317 - Reparenting Our Inner Child with Dr. Eddie Capparucci

Welcome to the Pure Desire Podcast, helping you take back your life from unwanted sexual behavior and betrayal trauma. Hello. Hello. I am your host, Trevor Windsor, and you're listening to episode 317 of the Pure Desire podcast. Here joining me, as always, is my co host, Nick Stumbo.

Good grief.

That just sounds like you on maybe a Monday afternoon. I don't know.

Or many of us. No, that is actually a phrase most commonly associated with one cartoon character. And in relation to today's talk, I could give you a chance to guess what cartoon character gets associated with the simple phrase, good grief?

No idea.

Good grief. Charlie Brown.

Oh, okay.

That's his, you know, and you love Charlie Brown. He's a little bit of, kind of a mopey kid who's always, you know, seeing kind of the glass half empty view of life. And. And I think that connects really well to what we were talking about today.

So.

So we had Eddie Caporucci on, and he's an author of a couple different books, why Men Struggle with Love and Going Deeper. And he's developed an inner child model, and it really is a therapeutic model that helps us understand why we do what we do. And we had him on really. It's funny, the title of this episode's Reparenting Our Inner Child, but we talked a lot about a lot when it comes to the inner child. But it was a great episode.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting if you think about Charlie Brown. That comic strip and the cartoon shows that came out of it really presented a world without adults. There were parents in the picture somewhere, but you never saw them in the teacher's voice, the parents. And so it's kind of meant to be a snapshot of how kids talk and interact absent the wisdom and maturity or foolishness of adults, however you want to see it. And in today's conversation, that's kind of what we're realizing happens for all of us, is there's a part of us that continues to function as a child that thinks differently than we do as adults. And we're not often able to bring maybe the wisdom and experience we have as adults to that part of us because we're not aware of it. Because we have, as we talk about in this episode, we've created a disconnect and an avoidance of what happened to us or what impact it had. And so there can continue to be this Charlie Brown voice in us that often is driven by depression or fear or anxiety or worry or shame. And it's kind of a good grief voice. And the more that we're unaware of it, the more likely it is that that's the very thing driving into our unwanted behaviors. And it can come from all kinds of different circumstances. It can happen in really, you know, quote unquote, good, healthy Christian homes. And it can happen in, you know, in broken, divided homes. So it's more about what happened inside of us than what happened to us. And I think today we just unpack. What do we do with that voice? And what do we do about that part of us that maybe didn't grow up? Where did it come from? I mean, Eddie unpacks all that. I just. I know listeners are going to get a ton of out of what he shared with us today.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's so interesting. This is my effort to try to tie in what we talked about to now what we're going to talk about. But I think that one of the things when we've experienced healing, we really want other people to experience the same thing. And one of the biggest challenges that so many people run into if they've been through pure desire groups and had some healing, understanding their family of origin, understanding their behaviors, is bringing it to their church. And one of the really cool things that we have completely free for people is called our group pathway. Why don't you tell people a little bit about what we have for them?

Yeah, you know, we talked about it with Eddie a little bit today just how we don't know this form of healing. And it's not as common as we think, where we're aware of trauma or aware of what drives us. And in a pure desire group, I think that's what people encounter. And for many of you as our listeners, that's what you've experienced, is that this is different. This is still a very biblical approach, but it's not just read more Bible verses and pray more. There's some deep work, some healing work. And when someone experiences freedom, if their church isn't doing something, it often leads them to that place of saying, my church has to do this. And so we're trying to equip you as the volunteer to take this back to your church, because we recognize that most churches aren't running groups like this and many pastors don't have plans to. But we have seen over and over that a motivated volunteer who comes in grace and with real resources to their church and humbly asks, could we start a group? And then even takes the step to say, I'd be willing to help start it, that there is often an open door. And so we Wanted to just put tools in your hands. There's an email template that you could use to send. There's a video that you could share with your pastor. We've got PDFs of some of our brochures, or we'd send you hard copies. It's all just meant to equip you the volunteer to be the ambassador to your church and give them everything they need to make a good decision. And so we'd love to have you utilize it. It's free because we're here to help you. And then at any point necessary, you know, you could hand off the conversation to someone at Pure Desire and say, hey, why don't you talk to the team at Pure Desire? I know they'd love to help us. And we would. So, yeah, check out the group pathway today.

Yeah, so go to PureDesire.orggroup-pathway with that. A couple more things. Subscribe to the podcast. We're on all the major platforms. Just do it. Just subscribe. And you know what, Nick? I've heard this. I've heard this. People are like, after so many times you just pestering me to finally leave a review. I did it. And you know what? That was like three or four people that have told me that. That's why I keep doing it. Thanks for giving me. That's right. The motivation. So please write a review, share it with people. That'd be great. And then you can follow us on social media, keep up with what we're doing. And we're earedesire PDMI on all the platforms. With that, here is our time talking with Dr. Eddie Caporucci on reparenting our inner child. Eddie Caporucci, welcome, man, to the Pure Desire podcast. We are excited to have you. Thanks for being with us.

Well, thank you for having me here. I've really been looking forward to talking to you gentlemen. And as I said before, we have a lot probably to cover today.

Yes, we do. So we've interacted a number of times. I've heard you on a number of different podcasts and recently I just read through your book, why Men Struggle to Love. And some of the topics that we're going to touch on today are specifically from that book, but also your book, Going Deeper. So you made a point to emphasize that, that some of these themes are developed in both of those books. And so we'll have those in the show as well. But today we specifically are looking at the topic of our inner child. And just hold for awkward pause as we're listening because there are some people that that language seems kind of funny or off as we'll get into. But Eddie, before we jump into it, can you just let our listeners know who maybe aren't familiar with you or your work, just a little bit about yourself, your story, and the resources that you have out in the world?

Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. I am a licensed professional counselor. I have a practice in Highland, North Carolina, licensed by both the state of Georgia and North Carolina. This is the second career for me. This was a God thing that came, you know, I struggled with my own addiction when I was younger from time. I was about 16, I was more of a womanizer and couldn't quite understand what that was all about. I actually ran through and destroyed a couple marriages because of it just being, you know, jumping from one woman to another. Finally, after the second marriage collapsed, I said, you know what, I really need to go and find out what's wrong. And I sought help. And what I found out was I have what you would call an avoidant attachment and therefore never kept both feet in a relationship. Have one foot in, one foot out. What was that about? Well, it's about the fact of when I was five, my father died suddenly of a heart attack. My mother had a nervous breakdown and I was sent out to relatives who I didn't know. So here I am, five, I'm with these strangers. I'm there for almost a year, come back, you know, my mom has to work. I have two older sisters who are raising me. They don't really want to be bothered by a six year old boy. So spent a lot of time by myself alone. But the whole point of why I tell that story also is it was through learning, you know, as I got older, what was the problem here, one foot in and one foot out of a relationship. And why? Because for me, as a young child, I developed this mentality, not really having the thought, but the people who love you will leave you and the people who love you are not dependable. So subconsciously that's sitting with me all the time. So any relationship I'm in, as soon as I get an inkling, like somebody's angry with me for something or whatever, there I go. I'm starting to pull away and move out of that relationship very quickly. And that is really the basis of what the whole inner child model is that I created. You know, it's based on the fact of trauma and neglect that we went through as children, that we're dealing with unresolved childhood pain points that are still haunting us today.

Yeah, we're big fans of yours, Eddie, and the work you're doing. And I love the way, even right there, you were able to tell in a pretty short time frame, a cohesive story of my past and the wounds and lies that it created and how it led to my behavior. And we just find so often that the average person, including the average Christian, is not able to do that, that there is a huge disconne between their current life and struggles and their past. And that can happen for a number of reasons. But I think we're going to get to jump into some of that today. And so let's, let's circle in on this idea of the inner child. And I think for many, especially Christians, as Trevor alluded to, the language or phrase like inner child and some of the other terms that might come up around it can feel New Agey to people or can feel like something worldly. Like, well, that's just worldly psychology. So as you're unpacking this idea of the inner child, how do you see this through a biblical lens and help people, people maybe who aren't familiar with these kind of concepts realize that we're not going off on the deep end psychologically, but this is just kind of a normal human experience that we would all benefit from understanding better.

The word psychobabble, something that comes up every once in a while. You hear that. But you know what? Let's first take a look at why the inner child, why it is not, how it is not from a biblical perspective. Okay? First and foremost, one, it's not an excuse for any destructive behaviors. And it doesn't replace that idea, the concept of sin or accountability. We are accountable. We have to own our stuff. The inner child model basically is a therapeutic tool that helped to provide a rationale for someone's behavior. It doesn't give an out for why that person did what they did. So the inner child also from a biblical perspective, does not, is not a repressed version of ourselves, okay? It's not that, you know, they would refer to it. People who've done other inner child models look at that kid and say, oh, that's the true self buried. My inner child model is not. That's not the true self, okay? That is not my kid. My kid is scared, he's lonely, he confused, he filled with all of these pain, painful emotions that are not going to go away. And he doesn't know how to deal with them. The reason he doesn't know how to deal with them because nobody showed him how. My inner child also doesn't have the power to set us free. Okay, that's Jesus role.

Amen.

That is not my inner child. My inner child wants one thing, comfort. He wants the comfort from this frightening negative emotions and feelings that he's going through. And he doesn't have the power to transform us. That is not what he does. He is nothing more than a subconscious representation of our unresolved childhood pain point that still haunt us today. Now what he does have the power to do is the power to increase our anxiety level when he attempts to correlate something from the path with some sort of negative event that happened right now. And when that anxiety level of ours increases, our anxiety rises. That then lead to an increase in compulsiveness. An increase in compulsiveness is ultimately going to lead to an increase in the risk of poor decision making.

It is interesting. One of the things, and I think when this question comes up from Christians, sometimes we wish we had just a verse that's like, oh, it's just right here. It's perfect. It's clear right here. But I think for me, the more that we've had conversations, the more I've learned about this whole process is that God designed our brains in a very specific way. And our brains, like our bodies are intended to. When we're in pain or when we experience trauma, we react. And that is a God given ability. That's how we stay alive. You know, like if you get hurt doing something, it's like, okay, well I'm not going to do that again because I don't want to get hurt because that's not good for me. But I think that there is something to be said about the way that science is now showing how God designed our brains from the beginning to internalize trauma and the messages and what we believe and how that plays out in our daily lives. And so I wouldn't say that that's like, hey, that's where you go for like proof of a biblical model. But I think you can still make a case that like God, you know, is weaving us together in our mother's womb, including our brain and our body and the way it reacts to trauma and pain in life.

Absolutely. I mean, because the inner child model is a trauma model and what it does, it helps people. To answer the why question, why does sex have a stronghold on my life? And you could take the word sex out and you could put anything else. Why does depression, anxiety, why does alcoholism put anything in there? And it's that self reflection. If you look at that, that's what very biblical about the inner child model. If we want to go to a verse, I can actually go to Second Corinthians that talks about examining ourselves. We are told. And again there we're told to examine ourselves to make sure that we're in the faith. But it's like that with everything we need to test what's going on within us. Because just like I understood when I was told, oh, you have an avoidant attachment disorder, I was then empowered. I was empowered to make real changes in my life because now I knew what was going on. I wasn't just a womanizer, a player, a pervert, whatever. No, there was something that was wrong, and it was from my emotional base, and I needed to uncover that. And that's how this whole inner child thing started to develop.

Yeah.

Yeah. As you're sharing, Eddie, the verse that came to mind for me is the APostle Paul in First Corinthians saying that when I was a child, I thought like a child, I act like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became an adult, I put childish ways behind me. And I think a lot of what we're discussing here is the need for us to mature in all areas of life. And I remember in my own story how helpful that was for me to disarm shame. Because when I thought of my struggles with pornography as primarily a sin issue, and it is sin, I don't want to discount that. But when I thought of it only through that lens, there was a lot of shame, of, I do wrong things, I make bad choices, maybe because I'm a bad person, shame on me. But through this lens of maturity, it's like, oh, maybe there's parts of me that haven't been trained or taught how to mature, and I've gotten stuck in immaturity in that emotional, relational, or even how I think sexually. And I think a lot of people can resonate with that, because we don't grow up in environments that really intentionally train us how to mature in so many areas of our life. And so we may be an adult male or female, physically and intellectually, and the degrees behind our name or our careers, but we might be very immature. And I don't mean that in a condescending way. I just mean a reality of life like we may have failed to develop because no one showed us how or helped us develop in those areas.

You're getting into the whole idea and concept of the emotionally undeveloped man.

There you go.

Which is from why Men Struggle to Love. But if I can go back to the moment for what you just talked about with shame. You know, that's how the inner child aspect of this all came to be. Because when I began this and started it in my practice again, I found nine reasons why men abuse sex. And that's what it was. And each of them are about a particular emotional pain point. And that's what I would use. I give these guys these two sheets of paper and say, here are nine things I identified. There'd be a little paragraph about all of each of them. And then say, which one do you resonate with most? And then we work on those. Well, then there was an idea. It was a book that I read about 20 years ago. Sorry, I can't remember who the author is. I can't remember the name of the book. But what he talked about was externalizing the addiction and when. And you'll talk to your addict. And then it made me. It dawned on me. You know what? One of the major problems that men have, or even women who struggle with this is the shame factor. That is what's going to keep them, in many cases, from being able to manage their addiction. What if I externalize the shame? And that became the inner children? Now, it wasn't, in a sense, that you look at it and say, oh, they're my problem. That's the problem. If I didn't have that inner child, I wouldn't have done what I've done. No, that's not what this is. What it is is, oh, that inner child. I can help manage him. And if I can manage him, I can now stay one step ahead of my addiction. And that's how the nine inner children came to be.

Totally. Okay, so another kind of question that can come up, and I know that this is predominantly, at least in our experience, men specifically in the church. But I think in the church as a whole, there could be this idea of, like, emotions are weak or this inner child idea is weak or something that's childish and we should avoid. How would you respond to that? Like, what would you say, particularly to men? Because I think they struggle with it more often than not. But really, just to anybody who feels like this is, like, weak and should be avoided, what would you say?

Right. Well, and that's a great question, but I would take them to the concept of what are we trying to accomplish with this? They tell them, put the. Put the inner child over here for a moment. What is. What am I trying to do? I'm trying to challenge you to embrace the concept of self reflection. Okay? And therefore to Understand that. You know, we should be curious about the question why? Why do I think, feel and act the way I do? Because again, as I said before, that's going to empower you. The inner child model that I develop is about growth. It's about mental, emotional, and spiritual growth. It is about the transformation of the heart. I am not trying to get men just to stop doing X, Y and Z behavior. I'm getting them to transform. So therefore, you know, for them to take a deeper look at the inner child model, because it's not like the other ones that have been written about and told in the past. This is something very different. My inner child is stubborn, kick at it, cunning, selfish, but most of all, he's afraid, just like men are. Okay, we don't want to admit that we're afraid, but we are. And it's about learning how to be able to take that kid and go back to what you were saying, Nick. That kid who keeps us immature because we run on his emotions and not rational thinking. So it becomes a different way. I want to get men to think differently, to feel differently, to act differently. Not just about this one behavior that is causing problem, but all things in their lives.

Yeah, Yeah. I think people may just have an aversion to these ideas because they fear they're being called childish. And just because you're looking to deal with your inner child doesn't mean you're childish. It's just facing a reality. And if it's helpful, I think for someone to think of it in other terms, we're trying to unpack in some way, shape or form what happened to me in my past that's leading to where I'm at now. What makes this make sense? Where does this come from? And the terminology could be an inner child and understanding those wounds and understanding what the messages it's heard. But I think if we need to detach that, we're not trying to call anyone childish. We're just looking at what happened to me and how does that help me understand my story at a much deeper level.

And it's funny, Eddie, as you were describing it, as this model, I just was in a training last week with a guy who is a marriage and family therapist and uses Legos as a way to have people kind of dramatize where they're at emotionally. And it's like, hold on a second. We're playing with toys now. This is what we're doing in therapy. I'm playing with these toys that my kids play with. And it's cool because if you just allow yourself to enter that space, there are some incredibly powerful things that can happen. And what I hear you saying is it's the same thing with this inner child model, that it puts us in a different frame of mind that helps maybe bring language or explain our experiences in a way that where we're at currently with our day to day framework, we can't actually enter into. Am I hearing you right?

Absolutely. And you know what? I don't mind. I've never done the Lego thing, but I'll say this. If I thought, and again, I need to understand more about it, if it worked, I would add it into the component. The one thing is that what we do is in many cases we'll have people draw, but we don't have them draw with their dominant hand. You have to draw with their non dominant hand because I want to see what I might get out of that picture. But again, the whole idea of this is not, as you were saying before, putting a label on someone that you are childish. Now we are immature. Nine out of 10 men that I've worked with emotionally, and I call them now emotionally undeveloped. But every man that I've talked to and I've said, you know what? I believe that you're emotionally immature. I've yet to have a single person push back on me, not one. And that goes to show because. And again, you could be very successful. You could have, you know, a lot of accomplishments, as you said before, all the letters after your name. But we weren't given what we needed to be given at a young age in those early years of childhood development that allow us to be able to deal with some of the very emotional problems and issues that we face as adults. We learn to run.

Yeah, yeah, so let's unpack that. Eddie, talk to us a little bit about if we have an inner child. And I think in some regard we all do. We have parts of us that need to be re parented, that need to understand love and value and acceptance in a new way. And so if that's true, then there's a part of us that's been wounded or hurt. And so unpack a little more. Where does that inner child come from? What are some of the ways that the inner child in us gets wounded and damaged? And how early in life does some of this start?

Yeah, it can happen extremely early in life and it can go throughout, even into our teen years. And basically most of the time it's based on traumas. Again, physical, sexual, mental, emotional. Many different things could happen because of People could happen because of circumstances, could be neglect and not neglect in the sense that, oh, somebody didn't feed me or clothe me or put a roof over my head, but more of emotional neglect. They weren't there to be able to give me the praise I needed, to notice me when I needed it, or just to help me, most importantly, deal with this emotional pain and distress that I have. My inner child is locked in a time warp. He is back there wherever that those pains came from and the re. And he's very afraid. And the reason he's afraid because he doesn't know how to handle this emotional distress. There was no adult in the room to be able to walk him through it. So therefore with that, he had to come up with a solution. What am I going to do with this distress? What do I do with the bully next door? What do I do with the fact that, oh my gosh, I broke this toy that cost my parents a lot of money, and then when they find out, they're gonna, you know, be in. I'm gonna be in big trouble. What do I do with the fact that, oh, I get teased because you know what, my teeth are crooked or my clothes aren't as good as everybody else, and there's nobody here to help me with it because if you go to them, you get, hey, I wouldn't worry about it. No big deal. Look, I don't have the time or you know what, you don't know what you're talking about. Get out of my face. Whatever it may be, what is the solution? Well, this kid doesn't have a lot of worldly experiences. He also more emotionally based in thinking than he is cognitively based. So he comes up with one solution. And it's brilliant. It's brilliant for a kid that age. I won't think about it. I won't think about it. Well, how did he do that? He distracts himself. Too much food, too much television, maybe too much fantasy in his own head. Not sexual fantasy, just fantasy in general. And then we move into our adolescent, our teen years, our adult years. And what we do is we change out the behavior. And at some point, the men that we are working with stumble across sex. And they say, oh my gosh, this is the mother of all distraction. This one right here. This can keep me distracted 24 7. So whenever your child gets activated, there you're going to go, you're going to run away just like you did when you were in your younger years.

One of the things I've just recently heard, I'M going through a book in a program called Positive Intelligence, and the author talks about how his dad growing up was very abusive, verbally, physically. And it's interesting he describes it this way. How his brain was pursuing safety was that in order to constantly feel safe, he had to rationalize in his brain that his dad is safe. There must be something wrong with me, because if there isn't something wrong with me, then this primary caregiver of mine is not safe and I can't live in that environment. And so it's fascinating to me how often that happens to us where. Where it's not even what is going on, it's how we process that at such a young age that then sets a trajectory that we don't realize can be so destructive and damaging. But I just think it's fascinating, and I feel like the reason why I'm saying that is just to make sense that it's maybe not these terrible things that are happening to you, but it is how you internalize that and process that at that young age that maybe sets you up for unhealthy behaviors.

Again, what you're talking about is children being egocentric, okay? Therefore, whatever happens, it is because of me. It's centered around me as a child. So therefore, and you're right, if I try to paint my parent as bad, wait a second, I need that parent who's going to take care of me then who's going to feed me. So therefore, I have to instead turn it inward. And now we have the development of low self worth. Of all those negative narratives that we carry on with us into our teen and adult world.

When I like the phrase you used, Eddie, you call it, we're time warped into a spot. And we know that from brain research as well, that when these kind of things happen to us in our formative years, our brain that is not fully developed, that is a childish brain, computes it as being necessary for survival. And what we have to do to survive, the brain holds onto because it doesn't want to forget those things. And that's where, in a very literal sense, we might be stuck in a memory of being five years old because our brain is identified. This is what I do to protect myself from that fear. And we can be 35 or 55 or 75 and still responding out of that same place because there is a time warp. We're stuck there. And until we understand it can, through an adult brain and with the help of a loving community, go back with others and understand where the message came from, what Truth and reality was where God was at. We may be stuck in that moment for a lifetime. And as I've shared on the brain in our seminars, it's like to remind people this is the beauty of God's design in the brain, that we needed God to design our brains to remember things that are associated with survival. But because we grow up in a sinful and fallen world, we calculate all kinds of things as being necessary for survival that really aren't about our physical survival, but are about creating that emotional safety that you're talking about.

Eddie, let's add another component to all of that. What if we have repressed that memory? Okay, so now we're still going to get triggered. There are triggers that are going to happen that are going to bring forth that, but we will not be conscious of what it is. So now we are afraid or uncomfortable about something and we don't really even quite understand what it is. And over time, if we continue using what the inner child does, that mechanism, that coping strategy of, well, you know what? I don't want to sit with this distress. I'm just going to run. That's where we go. And how many guys will run, do something, you know, from. With the addiction and then later being say, say sit there and say, what was that about? What in the world led me to go and do that? I never thought I was going to do that again, but yet here I am one more time.

Yeah, I feel like you're already talking about where we're going with the next question. And it's how does our wounded inner child play out in our adult lives? Like, what are the signs that re parenting our inner child is so necessary?

We talked a little bit about this, but let me put it in a orderly format for you, okay? So our inner child has taught us years ago that we need to distract ourselves from emotional discomfort. Right. Why? Well, because again, we weren't taught by our parents how to sit with this discomfort. Whether they ignored us, they, you know, minimized it, they would be angry with it, whatever it may be. We don't. People who have addictions have a difficult time sitting with emotional pain or discomfort. So we don't have that. The inner child then also represents the unresolved childhood pain point. So our kid, how do we get triggered by current day event that he believes is something from the path? It looks very similar. It's like the two world colliding. Something just happened today that seemed very similar to something from the past. And he puts those two together and therefore it activates One of our core emotional triggers, such as, I'm not good enough, I've been rejected. I don't feel safe. Well, when that first original negative event happens, your anxiety level has elevated. Once the kid brings in that memory, which again, could be repressed, you're not aware of it.

You.

Your anxiety level continues to grow. So now. And you're thinking that it's based on this event that just happened. I'll give you a real quick example. Let's say you have a really good friend, and you guys had a falling out, and you run across each other in the street one day, and you talking, and somebody said, hey, you know, maybe we should get together and we can work this out. Okay, yeah, let's do that. So you schedule lunch. Well, day of lunch comes, and you get a phone call from him. He goes, hey, look, something happened. I can't make it. You know what? I'll see if I can get back to you by. And hangs up. Just like that. I mean, it's less than seven seconds long, and you're sitting here and saying, did I just get blown off? What was that about? Damn rude, wasn't it? Well, your kid reaches out into a storage unit and he pulls something out. You're not aware, but he remembered the time when you were about 9 years old and you went down the street to Bobby's house and you knocked on the door to see if Bobby can come out. Bobby opens up the door, and there's him and three of your friends. You're sitting there and you're saying, what are you guys doing? And they go, we're just hanging out. Well, how come you didn't call me? Oh, we didn't think about it. I don't know. Whatever. Do it. Well, can I come in? And Bobby goes, no, my mom said they can't have anybody else. And slam door in your face. And you go home and you're. And you're going home. Maybe you have some tears in your eyes and you wonder, why don't people ever chase me? Why don't people, you know, come to me and see what I want to do? And again, making feel. That kid feels dismissed. Your inner child. So he's putting these two things together. You're not aware. All you think is that if your anxiety continues to grow, it's because of the phone call. Well, it's not just the phone call. It's because you have experienced other things in your life that bring up the feelings that I've been dismissed. I'm not noticed. I feel invisible. All of these things are coming up. You may not have knowledge, but the emotions are there. And as your anxiety continues to increase, I can't sit with pain. What am I going to do? I'm running. And before you know it, you're off doing something. And it may not even be from the sexual nature, but maybe the next person you engage with, you just explode at them for some reason. There could be many other things that happen. Maybe you go and start to binge on food. So. But again, I need some sort of comfort. Remember what I said, My inner child, what is his only need? And that is comfort. So that gives you an example of how that could play out.

Yeah, that's a great story. I really appreciate that. And I think, just to make sure we're being real clear, when you ask about signs, Trevor, I would say to anyone that feels like I keep using a substance, whether it's food, drugs, alcohol, sex, masturbation, any kind of substance that I know is hurtful for me or others, yet I can't seem to stop going back there. And we would often call that an addiction. That's a sign that there is inner child work to be done. There is something deeper that's driving this behavior. It's not just about that the food is good or sex feels good or that, yes, drugs and alcohol can be addictive. That's a part of it. But if we keep running back there, there's something deeper driving it. And that's a sign we all want to be aware of. And the other thing that comes to mind for me is what I would call disproportionate responses, that if the trigger and our response are very disproportionate, you know, and so maybe someone slightly inconveniences me and I blow up, like, okay, there's a little indication there that there's some inner child work, that you've had a fear trigger pushed, You've had an anxiety or a shame trigger pushed. We use it often like the illustration of being cut off in traffic. And if that response from you is like you're yelling in your car and flipping people off and just like, okay, those moments where you realize my response was not in line with what happened to me, it's that opportunity to look and say, oh, that's a sign something deeper is going on. Where is this coming from? And I think we all could probably come up with examples like that. And we may not, you know, back to Eddie's illustration. We may not have the memory right away of walking to little Bobby's House. But that, to me, is the value of group and of the kind of processes that Eddie leads men and women through and that we do at Pure desire there. It's that we haven't made the connections. And so let's walk through. Well, you're aware of the current behavior. Let's start to figure out what were some of those moments that created these inner child wounds. Because when you can piece it together, that's a huge game changer.

So let me just real quick, just to double back. It's not normal to yell at people and flip them off when they cut you off.

Normally, I would call that a disproportionate response, Trevor.

Good enough.

I'm gonna write that down. Just kidding. No, I think I will tell you.

You know what, the one thing that I love about your pure desire group, because again, I've gone through the material I' so many men there is that a lot of what you do when you have people go back and start to look at those childhood wounds is very similar to what this inner child is like. Also is very, very similar. And not all approaches, not all therapy take this type of approach. And I think it's critical. I think it's something that's definitely needed.

Yeah. And I can say it's not just like, I can tell you right now, because I've done some, like, not. Not enough, but some inner child work that my entire personality is wrapped around running away from emotional pain. Like, I can. I literally can tie, like, the fact that I have so many different interests and the fact that I don't like sitting still and the fact that I can't be present in the moment is all tied to things that I internalized earlier in life.

And that's why, Trevor, that's what we talk about. That's why I say what's so important. Self reflection.

Totally.

Like you said. You just sat there now and just outlined, you know, all these various different behaviors. And you can go back and you can look and you can tie them to what the kid is doing trying to get you to not sit with your emotional pain.

Yeah. So on the maybe positive side, Eddie, in your book, you identify five core needs for healthy emotional development that we all have. So can you talk a little bit about those core needs and how do we go about getting them met in our daily lives? Maybe especially if we realize I've got a past where many of these needs weren't met.

Yeah. I mean, what happens is in the early stages of childhood development, there are five different areas that we should Be that a parent should be walking us through. And it starts with connection, okay? Learning how to bond with other people. And like, for example, with me, I got bonding when I was, was, you know, 2, 3, 4. Because I know I felt was a very happy kid. But once my dad dies and my mom have her nervous breakdown, that connection is severed. And now I don't have it any longer. And this is where through a connection is where our attachments form. So whether it's a secure attachment or perhaps just anxious or avoidant, whatever it may be, you know, that's what's happening. So we need that strong connection in some cases, again, for parents who maybe they were very young when they got married and had a child and they don't really know how to, you know, bond and attach with a kid or they are too much into their own lives still. Or perhaps maybe you are number one. Seven of nine kids and parents are just kind of given up at that point there for many reasons why you may not get that connection aspect that's taught to you. Then we have attunement. Attunement is where I get to really kind of pick up and read where people, what they are, what their emotions are, their feelings, what their body language and such. This is where it really comes into play where a mother, you know, with. With a baby, really trying to show the baby the different facial expressions that, you know, they can pick up on. Now, again, attunement can be severed at any point also for whatever reason. But if I'm not attuned, I'm going to be rather indifferent toward people. Trust. How do we build trust? That's number three. Well, trust is that as a child I can walk away, I can go into explore. But I know when I go back, I don't have to go very far. And one of my parents are there. There's somebody waiting for me. For me. Again, let's go back to my story. All right. At 5, there's nobody there. All right, they're gone. They're just gone. So therefore it became very difficult for me to trust. I have autonomy. You know, that is the idea that I can have some level of independence as a child. I'm not being smothered by parents. And then finally there is the love and sexuality. And you may be saying, wait a second, sexuality? What that have to do with a child? Well, you know what we're teaching kids even at a very young age about the idea of integrating love with sexuality. Because if it's not integrated, what you're going to do is you're going to have individuals who are going to build a relationship based on physical intimacy. And that is not God designed for our relationship. Design is that it's built on emotional intimacy and we sprinkle physical in to support it. So where did a kid run into a problem here? Well, let's say you have a little boy, maybe 4 years old, and he walks around with his hand down his pants. Not because he's trying to sexually stimulate himself, it's just that it's soothing for him. And so therefore let's say you have a parent parent who should be saying hey, you know what Tommy, take your hand out of there. That's not really polite. We shouldn't be doing that. I know it feels good, but we don't put our hand down there. Versus a parent who grabbed the hand out smacks it. You dirty little boy. That is disgusting. How could you even touch your thing like that? What you've done is you now set in motion for the child that there's something here with my sexual organ that is wrong, that is bad. And so now what you've done is you've disconnected the love from the sexuality and we need to try to keep them engaged. So therefore a child doesn't later on, like I say, build relationships based on physical intimacy as opposed to emotional.

What I like what you said earlier, the awareness piece is so important because I think that if we know that these are places that we're lacking in, we have that, interestingly enough, we have that autonomy or the agency to pursue that in relationship to know that, you know, maybe I like, and I can say this for sure, I had similar experiences growing up with love and sex, being kind of pulled apart in that way. But understanding that being in a pure desire group, it helps me redefine what sex is and redefine what intimacy actually is. I think that that's one way for sure that we can start to address it. And as you were sharing, I was thinking about it. I often, I have a six year old and a three year old son and they both oftentimes like in the bath or touching their penis. And for me, for me I react from my past and addiction where it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't like, come on, don't do that. Like that's not okay. But what I'm doing is I'm projecting my experiences onto them. And so what I've and my wife, we've had to like because it's kind of funny when you're watching them do it, you're like, why are you doing that? That seems so stupid, silly. But being able to even say, you're really funny and you're silly. And I know that you like to do that, but when you're around other people, it's not appropriate to do something like that. And so trying to do that on a relational level, what's interesting is in doing that with my kids, I've also found that that helps redefine it for me, that even though I had this addictive mindset, that that's what that was for me, it helps me build some more of that into my own story or my own understanding. And I'm not saying that's the only thing that comes out of it, but it's that cool kind of dual thing that happens where I'm helping my kid understand this. But even in doing that, I'm better processing the reality of the situation.

One thing that's been very interesting about the two books is that when people read them, one of the biggest reactions I get immediately is, oh, my gosh, what I've done to my kids. You know, they see. They see themselves in their life. Like, even as a parent, I've been doing this. I haven't affirmed the way I should. I don't pay that attention the way I should. I don't show that curiosity. My kids see me being hypersensitive to criticism and such and being defensive. So therefore, it's also a really good tool for them to be able to help to better parent their own children.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say is I think this really serves as a motivation for us to do the hard work of turning in and looking, looking back and reparenting our inner child. Because I really believe we can only parent our children to the level we've parented our inner child. Because if we're still being driven by a lot of shame and fear and those wounds of our past, we will inadvertently parent out of that, as you're saying. And I think the flip side of it is when we do some of this hard work, when we go through group, when we get counseling, when we read books like Eddie's, and we understand what's going on and what's driving me, it. It does actually change the lens of our parenting. I mean, imagine Trevor having that experience you just did with your boys during bath time. If you had no healing story, no pure desire work, like, your reaction might have been very shaming, and you would never even have thought twice about it, because it's just like, well, that's what I, you know, my parents told me, oh, put that away, you know, or don't do that. That's wrong. What's wrong with you? And that's. We would have just done that, almost second nature, because that's what we learned and then missed how, oh, I've just passed on the very kind of trauma and triggers that were given to me. And so if anyone out there was looking for motivation to do the work, I think that's one of them. And obviously we don't have to have kids to need a motive to do this kind of work. But what I loved about your list, Eddie, to say to that as well, is how when we're really feeling a draw towards our old behavior or that unwanted way of soothing ourselves, this is a list we could almost look through and go, well, what am I really needing right now? Is my real, true need for connection? Or is it for attunement with other people? Is it for trust or autonomy? Do I feel trapped and smothered and I'm just looking for some autonomy in my life? Or is it that loving connection? And if we see the deeper needs, then we can work with God and others to say, how do I meet those? And what comes to mind, too, is what our friend Ben Bennett says is we've found illegitimate ways to meet legitimate needs. And what you're describing here, Eddie, are five legitimate needs we have. And if we can see them, then we can start to pursue healthy ways of having them met.

So one of the things that I loved in your book, why Men Struggle to Love, is you talk about blind spots. And I think that the blind spots that we have are a lot of the reasons why that we're not able to address these things. Right. And so what are some of the most common blind spots that many of us have? How do we identify them? And then what does it look like to actually address those blind spots?

There are 14 that I identified. And again, that was with my. My work and research with me.

Oh, man, I got a lot of work to do. Hold on, let me pull out my pencil.

Well, you know what I had? What? There were nine kids. They're now going to be 11. But we're doing a second printing of the Going Deeper book in the fall because we're adding the Amesh child, which I can't believe I missed in the first place. And we're also doing the Spiritually Wounded child. So they're growing in numbers. I don't think think we'll find more blind spots. I think I'm Pretty pretty much got.

I don't know, you might have a blind spot to 15 or 16. So.

Well, I guess you never know. But. But I think this is a pretty comprehensive list. If you had to look at again, of the 14, which are those that are the most troublesome. And again, they're all. They all cause problems in our lives because what they do is they prevent us from. From being able to cultivate healthy relationship. Well, one is one that we've been talking about quite a bit today and that is avoiding emotional pain. Because if we can't sit with emotional distress, we can't sit with that discomfort. We are going to find other ways of being able to manage that. And that could be avoiding people withdrawing. It could be again, going back to minimizing. You know what? This is not something that's important. I don't want to talk about. Could be running to some sort of addictive behavior or destructive behavior. So we have to learn how to sit with that pain. How do we do that? Well, first and foremost, and I know this sounds silly, but it's so true. We have to understand sitting with pain. Pain is not going to kill us. We're going to be okay. It's going to be all right. But you just need. And go back to one of you mentioned. Oh, I think if you. Trevor, you said even having problems sitting still, most people who have problems with addiction, they have a problem sitting still. And that's where I go with a lot of this stuff. The big thing is, and it's kind of funny, everybody laughs at me now because I say it so often in the way I say it, slow everything down. We have to learn to do that. We've spent way too much of our lives with our head down, running through life. And now we have to have our head up and we have to be looking and observing and slowing things down and be able to sit with that pain. Pain and being able to process it. But see, a lot of the time what you're going to notice with this emotional pain is that it is based on a lot of the raw emotions of our inner child. So therefore, if we're going through and I sit with the pain, I go through it, then I have another step. If I slow everything down, I move from what I feel real to what is real. And now I'm looking at it through a wide mind, through rational thinking. Go back to that example I gave you before about the guy who, you know, he from. From Bobby's house in the phone call. All right. What are the raw Emotions. I've been, you know, dismissed. He doesn't really care. He's duping me. You know, all I've been rejecting it. All these things, right? That's what this kid feeling. And he feeling some of it. I move over to rational thinking. Well, you know what? Yeah, maybe some of those. Those emotions are right. Yeah, I do feel like he was rather abrupt. I think it was rather rude. But you know what? Maybe he really did have a emergency. Maybe there's something really wrong. You know, I. I don't know if I have enough information that I can say that he's trying to blow me off and he doesn't want to try to get back to be friends again. I've slowed everything down. I'm not running. Because, see, when we're processing these emotions, that's where we stop. We don't process it. We feel them and then we stop when we just run off here. Now I've slowed it down. I'm processing now I can make a good, healthy choice. Choice, what would that be? Well, you know what? Maybe I'll give him a couple days, see how he's doing. I'll call him. Hey, everything all right? You know, do you want to try to get together again? If he says yes, great. He says no. Maybe I have to say, maybe you need more time. Maybe you need to think about it more. Yep, that's what I'll do. Slowed it all down. So that's one. The second one that I think is of the top is inwardly focused. We become inwardly focused, especially when, for example, someone like me who you believe that the people who love you are not going to be there for you. The people who are supposed to be there are not reliable. I feel like I have to take on everything myself. There's no one there for me emotionally. So therefore, I turn inward. And turning inward immediately. Whatever comes up in my life light, it's going to be more about what do I want, what do I need? And it's not looking outward to see what others may need or want. And then if I look at the third one of the 14, I think it's fear. Fear, in fact, fear runs through all 14 of these blind spots. And fear is, I think. I think fear is at the heart of almost every disorder that we deal with. And you look at fear and what do you do there? Well, you know what? I need to learn to be able to, as I slow everything down, to move forward despite my fear and not allow it to limit me and the possibilities that I can have. Because again, that's what scripture tells us. Fear not. Okay? How many times the word, you know, is it in there to tell us, do not fear, fear over and over and over again. Why? Because God knew that our fear would be destructive for us in limiting us in what we could really do and accomplish for his glory.

You know, as you share these things, Eddie, which are all great, by the way, it occurs to me that these are not easy things. Right? This is not like a light hearted, knock it out in a Tuesday afternoon kind of work. This takes time. It takes emotional investment. And I really think, think there's a recognition here. We may have spent a lifetime insulating ourself away from seeing or feeling these things, and that's why they're blind spots. And it just reiterates for me, again, why community is so valuable. Why the input of others and truly being open to it is absolutely critical in this journey. And if you're really brave, take this question to your spouse, take this question to your group and say, hey, what do you see? When it comes to my emotional reactions, where do I have blind spots? What do you see, see that I'm not seeing? I think in my own story, it was. My wife had said some of these things before, but I wasn't really listening to them until we were in counseling. And I was kind of being humbled to the reality of how bad things had gotten. And then when she was saying something like, you know, your schedule and your needs always come first. What you are doing is always the priority, and it makes me feel second best. And it was like, well, you know, I'd heard her say that before, but it was in our counseling journey where I heard it and was able to receive it and recognize, oh, there's a blind spot here where that's kind of how I protect myself, is by getting my way and doing it right my way that I, that I get stuff done. But in the, in the process of doing that, I was hurting people. And so it was there. Others could see it, but I wasn't able to receive it. And so I think when it comes to this work, just recognize it's not easy, but it's worth it. And you've got to invite others into the process.

The word I use often in the book is oblivious. We're oblivious. We were oblivious to all of it. And the reason it's difficult is because none of it is natural. It's not natural to us because it's something we should have been taught. And in those early developmental years and we weren't the good Thing is, however, that we can. And when I talk about, I don't talk about eliminating blind, but I talk about softening blind. But because they're never going to completely go away.

We have a weakness.

Yeah, totally.

You can, you can talk to my wife and she will tell you they never fully go away. So I still struggle at times.

I hear you there, you know, and thank God that he designed our brain that this is not natural because what is natural is to avoid pain. And I mean, thank God for that because otherwise we would have probably all killed ourselves off because we wouldn't be smart enough to avoid real pain in this world. And so your brain to wants, wants to avoid what's painful, but sometimes it even avoids the good kind of pain that will change us. And so that's where we have to realize if I just kind of take the easy route here, I'm never really going to change because I will keep finding new ways to avoid the pain. But if I can see that there's real growth I want and it's worth the effort to get there, and I sit with the pain and I face the pain and I allow others to show me the things I'm missing, there's better that comes on the other side. Right. There's better relationships, there's better emotional health, there's better parenting, there's better responsibility, responses to difficulties because we're all going to go through difficulties sooner or later. And so if we can see that, it's like what was said of Jesus in the book of Hebrews, that for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. He wasn't looking forward to the cross. He was looking forward to what he knew the cross would produce in us and for the kingdom of God. And that's kind of what this pain is like for us. You don't have to look forward to the pain. Right. I've said to many guys, like, it's okay if you don't want to do group. It's hard. It's difficult, difficult. But if you can see the value of what doing group or counseling will bring into your life, and you're doing it for that, then, then that's reason enough to face the pain and get towards the joy that comes on the other side.

So once again, what are we, what are we trying to accomplish? Yes, Transformation. We either I'm putting, I want to put somebody, you know, on the path of sanctification, maybe for the first time, or want to put them back on the pathway way and let them understand that, hey, get what you're gonna fall off again. You're gonna slide, but it's okay. Get back up, Brush yourself off. Stay on it. Because again, we're trying to get in. And you know what? You'll be light years away from being Christlike on the day of Judgment. But that's okay. We all will. Okay, what are we doing? We're just all hopefully moving the right way because again, ultimately, what's your legacy? What do you want people saying about you when you're gone? Oh, he worked hard. He was really good in putting everything together. Details and stuff. Or is it the idea that, wow, you know what? When it came to relationship, when it came to people, that was first and foremost where his heart was.

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. And, Eddie, this has been such a great conversation. I'm sure everyone's gotten something as a takeaway. But as we wrap up this episode, if you could give someone a final piece of encouragement or maybe one idea, like leave them with something about understanding and reparenting their inner child, what would you say to people as we wrap up today?

What I would say is a little bit about what we've just been talking about, that, you know what? It's very frightening to try to think about going down this pathway and trying to really look. Look at yourself. Because again, a lot of times we'll let our shame get in the way. But God does not want that to happen. In fact, God wants you to stand in front of him and show him your shame, not so he could point it out and say, what's wrong with you? So that he could say, wait, let me take that. Because no son of mine or daughter of mine should sit and be riddled with shame. Okay, yes, you may have done things that were wrong, but you are forgiven. And therefore take that wonderful gift that you've been given and move forward to continue to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

What comes to mind for me is just we've talked about how it's uncomfortable and it's painful, and this model can. Can really bring a lot of different things up. But the visual that keeps coming to mind is like surgery and physical therapy. You do surgery correctively so that you can have a healthier life, so that your life can continue. And you do physical therapy so you can build the strength back up so you're not having to limp around the rest of your life or have full movement in a part of your body. And I think that this is the same thing that it's. That even though. And this is similar to what you were Saying, Nick, even though it is difficult and it's scary and it's gonna be uncomfort mean that it's not for your betterment. And so using this model is going to include those things. But knowing that you can walk a little better or use different parts of who God's created you to be in better ways, know that that's what we're after.

Yeah. And I think my last piece of encouragement would just be to say in this process, make sure you approach it with a lot of grace for yourself. Because I think there can be a tendency to look down on what we perceive to be weak or childish or, you know, it's like, oh, grow up, get over it already. And maybe we've had that condescending critical tone that actually makes it a lot harder to go back there because we feel bad about it. But if we're like, you know what? I'm going to be gracious towards the parts of me that were too young to know what was happening and got hurt before they even know why and didn't know how to process it, man, how can I help? And to realize that God, your father, feels the same way about you as well, that for any one of us, if we had a five year old child come to us that was hurt, I think our natural heart is to help and not to be like, what's wrong with you? Why are you crying? You know, it's like, man, what, what's wr? How can I help? And to see, well, respond to the 5 year old part of yourself that way too. Because then we can partner with God, I think, to do the good work that he wants to do to bring healing and growth for all of us.

Eddie, this has been awesome, man. Thank you again. How can our listeners get in touch with you, your resources? How can they follow your work?

Books are available exclusively on Amazon. Because I have a partnership with them, they can go to innerchild-sexaddiction.com if they want to learn more about the inner child and if they just want to reach out to me at edcappa, Ed Capamail, I'll be more than happy to answer questions or point them in the right direction of other resources. We've trained a network of clinicians about the inner child model because when the book came out out it just, you know, there was a firestorm that happened where people were calling and they want, you know, help with their addiction, but they wanted to do it from an inner child perspective and still haven't figured out how to clone myself. So we really needed to train more clinicians about it. And so therefore, we have a whole referral network if they need some.

Great. Yeah, man, this is great. We love this model. It makes a lot of sense, and I know it's very effective. So thank you again for your time being with us, man.

It.

Appreciate. Appreciate it.

Well, thank you. And thank you guys for all the work you do. You guys do amazing work. And like I said, I'm a big Pure Desire fan. You. You don't realize that your groups and the other things that you do, the amount of help they've given to so many men, I see it. I see it, you know, in my own guys who come back, I see. I've seen it in other people who talked about what you do. So again, thank you for that. And I continue to pray that God blesses your ministry.

Thank you. Yeah, appreciate it. And wherever you're at on your journey, Pure Desire is here to help you take back your life from unwanted sexual behavior and betrayal trauma. If you or someone you know needs recovery and healing, go to PureDesire.org and begin the journey today. If you like this episode or a fan of the podcast, please share it with others and make sure to check out the full episode up on YouTube as well. And lastly, never stop being healthy.

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