Helping the Inner Child Process Grief

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this video on helping the inner child grieve. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this video, we're going to briefly review what the inner child is. For those of you who haven't seen the other videos, we'll explore the needs of the inner child from a developmental perspective and identify tools to help the inner child grieve. So what is the inner child? The inner child is a part of each of us that is made up of memories and experiences from childhood. So when you think back to your childhood and you remember what that child felt like at that point in time, that's your inner child. These memories are organized into mental shortcuts to help you understand, interpret and react to life in the present. And, and this is what we call schema. When children are young, they think very differently than adults think. And you can refer to Piaget's cognitive development to learn a little bit more about that. But basically, children interpret things very personally. What happens is my fault. They think they have a lot more control than they do. They interpret things very concretely and it is what it is. They have difficulty thinking of alternate explanations for why something may happen. And they tend to think of things in all or nothing terms. It's my parent loves me, my parent hates me, I'm a success, I'm a failure. So the schema that are formed in childhood, if they go unchecked, if nobody ever says, let's take a look at that and see if that's actually accurate, then they follow the person into adulthood. And the adult start still tends to think that things happen in very extreme ways, all or nothing. They tend to be very narrow in their focus when interpreting things very concrete. This is why it happened. And they have difficulty remembering that they can think of alternatives. And they tend to personalize. They feel a lot of guilt. They take things very, very personally. So one of the things that we talk about in inner child work is really examining those schema. Some of them may still be accurate. I'm not saying that they are inaccurate in the present for any individual. I think each person needs to evaluate their schema in the present context and see if they're still accurate. To give you an example, if you're not familiar with schema, it's really important to understand schema to understand the inner child. Think about stoplights. When you pull up to a stoplight, you have a schema based on past learning that tells you if it's yellow, it's going to turn red. And if it for some Reason went from yellow to green, you'd be kind of stuck for a second going, that's not what I expected. So your schema says yellow lights always turn red. If another example, if you pull up to a red light now, there are two things that can happen. Typically at a red light, the red light turns green and then you go, or the red light's flashing. But for a lot of us when we first start learning to drive, we haven't really paid that much attention. So the first time we pull up to a flashing red light, it's curious to us. So. So our schema has to be adjusted and we have to say, okay, when I pull up to a red light, it may turn green or it may flash red. I just have. Either way, I've got to stop. But I have to prepare myself for the two different options. The inner child schema, as I mentioned, is often self focused or very personalized, dichotomous, all or nothing, and concrete or narrow. Because they can't identify, they actually can't, when they're very young, identify alternate explanations. They can't think. Well, my caregiver who is addicted to heroin is engaging in these behaviors because they are very depressed, because they're very sad. They think, I must be doing something to make my parents sad, that is making them do this. The inner child may be quite happy and well adjusted if the child had a healthy, secure attachment that helped them feel safe and empowered to identify their emotions in self and others. So they learned how to identify their own emotions. This is angry, this is happy, and in other people, so they can interact with others and get a general feeling of what's going on. So they can tolerate emotions in themselves. They can sit with anger, they can sit with anxiety and not feel afraid of it or feel like they're going to be overwhelmed and tolerate emotions in others so they're not afraid. When another person is angry or anxious, they can respond effectively to modulate their emotions. And this can include vulnerability, prevention, doing things that help them be happier and prevent them from being vulnerable to being triggered, and problem solving, because sometimes crap happens. So responding effectively means first sitting with the emotion, tolerating the distress until they can get into their wise mind, and then moving over to problem solving, how, how can I improve the next moment? Secure attachments also helped the inner child or the younger version of the person effectively set and maintain boundaries and learn how to assertively communicate their needs. If we can't communicate our needs, then generally we don't have a lot of hope of getting them Met. If we have difficulty communicating them assertively, if we tend to be more aggressive or passive aggressive, then again, a lot of times our needs may not get met because we end up pushing people away or creating barriers. It is important to recognize that the goal is not to get rid of the inner child. The goal, if somebody has a wounded inner child, is to help them help that child heal their wounds so they can have a happy, carefree inner child. And for those people who have a happy inner child, this is the part of you that still wants to sit in your PJs and watch cartoons, or go slip and slide or swing on swings or whatever you did as a kid that you enjoy, that's your inner child coming out. And if it's a happy inner child, when it comes out and it's kind of tapping you on the shoulder and saying, let's go do this fun thing, that sounds like something really fun. The wounded inner child is coming from a place of fear and disempowerment. So a lot of times, fun is the furthest thing from their mind. They're just like, make it stop. Somebody make me feel safe. The wounded inner child is not an alter. We're not talking about dissociative identity disorder. The wounded inner child is a hidden part of ourself, one that the person has tried to ignore. Because as they were growing up, when they encountered adversity, when they encountered trauma or they experienced losses, their caregivers were not there to help them process it, there to help them learn how to tolerate distress and problem solve. So they were told to get over it or just grow up to, you know, it's not that bad. Their feelings were invalidated. Once they did grow up, they never went back and addressed all of those bad memories, all of those losses. The wounds the inner child experiences are caused in part by lack of a secure attachment figure to help them learn to identify and process their emotions. We're not built. We're not born knowing how to tolerate these things. So young children, when they feel anxiety, when they feel anger, what do they typically do? Typically, they will act out. Now, some children withdraw, but a lot of children will act out. What is the function of that behavior? The function of that behavior is to try to keep them safe. If I act out, then I will get my caregiver's attention. So who will provide structure and containment? And that's kind of what we're talking about here. We want to examine the function of the behaviors of the inner child. So the attachment figure didn't help them learn how to identify or process these emotions. So the kid did their best to figure out how to tolerate these emotions that were sometimes overwhelming, like a tsunami. Specific wounds, however, may have been caused by anything that was traumatic or represented a loss to the child. Maybe they had always dreamed of being on the football team or the cheerleading squad or in band or whatever, and they tried out and they didn't make it. Now, as an adult, we may look at that and go, well, that sucks. But there will be other things for the child at that point in time, based on their very, very short history of experiences. That was devastating. That was a dream they had, and all of a sudden it was shattered. And so they need to grieve that loss. If they recognize that, hey, maybe I'm never going to be able to make this particular dream come true in a dysfunctional household. The child is not given any support for that. They're told to get over it and. And everybody moves on. So they put that memory back here. They're like, I don't know what to do with this. This is very, very painful. But I don't know how to cope with it. I don't know how to improve the moment. So I'm just going to put it in this box back here and think of all these memories that were traumatic or triggered grief as things, as trinkets, if you will, that you put in Pandora's box. This box in the back of your. I don't know why I always have it in the back of your head. I guess because I think of a closet that may be in the back of the house and you just push things back there. But this box you have in your head that stores all of these memories. And for the wounded inner child, it's very traumatic memories or memories that were very painful for them. For some way. The wounded inner child did not have secure attachments that help them feel safe and empowered. And one of the key features of trauma is trauma leaves us feeling unsafe and disempowered. So think about it from the child standpoint. The six year old, the eight year old, the ten year old who is experiencing a loss, their best friend, you know, decided not to be friends with them. They broke up with somebody, they didn't make a team that they wanted to. Again, as adults, we may see it and go, oh, that's hard. But for the child, that may be their first significant loss or one in a long history of significant losses. And it can feel overwhelming. So they have this tsunami of emotions, you know, anger, grief, you know, all that Stuff. And there's nobody there to help them feel safe, nobody there to help them figure out how to tolerate these emotions because they feel out of control and overwhelming. So they feel unsafe and disempowered in their own skin. And that's awful to feel like your, your brain and your body are just kind of doing their own thing and you have no control over it. The wounded inner child is going to need to learn how to identify emotions in themselves and others, to tolerate emotions in themselves and others, to respond effectively, to modulate their emotions. They're going to have to figure out what makes me more vulnerable to being irritable, what makes me more vulnerable to anxiety. And this could be being in pain, being sleep deprived, being over caffeinated. You know, there's a lot of things that can make people feel more vulnerable, which means they're already primed for distress. And they need to learn how to effectively problem solve, how to effectively answer the question, what can I do to improve the next moment? They need to learn how to effectively set and maintain boundaries in this household. Likely they were taught that they may have this feeling, it's grief, it's depression, it's anger, whatever it is. And their caregiver said, no, it's not. Get over it. That's an invasion of the boundaries. That's invalidating the person's emotional boundaries, that is. And they may have started to build a wall around themselves because every time they shared something and asked for help, they got shot down. And they need to learn how to assertively communicate their needs. It's another thing we're not born with as kids. We're not born with the capacity to communicate assertively. That is a skill we learn. And the wounded inner child probably never was able to do that. And they either became very passive because every time they tried to communicate their needs, it was met with nothing or punishment. Or they may have become aggressive because the only way to get anybody to hear them was to act out. We need to help them find that middle ground of assertiveness where they can say, these are my thoughts, wants and needs. I respect your thoughts, wants and needs. And you know, we can find a compromise. But my thoughts, wants and needs are just as important as yours. So what kinds of losses did the wounded inner child experience? Well, they may have experienced a lot of stress, which actually altered their HPA axis. They actually lost neurons. And as adults, they may have more difficulty with emotion regulation because their HPA axis is dysregulated. They go from feeling flat to feeling furious or terrified. So that's one of the losses that we may need to address. If the person's been exposed to chronic stress, which most people with a wounded inner child would fall in that category, they have to a certain extent altered their stress response system. So they tend to be more excitable, I guess would be a word. And we need to help them reset their HPA axis. They may have lost self esteem because when they tried to communicate their thoughts, wants and needs, those thoughts, wants and needs didn't get met. When they started to feel distress, they were told that their feelings were wrong. When they started feeling a lot of distress, they may have acted out in ways that they really didn't want to and they regret now, but they didn't know what else to do. So they may have lost self esteem. They may have lost a sense of safety and empowerment in the world because as I mentioned, their feelings and their thoughts may have seemed very disconnected from them and overly powerful. They may have lost the ability to trust others as well as themselves. They communicated their feelings and they were told their feelings were wrong. So, okay, maybe I can't trust my own feelings, maybe I don't know what I'm feeling. And they lose the ability to trust others to be there, to help protect them, to help them figure out this thing we call life. They may have lost love. They may have never had a healthy relationship with a primary secure attachment. So not only have did they not have that primary secure attachment and that love, but they never learned how to develop intimacy and develop healthy relationships. So they've been deprived of healthy love up until now. Childhood. A lot of people with a wounded inner child reminisce that they didn't have the childhood that they deserved. And that's true. So processing that grieving, that will be important. They may have lost friendships because of their behavior. For example, if they tended to be extreme in their behaviors, if they tended to be depressed or anxious, which a lot of people who don't have a secure attachment, who don't have good support at home, who are being raised in a dysfunctional environment, a lot of them don't know how to form friendships or when they do, they are short lived friendships. But there are a lot of other losses that the wounded inner child may have experienced. And like I mentioned earlier, some of these can be very typical developmental losses. They lost this dream of becoming a Super bowl quarterback because they couldn't make the football team. They lost this dream of this relationship with somebody. There are a lot of different developmental losses that people may go through that are important for them to process if they're still holding on to that, where they still have regret that they didn't try out for this team or, or they still have regret that they weren't able to do this, that or the other. So let's move on to helping the inner child grieve. Well, let's start out by recognizing that the inner child is a personification, if you will, of your inner self, of yourself at that age. So the inner child is above all a child. And we can't expect a child to process grief the same way we have adults process grief. There's a child in there who may express themselves differently or may not even know how to express themselves yet. Powerful emotions like anger, anxiety and grief are often overwhelming for children. So before the inner child can grieve, they must feel safe. Encourage the person to think back to their childhood when they were little and they started to get upset, or heck, even now when they start to get upset, what would they have wanted their caregiver to do? What would they want a friend to do to help them feel safe and empowered? In order to help the inner child grieve, you need to start creating a secure attachment with. And I know that sounds weird, but it kind of goes along with self esteem, kind of goes along with self re parenting, whatever you want to call it. The first step is to be consistently aware of your inner child. Be mindful of what's going on inside you. Respond appropriately to the inner child as well as to the adult, and we'll talk about how to kind of ferret all this out in a minute. Attend to the inner child to let them know that they are loved and cared for and they deserve love. Validate how they are feeling. Even if as an adult, you're looking back going, oh, I shouldn't have gotten so upset over that. As a child with, again, the limited experiences you'd had, the few losses that you'd had at that point, that was a big stinking deal. So in retrospect, it may not seem like that big of a deal, but we need to validate for that child at that time, that was a big deal. And encourage them. Let your inner child, let your inner self know that they can do it. It's hard, but they can do it. When I do inner child work with people, I encourage them to spend a month, but I have a week here, but ideally a month, just getting to know and connect with their inner child so they can start understanding what the triggers are, understanding what may need to be addressed and helping that inner child feel safe enough to come out and talk. The mnemonic 4 Secure attachment is craves consistency, responsiveness, attention, validation, encouragement and support. That's wonderful. However, it's not necessarily in that order. The first thing that is often important with the inner child, just like it would be with any other child, is to get to know the kid, do things. Have people do things they like to do as children, or things they like to do now that children also like to do. Slide on slides, get on merry, go rounds, blow bubbles, watch cartoons, eat Fruity Pebbles. Whatever it is they like to do. If they happen to have a child or even a pet, sometimes it helps to do it with them. Not that you're going to go, you know, adopt a child, but if you happen to have a young child, spending time with them and seeing the world through their eyes will help you reconnect with your inner child. Instead of going, I don't know why you're sitting there staring at those ants. Stare at them with them. Talk about it. You know, they have fun sliding down a slide. Try it. See what happens. See if you can get in touch with your inner child and coax them to come out. You can have your inner child complete a scrapbook. Many times our memories are sensations or maybe images, but may not be words, especially if we didn't have the words to assign to that situation or that feeling at that time. So having the inner child complete a scrapbook of the things that they like to do and start back with, you know, as early as you can remember and kind of go through year by year and identify the things that you liked, the things that you did, and maybe even the bad things that happened depending on the person, but definitely the things that were important to the child at each age. So you can reflect and you can remember. Look at old artwork or schoolwork that the person did as a child. If your client has any of this, it can be helpful to look back over that and say, tell me about what this picture meant. Tell me about what you were thinking when you made this ashtray. When I was in school, whenever we had pottery, it was always ashtrays. Tell me what you were thinking when you made that. Develop the inner child's self esteem as a parent would for a child. And I encourage you, go out and get a book on enhancing children's self esteem and start doing that for yourself. As the child starts to feel more lovable, as the inner part of you starts to feel more lovable, then it will feel more secure in revealing, letting down some of those walls and saying, okay, this is how I really felt. The inner child that has stored away all of those memories in that Pandora's box. The thought of opening that box is terrifying. The reason those memories were put back there was because they were terrifying. So opening that box is like opening a box that's filled with all kinds of ghosts and demons to a child. You can understand how that would be terrifying and why they would not want to do it right away and why you may not want to remember some things right away. And that's okay. While you're getting to know your inner child, you know, I said, start out with being paying attention to your inner child, but also consistently be aware of the inner child and of your inner experience. And some people think this is silly, and other people are able to embrace it. Not every technique works for every person. So I will say that I encourage my clients to greet their inner child each morning and ask, how do you feel? How can I support you? And what do you need from me? Now, sometimes the kid ain't gonna say anything, but sometimes they will say, I'm feeling anxious about maybe you're going on a job interview. And objectively, as an adult, you're like, I don't know why I'm so stressed out about this, but I am. Well, that's your inner child going, failure. You're risking failure again. We don't want to go back there. We've been there. And that hurts like a son of a gun. Let the inner child know what each day holds. Review your schedule for the day. I'm going to do this, this, this, and this. And if you notice when you're going through the schedule, you start feeling, you know, a gnawing in the pit of your stomach, then it's important to recognize that that may be the inner child saying, yeah, that's scary. Again, as an adult, you may be looking at it going, no big deal. But the child is remembering prior experiences that were similar, that were traumatic, that they didn't know how to deal with. I encourage people as they're doing inner child work. Remember I said, be mindfully aware, consistently aware of the inner experience of the inner child. So they need to check in with themselves throughout the day and make sure they, as the adult and their inner child are feeling safe. And I have a lot of success when I work with people of having them envision themselves as the adult, being the parent, and then envisioning themselves as a child, whatever age 4, 5, and they're walking together. And when the inner Child gets scared, the adult is able to kneel down and give them a hug, or is able to push them, you know, get back behind me, I'll be your shield. And that helps the inner child start feeling safer, so to speak, but, well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Throughout the day, as they check in, mindfully checking in with themselves, notice if they, the adult, start feeling anxious or resistant and then asking themselves, where's that coming from? Does this remind me of something in the past? Maybe I'm applying for something, I'm applying for a job or I'm going out on a date with somebody, which means I'm putting myself out there and making myself vulnerable to rejection. How does that relate to my past? What wounds does my inner child have that may revolve around rejection? And how is this opening those wounds? Sometimes it won't be a feeling so much as an urge, like an urge to get away or an urge to run or an urge to throw something. And obviously that's not an appropriate response. But recognizing what would an 8 year old or 6 year old have done when they started feeling overwhelmed? Responsiveness validate the feeling that the child is experiencing and reassure them that they're safe and respond appropriately even if the anger or anxiety is coming from the adult. Even if as an adult you're going, ooh, this is kind of, you know, this is a big deal. It's terrifying to the inner child. If their caregiver is in distress. And we see this in relationships between adults and their children. When the adult starts decompensating, becomes depressed, angry, anxious, the child just absorbs all that. They're like my caregiver stressed out. That means I'm definitely not safe. So when the adult starts to feel stressed, it may trigger memories from the inner child that says, oh, I remember when my caregiver would get upset, then I wasn't safe either. How do you respond? Whether it's the adult or the inner child who is experiencing the distress, it's important to implement distress tolerance skills and identify distress tolerant thoughts. I can get through this. I'm safe. I've been through worse. Whatever the distress tolerant thoughts are that are helpful, engage in activities such as deep breathing or what they call respiratory vagus nerve stimulation. Breathing in for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four and repeat. Or chew some bubble gum and blow a few bubbles. Because you have to do the same thing with slowing your breathing to blow a nice big bubble and not have it explode on your face or bubble stuff. If you've Got those little party favor. Bottles of bubble stuff. Going out and blowing bubbles can slow your breathing. Unhooking, and this is part of guided imagery, but unhooking from your thoughts. I'm having the feeling that I'm anxious. I'm having the thought that this is going to go bad. And have them envision that as something. Maybe you may be able to get some little stuffed emoji pillows, and they can just hold it. This is anxiety. I'm holding this out here. Now what am I going to do with it? How can I improve the next moment? If they hold it out here for long enough, eventually their arms are going to start getting tired and they're going to have to make a decision about whether they're going to just let it go and not do anything about it or they're going to do something to address the issue. One of the things with distress tolerance skills is to help the person recognize that they can sit with an emotion and it's not going to overwhelm them. They can sit with anxiety, and they can encourage themselves by saying, okay, I've been through this before. This will be over pretty soon. They're not making that emotion go away. They're reminding themselves that they can tolerate it, they can sit with it, and it's not going to overwhelm them. And that is a huge step towards personal empowerment. Once they have tolerated the distress and gotten into their wise mind. When we experience something that triggers our distress, our HPA axis or our stress response system sends out this flood of hormones and neurotransmitters and all kinds of crap that causes our heart rate to go up, that releases blood sugar, that gives us a bunch of energy so we can identify if there's a problem. And if there is, we still have some energy left over to handle it. That's what I call the adrenaline haze or the adrenaline flood. Well, you can't think very clearly when you can't see options very clearly, when you're in a dense fog, when you're in a haze, you can't think very clearly if you're trying to tread water during a flood. So once that flood blood is gone, anywhere from one minute to 15 minutes, depending on the person, then the person's in what we call their wise mind. And at that point, they can start identifying related memories. If they're having a reaction that they think is out of proportion to the situation, they can say, where's this coming from? I'm wondering what memories this is triggering in me. They can use facts, control and probability. What are the actual facts in this situation? I'm feeling anxious or I'm feeling really angry about this, but what do I actually know? Not what do I assume is going to happen. Not what do I assume this person was thinking or intending, but what do I actually know? What things in this situation are within my control? If it's an event, you may be able to take steps to resolve the event. If somebody in your life that you're close to did something and it triggered your anger or triggered your fear of abandonment, you may be able to communicate with them and try to find out because you don't know why they did it or what their intention was. Communicate with them to try to figure out and get facts on what's going on here. Not use your assumptions based on prior experiences with prior people. You want facts based in the current context and improve the next moment. Once you have the facts and you've identified the parts that you can and cannot control, then you have a choice to make. What is it that you can do in order to improve the next moment? What is a good use of your energy in order to help you continue moving toward your rich and meaningful life and not steal energy from your rich and meaningful life to give to something that doesn't deserve it? I encourage people to become aware of immature behaviors, the good and the bad. The good ones are, for example, wanting to skip down the aisle at the store. Okay, you're 40, 50 years old. Skipping. Not typically what we see, but that's that inner child wanting to come out. That's fine. Become aware of it, acknowledge it, maybe table it for a different setting. But recognize that there's a part of you that's feeling happy. There's a part of you that is really excited about something, and that's good. Let's seize on that and the bad. The part of you that, when you get angry, wants to storm out of the room or scream or throw a temper tantrum. That's those immature behaviors, things that you would expect to see in a child. That's often your inner child coming out saying, I don't know how else to deal with these feelings. I don't know how else to deal with these emotions, but somebody better do something. Get curious about what the inner child is trying to communicate and respond appropriately. If the inner child is saying, I'm scared, okay, I'm feeling scared, okay, of what? What exactly am I afraid of in this context at this time? If the answer is nothing, if you're looking around going, there's really nothing to be scared of, then you need to look back and ask the inner child what memories are being brought up for you right now? What memories are being triggered that is triggering that feeling of being scared? What does the inner child need at this point to feel safe? What are the benefits and drawbacks to holding on to anxiety in this situation? Same thing for angry. You know, if a person starts to feel angry and asking themselves, what am I angry about? Where's. What is the threat that I am feeling the need to defend against? And if they objectively evaluate the current context and there really isn't one, then they need to look back to prior memories and ask the inner child, what is being triggered for you at this point? What memories are coming up for you? What are the benefits and drawbacks to staying angry, to being angry in this situation? And as the adult host caregiver of the inner child, we what is it that you need from me at this point? What can I do to improve the next moment? And there's a third time. The inner child may come out when they're bored and they really need to have some fun. What does the person need at this point? And looking at the behaviors that are coming out, whatever they're doing because they're bored, maybe they're avoiding doing work because it's not fun. They hate doing paperwork. Okay. You know, a lot of us have an inner child that says, I'd really rather be out doing just about anything than doing paperwork. Okay. What are the benefits and drawbacks to this behavior? And as the adult host of the inner child, what is needed in order to get our work done, but also to add in fun? The inner child is there sometimes to tell you that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. It's important when you're being responsive, when you are validating what the child is communicating, that you have radical compassion. Okay? The inner child is feeling anxious and terrified and wants to run. Wants to run into the bedroom and put their face in a pillow and scream as loud as they can. Okay? So have radical compassion for them if that's what you need to do right now. Not hurting anybody else, not hurting yourself. Let's go do that and then fix. Figure out what the next step is and maybe how we might be able to respond differently the next time. Encourage the inner child to trust the adult as they use coping skills. And I encourage people who are doing inner child work to regularly practice the loving kindness meditation, envisioning sending this bubble orbital of safety, love and peace to their inner child. Seeing that Inner child and seeing that child enveloped in a safe situation. Other strategies to help have the person have the adult write their autobiography. You can also have the inner child write the autobiography. So one is going to be written maybe on a computer, maybe with ink, pen, whatever, and the other is going to be written from the perspective of the child. And a lot of times when I do inner child autobiography work with people, I have them do one year or time period at a time. So maybe elementary school. So I have them write from the perspective of themselves in fourth, fifth, sixth grade. And then we may move up to middle school because there's different developmental tasks at each stage. And then we process that, and then we talk about high school. So we're addressing the different stages. And each inner child is going to communicate a little bit differently because cognitively, the elementary school child is very different than the high school child. But ultimately they're both still children. And helping the person communicate and really connect with those memories as that child, to help that child experience and resolve them is important. If the inner child is alexthymic, they never learn to identify their emotions. They just feel all the time. And I know is not a really expressive word that. What is that? Anger, anxiety, grief? What is it? They may not know. They may just know. They feel icky or they feel upset. Okay, so the Alex Thymic inner child, if they don't, if they can't put words to what they're feeling, may draw pictures or make a scrapbook or even create a music playlist to communicate what they're feeling. Music playlists can be really good for people because the music communicates a certain energy, and we can help them identify words to put with that. So when you start feeling angry, this is what the music you want to listen to sounds like. When you feel depressed, this is what the music you want to listen to sounds like. So that's really helping them start to connect with their somatic memories. So we can start labeling them, identify coping skills they learned as a child that they still use today. And a lot of those may be immature behaviors, but that's okay. They help the child. They help the person survive. Until now. That may be whenever they get upset or start feeling overwhelmed, they. They go to their room and go to sleep. It may be when they start feeling upset or overwhelmed, they get a whole box of Oreos and devour the whole thing while binge watching Netflix. We want to look at, what does the behavior mean and how. How in the past did it help the child survive? Help the inner child identify triggers for depression. When you feel depressed, what are you depressed about? What do you feel hopeless and helpless about? And for example, a lost childhood. They may feel really depressed or need to grieve. A lot of times when you talk to people about depression, what comes up is the fact that they have something out there that still needs to be grieved. They feel hopeless and helpless to change this situation. That represents a loss, anxiety and unsafeness. What are your triggers? What triggers your sense of feelings of anxiety? And for some, that can be abandonment. For others it can be loud voices. For others, it could be seeing somebody else who's angry. That could trigger a sense of anxiety. It could trigger those memories. Okay, so we're starting to identify things in the present that trigger these feelings. And then we can connect them to unresolved experiences from the past. Anger. And remember, in grief we have denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Sometimes anger represents a reaction to a perceived threat. They, they are afraid that they are going to be abandoned. They are afraid that they're going to be rejected. Okay, well where is that coming from? A lot of times you can trace it back to abandonment or rejection in the past. That was a loss for them. They were abandoned by their caregiver. They were rejected by somebody important. And it represents a loss that, guess what still needs to be grieved. Guilt and shame represent a loss of self esteem. And many people who grew up with and have a wounded inner child, as I mentioned earlier, were often told that their feelings were unimportant, that their needs were unimportant. So they started to feel guilty for having them. They started to feel shame for not being able to get the attention and the love from their biological caregivers. You know, these are the people who gave me life and they won't give me the time of day. So we do want to explore how each of these triggers might represent a loss and help the adult, the, the adult reparent, the inner child. Help the adult in the present connect with that inner child during that experience and say, what is it that I can do to help you? What do you need me to do in this experience to help you process it? And sometimes, for example, if the caregiver abandoned the child, it may be as an adult communicating with the inner child and saying what should have been told to the inner, to the child when they were, when they were younger. Helping explain to them that it's not about them, that their caregiver was sick, that their caregiver was unable to do what they needed to do. Help the inner Child move through the stages of grief, draw a picture of the situation and explain it. If they are grieving the loss of a pet, or if they are grieving their caregiver, just walking out and never coming back, have them draw a picture of it and explain it. What makes you angry about this situation? What makes you feel sad about this situation? Remember anger, depression, acceptance in the grief process. So we want to have them really explain, explore those feelings. And children don't talk in terms of emotional nuances. What makes you depressed? What makes you unhappy, angry and sad? Stick with the basics. What makes you angry about this? What would help you feel happier and safer? Now you can have the inner child write a letter to the person that hurt them, invalidated them, or abandoned them. You can use guided imagery where they envision that person and envision talking to that person. You can do empty chair, where you have exactly what it sounds like, an empty chair, very gestalt technique. And they envision that person sitting in that chair and they tell them what they feel, what they're angry about, what they wish that person would have done. Some people have difficulty with the guided imagery and the empty chair. So role playing can be helpful where the therapist assumes the target that the person is talking to, whether it's their best friend from elementary school or it's their mother or their grandmother or whomever. Sometimes people want to memorialize losses. Not everything's about being angry. Sometimes it's a loss that they never were allowed to process, like the loss of a pet. So helping them memorialize that loss in a way that's meaningful and can help them get closure. It's vital that we help the inner child recognize that it wasn't their fault. And as. As part of the re parenting process, explore with them or propose to them, if they were very young, alternate explanations for why that may have happened. As adults, a lot of times we have a much broader perspective that that child didn't have. So we need to adjust the schema to include this new information. We also need to help the inner child recognize that there was nothing that they could have done differently. And this comes with evaluating the facts of the situation. What was going on at that point in time. And then there was this bad thing that happened. What are the facts? What part did you actually play in this bad situation? A lot of times they didn't play much of a part. This video is designed to accompany healing the inner child. Cognitive behavioral therapy strategies to address trauma and abandonment. So that's another video that is on my YouTube channel. It's gotten 1.5 million views at this point, But I had had some requests to expand a little bit more on how to help people work through or work toward that grieving process. Strategies for connecting and helping the inner child grieve will depend on the age the child was when they were wounded. You're going to use different strategies to comfort a 4 or a 6 year old than you are a 14 or a 16 year old, but both of them, again, both of them are children. We don't want to just think of inner child as something that happened in preteen years. Eighteen and below is still considered a child in most cases. It will be important to examine the concrete or narrow explanations for what is happening. So help the inner child see other possible reasons why this might have happened. We may need to help them examine the overly personalized beliefs about the situation. What are the facts and how much control did you actually have? Remember I said kids often think that they have a lot more control over situations and that they cause a lot more things than they actually do. So we need to help them alter that belief and recognize that it wasn't their fault and help them examine the dichotomous beliefs about themselves and the situation. If they look back and their caregiver abandoned the family, they think it's my fault for whatever I did. And that means I am a bad person. That schema got packed up into a neat little package and internalized. So we need to help people explore as adults whether that belief, whether that schema is actually accurate. It will also be important to explore and identify losses with the child as well with the adult as well as the inner child. As an adult, I may say I still have these things from my past that are open wounds. Okay, well, we need to address those. But then there's also some things that as an adult, I may not even be paying attention to anymore, because as an adult, I'm looking at it as inconsequential. But to the inner child, it is still very consequential. So have the adult and the inner child identify losses, including things like a loss of a sense of safety, trust in others, hope, dreams, childhood pets, people, or even important events that the child missed. Maybe they didn't get to go to prom because they were in quarantine. So asking both the adult and the inner child, what are you angry about? What are you sad about? Healing the wounds of childhood will help the person free up energy in the present, develop healthier relationships with themselves and others, and feel empowered to start moving toward a rich and meaningful life.