198 - Healing Your Inner Child w/ Drew Boa

You're listening to the Pure Desire Podcast, your safe place to find hope, healing, and freedom from sexual addiction, betrayal, and relationship issues. What's up, people? I'm your host, Trevor Windsor, and you're listening to episode 198 of the Pure Desire Podcast. Here, joining me as always, my co host, Nick Stembo.

Do you want to hear the most annoying sound in the world? Okay, I'll stop.

Justin. 10 bucks. You know what movie that is? Nope. Oh, my goodness, no.

They might. The scary thing is it's from a movie that may have been made before he was born, which just makes me feel dumb.

And Dumber is made?

No, it's mid-90s. Yeah, I've definitely seen it. Okay, you guys. But you guys were like kids when this movie came out.

Totally.

Like little kids.

I watched it in high school and college. Later, later, later. Okay. I saw Jim Carrey before he went crazy. Right, right. Yeah. So we've got a really good episode for you. But real quick, subscribe to the podcast. If you haven't, make sure to follow us on social media. We are at PureDesirePDMI. And then also we do have full episodes of these up on YouTube. YouTube. All right, well, here is our conversation, which we didn't even talk about. Let's talk about it. What did we talk to Drew about on this one?

Yes. So we're. We're going back through, you know, healing your inner child and thus the. The intro of the Crying baby. For some people, it maybe feels like, oh, this is annoying. And I don't. I don't want to talk about that. But what I think you'll get out of this episode is recognizing the significant work that we all need to do in our interior person. And in this episode, you know, the way Drew frames that our inner child, understanding a lot of the places we've been wounded and are still stuck in some of those places of trauma. There's just so much insight and understanding we can get for what drives current behavior by doing this work. And so I hope, no matter how someone might feel about the topic or what they've heard about it or what maybe imagery it conjectures about blaming our past or our parents, and we get into all that. This topic is just so valuable, and I can't wait for people to hear it.

Yeah, it really is a good one and is very, very meaningful. So here's our conversation with Drew Boa on healing your inner child. Drew Boa, we have you back. You're here with us again. Thanks for being here.

You're welcome. It's 2021. Let's do this.

And this time, it hasn't been a year. It's been like a few weeks.

It's been like. Yeah. Like, I mean, we had you on two episodes ago. Yeah. And we've. I mean, we have to pay you handsomely to be on episodes. So it's only going to be every, like, two. Every year, basically, I think as we.

Of our guests.

Yeah. I'm just kidding, by the way. We don't pay. We don't pay.

Our guests are like, wait a minute. What?

Yeah. You wonder how I got out of debt. I just took all that payment. Okay, so we are going to talk about. And we referenced it in the episode. A couple episodes ago, you were referencing this conversation, the idea of healing our inner child, which, I'll just be honest, from the get, sounds super meta and super weird, but I've heard you talk enough about this that I think it is a super powerful conversation to have and a principle that even though it might seem weird and like, you know, I don't want to go back there. I don't think I should go back there. I'm an adult now, not a child. Why do I have to do this? I'm hoping that this conversation challenges us in that paradigm. And so let's just start with this, Drew. So much of our trauma and woundedness, not all of it like trauma and woundedness happens at all stages in life, but a lot of it. And the stuff that seems to motivate so much happens at an early age. Why is that?

Biologically, it's because early life experiences shape our brain more than anything else. That's what I learned from Adam Young and from other experts. I read that by the time a child turns 5 years old, the brain has reached about 90% of its adult size. And that means that those first few years really lay a foundation for who will become as adults. And our brains are constantly being formed and deformed, and that's happening rapidly when we're children, especially in the area of sexuality. And that's what we talked about. Sexual development begins at birth.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ted Roberts talks about it in the Conquer series, too, when he says that the limbic system is fully in place by six years of age. And what he means by that is that inner brain that's responsible for survival, responsible for keeping us alive, is the framework. Is that doesn't mean we never learn anything again or it doesn't adapt.

Right.

But it just means the framework of now, how we're interpreting life, what we need to fight flight, freeze, run away from, like it's in place and operating, it's been formed. And so most of the formation of that system happened before we even had perhaps some conscious memory of it. So it's interesting to think about. And the other part, for me, that I always think about, and going back to childhood trauma or just how we were formed. Your childhood brain doesn't know how to make sense of things. It doesn't have a paradigm, it doesn't have the wisdom, it doesn't have the adult brain to go, oh, here's what happened when mom got mad at me. Here's why. Here's what it meant. Yeah, the childhood brain just goes, wow, Mom's angry. And so maybe it's not safe when that happens. And in a moment, we've learned something that's maybe stored there for life simply because we have no other framework for that experience.

Kids are excellent observers. Oh, my gosh. And unfortunate interpreters.

Hmm, that sucks. That's a good way to put it.

It's true, though. Yeah. I think I've told this story on the podcast where Brady had drawn all over his body. My 4 year old had drawn all over his body. He's gonna listen to these years later and just be like, dad, you're a jerk. Which is fine. I'll just cause TR later in life.

Podcast money for how much I was your illustration.

But he drew all over himself with markers. And it was the first time I experienced him running right into shame, where he didn't want his mom to come in. I came on, he's like, don't turn on the light. Don't do it. No, dad. No, dad, turn on the light. Called Amy in, and he's just like, no, dad. And for me, that was such a painful experience as a dad, knowing that shame was something that was so present in my childhood. And what I've realized though, is that just because shame is there doesn't mean that any one person brought it in that situation. No one told him, hey, dude, don't do this. This is wrong, don't do it. He just did it and knew it was wrong. And so for me, you talk about being not very good interpreters. For me, in that moment, I felt so strong that I need him to know that it's okay, he's okay. It's okay. Obviously. Do I want you to do this? No. Please don't ever do this again. Okay?

Just.

It's not, you know, don't do it. But I want. I, like, I just remember I grabbed him Like, I didn't know what else to do. I just grabbed him. I'm like, buddy, it's okay. And I just hugged him. And I'm hoping over time that I have more experiences like that with my son because I'm able to help him bring interpretation to that moment that, yes, this is something you shouldn't do, but it doesn't affect your identity. It doesn't affect how much mommy and daddy love you. There'll be consequences. But those two things can exist. Love and value and consequences can coexist in an experience.

And there will always be rupture for all the parents out there. It doesn't mean you're a bad parent if something goes wrong with your kid. Like, that's always going to happen. Most important part is repair. Will there be repair? Will there be that embrace? Will there be that soothing and reassurance and love? And if not, then that will show up later. There's another explanation for why our trauma and woundedness so often most deeply goes back to childhood, which is a spiritual explanation. The enemy understands how we work. And if. If evil can get a hold of us at a young age, then it will reap the rewards, have an excellent return on investment for decades to come and sometimes generations to come.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, Drew, you're talking about the impact that these childhood experiences, trauma, pain, wounds, neglect, can have on us. What are some of. Just talk a little bit about that impact. What are the evidences of childhood trauma in our lives today as adults?

We could take a whole episode and just talk about that and we would not exhaust the impacts totally. Let me summarize it for you. Trauma causes us to get stuck or frozen in time. And we referenced this before too. That's what our triggers are. They're like time machines taking us back to the places where we got stuck. So I'm 28 years old, but there's still a part of me that feels five years old. The part that's afraid of lipstick and believes that women will humiliate me. And when I get triggered, that five year old inner child is showing up screaming for validation and protection.

Yeah.

So in the places where we get stuck, even if you've been through a lot of recovery, maybe you've been through a seven Pillars group, or maybe you've been through counseling and there still feels like a place where you're stuck. Pay attention to that. Yes.

I think for me, it shows up. I mean, one of the ways. And maybe I haven't told the story, but for me, I hate being in situations Where I'm the one who's the least skilled or talented at something and people who are much more talented are talking down at me. I had this experience with, and this is like a couple years ago. So I'm like three or four years into recovery, living in sexual freedom. Like, it's just great. And I go. And I remember feeling like I was five years old, I was in the water. I'm terrible at water sports. I'm trying to wakeboard and all of these, like, in my mind they're not all, but all of these like beefed out super people, right? All men sitting on the boat who are better than me, more attractive than me, bigger muscles than me are talking literally they're in the boat above me and I'm below in the water and they're literally talking down at me. That was just like trauma, trauma, trauma. Like it's just, it's all there and I just wanted to quit. I'm like, nah, I just don't want to do it. And what's funny is I've realized that's why I don't go out on the boat.

It's.

Cause every time I go out on a boat and do water sports and what's funny is that that impacts relationship though. One of my best friends loves going out on the boat and he pokes fun and makes fun of me now because he knows the story. But like I don't enter into those relationship situations that I know trauma has impacted. And for me that can negatively impact relationship. That can negatively impact me in a lot of ways. But that relationship. I know he cares deeply about this thing, I care deeply about him. But there's this gap between doing stuff that my friends love to do because I'm like, well, I don't really want to get talked down to again and feel like a five year old.

That's really interesting because I have a. I cannot wakeboard. I've tried to get up like multiple, multiple.

Can we just high five right now? I'm just like, yeah, thank you.

And the. In my story, the person who had gone right before me was a 50 year old woman that made it look like a walk in the. I mean, just so smooth and easy and I could not even know how to get out. I know what you're saying about those things that trigger and yeah, there's just so many ways we see that we're stuck when we're reacting or responding in a way that we might say this is kind of out of character for my adult self, for who I am. And how I behave in a lot of places, like, why do I have this sudden anger issue? Why am I reacting that way? And that's what I've tried to say to men in groups is like, look at just where your response is not in line with what you should be. And we said in the other podcast of like, overreacting or underreacting. Like, that's weird. Why did I do that? I think we're usually seeing the evidence of some sort of unaddressed or unhealed childhood trauma. And yeah, Drew, I wanted to add a question to this because, and I think this is maybe the right place in the episode for some of our listeners, Even the title of this episode, the content, they're like their faith journey told them, the past is in the past. What God has forgiven is let go of. There's no point in going back. Like, we just need to trust Jesus for today. And that's all there is. So talk to that person about, like, in light of the impact childhood stuff has on us today, why is it even in theological terms or biblical terms, why does it make sense to understand our childhood trauma and wounds biblically?

We see a very vivid example of, of the generational impact of trauma in the book of Genesis. Man, that family had a lot of baggage and it got passed down from generation to generation. We can see it in the life of David. Nick, I think you do an excellent job of talking about it in setting us free. Also, one of my favorite chapters of the Bible is Psalm 131, which says, My heart is not proud, O Lord, My eyes are not lifted up. I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. Instead I've stilled and quieted my soul like a weaned child within me. Like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord now and forever. That image of stilling and quieting my soul like a weaned child is one way to think about inner child work and healing the inner child soothing the little boy who was abused by his grandmother. Or for the women who are watching, maybe the eight year old girl whose parents said, you're too emotional, or the teenager who was bullied in the locker room. It's the child who was wounded as the child who needs to heal.

Yeah, well, I think you could make the argument too that Adam and Eve believed a lie about God and that lie was planted and then grew into rebellion. And so I think that you can make a clear connection to the lies that we are taught through Traumatic experiences in our childhood that then give birth to these really unhealthy patterns. I feel like I could do a dissertation now. That sounded so good.

Hey, you're taking your master's degree. You should go for it. I'll read the paper. Cool. Or you could, you know, you can always term it in the way that Dr. Ted does to say, if your past keeps coming back to bite you in the butt, it's not in the past. Right. It's still a part of your present.

And totally, the past has never passed.

Yeah, that's why I asked the question here. Because I think our answers to this question kind of make evident why that theology is not helping us. That if. If we're still acting out of patterns that were formed when we were 5, 6, 7 years of age, it's not helpful to just try to forget the past. And I think when scripture does tell us to forget the past, it's talking about our sin and our shame and the guilt we maybe carry. And yes, those things are in the past, and we need to consider those former things gone and dealt with through Christ and the cross. But that verse isn't saying that anything that happened prior to 8am this morning is now irrelevant. Because I think everyone listening would agree, boy, if I had a conflict like with Trevor yesterday, it doesn't just help to go, well, it's in the past. We just move on if we didn't deal with anything. So if we see, well, there's value in addressing something from yesterday, it's like, well, then is there value in addressing something from a year ago? Okay, so then where would you draw the person that does say, oh, the past is in the past? Well, where would you draw the line to say, you shouldn't go back? Because even that person could see, oh, I deal with things that happened in the past maybe as a few days ago.

Right.

And if that's the case, then we're just going further back to say, something is still impacting me. I need to deal with it with God's help with others, but I need to see how it's being influencing my life today.

Totally, yes. So here's another objection that I often hear when we talk about the impact of the past on. On the present. They'll say, isn't that an excuse? Isn't that taking away the moral responsibility that we do have? Are you somehow saying that a struggle with porn or sexual addiction is the result of what happened to me? No, I'm not saying that. And it's not an excuse. Rather than using the language of blame. Like I'm going to blame it on my past. I prefer the language of contribution. The past contributed. My family contributed what happened to me, contributed what should have happened and didn't happen. Contributed. The abuse, the abandonment, the neglect. All the different things we talk about with trauma are contributions. And if we don't address them, then something is missing.

Yep.

Yeah. So if we can see these contributions, it helps to make sense of our choices. And I do have a responsibility to make a new choice. Totally.

Yeah. To quote Adrian from our PSAP training, what makes this make sense? And when we can look into our past, it makes a lot of what we do today makes sense.

Yes.

And the other thing I say to people, and they say, well, isn't this just an excuse? Or, you know, shirking responsibility for our behavior? My response is to say, well, it's only an excuse if we're using it as an excuse. And you can use an excuse. A guy could say, well, you know, I look at porn because I had a terrible childhood and my dad abandoned me, and you could use it as an excuse. Or like you said, you could look back and go, what contributed to my struggles today are these childhood issues. What happened with my dad, what happened to my family, like, not to blame it, but to recognize the impact it had on me.

Yeah. So you talk about an approach of healing your inner child. Let's just talk about that. What does that look like?

This conversation could get really technical and clinical, but it's not that complicated. Let's think about it together. What do children really need? You guys have kids.

You know, they need nap time. They need to eat what I tell them to eat. Oh, sorry, that's not what you're looking for.

They need rest, quality time with mom and dad.

Totally.

Love and affirmation. Yep. Physical touch. Hugs and, you know.

Yeah.

Being together. Being valued. Being seen.

Yeah, yeah, Yep.

Being valued, Being seen, being pursued.

Yep.

Children need to be safe. Children need that feeling of empathy to be able to have language for their feelings. They also need authority in a healthy way to feel like the world is not out of control. And when our children are difficult to manage, what strategies don't work?

Oh, gosh. I mean, I could. From my experience, spanking my kid does not work. I know a lot of people feel like. And that has. I know that that works for some kids, for our firstborn, it does not. He ramps up. That doesn't work. And so it's. Yeah, that one is. We've learned.

That's a good point. Let's Pause there. Healing the inner child is not a one size fits all kind of thing.

Yeah.

For some kids, certain things don't work, but maybe for another one, it might. In any case, yelling and repeating the same thing over and over, trying to force them to behave a certain way, making threats, especially empty threats that we don't follow through on. Or preaching a sermon to a little kid using big words. Yeah, sometimes these are the ways that we're trying to get free from pornography and they're not working. Being harsh with ourselves, trying the same thing over and over. The inner child is just feeling even more alienated and wounded when we do stuff like that.

You know, when you say that, Drew, it makes me think about what for many religious leaders is maybe still the most common way they'll try to help someone is they give them a book. And you and I both know that books can have value. And we wrote books and we try to share ideas and. But I just think about that image of like giving one of my four or five year old kids a book about why it's wrong, you know, to talk back to mom and dad. Like, read this book, you know, and it's 200 pages long. Like really, that. That is not going to connect with their issue.

And what is that? Subtly communicating.

Well, it communicates. You don't know enough. You're not smart enough. If only you would do. If only you would do what I tell you, you can better do what I tell you.

It communicates that transformation is about information.

Totally. Yeah.

Is not the case usually.

Right.

To use Drew's language. It's a contributor, but it is not what brings about the change. Yeah, that's good.

That's good. And this is why in the PSAP program, we learned about why traditional talk therapy can only do so much. Because our childhood wounds are not logical. They're emotional, relational, they're physical. And so knowing the truth intellectually is not enough. You have to experience that truth emotionally and physically. The truth will set you free if you can experience it. And in order to do that, we have to get into our imaginations and our bodies because that's where the trauma is stored. So what really works well in helping kids to grow and develop.

Oh, he's asking us. Yeah.

You know, we learned as parents consistency is a huge deal. Modeling, like, what they see in us and if we messed up, modeling even repentance and asking for their forgiveness. To say, dad got critical and angry and spoke to you in a way that's not appropriate. And I think modeling that and Just I think continuing to help, what we really focused on, that I think we feel worked, was helping our kids understand why we were asking them to do the things we were. What we saw, that it would develop in them, how it helped the family. Because I felt like if they could understand the why question, then they'll know. They'll have a better understanding of why we're asking them to do that, and then we can work together to get there. Yeah.

I think we've also tried giving them options, and that has helped. I know it's helped Brady value his own opinion or his own decision. He's making a decision rather than me giving him one option. Yeah.

Can we give these things to ourselves, to the parts of us that need love, that need, that consistency, that don't need to be told, hey, you should be free from porn, because I said so. You know? Like, for me, one of the biggest ones is curiosity. If my child is acting out, finding out, okay, what's going on, what's really at the root of this? Maybe there's something that I don't know about that's bothering her that she hasn't said so. Curiosity is huge. And compassion for what she's going through. If she has been doing something over and over again, one time she did it right. Appreciation, affirmation, saying, hey, I noticed. That was great. Good job. Can we give that gift to ourselves? That's a huge part of healing the inner child.

I would. I want to add one, too. And this is something my wife, who was a kindergarten teacher, and I'm sure Michelle is the same being a teacher, that there's a difference between, like, there's a different type of kid you create when you acknowledge someone's hard work versus acknowledging them and their intelligence. Where if you're able to not just say, hey, great job, when you do something right, but also, hey, you worked really hard. I know it didn't work out the way, but you worked really, really hard, and I'm proud of you. So acknowledging the effort, because when you go up as a baseball player, when you go up, bases are loaded, bottom of the ninth, full count, you strike out. No one's gonna come up and be like, you tried really, really hard. I'm so proud of you. People are just like, you struck out. You didn't do it. You didn't do it right. That's not what should have happened. Which is true. It's not. But I think we take that approach. I know it's easy to slip into that approach with myself and with other people. Today's episode is sponsored by Drew BOA and Husband Material Academy. Through Husband Material, Drew helps Christian men outgrow porn. He does this through coaching men on how to change their brains, heal their hearts, and save their relationships by achieving freedom from porn.

Yeah. Drew is one of those names that I knew from before I really got into working at Pure Desire because he'd written a workbook that is used around some college campuses, and I'd heard the name, and I didn't realize how young he was until I met him. Like, dude, this. This guy is sharp.

Yes.

For a young man. And the kind of work he does, he's really more than just a coach in that sense of He's. He studies, he's learned, he draws from so many different people. And that's what I respect about him, is he is just hungry to understand our behaviors, where it springs from, and to really help people in a way of not just, hey, let me encourage you to change your life, but, like, let's actually have some really significant conversations that lead to lasting change. And I respect him a ton, and I think he's a leading voice in this area that for many, many years will be one of those that God's going to use to shift our culture in this area.

Yeah.

And we love our time with Drew. So what we want you to do is go to husbandmaterialmen.com and join the group. You get tons of value there, tons of the stuff that Drew has to offer. Again, that's husbandmaterialmen.com.

So, Drew, what would you say to the person that maybe comes back in this conversation to say, I don't know how to do that for myself. I don't know how to show myself compassion because I feel stuck in worthlessness. I don't know how to show myself consistency. I don't know how to appreciate. Like, I don't know how to be curious. How would you help the person that just maybe feels stuck in an inability to treat their inner child that way?

There are two sides to this. Learning and unlearning. So if you're saying, I don't know how to treat my inner child with curiosity and kindness, odds are you not only have to learn that, but you have to unlearn the opposite. And unlearning is a lot harder than learning.

Yeah. I read a book called the Talent Code by Daniel Coyle that actually, biologically, your brain is incapable of unlearning things. You have to relearn things in its place. And so there is this, like, you lose power and we talk about it a lot with the neuropathways that our behaviors, specifically our addiction to pornography or sexual brokenness, the behaviors. We do build this superhighway in our brain where something happens and we just slip onto the highway and we're going at full speed. But the idea that he presents is that the myelination process in the brain, it actually, you have to, like, that's why you can't unlearn how to ride a bike. Like, if once you've learned how to ride a bike, you don't learn stuff that's similar but different. Like, I think about that video we used to always show at the. At the Pier Desire conference, where this guy learns how to ride a backwards bicycle, where if he turns it left, the. It goes to the right, and if he turns to the right, it goes to the left. So I think that there is this piece of. There has to be replacement, that the unlearning process requires a relearning. It can't just be doing one or the other. They have to be, I think, both in conjunction.

Yeah. The process of reparenting.

Yeah. Which you talk a lot about.

Yeah. And it definitely helps to have a trusted guide, whether that's a mentor or a professional, a therapist. You can do inner child work with a group if you have a great facilitator. The point is, you have to get out of your head. When we are relating to our kids or relating to the kid within us, we want to stay in our heads and try to preach or try to teach or try to force in order to bring healing. That's not going to work.

Yeah.

We have to get into the right brain. So the left brain is the more logical, analytical side. The right brain is much more emotional. It's imaginative, it's passionate, it's creative. And that is the side of the brain which is drawn to porn. It's not the logical side. It's the side that feels deeply. It's the side that is captivated by stories and imagery. So can I relate to my inner child in his or her story, in the imagery surrounding those experiences? And that takes a little bit of tenderness. It takes a little bit of a willingness to let go of control.

Yeah.

And. And see maybe what my child would like to tell me. Maybe my inner child will heal me.

That's good.

So, Drew, for some people, the thought of going back of, you know, addressing their inner child, it's scary. It's messy. Maybe in particular, if someone had a very painful childhood, they. They kind of like the idea of that's not who I am, and I've just moved on. And maybe I don't go back to that for good reasons. How would you encourage that person, or what would you say are the benefits for them of doing the work of healing their inner child?

Inner child work does sound heavy. It's not easy, but it can be fun, too. It doesn't always have to be the wounded memories. Reconnecting with some of those positive memories, reconnecting with some of those healing moments can be part of the work. In any case, inner child work allows you to get unstuck where trauma interrupted, where trauma pushed pause. Inner child work allows you to push play, gets you out of your head and into your heart so you can experience God's love and not just think about it.

Yeah. And I would think anybody who's listening, if you have an area of your life that you're stuck in, we don't like being stuck. You know, like, I get stressed when I'm stuck in traffic. I want to get where I'm going. I don't want to sit here and wait. And I think that a lot of us do want to grow and develop in our life, but yet we're stuck in the traffic of trauma. Maybe.

Yeah. Sometimes we have to look back in order to move forward. And specifically for our context, Inner child work is extremely helpful for healing sexual addiction because it gives you a way to separate from the triggers that keep you trapped. For example, instead of being aroused, I can be with the arousal. Be with the inner child who is aroused. Instead of being angry or ashamed, I can be with the anger. I can be with the shame. Yeah. I can be with the inner child who is showing up all these years later. And that makes a huge difference.

Yeah. That reminds me of internal family systems. Our conversation we had with Jenna Reimersma, I know you had her on your podcast as well. That idea that you start to have conversations with these pieces or these elements to you rather than just identifying as, this is who I am.

Yeah.

And as I think, Sorry.

Well, I was just. Maybe I'll just talk about that. Jenna Reimersma introduced me to ifs, and IFS is a really powerful way to do inner child work. Some other options are emdr, somatic experiencing. And I developed my own method called older brother coaching. You could do it as a woman, too. With older sister coaching, you become the older siblings that you never had when you were a kid. Yeah.

Yeah. I was just thinking about Peter Scazzero. In his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality tells the story from another book about the glittering image that this priest had maintained. And in counseling, I was asked, like, why didn't you reveal this part of you? Or, why didn't you bring that out and let people help? And he said, I was afraid that if I did, people wouldn't like me. And just expresses, I think, so accurately, what many people feel about that inner child work is it represents often the parts of them that they maybe like the least, where they feel the anger and the messiness and just the parts that they wish weren't there. And so it can feel easier just to try to keep that inside because I want people to like me, and so I want to present the parts of me that are fun and outgoing or whatever. And the idea that inner child work has to be done with other people is like, oh, what if they don't like me? And so I think facing some of that shame is really significant. But maybe most importantly, finding out that we're not alone, that everyone has some of that element of, I don't like these parts. I mean, everyone else goes, yeah, me too. I've got that. And like, oh, okay, we're all here dealing with something together that's not, like, foreign to others. Like, this is pretty common, and it's what we all deal with. So getting through the shame we feel to recognize we're not alone, I think can be a big piece of this.

Yeah, I think with the fear, there's, like, I don't want to go back and experience those negative emotions again. Or, like, there. It basically is a misconception that those things aren't negatively impacting me now. Like, so I don't want to go back and feel those negative emotions. Is the assumption that these aren't impacting me, they are impacting you in so many different ways. And so it's just that idea of, like, if you can just press through the fog of this pain, then it's going to clear up and things are going to get better moving forward.

Yeah. And it was like Nick said before, quoting Dr. Ted, the past has never passed. It's not even past. It's still here. And because of that, we are dealing with this stuff whether we like it or not.

Totally.

The question is, am I going to do it on purpose so that we can bring healing and not just reinforce and reenact the wounds?

Yeah, totally. And I mean, we've talked about parenting already in this. Like, think about how those things are impacting your kids, impacting the generations that are coming behind you. And so there's way More benefit than just to me healing my inner child. There's so much more healing that my entire family could experience if I'm able to do the work or willing to do it.

It's probably the greatest gift you could give to the people you love to heal your own inner child.

Yeah. Yeah, we agree with that. Okay, so this process, and even calling it that answers the question, is this a one time thing or is this a process?

Drew, just a one time thing. You get it over with. Do one counseling session and you're good for that.

Perfect.

I'm just kidding.

Drew is the one counselor who can do it. So you sign up@husbandmaterialmen.com yeah.

Let's say you spent some time getting to know your inner child. Let's say you join my program and we have an amazing session. It was meaningful and it was healing. And then at the end of it, you say to your inner child, goodbye, I'm done with you. I'm never coming back. How do you think any child would feel? The most common childhood wound is neglect. And it's going to reinforce that fear of being forgotten, of being left behind, of being alone again. Because here's the reality. Most of us have been neglecting that inner child, sometimes for decades. I don't want to deal with that part of me. I don't want to see it. I don't want to go back there. There's nothing that would make me want to go back to that place where I was abused by my grandmother. Unfortunately, the result is that in all my recovery, if it's not dealing with that, I'm still neglecting the child. And so sometimes at the end of a coaching call that I do where we're focusing on inner child work, my client will be in the middle of hugging his inner child, sometimes physically wrapping his arms around himself, and he'll say something like, the little guy doesn't want to let go. He doesn't want me to leave. Usually there's a request like, hey, will you promise me to come back again? And if he makes that promise, then I will follow up with him. Because you can't make that promise and break it again. If you treat it as a one time thing rather than an ongoing relationship, you actually reinforce the trauma.

Yeah, and I think that's just a principle in recovery. I mean, it's something that as you get healthy, it's not something that you do once and then you're fine. It's something that if you stop, like, I subscribe to this thought in life that you're either moving toward God or toward health or away. There's no in between. And I think that even if you were to do all this work and finally get healthy and then just coast, well, you're not going to coast toward health. You're going to coast the other way. And so I think the principle can apply not just to healing our inner child, but just health in general.

Yeah. So if you are thinking about doing some inner child work, it doesn't have to be therapy for the rest of your life. It could be starting a relationship. And the more you practice, you get better at it. You can do it on your own or with friends and family members and even facilitate this kind of work for other people. That's really exciting.

Well, and there's a reality that in many ways, we're in an ongoing process of discovering more triggers, more situations that we hadn't realized were causing some stuff to come up. We maybe go through a holiday season where, man, I didn't even realize how triggered I am maybe by a certain relationship, someone we haven't seen in a number of years. So I think just considering we're in this journey of growing and maturing and our inner self becoming more wise and mature, like, we don't ever stop growing as humans, or hopefully we don't, because that implies that then we're just decaying. So we want to keep moving forward. And in a lot of our material, we talk about it like this almost looks like a spring. There's a cyclical nature to our growth, but it's upward. It continues to move forward, but it will have, I think, parts or seasons where we feel like we went backwards. Like, man, I thought I had this great session with Drew, and I thought I'd kind of healed that part of my inner child that felt neglected. But today, I just feel abandoned by people and what's what, you know, we might even say internally, what's wrong with me? And the answer is, of course, there's nothing wrong with you. This is kind of how this emotional, relational, inner interior work goes there. There's days we just feel like we're nailing it and moving forward. And other days, for maybe a variety of reasons, there's setbacks or things that grab hold of us emotionally in a new way. And rather than panicking or shaming ourselves, oh, man, there's something wrong with me. I did something wrong. Just go, oh, this is part of the process. This is part of the two. Two steps forward, one step back. And I just keep moving forward, keep moving through it, believing that there is an upward trajectory to this work.

Yep.

Yes. And as we grow, instead of just being discouraged, you can learn to be with the discouragement.

Yeah. And, gosh, every new relationship or a relationship that you haven't been in for a really long time is going to be a little uncomfortable and a little weird. So it's okay if it's weird. Doesn't mean you shouldn't have it.

Yeah.

This is all about learning how to give ourselves what we needed and didn't get.

Yeah.

And that, you know, it sounds scary, it seems difficult, but, like, don't you want that? Don't you want to give yourself the thing that you didn't get?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think for some people, they maybe feel like, well, but wait a minute. If I'm saying, you know, there are all these things I didn't get as a kid, it feels like I'm blaming my parents and like, I'm saying they were the bad guy. And, you know, we've already talked about that. We're not blaming or using an excuse, but we do want to recognize. And I've said this in a lot of sessions that, like, hurt people, hurt people, wounded people, wound people. And no matter how awesome our parents were, they were not Jesus. They were not perfect. And even in their Excellency, their imperfections created imperfections in our relationship and opportunities for us to feel wounded or to have issues in our development. And it's so. It's not to say mom and dad are horrible. It's just to acknowledge the reality of mom and dad were not perfect. The world in which I grew up in was not perfect. I remember one time I asked Dr. Ted, I said, so what has the capacity to create wounds in us? What has that ability? And he said, anything that occurred to us that's outside of what God intended in the Garden of Eden has the capacity to create woundedness. It's like, oh, so basically just living in this world, it's gonna happen. That's not to blame people. It's just that that's part of our human development. But I also think it's part of what reveals that healthy need we have for God, that healthy need we have for a savior. Because none of us can grow up in a world so perfected that we don't need that kind of redemption. And so acknowledging our need for an inner child to heal and grow is just acknowledging our humanity and the grace that God gives to work with us in that process.

So good.

That's so beautiful. Another objection that I commonly hear is when People begin to do this inner child work and they unearth the harm and the heartache, especially caused by parents. Then they wonder, okay, well, how do I relate to my parents now? Like, do I talk to them about it? I want to honor them. And I also want to be honest. And one of the most helpful ways that I found personally for doing this and that I recommend to others is learning more about my parents story, learning more about their childhood and what they went through as kids. And then we can approach it with compassion.

Yeah, yeah. And you talk about that in your book, Drew, that you can both honor our past while dealing with the negative impact it's had. And so if people are going to connect with you, they want to, you know, be a part of husband material. They want to start doing this work, or maybe they're just on their own. They go find some resources. What encouragement would you have for people as they lean in and really get into this journey of going back and healing their inner child?

Your inner child is not the problem. Don't blame your sexual addiction on your inner child. Acknowledge the contribution and realize that your inner child is created in the image of God. There is beauty and strength and goodness to discover. Before original sin, there was original blessing. And in inner child work, it's not only going to show you your wounds, it's going to show you your original blessing. It's going to show you the way that you were designed to reflect God's image. And that image has been tarnished. It's been corrupted in different ways by what has been done to us and by what we have done in response. When we get to do this work, man, you don't. I was surprised by how much my inner child has helped me. And I'm reminded of what Jesus says about children. He says, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them. Yeah, that's what this is about.

Something.

Something you said, Drew, the idea of trauma keeping you stuck. What's cool is those areas that got stuck when we were kids. If we go back and we heal those areas, we're not stuck anymore there. Then we can become adults and develop in those areas and become a much more holistic. I don't even like the word version, but it is. It's a more holistic version of ourselves, a healthier version, a stepping more into who God designed me to be. Because trauma has been this thing, this weight I've been carrying around behind me. And I haven't been able to go through life at the pace or in the direction God wants me to. And so I think that there's a lot of benefit that we just stepping into our identity and our purpose and our design by ourselves in community, in the relationships we have with our kids in the next generations. I think there's a lot to be developed and a lot to be had that we are missing out on right now because we haven't healed the inner child. That'd be my encouragement.

Yeah. I think of an imagery that we've used like in the Betrayal and Beyond workbooks for women and some of the resources of someone carrying around this baggage. You know, we often in those reference, the baggage is maybe being the wounds or trauma that's happening because of a marriage or because of an addict in your life. But I think for all of us, that image rings true, that there's a tendency or a capacity to carry around a lot of baggage about our value, worth, identity, and much of that related to unaddressed wounds places, our inner child. We haven't learned to be free of burdens that aren't ours to carry. You know, and so we're. We're carrying the weight maybe of past decisions. We're carrying the weight of sensing our worthlessness, of shame. And that to me is the motive that I would encourage listeners that, that if you sense that boy in my spirit, there's, there's heaviness in my day to day living. There's just. I feel like I'm carrying loads. I don't feel joyful, I don't feel free. I don't feel like curious about my life and excited about each new day. Like there's probably baggage then that you're carrying. And I think this is the work that really helps us identify it and start to lay down those suitcases like, oh, this feels better. I feel like I'm more able to just be real, to be me. And that's what we're after, is finding how we kind of create this convergence between the inner child or the inner self or whatever a person wants to use to refer to kind of that part of them that needs to be addressed here and the life they're living. When we haven't addressed this journey, there's like a big gap between the two. And so we're always in that image management of what people know about me and what people don't know. And I see it as the more work we do, it's like those two parts of us, our external life, what others know and the internal life and what maybe only we know becomes more and more one. And the Same. It's just like that convergence of integrity. Like, this is who I am and I'm that way with you. I'm that way at home. There's a freedom that comes in this work. And so for those that are listening and maybe haven't really gone into some interior work and addressing your inner child, I think that's the outcome is being a more authentic, real you that just gets to enjoy and appreciate the life that God has given you to live.

Yeah. Integrated.

Yes. A life that includes play, A life that includes fun. A life that includes a childhood that you may not have had.

So, Drew, anybody listening who wants to step in to this and do some of this inner child work with you, how would you suggest they get ahold of you?

They can go to joinhma.com I have a coaching program called Husband Material Academy where we do coaching calls like this, where you go back into your stories of suffering, or we do some inner child work or look at sexual fantasies every week. So we're doing those coaching calls. It comes with a video course, and that's the best way to get involved. But we also have a lot of stuff for free in our group and podcast.

Cool.

Well, I mean, it just. It's so clear here that there's a lot at stake, both if we don't go back and heal our inner child and if we do go back and find that healing. Drew, we love your passion, man. We love what you guys are doing at Husband Material Academy. And thanks just again for being here and sharing all you got.

Thanks, Trevor. Thanks, Nick. And it was fun to get to know little Trevor and little Nick a little bit too.

Anytime.

Sure, no problem. Wherever you're at on your journey, pure desire is here to help create a roadmap for your healing. If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual brokenness, go to PureDesire.org and let's start the healing journey today. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Each week we put out new content to help you on the road to freedom from the effects of sexual brokenness. And lastly, never stop being healthy.