Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - How to Heal Your Inner Wounded Child

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

On this episode of “The Language of Love,” I am sitting down for a very special Sessions conversation. During Sessions, I get to talk to real listeners just like you and give them personalized, real-time advice to help address all of their questions about sex, love, and relationships. Today I am speaking with Mary. Mary reached out to me after seeing a post I made on social media about the wounded child that can often lives within many of us. If you have trauma in your past (who doesn’t?) and you haven’t fully addressed and processed that trauma, you might too have an inner wounded child who is crying out for attention and healing. Mary shares with me some of the things that deeply traumatized her as a child, including how her mother would prioritize men over raising her children. Mary still carries that trauma with her into her own romantic life and beyond. I help her to understand how she can meet her inner wounded child and help that child heal. If the concept of an inner wounded child sounds familiar, here are some signs that you might have an inner wounded child: ⧿ Fear of abandonment and/or the belief that no one will ever stay with you if they see the ‘real’ you ⧿ Problematic boundaries: You let people walk all over you and reveal all your deepest secrets and vulnerabilities right away…or the flip side, you never truly let people in, even those who have known you for years ⧿ You are ashamed of expressing your own emotions: People with a traumatic or troubled childhood may have learned that it was important to hide their fear or sadness or anger from the adults in their lives, and this behavior can carry on into your own adulthood ⧿ You never trust anyone. You have a subconscious (or conscious) suspicion of everyone, even you: You struggle to trust your own judgement or believe your own recollections of events. ⧿ Conflict avoidant: You run from conflict and bury your head in the sand when people mistreat you or those you love. You want to stand up for yourself but you don’t have the tools or resources to do so. Listen to this episode and let me know your thoughts! 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 learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Mary, tell me what's going on. How can I help? Hi. Well, I originally messaged you when you had

made a story on Instagram and it was said something about signs you have an inner wounded child. And I was like reading all of the little anecdotes and I was like, okay, that's, that's me. Sounds familiar. Check, check, check. Yeah. And I was looking at it too and thinking that's, like my, I have an older sister and I was thinking that's my sister. That's me. That's my sister. And I messaged you and I just was like, Hey, I think I resonate with a lot that you put out there, but this really resonated with me, but also just, I didn't know some of that. And I know you had a couple shows recently that I watched and I was like, that's so exactly what I was talking about. The whole afraid to love one. I think I watched and I've been divorced for

over 10 years. I've only had one very short relationship and I've been raising my kids by myself for a really long time. And I'm just never interested in dating like ever. So, all right. If you're not interested in dating, that's one thing. Are you interested in finding love? I think I am truly deep down. I, I believe I am. And I don't know if it's just apprehension or if it's scared. Was your last relationship really bad? I wouldn't say it was bad. I waited a good over two years before I even started dating after my divorce and then started dating someone and it was going well. It was fine. The real reason that we broke up was because he wanted me to move my kids in with him. And I was like, no, absolutely not. Because what so that we can hope that it works out and I have to move their school and everything else.

And I just I couldn't do it. And that was a huge argument. And I just said, I'm done. How long were you dating? Like 18 months. Yeah. OK, so it sounds like there's also not just a fear of love, but a fear of commitment. So let me just ask you this. In your marriage, before this relationship, why did it end?

Many reasons, but he had some mental health issues that I truly wasn't really totally aware of when we got married. He was very good at hiding things, financial decisions that impacted me as well, gaslighting, mental, emotional abuse, basically. And then at the very end of which we, I knew it was pretty much ending, but it was a emotional affair that he had. It hadn't reached a physical point, but in my mind, yeah, it was the straw that broke. I was done, done then, but that's it basically. How old were you when you got divorced? I was 30. Yeah. Cause you still, I mean, you seem pretty young to me, right? You're you're, I mean, not that it matters how old you are, but yeah, I'm 48. I'm 48. I'll be 40. So for a 30 something year old, I get with

young children and you need to be really careful. And maybe that guy you were dating, it wasn't just that he wanted, cause you know, listen, if you're already been married, been there, done that a mother of two kids, a grownup, and you meet someone and you've been dating for 18 months, you're not seeing each other once a month, but you're seeing each other regularly and you're really getting to know each other. It's not unreasonable if both of you are really sure of the relationship to take it to the next level and make a commitment as two grownups who know who they are. So either this guy wasn't really the right person for you and you knew that, or as I think you're sensing, there is a resistance to really committing to love

and letting love in and maybe some combination of the two. I was just going to say that. I think it truly probably is a combination because, I mean, there was a few little things that my intuition was telling me and we lived about a half an hour away from each other, maybe 40 minutes. The things, the bells that were going off were, he had two daughters as well, but of course they lived with their mother and then saw him on the weekends or whatever, every other weekend, but I had my kids every other, all that they live with me, but they were with

their dad every other weekend. And the weekends that I had my children, he was not interested in hanging out with me and my children together without his kids. Oh, that's a bad idea. That's a bad sign. Yeah. We don't like that. Yeah. I don't like that either. And I listened to that because I thought that's not fair or good. And, but when he had his girls, he'd always be like, oh, let's get the kids together. Let's get together. And so that was one thing. But let me just ask you this. Okay. So that guy's irrelevant because he wasn't the right person for you, but it is meaningful that now your kids are how old? 18 and 14.

Okay. So they are well-baked. They're one of them's a grown adult and you still are not really putting yourself out there or reaching out for love, right? If we can snap our fingers, just try this out. If we could snap our fingers and the perfect partner who was going to love you the way you wanted were to show up and love your children the way you want were to show up, do you feel an openness to that? Or is there some resistance to that? Because one thing is to be in resistance to finding him. Another thing is to be in resistance to having him. So that's what I'm trying to understand. Is there resistance to having him, to having that in your life? because you could get hurt or because you could get betrayed or because you might get bamboozled

or because you might get abandoned. Right. Like I know intellectually there isn't a resistance, but is there a resistance there? I think there is a little resistance. So who abused you growing up? Who wasn't the emotional abuser? My mother and my biological father and her divorced when I was pretty young. He was, you know, nothing good. I've never ever seen him at all. No. Yeah. He abandoned completely his entire family. And we lived in another state. Then we moved in with our grandparents for a short time. Then we moved to another state where my aunt was and it was like that. And then I started kindergarten. So I was really young. My sister's three years older than myself,

but my mom remarried somebody when I was in second grade. So pretty, in my opinion, quickly, he raised us. They're still married to this day, but it was a dysfunctional alcoholic home. Who was the alcoholic? He was? My father. He was. And my sister and I struggle with many things with our mom now that we love her. We have a good relationship in that way. We talk to her all the time. We celebrate things with her and my dad and all that. But what we struggle with is like the way we parent and how we were parented. I feel like we did the complete pendulum parenting swing and went the opposite way. Like my mother never came to our sporting events. She wasn't invested in us. She was invested in

our dad and what our dad was doing. And when I say my dad, it's my stepfather, but he adopted us. Was he abusive when he got drunk? Did he, what was he like? Yeah. Yeah. And she would enable it and would not protect you. He didn't do anything to us. It was her. Oh, he, we had to hear it and witness that. And how was he with you when he got drunk? Well, we were just cowering in our rooms when we got older, like my sister left for college and obviously she was three years older than me. So I had to endure more years as we say than she did, but we didn't do anything. We just cowered in our room and acted like nothing the next day, like my mother did, you know? But then like the thing, when I got older, I remember one incident where I came

flying down the stairs because in my mind or what I was hearing, I felt like it was going to become physical. And, you know, usually it was just definitely emotional, mental. Right. Well, it doesn't, there's no just to that. Yeah. Oh, I know. But I know what you mean. I know what you mean. It wasn't physical, but okay. So what happened when you came running down the street, you know, basically told him if you touch my, I'm going to get emotional. Sorry. It's okay. Everybody does. I do too. Don't worry about it. I basically said, if you touch her, I'll kill you. I'll kill you. And, you know, that was one particular incident that I remember very vividly. But what angered me or what I feel like I'm struggling with, it was toxic at best, but she always just took them back and was, you know, almost just like too easily or like, you know, just very, you know, definitely an enabler. Oh my God. And she still is to this day. What really happened this last summer, actually, my sister shared something with me that I didn't know. And I think that's why I've been in this real funk. And it was a trigger that my sister's a stuffer. She doesn't like to talk. She avoids conflict. She's very like that. And something happened, a trigger happened with her daughter

that made her remember something about our mother and she, we were having dinner. It was just her and I, and she goes, oh yeah, this reminds me of the time that mom tried to kill herself. And I went, what? I was so shell shocked in that moment. Cause I, I didn't know about it. You didn't know that happened. What were the circumstances? What happened? This was when her biological dad left her basically and said, I want a divorce. So she wasn't even the one that initiated the divorce, even though he was so abusive. And we were staying with our aunt at the time. And this is when we had moved back into the state that we lived in. And my sister said this just so flippantly and said, oh, yeah, it reminds me. And I went, what are you talking about? And she said, well, we were staying with it, but I guess you were upstairs sleeping.

And I said, yeah. And I'm like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? And she said that our mother had slit her wrists and my sister found her. and my mother was basically saying to her and in my sister's words oh you know life isn't worth living without him and she's saying this to an eight-year-old child and my sister vividly remembers the blanket that the blood was all over that must be really traumatic and she had to run and get my aunt and obviously the ambulance were called and I believe my

mom was committed for a few days, at least. And back then, I mean, they probably what she stayed a couple nights and okay, you're fine. But that was last summer. And ever since then, I've been in this angry, almost resentful state. Even though I love my mother, I talked to my mother, but it's like I'm looking at her in a different way. And what makes you angry about it? I kind of tried to pinpoint this. And I thought, I know what it is. I have been raising my kids and myself and doing everything and killing myself literally to do it all. But even in my lowest times, whether it's being alone or just whatever, I never once thought of leaving the earth. and leaving them and leaving them. I never ever would even. Yes. So that's what you're angry

about. And that's what I was feeling too. The thing that, I mean, not only does my heart break for your sister finding her and having to have that sort of trauma and for the pain that your mother must've been in, but for your sister to have heard those words. And even though you weren't there for that incident, there were a million different ways that your mother showed you in her actions and in her words, that her attachment to a man was more powerful than her attachment to you, right? That's basically what she was saying. Life isn't worth living without him. What that says to a six-year-old who's hearing that is not only is my mother bleeding all over this blanket and I'm scared, poopless, and there's something horrible happening. My mom might die and all that

trauma she's also hearing you aren't enough for me to stay alive and what she really hears in the child's mind is you aren't lovable enough for me to stay alive you aren't worthy enough for me not to abandon calculating route to avoid seeing poverty turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away then take the next exit let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty your donations help the united way fight poverty in thousands of ways like providing food shelter and crisis prevention donate today at unitedwaygt.org right and so i feel like for you there are two key pieces to this puzzle for you one is you must have made a decision

super early that you are going to be the opposite of codependent. Yes. Right. So you were going to have what we call avoidant attachment style. You are not going to ever be your mother. You are never going to let someone mean that much to you that you would give up the health of your children, that you would make that the most important and that you would allow someone to hurt you that much. And that makes sense to me. And kids go two different ways in these situations in this vein, right? Some emulate or replicate with what they see the mother doing. And I did that earlier in my life. I sort of became my mother in relationships. And in other cases, I became my father in those relationships. And so you decided that you were not going to be

her and you went to the opposite side of this spectrum, right? But the second thing, which I I think, is even more deeply connected to those childhood wounds is that you got the same message your sister got with that incident, even if you weren't there for that incident. Because every time your stepfather got drunk and was abusive to your mother, every time your mother made clear in her words and deeds and actions that I'm willing to be a doormat and do whatever it takes to keep this man. And that's the most important thing. You aren't the most important thing. In fact, you're not even that important because I'm not coming to any of your stuff, but he gets all of me. He gets all of me. And I don't even think you as an adult yet fully

understand what I'm about to say, but the child sure as shit didn't understand. In the child's perspective, here's mom and the reason she's incapable of giving anything to me and gives everything to this person who treats her like crap is not because she was abused herself. She is deeply wounded. She's carrying out and replicating her own toxic childhood and her relationships.

It has nothing to do with me that she's behaving this way in terms of how lovable I am and how worthy of love I am. The child doesn't think that. In fact, I would bet the adult you are doesn't even really fully understand that, right? And still takes it personally.

You're just starting to excavate all of this, which is normal. But the child feels, well, if mom behaves this way, then it must be because of me. Clearly, if I was more of something or less of something or more lovable, then she would behave differently. That is just the way children think. Everything is because of them. Everything that happens around them. So all the conversations you had, even leading into kindergarten, you may not even remember

them of your mother when she was without your stepfather, right? There was probably a million times where she was lamenting how their life wasn't worth living without him. And all of her focus was on the pain of losing him rather than on the focus on raising you guys, right? And then when she had the stepfather, when she got married, she quickly enmeshed with him and then abandoned you, right? So you were abandoned from the time you were born. Basically you were emotionally abandoned and you never had a model of what a loving, healthy relationship was. You had the opposite of that. And you made a decision early. Okay. I'm just not going to do what she's doing. I'm going to do the opposite, the opposite, which means that I will not let anyone mean too much to

me. I will not let anyone ever be so important to me that life wouldn't be worth living without them, right? Even though you don't remember that incident, believe me, you got that message a million different times. That's where the childhood wound is. So let me ask you this, as I was talking about your mom and her wounds, and I don't know how much you know about her history or her childhood. Can you understand that? Can you see it from that perspective? Yes, I can. And my grandmother had recently just passed away, but my mom has made comments, you know, in the past about certain things, but she's never fully told us everything. I think there was emotional neglect for sure. Our grandmother was never warm and fuzzy and that

grandma, you know, that I'm sure that's the tip of the iceberg though. You don't, you don't become someone who is that the core of the, I don't know how much you know about codependence, but the core of the codependent is that they are unable to find safety inside themselves. They are unable to find love inside themselves. It is always externalized. They have to have that person. If you're not okay, I'm not okay. I will turn myself into pretzels so that you won't leave me. If you leave me, I am no longer able to function. You know what I mean? Like that's a severe codependent. It's on a continuum, right? But you only become that when you are raised pretty abusive, especially to the degree to which your mother was, a pretty abusive and addicted

environment. And so your work to get ready for love, if that's what you really want, and it sounds like on a certain level you really do, is to start thinking about, A, what kind of relationship do you really want? Because you're going to have to actually create that in your mind and define that without having had a model. Calculating route to avoid seeing poverty. Turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street. Then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food. Steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away. Then take the next exit. Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty. Your donations help the United Way fight poverty in thousands of ways, like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention.

Donate today at unitedwaygt.org. I think it was on your website or you had a quiz that you take. How you want to feel in love. Or something like that. And I thought, oh, I'm going to take that. Or the most important thing for you to have, whatever. But at the end of it, mine said safety and protection. Yes, yes.

right? Because that's the opposite of what you had. And we always want and love the opposite of what we had. You want the kind of relationship where that person not only makes you a priority and makes your children a priority, but who also to hurt you is to hurt themselves. I mean, that's really what love is. What love is, whether it's for your children or a partner or a friend, if I love you, hurting you is like hurting myself. Abandoning you is like abandoning myself. And someone who is emotionally healthy and mature, and that doesn't mean they had to have grown up in a perfect family. It just means they have to have done the work to evolve and heal the wounds that we all have to differing degrees. You've got some big ones. Your edges are going to be around

sabotaging relationships and avoiding any kind of commitment, resistance to being vulnerable and opening your heart because you have a story that that's going to make you susceptible to abuse and it's not. That's going to be part of it. And trusting, right? So whoever you're going to be with has to be willing to move slowly, to earn your trust. Not that they're on trial and you're unwilling to have anything to do with them until they prove to you something, but just over time that they say they do what they say they're going to do. They show up. They fulfill their commitments, not only to you, but you see them doing that in all sorts of ways in their life. They are caring. They are protective, not in a jealous, controlling way, but in a let me walk

on the traffic side of the streetway while you're on the inside of the sidewalk. Just those little gestures that show you that they're aware of you and that they protect you and that you're important to them and that you're cherished. And you never felt that and you freaking deserve it. And for whatever reason, your soul wanted to explore this because you chose a family, which we all do. I chose my family for the wounds they gave me and they gave me plenty. We all choose our families as a soul for, ironically, not only for the joy and the experiences that we're going to have in that, but even more importantly, for the wounds, because that's how we grow and expand and heal, right?

And that's where your opportunity is. So for you, I think the healing comes, you've acknowledged what happened, right? That's the first step. Then it's about releasing this sadness, right? The sadness that you're experiencing right now as we talk about it and really even starting to forge a relationship

just like you have with your children with those smaller parts of you, because I can feel so many different parts of you. There were so many times where you felt discarded, unimportant, unseen, unprotected, abandoned. And each one of those times, a little part of ourselves gets left behind if it doesn't get resolved. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to resolve all of those parts of yourself before you're ready for love. But it does mean that there's a journey there that you have to be kind of well into, I think, before you're going to be willing to let your guard down a lot enough to let someone else in. Because where you are right now, even if the man showed up who had

all these qualities we just talked about, you're not going to really be open to them. You may not even see him because your initial knee-jerk reaction is going to be suspicion. And so what I want you to get to, and we'll talk about how you're going to do that in a second, but what I want you to get to is a place that is solid enough, clear enough, and healed enough, and attuned enough that not only do you know you'll be able to recognize someone who's really going to show up for you and someone who isn't, you can have that discernment, right? But also that you start to understand that it is okay to take a risk in love, that you are going to be supported. And there is still a part of you, which I understand why, because you've experienced

so much pain and rejection in your life up to now, not necessarily, well, to a certain degree in your first marriage too. I understand why you would be scared of love and scared to open your heart. But what starts to happen when we heal is that we forge a kind of relationship with ourselves that is so beautiful and fulfilling that you start to realize that even if I do get hurt again, and I might, because the one thing I can guarantee you is that you are going to have some sort of heartbreak, several of them before, if you live a long time, every single one of us was. I'm not saying you will in love, right? Life is full of heartbreak, period. It is. And we're

all going to have heartbreak. It's coming to the point where you have such a deep and abiding connection to yourself and you've done enough healing that you can kind of roll with those punches and you'll be okay. And you'll stay, you know, you won't be thrilled. You might be hurt for a little while. You might cry for a little while, but then you'll be okay. In fact, you will have learned a lot and you will have grown a lot and you will have gotten that much clearer on what you want the next time if this happens in love, right? But you're not there yet because the stakes still feel too high because the one driving the bus is that conglomeration of little girls, right? Because as I talked to you, you intellectually are like, yeah, I could.

But then there's most of you is like, hell no, we're not going there. That's danger zone. That's a minefield, right? So are you in therapy now? okay so any kind of therapy that is going to not dredge up every incident in your childhood and i think even talking to you now i don't know other than your sister how many people you've talked to about this and i'm not suggesting you go shout it from the rooftops but i can feel the rawness of it i told one of my very best friends she kind of knows the dynamics and I definitely talk to her a lot about things and my sister too, but my sister and I just react differently to life and how we cope. Yeah. Yeah. Mine too. We all, it's amazing how in the

same family, we just all react so differently. But I do think that the more, not that you have to go around talking to everyone about this, but in a therapeutic context, if you can kind of talk through some of this, it's important, but even more important is that inner child work because we've got to reintegrate those parts of yourselves, yourself that still don't realize how safe they are because they're still stuck in the wound. What I would love for you to do is explore a kind of therapy called Imago therapy that does a lot of work with the inner child and also any kind of somatic experiencing therapy. Because what somatic experiencing does is it's less, you do some talking, but it's less about when I was seven years old, this happened and this happened. It's

more like connecting with the bodily, physical memory of that. It gets much more into your subconscious, what's really going on, the feelings and the reactions and the fear and the sadness, and allows you to connect with that and release it in a really powerful way. So I have found that that's one of the most powerful tools for healing. I mean, basically what you have is a form of PTSD, post-traumatic stress, right? Like that's basically it, right? So for any kind of trauma history, which is what you have, somatic experiencing is a really powerful and beautiful way

of working with that and healing that because so many of the wounds that created the trauma are pre-conscious and early conscious, and you're not going to really even remember them, but your body and your instincts do. Does that make sense? Yes. I still, even to this day, like if there's any conflict, like even in my marriage or something, if the raised voices, like, and it's the angry deep voice, I have a physical response in my body. And we all get angry. We all yell. We all, you know, if someone near me or so, and if it's the real angry, deep voice that's, you know, where the octave changes, you know, and I have a physical like. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's so many ways that's when you're aware of,

right. But I think there's probably several more that you may be aware of and several that you're not even consciously aware of, but they're the ones that make you turn away from someone or not go eventually on that second date or find something wrong with him that isn't really wrong with him, you know, to avoid the intimacy, right. To avoid moving forward and making yourself vulnerable. Right. So this is PTSD about vulnerability and openheartedness and love. And it's for really valid reasons. I mean, really, really understandable. So all you need to do now, I mean, all you need to do, but there is a roadmap here, right? Now that you know what it is, then it's to go about healing it. And that's the cool part about our earliest wounds is that when we can really be with those, feel those, move through them and be with ourselves, it's like it kind of evaporates that little hitch and hold in ourselves. And if we do that enough with guidance, then everything starts to change.

And where you are, which is kind of in a stuck place, not in your life, but with regard to your love life, you're kind of still stuck in this traumatized place, which you were a match to a partner who was not going to show up for you, who was going to be duplicitous, who was going to hurt you, right? Because that's what you were defending against. That was your greatest fear. And I understand after that why you were like, screw this. I'm not getting close to anyone.

You reached out to me because you want this. You want this. And you deserve that kind of love. The good, beautiful, soulful, cherishing, safe and protected love. You deserve that. And you know that as I'm talking to you. But all those little parts in you don't. Yes?

Yes. and are you crying because you know that's the truth or are you crying because you're struggling to take it in both fair enough fair enough yeah well it's the truth and what i want is for all the parts of you to come together to recognize that and to be with that in yourself and boy is life all aspects of life are going to get better for you when that happens, but then you will be ready for love and you're going to attract in a really good one because there are many, many, many, many of them out there, but you have to be a match for it and ready to receive it. And right now you're not, which is fine, but you will be. Okay. Will

you pursue that for me and let us know how it goes? Yes. Well, we're going to be cheering you on. I went to the doctor Said I'm crazy for your love Wrote me a prescription But there's no cure for a crush All I wanna do, I wanna do is take you home with me I wanna make a move, I wanna make a move Calculating route to avoid seeing poverty

Turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street Then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food Steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away Then take the next exit Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty Your donations help the United Way fight poverty in thousands of ways, like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at unitedwaygt.org.

Helen Mirren. Do I have to do everything myself? You want more? I'll give you more! Mobland. New season is now streaming on Paramount+.