to avoid rejection or in this situation. Now, I know in reality there are some times where you got to put on a happy face and go to that work function or whatever, and you don't really want to. That's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about is when people are living in relationships in which they're inauthentic and, and. Or in ongoing, repeated situations when they feel they have to be different than who they are in order to avoid rejection. A lot of times, a lot of times that came from early childhood experiences that need to be processed in the present to reflect and understand, you know, why was that caregiver only accepting of me when I did this? Why did I have to be like this in order to get love from that caregiver and start understanding, in most cases, not all, but understanding as an adult, I can look back and I can see, oh, that was that caregiver stuff. It wasn't that I was a bad child. It was that that caregiver had these needs, wasn't able to cope whatever was going on. And as adults, we can start making sense of what happened from a more objective standpoint instead of the, it was my fault and I am not deserving. Envious, critical children learn what they live. And they may have developed this behavior because they were taught, you're only loved if you are the best kid on the block. If you are the Best football player, if you're the best flute player, whatever it is you do, you have to be the best. And anything less than the best is not acceptable. Well, that's critical. It teaches them to envy others that are better than them and to also tear them down, which they also do with themselves. They are constantly critical of themselves. Looking back, we need to examine where'd that message come from and how accurate is it? And this behavior, how is it helping you work or move toward your rich and meaningful life? Does envying somebody and criticizing people, does that do anything to help you be the person you want to be and have the life you want to have? Perfectionistic, similar to envious and critical. Children may have learned that the only way you, you are getting to you're going to be loved is by being perfect. Perfect all the time. And perfectionism is one of those. If you look at the addicted family, you have the hero who tends to be the, the perfectionist. You have the scapegoat who tends to get blamed for everything and take it. You have the lost child that kind of blends into the background and just tries to stay under the radar. You have the mascot who develops tools to make everybody laugh and to diffuse the tension and distract people from whatever the problem is. And then you have the enabler, which is generally another caregiver that covers up for, for the behaviors of the dysfunctional caregiver. Now sometimes it happens where the caregiver is not able to provide care and the child has to assume the role of the parent. And in that case the child can actually become the enabler. Trying to make sure that my parent gets to work, that my siblings get to school, that department of children and families doesn't find out, yada yada. So we can see enabling in a child. But I digress. The overly conforming person. And that kind of goes back with the inauthentic and false self. This is the person who you tell them what is acceptable and they are going to be rigidly adherent to that and have difficulty adapting to as. As things change. People who deny or hide their feelings or are passive aggressive as a child in these unsafe environments that we talked about probably wasn't really safe to ex express anger or need or vulnerability. So the child learned to hide their feelings. And as an adult, it may come out as passive aggressive. And even as a kid, you know, there are things that your children do, especially once they get to be teenagers, that are passive aggressive. They're not going to call you out to your face, but they're going to pout or throw a temper tantrum behind your back or some other rendition of that. But we have to consider what is this behavior saying? If the child is afraid or if the adult who grew up as a child that was afraid, if the adult is now afraid to express their feelings or is passive aggressive instead of being assertive, is it because they don't have the skills? Is it because they don't feel safe being assertive? Because being assertive again means putting your thoughts, wants and needs out there, communicating those and risking rejection, which means potentially risking unlovability, if you will. In the child's mind, an overdeveloped parent script, which is kind of what I just talked about, I guess I jumped ahead where the child becomes more of a parent than the adult in the household. The child that always pretends to be strong. They never show distress, they never show fear. They're strong for their siblings, they're strong sometimes for their caregivers where again they start being the parent that think about that in the mind of a 10 year old. Let's just pick, pick 10 for right now. If their caregiver is not functioning, they are passing out drunk, they are not making dinner, they are at risk of losing their job, they're having difficulty dealing with life, they just sit there and they cry for hours on end every night. What's going through the mind of a 10 year old are, do they feel safe? Do they feel like this caregiver is going to be able to protect them if they need it? Do they feel empowered? Do they feel like their caregiver is upset because. And it's their fault? And the answer is kind of, you can, you can fill in the blanks to those answers. But children aren't always going to show what they need or talk about their needs because they're afraid of being rejected. And Robert points out, be seen and not heard. And, and that was what a lot of people were taught. If you grew up in a family with an addiction or with chaos, even with mental health issues, it was. The key phrases were often don't talk, don't trust and don't feel. You do those things, you're setting yourself up to get hurt. The wounded inner child controls or withdraws. And a lot of times will see this behavior continuing in adulthood where the child will try to control something and if they can't control it, they completely melt down because they're like, they feel terrified that they're going to be rejected or unsafe. Sometimes they'll withdraw, sometimes they'll try to control if it fails, they completely withdraw. Sometimes they look at it and go, oh heck to the no and don't even try. And they just withdraw because they don't believe in themselves. They don't believe that anybody will love them if they fail. So they don't want to try. And the wounded inner child often acts out prior relationships. They will see behaviors, they will hear phrases in current relationships that they saw or heard in childhood and they will react as adults, as that child did back when they were younger. The wounded inner child has a low self esteem. Well, if you don't feel like you are worthy of attention or love for who you are, only what you do, if you don't feel like you're capable, then yeah, your feelings about yourself are probably not going to be that great. They have difficulty with emotional regulation. Well, the child that has these open wounds, think of a wound that stays open for, you know, decades. It just, it gets kind of dirty and infected and festers and grows and it's bad. And the child has these wounds in their brain, in their memory banks that are continuing to impact them in the present, continuing to make it more difficult to deal with life on life's terms in the present, which adds stress. It triggers that stress response, it makes them feel unsafe and eventually it leads the stress response, the HPA axis that we've talked about in so many videos, to dysregulate. So when they are upset, they go from flat or okay, you know, just getting by, to furious or frantic. There is no m. Middle ground. And it's not just a cognitive reaction, it's a neurochemical reaction where people who don't emotionally disregulate may have, you know, 1cc of certain neurochemicals surge when they're stressed. Somebody who emotionally disregulates will have more like 10cc's surge. And so it takes them longer to get back to baseline. It's more exhausting when it does happen because it's a stronger physiological response. Recognizing that, recognizing that once the person feels safe in their own head, once the person feels safe and empowered and has helped that inner child recognize that they didn't deserve it, they didn't bring it on themselves, it's not their fault, they will feel less stressed, they will feel safer. Now, when you first start working with somebody with an inner, wounded inner child or any other sort of grief wound or, or guilt wound, obviously you're not going to say, well, it wasn't your fault. That's something that they have to come to by exploring what happened, what Part did I bring on this? Was it meant, was there? Were their behaviors meant maliciously? What part? And this is the part that, that the young child doesn't consider. What part did the other person play in it? What part was it of it? That was their dysfunction that didn't play in it. So as adults we can help people look back and start processing those and grieve not having the childhood they deserved, deal in whatever way they need to with any guilts that they have. And they may have some that are deserved and they may have some that are toxic or undeserved, but we can start unpacking that baggage. The wounded inner child, because they are. The memories were formed in all or nothing terms. When those memories are triggered, the person thinks more in all or nothing terms. So they have that polarized thinking. And we need to help people develop distress tolerance skills so they can down regulate, get into their wise mind and think about the facts in this context at this time, there's low motivation and fear of failure. Well, if you have always been walking on eggshells hoping and praying that you didn't accidentally misstep and get rejected, then it's exhausting and you're going to fear failure. You're going to be afraid every time you take a step and heaven forbid you should take a step outside your comfort zone. That's absolutely terrifying. Because if I make a mistake, if I fail, then I'm going to be rejected. Why would I be motivated to run into that lion's den? Oh, the low motivation often has to do with a lack of self efficacy. The person has abandonment anxiety. Well, we've already talked about sort of ad nauseam, generalized anxiety. Everything makes them nervous. It's hard to know, you know, with friends are they going to be there. Many children or people who have a wounded inner child, children who've had adverse childhood experiences didn't have a consistent secure attachment that helped them process all of this stuff. An internalization of caregiver coping and interpersonal behaviors. I said before you learn what you live. If your caregiver copes with distress by yelling and throwing and drinking alcohol, then that's what you are learning. You're being taught that they're not teaching you other skills. Children are not born with coping and interpersonal skills. They learn them through observing and through practicing in their early life relationships. Many times children's emotion regulation and interpersonal skills development gets stuck at the age of the trauma or the adverse childhood experiences. So somebody who is has a a major trauma as a 10 year old May react in a lot of situations. As soon as they start feeling unsafe, that triggers that inner child. And they may react more like a 10 year old than a 20 or 30 year old or something. The child feels unsafe, which causes a strengthening of the connections between the amygdala, the part of the brain that does fear processing, and the default mode network, which is your autopilot. So the autopilot connects to that fear processing area and starts saying, oh my gosh, there's a lot of danger out there. And that connection is stronger in people with trauma than it is in people without trauma. When the salience and emotion network, when your nervous system identifies sim stimuli that are similar or reminiscent of prior threatening experiences you encounter. Maybe you got traumatized by a dog. You get, you encounter a dog that rushes up to the fence and starts barking. Well, you don't even think, I wonder if this dog is friendly. Your autopilot, your default mode network kicks into overdrive and goes, oh crap, I remember this and I'm not being there again. And it triggers the stress response or the HPA axis. When this happens, the person has various responses and behaviors. They can fight, they can flee, they can freeze, they can fawn, or they can, as Adriana pointed out, flop. I used to have a different f, but I like flop because I can actually say that on YouTube. And the person begins reacting in their emotional mind based on those old schema. In terms of core issues, the person with a wounded inner child, in order to try to maintain safety, feels like they need to be in control. I don't trust other people. I don't really even trust myself. But I need to try to control things so I can try to kind of expect maybe what's going to happen. They have an inability to trust themselves or others. They tend to be over responsible or perfectionistic. They have a high tolerance for inappropriate behavior. Well, this sort of enables the person that's doing that inappropriate behavior, they just, they let it happen. They don't correct it. They neglect their own needs, especially in deference to others needs. They tend to be inauthentic. They can't tell you how they feel or who they are. Not because they're trying to lie, because they actually don't freaking know. They've never been taught how to look inside and say, oh, what do I want? What do I like? And they may be more impulsive not playing the tape through, as we say, when something happens, it triggers that fear response. It triggers that memory from the past. They react as children do, impulsively and they may run away from the situation, they may break up in relationships, they may all of a sudden, you know, be ready to fight whatever their go to response is. But we need to look at these behaviors in terms of their function of helping the child stay safe in an unpredictable, unsafe, chaotic environment and help the adult. Because I'm assuming most of you work with adults, help the adult examine these behaviors and decide for themselves by looking at the benefits and the drawbacks and how these behaviors are helping them or not helping them move toward their rich and meaningful life. And then sometimes there's some skill development that goes in there. For example, if you have somebody with a high tolerance for inappropriate behavior, they tolerate someone who is abusive, they tolerate someone who is abusing addictive substances, then we need to talk about, okay, how do you deal with that? What are the problem solving skills? You need to, to be assertive, to set your boundaries, to communicate your needs to address this issue. And obviously in certain situations, the response is not talking about it, but it's getting out. But my point being, even at work, for example, someone who tolerates inappropriate behavior from their colleagues that are rude or lazy or whatever it is, we need to help people examine why are you afraid to address that issue and is it because you don't know how, or is it because you're afraid of a rejection or all of the above. Results of unsafeness? People have a fear of abandonment. We need to explore these things with them. Why do you have this fear? Why? Where did this come from? What messages did you get from what people when you were growing up that taught you that abandonment was likely? And do you believe those are accurate in retrospect, do you believe in the present, the facts in this context at this time, do you believe that you're at risk of abandonment? If your best friend or your spouse or somebody gets angry with you, does that mean they're going to abandon you? Or does that mean that they're angry with you and you know, okay, so we may have to deal with it. Low self esteem. When people feel unsafe and nobody comes to their rescue and they don't know how to solve the problem, it develops low self esteem. I'm not worthy of protection and love and I have no idea how to deal with this. So I'm not capable and not lovable. Grief. Well, when people feel unsafe, we're not meant to feel that way. Children who don't feel safe grew up in an environment that they should have never had to deal with and they have to grieve the loss of or Lack of the caregivers that, and I'll use this word that I try not to use. They should have had children, should have caregivers that they count on. Emotional dysregulation. That HPA axis is out of whack. And it's not just. Again, it's not just a cognitive thing. Well, when this happens, you need to not react so strongly. Okay, you might as well tell the sea not to have the tides come in and ebb and flow because it's not going to work. To just think it away. You, you've got to actually heal the nervous system and depression and anxiety. When you feel unsafe, that triggers the stress response. That triggers anxiety. When you feel unsafe and powerless to change it, eventually you start feeling hopeless and helpless and depressed. We need to empower people as adults to examine what parts can you address. You can't change your caregiver. You can't change the past. You can't change a lot of things, but there are things that you can change. To feel safe in your own mind, feel safe in your own body, and feel safe henceforth. Healing through reparenting help people create exploration. Create safety for exploration and change. Now, normally I use the mnemonic cares for secure attachment, consistency, attentiveness to the child, responsiveness to their needs and helping them learn to identify their triggers, their emotions and coping skills, encouragement to keep going, to try things that are a little scary, and safety, the ability to come back to a safe home base when you fail or when you succeed. It doesn't matter. You're loved anyway. So that's the CARES mnemonic here. I'm talking. I use visceral, which gives us a few more dimensions. The caregivers and in. If you're working with an adult with a wounded inner child, the adult needs to be able to look inside and see that or feel, hear whatever word they want to use that inner child and validate how that child's feeling. As an adult, I recognize that this is really not that big of a deal, but there's still this grinding in the pit of my stomach. That's my inner child going, pulling on my skirt and going, are you sure? Are you sure? It's not a big deal. So validation of all of your feelings and recognizing that you know they're influenced by the past. Intimacy and attention to self to understand the child's point of view. Let's pay attention. Let me talk now. Intimacy is not just sexual. And in this case, it's not sexual at all. It's emotional intimacy, cognitive Intimacy. Little child, little child inside me. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? I had to go back to that incident with my grandfather and really process it and go, okay, why is, why am I still hearing him call me a little piggy every time I start to eat? And I had to go back into the mind of that eight year old little girl and hear my think to myself, what was, what did I think when he said that? What did I feel when he said, said that and what were my needs at that time that did or didn't get met? Providing safety and boundaries is really important. Helping that inner child feel safe, helping that inner child recognize that, yeah, the past sucked, I'm sorry I wasn't there, I can't change that. I'm here now and as an adult, I, I don't have to go through that again and I can protect you inner child from having to go through that again. Consistency and predictability is important in your relationship with yourself. Not being chaotic, not saying, oh, I'm going to do mindfulness activities. You do them for three days, you don't do them for seven days, you do them for three days again. Let that kid know that they're important. Every morning, check in with your inner child and say, you know, how do I feel today? Does my inner child have anything to say? Encouragement and nurturing for self efficacy. It's important for the person to start recognizing that they're lovable whether they succeed or fail and that they can try to step out and helping them reframe their relationship with the F word, which is failure in this case. Failure doesn't mean you're worthless. Failure doesn't mean you're going to be rejected. Failure means what to you? And I usually have clients look up quotes about failure online and bring me 10 that resonated with them. Being responsive to help with coping and problem solving. Learning how to be mindful of how they're feeling and start using coping and problem solving tools that they were never taught in order to keep themselves safe. In order to help that inner child feel safe. Recognizing that this is not the same as the past, this is now. Authenticity to feel feelings and grieve losses. Not everything that happened got processed, got grieved. And as an adult you may think, well, that happened 20 years ago. What's the point? There's a point. We need to, instead of having that memory just kind of hanging out there in free space, we need to integrate it somehow and allow the person to grieve those losses. I do have a fair number of activities in the, in the video that I will be doing on helping the inner child grieve that people have told me they found relatively helpful. And we'll be doing that, I think, in two weeks. And unconditional love to enhance self esteem. Encouraging people to be mindful help of loving themselves for who they are, of recognizing their worth as a human being. Whether they're having a good hair day or a bad hair day, whether they're happy or sad, whether they succeed or they fail, they're still lovable. And learning how to accept that is hard because they never ex. They may never have experienced it. And it's a gradual process of, of trying to recognize and see the good in yourself, not just the bad. Many times when you react in unhelpful ways, you're reacting from the place of the child's default mode network. The child, it triggered a memory where the child felt like they needed to fight or flee. The child never figured out how to solve that situation. So that's just this open story or, you know, whatever in their mind. And so when it's triggered again, you're kind of back to that same point. Because the book was never closed. You may find that at work you can engage different behaviors, but in your personal life, it's different. That's because the default mode network is programmed differently, with different belief systems, different shortcuts for work versus personal relationships. You may have had great teachers and crappy parents or vice versa as a child. And that may impact how you interact with certain people in certain situations. It's important for people to start to recognize when their inner child is emerging, when they're acting more like a child instead of an adult. And only the person can determine what is childlike for them. But if they look back at it and go, wow, that was, you know, a really immature way to respond to that. All right, well, sounds like your inner child came out really loud. So let's take a look at that. Explore why that inner child jumped up and said, hey, you're not getting the job done. If you're not going to do it, I'm going to do it. And explore how you can validate and respond to that child so that they feel safe. You know, looking back at the situation in retrospect, when your boss gave you a bad evaluation and you just felt like the world was coming to an end and you, you started, you got really angry. We'll say you got angry and started screaming at your boss about how unfair it was and blah, blah, blah. Okay, so let's explore why you had that intense and very inappropriate reaction. Explore what it's related to, how it might be related. Related to prior experiences where you didn't do something right and you got punished or rejected for it. Explore how that child reacted. Explore how your reaction in the present, getting angry and screaming might have been sort of that inner child's way of trying to take over and help you feel safe in the situation in which you were. You failed and felt rejected. What did you want a caregiver to do? How could you have. What would have helped that child cope with that situation? And in. As an adult, when you experience criticism and you fear rejection, what can you do for yourself? Because ultimately as an adult, you start having to do it for yourself. What can you do for yourself to nurture yourself so you feel loved, you feel accepted, you feel safe, and are able to acknowledge or accept the criticism that was provided. And then you can decide whether it was accurate or not. But recognizing the difference between your behaviors and who you are, that's a advanced cognitive process that children don't have. Encourage people to examine what current behaviors they have that are problematic. Where did they learn those behaviors? Did they learn it from the caregivers? Did those behaviors, did they develop them on their own to help them stay safe when they were young? Are they still using them now in an attempt to stay safe? What would they rather do instead? What do they think would be a more helpful response? And then encourage them to envision themselves responding that way to triggering situations. You can even role play in session. Encourage people to reflect on what they did not develop or get as a child. What is their inner child angry about? What do you still have regrets and anger about from 15, 20, 40 years ago? And how can you process those angers and regrets and help your inner child help yourself, grieve the loss. In the grief processing pro grief processing process, the person goes through denial, anger, depression, acceptance, and sometimes forgiveness. And we've had debates on this channel about definitions of forgiveness. Forgiveness as I use it doesn't mean it's okay, you know, whatever, no harm, no foul. Well, yeah, there was harm and there was foul, but I'm not going to choose to continue to use energy dwelling on it. I'm going to use that energy instead of to figure out how to stay safe so it doesn't happen again. We want to help people identify blocks to grieving, like not wanting to confront the realities and destroy the illusion. Some people I work with tell me, oh, I had this perfect childhood. I don't know why I feel Depressed and anxious and I get angry all the time. Okay. And two, three months into therapy, I start learning that they had a very rejecting environment that they grew up in. They had a traumatic environment and they didn't want to destroy the illusion. Yes. My caregivers were never home. I was raised by a nanny. I. In order to get my parents attention at all, the only way to do it was to be the head, the, the head quarterback, lead quarterback and first string quarterback, whatever, and do xyz. All right, so those are all conditions of worth. There's a lot of rejection if you're imperfect. There's a lot of stuff that a child picks up from that. But they grow up and they go, no, it was perfect. I was told to always told to say it was perfect. And I'm still holding that line. There's a fear of being overwhelmed. All right, well, this is a trauma processing issue and we don't want to go any faster than the person is able to tolerate. So we take it a little bit at a time. We make sure that the person has skills to deal with it ahead of time. There's fear of rejection and abandonment. There may be blocking behaviors like denial. That didn't happen. It was just a nightmare. You know, my parents were actually really good and I'm just, I'm misremembering. So they start gaslighting themselves, making excuses or accepting all the blame. My parents were really awesome. I was a difficult child. It was my fault. I was the black sheep of the family, to use a phrase. And that's not helpful. Other strategies have people respect and integrate their inner child. Not just when they're in distress. Have them make a personal bill of rights about their thoughts, wants and needs. Encourage people to take it slowly and be curious about why am I reacting this way in this situation. And encourage the person to forgive themselves and their inner child by identifying who had responsibility for things, having remorse where remorse is due, rectifying if needed, and then releasing. Every person has an inner child. We grow up, but those memories are still a part of us. When the inner child is wounded or traumatized and can't get comfort, it withdraws it not safe out there. That wound stays open. The first step is to create a safe, non judgmental environment for the person and the inner child in that person to be authentic and learn new skills. Secondly, identifying inner child behaviors that the adult is using and what triggers those behaviors. The third step is to begin to identify and rehearse new responses to old triggers. And finally allow the inner child to Grieve losses and move toward acceptance of the present. Are there any questions? Is complicated grief related to inner childhood grieving? Yes. The wounds of an inner child can be very complex because it's not just losing one thing. It's often losing a sense of safety and potentially losing dreams and hopes and optimism. So, yeah, there's a lot of that goes into trauma and adverse childhood experiences, especially when a person is young. What's the best way to tell a partner you're working through inner child issues specifically triggered within the relationship? Assuming, and I'm going out on this ledge and assuming that the partner is safe and is willing to be able to hear that. I generally start out with encouraging people to tell their partner that they're working through trauma issues from their past that are being triggered by the current relationship. And then explaining, My mother grew up in a chaotic household and my grandfather was very loud. He was a very angry alcoholic. And so when my stepfather would start yelling, it would trigger her inner child. It would trigger those past memories of when my grandfather would just start raging in the house and she would start feeling like that unsafe little girl again. And it was important for them to have this discussion that so. So my stepfather understood why she was reacting and withdrawing or fighting back or whatever she was doing, why she was doing that, and that it was a reaction that was bringing up her old traumas. It wasn't his responsibility to fix it, but he did become more cognizant about raising his voice and when he would raise his voice and she became more aware of, okay, he's yelling right now, but facts in context. At this time, my caregiver, or not my caregiver, my spouse is. Is angry, but it has nothing to do with me. So it becomes a matter of communicating with the significant other that some stuff you do, you don't mean it harmfully, you don't mean to hurt me, you don't mean to scare me, but it's bringing up these memories and it's almost like bringing up a flashback. And I need you to understand why I react the way I do. Alrighty. If there are no other questions, I will see you all next week. And we will. I don't even know what we're discussing. Remember, you can go to all ceus.com schedule to see what the upcoming topics are. First name, last name. That's a good point. And there is a therapeutic approach called compassion focused therapy that may be able to help you focus on those things. It's less about cognitive and more about developing compassion for self on a slow basis and develop. Exploring what that guttural reaction you're having, that repulsing reaction that you're having, where you learned that and how that's protecting you. Alrighty, everybody, have a great day.