Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Healing Your Inner Child

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

Welcome back to another Language of Love Bite! This week I'm going to explore the concept of inner child work and how it can heal past traumas and improve relationships. So, what exactly is inner child work? Well, it's all about connecting with those wounded parts of ourselves that were hurt during our childhood. These parts often carry unresolved emotions and traumas that can impact our adult lives and relationships. One key aspect of inner child work is recognizing that these emotions are just parts of us, not our entire being. By understanding that these wounded parts are separate from our true selves, we can approach them with compassion and create space for healing. Embark on a journey of healing and self-discovery as we explore the transformative power of inner child work. Let's heal our inner wounds and nurture healthier relationships. Check out Richard Schwartz's book, No Bad Parts, along with my course, Good Grief: Healing from Loss with Love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the last 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Bites, where I tackle your most asked questions and requested topics. These episodes are designed to be fun, quick and to the point. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Inner child work. We're hearing so much of that right on the internet and on social media. It's made a renaissance lately. It actually was extremely popular in the 60s and 70s and now has had a renaissance, which I love because I am a huge fan of inner child work. In fact, if you want to read a great book, read Richard Schwartz book,

No Bad Parts. And he talks about parts work, which is basically inner child work. So this video is really about that, about how do you get to know your inner child? It's actually inner children. There are many, many, many of them. And how do you heal them? Because here's the thing, you may not even remember this, but there was a point in your life where you were in full alignment, and complete flow and complete awareness of who you were, how you kind of connected with the world and how much you are worth, which is everything, right? You are worthy of all the love in the world. And at a certain point, and maybe it was just for a very short while, you knew that you came into the world understanding that. But then we have our life experiences and our families of

origin and the traumas, the big T and the little t traumas. So big T traumas like sexual abuse, physical abuse, abandonment, emotional abuse, addiction in our families, and little t trauma, neglect, hypercriticism, bullying, illnesses. Death is another big T trauma. So there's all of these traumas, many, many, many of them. And in our entire childhood, in many cases, if we weren't given enough love and we were never given enough acceptance or approval, which children confuse with love, then we have some inner child work to do. So basically every human on the planet has some inner child work to do. So how do you do it? All right. Now, there are many aspects of yourself, many inner child parts of yourself that you may never become

aware of, or there's so many of them, right? So it's not a matter of identifying every possible inner child you have and making sure you excavate those. The parts of you that are most impacting your life, your relationships, your love life, whatever that is, those are the parts that are going to show up most, okay? And think of it as these little abandoned parts. So here's how those parts develop. Let's talk about that first. They develop as a coping strategy. It's literally like something happened. It could have been a moment or it could have been an elongated period of time where things, something bad was happening. And that you at that age and stage, it's almost like a little bubble formed around you. Like you got stuck there, a part of you, obviously the rest

of you grew up and to the rest of the world, you're the age you are and a grownup, but there's still a part of you that is that age. So I always envision like this, a person standing there and they're all these, it's like a puzzle. They're a puzzle picture of all these different little forms of themselves from the time they were babies all the way up. And those child parts are thinking with a child's mind. So that if you notice in your life that the rational part of you, the grown-up part of you knows that that guy or that girl, whoever they were, was bad for you, and it's a good thing you broke up with them, right? Or, of course, you know that your worth isn't based on how much is in your bank account or how many friends. Like, you know that as the

adult you are now, and yet you feel such a charge around it. You feel so much pain around it, and there's a discord between what you know as the adult you are now and what you're feeling inside. ding, ding, ding, that is a sign that an inner child is driving the bus, right? Now, the way that we connect with those parts of ourselves, as Richard Schwartz would call them, or those inner children, as others would call them, is by embracing them, is by recognizing that there is no bad parts and getting to know them and talking to them and connecting with them the way you would to a child that age, right? So that may look like I just did this this morning. So I'll give you this example. I was feeling really fat and unattractive and I've been losing weight. I've

been exercising. There's no reason for me. I mean, I could make myself feel ugly and unattractive, but I knew that it wasn't really about that. I knew that I was just struggling with some body image issues. And I also am already familiar with this 10 year old little part of me that when I was nine or 10 years old and my body started changing, there was tremendous shame attached to it. My mother and even my grandmother, my mother's mother, you can see how these traumas get passed down, started telling me, you know, you don't have to clean your whole plate. You know, you're going to get fat. Be careful what you eat. Do you really want that dessert? No, don't eat that cookie. And again and again and again. And then, of course, I started putting on weight. And then I all the comments started about how I looked not so good and how it wasn't very attractive and how I needed to wear something more flattering or I needed to wear something to cover my arms because they were too chubby or whatever it was.

And so it started when I was 10. And over the years as I've done work with that part of her, myself, that part that feels unattractive because of her weight, like that's her source of value because it was my mother's source of value. I mean, she had, she started me on Dexatrim. I don't those, I mean, I'm dating myself here, but she had me on Dexatrim when I was 13. So I literally went to the, I'm friends with her now. I've done some work where I've gotten to know her and I'll talk a little bit about how to do that in a second. But I went to the mirror, and this can be a form of inner child work, and I do it all the time. And I looked deeply into my eyes until I could see the 10-year-old's eyes. I called her forth. I was like, come on, 10-year-old Laura,

let me see you. And I looked deeply into my eyes. And I was like, honey, you're fine. You are beautiful. You are working so hard on your body, but you are perfect, exactly the way you are. You are healthy. You are strong. You've brought life into the world. You've been through cancer. You've had so many things. You've had death. You've had so many reasons to protect yourself with weight, with padding. It's okay now. You not only can release the weight, but you don't have to be in a hurry, right? So I literally was talking to myself, to that part of myself, and I went on and on the way I would a 10 to 11-year-old. Another time, you may literally talk to yourself like you would a three-year-old. Listen, I've got you now. You don't have to be

scared of this because we are protected. I'm going to make sure that nobody hurts us. I know that you felt you didn't feel protected then. We didn't feel protected then, but I am here now. You can relax. I'm going to keep us safe, right? So there are all these ways that we can remind because if they don't feel safe, if they don't feel, they're all there to keep you safe, right? All those little parts develop to keep you safe, to keep you from feeling pain or to keep something bad from happening emotionally, right? Or physically or literally. So they have to be soothed, understood, seen and accepted and protected. And when they feel that way, just like when a child feels that way, they relax their hold. They no longer have to try

to shove you out of the driver's seat and take the wheel. Okay. Now, a key way of exploring and healing your inner child parts is by also doing somatic experiencing, which you know, I'm a huge fan of. And that's really one of the most powerful forms of trauma healing there is. So make sure that you explore in your community, looking for someone who is a therapist who specializes in somatic healing and trauma healing because they naturally, by doing that, as you resolve the energy and the remnants of that trauma and its hold on your emotional system and your body, physical system, then the hold of those inner child parts starts to loosen. Most of us have no idea how to move through loss.

There's no roadmap to follow when you're trying to navigate grief. And I realized this when I lost my son three years ago. As a therapist who understood grief, a whole new level of pain opened up to me when I lost my 16-year-old son. And since then, I have been building resources that have allowed me to navigate through loss, not only in a healthy way,

but in a way that has transformed me for the better. We can move through the most terrible loss with grace. And that's why I have created the course, Good Grief, Healing from Loss with Love. You can find it on my website, drlauraberman.com, right there on the homepage, as well as free resources letting you know how to support others who are going through loss. None of us has to do this alone. And finally, you want to explore parts stuff and parts work. So what that means is when you notice you're having, anytime you notice you're having a big reaction to something that doesn't feel good, maybe it's fear, maybe it's depression, maybe it's anger, anxiety, right?

There is a part of you that is feeling that way because the whole of you, this is what I'm always talking to you about, your essential self, your true self is that perfect self that came in. She, he, they are still there. most of you is that is that pure love that understands how worthy of love you are that's tapped in and tuned in that is your essential self your god self your true self and then there's all these ego and insecurities and parts of ourselves on top of that right but I never and this is what parts work promotes. I never want you to say even I'm anxious, right? I have a part that's feeling anxious right now. I have a part that's judging myself right now because of X, Y, Z. I have a part that's just really, really hurt and feels really abandoned by what just happened. And once

again, being with that, excavating that, understanding that. And the final thing I'll recommend to you, I actually have in a separate video. And in that video, I describe to you a somatic process you can go through to identify those inner child parts of yourselves that may need some inner child healing work. So make sure to check that out as well. If you want to learn more about how to not only identify those parts of yourselves, but a somatic experiencing process for doing that, go over to my YouTube channel and look for the video of somatic processing for your inner child. If you liked this episode, make sure to rate and review it on your favorite podcast platform and also follow if you can.

I wrote me a prescription, but there is no cure for a cry.