The Psychology of your 20s - 114. Healing your inner teen

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Everyone is talking about healing our inner child, but what about our inner teenager? We experience certain things in adolescence that we don't experience as children and these can manifest in different behaviours, defence mechanisms and emotional wounds that continue with us into adulthood. Whilst the inner child is seen as gentle and vulnerable, the inner teen may be angry, misunderstood and lonely. So in this episode we break some some of the psychology and theories behind healing your inner teen, including the interactions with our hormones, certain life experiences and the impact of our first romantic encounters and sexual experiences. We also explore how we can release the rage of our inner teen, express those wounds and use the adult chair method to feel more connected with this past version.  The Adult Chair Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FzdV2nB2BZlywCxowM1Xw?si=080b7a4a392d4dde Patreon: https://patreon.com/ThePsychologyofyour20s?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=join_link  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thatpsychologypodcast/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn.

the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice in so much, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.

My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.

I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO.% on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target.

He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it's great to have you here back for another episode. Today,

we're in for a freaking fascinating topic. I think we've all heard of inner child healing by this stage and the value in acknowledging and making peace with our childhood wounds. However, our childhood self is not the only past version of us that deserves love and attention. So today, we are going to expand on the principles and the theories behind healing our inner child to talk about healing our inner teen and what exactly that means and why it requires more of our focus. This is not spoken about enough, I think, because the idea of healing our inner child is a lot more. I would say, well, gentle and sweet and lovely. It's very easy to not blame our childhood selves for what they went through

and how they're showing up in our adult behavior because of our innate vulnerability at that age. But our teenage selves are this whole different ballgame. I think I'm not the only one that looks back at my teen years with like an overtone of cringe, seeing the decision she made, the rage he felt for the world. but then also how alone she felt and misunderstood. It's this mixture of embarrassment and I guess also sadness. But what I've come to realize is that this version of me deserves just as much consideration and compassion

as that younger version of myself and my current version of myself as well. The wounded teen looks a lot different to the wounded child, as we'll discuss. It's not just about needing love and care and security, but also about feelings of intense anger at times and rebellion and frustration. And this shows up in many ways like impulsive behaviors, emotional outbursts, self-sabotage, overspending, rejection sensitivity, all things that I think we could do without. So in today's episode, we are going to discuss it all. I will say that compared to healing our inner child. There is a lot less psychological research on this, but I think a lot of the foundational knowledge is still the same, as well as some of that emerging literature on things like

suppression and early teenage isolation, identity theory, and also some really fascinating articles on events and experiences like our first time having sex, our first sexual experience, especially in our teenage years, things like that are a lot of. more impactful than we once thought. So we're going to break down the way that our wounded inner teen shows up and why the experiences during this period are highly influential for our adult selves. As much as we may try to avoid looking back at that time, we're also going to dive into some of the catalysts for our inner teen wounds, things like rejection, feeling excluded, parentification, and how we can identify with this lonely, angry, perhaps vengeful, impulsive version of us,

but also how we can reconnect and how we can move forward. Some of the strategies will discuss include the adult chair method, one I haven't spoken about before, but which is so deeply influential. I cannot wait to discuss it. And also why listening to your old Taylor Swift or Blink 182 albums might actually be rather healthy for us. So I'm so fascinated by this topic. I'm really keen to get into it

because if this didn't make me realize how much I actually hated my teenage self, oh my goodness, there's a lot of work to be done there. And I also want to share how I've been approaching it and all the value that I've found in this level of deep retrospection. So I'm going to stop rambling. That's not why you're here. So without further ado, let's jump into how to heal your inner team.

2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong.

Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's T-W-O-P-P-Cent on the I-Hart Radio. app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim?

Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all. all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 was big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but just so you all know.

I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah.

For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Keer Games. And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we, are in possession of the thing, and we're still chasing it, and we don't know when we've done enough.

Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth, or are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, is we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood,

pressure and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Sond's, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of Internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected.

They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Alesspian and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as, Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped Podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So you've most likely heard of inner child healing before, especially if you are a long time listener of this show. I talk about it quite a lot because I think it's really valuable to understand how the experience. of our childhood self, impact our adult behavior, in particular our self-perception, and how we approach things like love and attachment and decision-making.

In a child healing for a bit of a refresher, it essentially rests on the premise that within all of us is this injured, vulnerable being who needs caring for, who needs you to step up and parent them and show yourself the compassion. and the unconditional love, you maybe previously hadn't experienced. A core foundation of this practice is that past versions of ourselves still exist, even if our overall physical form has changed. Those experiences we had during our formative years, either in childhood or adolescence, they don't disappear.

They stay with us as very emotionally present and salient memories, And so in some ways, we are still carrying every version of us that has come before, including all the baggage that they themselves were carrying. Now, whilst inner child work and talking about our inner child is really about reflecting on our emotional core, the vulnerable, innocent, often needy part of you, our inner team is a lot more messy, as they say. Maybe they're angry. Maybe they're isolated.

Maybe they're misunderstood. this version of you, this past version, they were intellectually and emotionally developed enough to be able to rationalize what they were experiencing, but perhaps not to process it. And the nature of the experiences they went through that perhaps left these psychological scars are going to be very different. So approaching inner child healing and in a teen healing separately is really valuable. And the distinction is mainly the age at which you received certain emotional or social wounds. So your inner teenager is a representation of what you went through in your teen years, the emotional experiences that perhaps shaped you, and most importantly, how that is still impacting you today.

And the age at which we had these experiences will impact how they manifest. So in developmental psychology, the distinction between children and adolescents, it's kind of more than just age. Yes, we kind of tend to see teenagers as those between the ages of 13 to 18 or 19. And that's our main way of categorizing this group of people. But during that time, we're also undergoing a really rapid level of development that distinguishes us from children. And it's not just physical because this is. the time when we really begin to figure out our identity and when we sit in the world. This includes things like our sexual identity, our relational identity, perhaps where we stand, you know, in

relation to our parents and our peers. And then most importantly, I would say is our personal identity. It's kind of a combination of everything. Who are we actually? Who do we feel like we are? it's this stage of development that the psychoanalyst Eric Erickson called the conflict between identity and identity or role confusion. So during this stage, adolescents search for a sense of self through a really intense personal exploration of values, of goals, of belief systems, and they tend to also rebel against broader societal norms, particularly those represented in the fact. family unit as a way of going about this. So maybe from your personal experience, you had a bit of an emo phase during this time, got a few piercings your parents didn't approve of, listen to angsty music, you know, skipped school, drank alcohol, or you just kind of tried on different costumes or masks for who you wanted to be. Even though you may cringe at that now, it's actually

really valuable because what Erickson concludes is that if you don't give yourself that space to really figure that stuff out, if you don't make mistakes, if you don't successfully move through this stage or resolve that conflict between who we think we are, who society thinks we are, and our true self, this is when we begin to see some of those emotional and social wounds that are most characteristic of a wounded inner team. And at the same time, we're experiencing a lot of independence and a lot of, I would say, personal identity growth. We're also seeing a very big biological shift, you know, the beginnings of puberty. And this exacerbates a lot of the experiences that we ultimately need to move through.

So beginning at puberty, the brain is literally being reshaped because we're going to start pruning some of those synapses and neural pathways that we know. longer need, but also hormonally, our bodies are being pumped with things like adrenal stress hormones, growth hormones and sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen. All of these greatly impact things like mood and impulse control, even our mental health. So there's been studies that have shown that higher rates of estrogen impact the availability of serotonin. So serotonin, as we know it more generally, it's one of the primary neurotransmitters responsible for happiness. So it kind of explains why women, in particular teenage girls who have such high levels of this hormone, have significantly

higher rates of things like anxiety and depression because of those shifts as we become, you know, women rather than girls. So what does this actually mean? It just sounds like a bunch of science. It means that what we're battling as teenagers is in some ways a lot more advanced than what we needed as children. Our inner child just wants love and security and attachment. And that probably feels very different to your inner teenager who has a lot of feelings of perhaps displacement and frustration, confusion and I think most importantly, insecurity. I think our teenage years is when we become clued into the world and perhaps very angry with what it has to offer. I remember feeling really misunderstood as a teenager.

I would sit in my room for hours. I would have these bites with my parents. And for many of us, our transition into adolescence is marked by these very heightened emotions and a changing landscape around what society expects of us. The three main, I would say, social, cultural experiences are trying to find independent. and perhaps grow up a bit too fast, feeling misunderstood and maybe trying to be someone when not for other people's benefit. And then finally, the experience of shame. The last one in particular, I think, really distinguishes our childhood selves from our teenage selves.

We start feeling shame as we enter our teenage years about our behavior and worrying about other people's perceptions of us. If you kind of think back to your childhood self, you really didn't have those concerns. You know, we were pretty happy to play and run around if you've ever spoken to like a seven or eight, even nine-year-old child. They say like the wildest shit. Like, they have no impulse control. And we would wear whatever we wanted. And I think it's important to notice, when did that stop? When was the first time you realized that maybe you'd, you'd, didn't fit in, or you became conscious of the expectations and opinions of others. And is that still impacting you now? In what ways is that teenage version of you still seeking out approval

from others in your adult behavior, in your current adult life? And then we also want to be, you know, perceived as older than we are. We're in such a rush to grow up, to push the limits. And yet, we actually don't really have the cognitive or emotional skills to process some of the things that we go through, particularly how they impact things like future attachment style and self-concept, because we are still very much children. That's how the legal system sees us, our voting system, our healthcare system, and yet we're having these very adult experiences in this weird limbo between childhood and adulthood. one of these experiences in particular is around sex.

So the average age, most of us lose our virginity, is kind of smack bang in the middle of the teenage years, according to a lot of the research. So around 16 to 17. Now, I will say this is self-reported. So there may be some level of social desirability that people want to be seen as sexually active younger. But that kind of actually helps my point,

that we really do want to grow up faster. And, you know, it's not everyone's experience. But for those of us who did have our first sexual experience during our teenage years, that may actually have a lot of long-term impacts that we don't really come to terms with until much later in life. And they've just, you know, conducted studies into this quite a few recently, actually, suggesting that the age of a person's first sexual experience can determine your romantic outcomes later in life. One study in particular published in the journal of sex and marital therapy, it kind of concluded that this is particularly profound for women and their later sexual desire

because losing your virginity, you know, we don't really talk about it on the podcast, but it's such a powerful learning experience, and especially for our teenage years. And sometimes it can contain quite a bit of, you know, not just trauma, but a real sense of like we've suddenly grown up. We've suddenly, this is like this milestone that kind of really sits in our brains as teenagers. And we might feel like we're old enough to deal with things, you know, and take on adult responsibilities, like having sex,

but our brains aren't really fully developed until much later on. So, in essence, inner teen healing acknowledges those experiences that may have been quite painful, all the ways in which you're perhaps rejected or unheard or trying to fit in. and what we want to do is provide space to feel and verbalize and process all of that in a way that you know, your arrogance as a teenager, just kind of your naivety didn't let you do. What we might see is this power struggle around the fight for control, wanting to feel older than we are, and then also feeling very much alienated. And when we internalize these feelings, this contributes to a lot of uncomfortable,

things and that's where the kind of premise lies. So what does it look like when your inner teen kind of takes control? So there are a few signs that you may have what we would call a wounded inner team and they'll differ from person to person but I want to list a few that are most commonly shared. So the first is being highly emotionally reactive or responding to situations in a matter that others see as immature, experiencing intense rejection, sensitivity, self-sabotaging behaviors like procrastination, overspending, even addictive behaviors, replicating early romantic experiences or partners, holding onto resentment, self-isolating, or even reverting to kind of like the silent treatment or withdrawal, feeling intense anger, you know, for no apparent reason, wanting to

be violent or petty or scornful. And finally, regression, which is what we would call a maladaptive defense mechanism against stressful or overwhelming situations. So regression is not as common, but it's pretty profound. And it's a very interesting indicator of an inner teen or even a childhood wound. So it involves reverting to behaviors that are not age appropriate in order to kind of replicate a time when you felt safer and more secure. So for example, sucking your thumb when you're feeling really stressed, wanting to go and like hide away in your closet or go into the fetal position, even talking in like a baby voice or a stuffed, you know, using a stuffed animal from your childhood as kind of like a coping device, something to attach to. It's not as common as the others,

but, you know, things like temper tantrums could even fall under this category as well. It's just these things that we did to self-souve as younger versions of us that are no longer appropriate and yet we still rely on. So these behaviours are going to impact us all very differently, and there are certainly more than just this list. But opinions and kind of psychoanalytic psychology in particular really suggest that, that these emotional habits and behaviors are really indicative that at some stage, in your adolescence, you experience something that altered your ability to relate to yourself and relate to

others in a sustainable and productive way. Once you kind of, I think it's one of those things when you start on this journey, you can't really come back. Like you may find that a lot of the behaviors or habits you've learned over time can be traced back to your teenage self. and a lot of the emotional conflicts that you encountered. For example, if you're a highly sensitive person and highly sensitive to any indicators of rejection, perhaps from a partner or a friend, and you respond by pulling away,

by acting cruelly, by feeling incredibly anxious, that may be indicative that at some stage as a teenager, you felt really excluded and you felt really unliked. And so you now feel like you have to work for people's, attention and you feel uncomfortable when they take away that feeling. You feel uncomfortable in a way that you want to have control over the situation because you didn't have control over feeling liked or feeling like your authentic self when you were younger. Another one that I find really interesting is when you continually replicate early romantic experiences, that might be indicative that you haven't really

processed how they were maybe quite negative and gave you the wrong impression of how love should be, but because you haven't come to terms with that, you're stuck in this really repetitive pattern. So I want to talk about what events or triggers or experiences create these reactions, specifically how did your inner teen come to be wounded? The biggest one, kind of in my personal opinion, I just find this one perhaps most relatable, is a time when you felt really rejected or ostracized, especially if you've been bullied or perhaps excluded by certain groups or supposed friends when you were a teenager. This is such a painful experience and it can leave very long-lasting psychological scars.

particularly around our innate sense of self-worth and feeling worthy of friendship. Each of us has an innate need to belong and to be accepted by the social groups we are surrounded by. Belonging is actually our third most important need according to Maslow's hierarchy of need. It's just above things like literal food and shelter, but below things like a sense of esteem or identity. identity or self-actualization. So we need to belong before we can come to terms with our highest self. So if you perhaps didn't feel like you really had a place where you felt accepted as a teenager, you may have been unable to kind of undergo some of that discovery that other people did.

What that means is that in adulthood, when we feel like we are being excluded like we spoke about before, that hurt, lonely, teenage version of us who maybe spent time really longing for the future, who really just wanted to belong, who wanted a friend. That version of us is activated and it begins to take control, perhaps isolating you even further. We see this in so many ways because we are worried that we will be hurt again, that people won't accept us. We can react by becoming quite codependent with just one person. Feeling intense anger at even the slightest sense of rejection. All of these being indicators of some deeper emotional origin or dysregulation. One way in particular I've actually seen this exhibited in my own behavior is the need to almost

hoard or like collect friends and sometimes even take on different personalities or identities with different people or groups because I want them to like me. want them to accept me. It's definitely something I've had to work on over the past five years. You know, filling up our social calendars or our circles with so many people that we can't even maintain all the relationships at once is really in some ways our subconscious brain saying, you know, hey, if we do this, we'll never have to feel alone again. We'll never have to feel rejected because there will always be someone there. I think the second thing that we can see really cause in a teen wounds has to do with parentification. So I talked about this in our hyper-independence

episode and I think it's one of the most fascinating concepts to kind of come out of developmental psychology. Parenthification occurs when we experience a role reversal with our parents or caregivers as children or teenagers. In this way, we kind of had to provide them with the emotional support, not the other way around, and we acted as they're confident or their mediator. This role reversal disrupts the natural process of maturing because we've been forced to take on responsibilities

as adolescents well beyond what our years should require. And we were also denied that kind of chance to be a little bit helpless, to have someone help us and to provide room for us to make mistakes. The consequences of this advanced maturity may show up later in life, you know, by us acting out or doing impulsive, risky things because we didn't get that opportunity as teenagers. We may also be highly emotionally reactive, particularly when we feel a sense of restriction or responsibility, because our inner team is once again, in this situation in control.

Those unheeled wounds are telling us to act in a certain way based on past experiences. And the same kind of goes for things like strict parents that may have contained our identity, not kind of allowing us to pass through that role confusion stage or to be exploratory or to make mistakes. This gives us a sense of almost hatred for authority. And you may struggle later in life with people in higher, positions like your boss telling you what to do, acting in defiance because it's triggering that teenage version of you who felt misunderstood and wasn't allowed to make mistakes.

Narcissistic parents and also the kind of environment they created fall under the same banner. I think it's a major contributor feeling like you were forced to maintain a certain image for their benefit that might come with a lot of future rebellion or anger and then finally major life changes in adolescence. And I'm talking about things like the death of a parent or a close family member, maybe divorce, maybe you moved around a lot. What this all links to is, A, that pressure to grow up too fast, not giving our teenage self the time to properly come into their own and experience the important events they needed to at the proper time. And be a sense of alienation or disconnection and with that a lot of unresolved emotions like frustration and rage and

resentment the kind of simplified premise of why we need to focus on our inner teen and not just our inner child is this the wounds we carry from our adolescents are going to be a lot more nuanced than the unmet needs we faced as children they will overlap but how they show up later in life is profoundly different in that our teenage wounds are a lot more active. So for example, our inner child wants peace and they want love and security. And our inner teens want that as well, but they also want expression and identity and rage, but ultimately acceptance. So what I want to discuss next is how to actually heal this wound and come to regard it as a really important element of who we are.

And, you know, as they say, we sometimes do really need to share. shake hands with who we are and to reach that next stage of self-actualization, part of that process is managing those inner feelings and those inner wounds. So we're going to talk about all of that and more after this short break. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that

seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO percent on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do a little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it

podcast. I'm Sam J. and I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84's big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know.

I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack, so I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now, so. Thank you for finishing that sentence. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history.

Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Trip Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it.

And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth. Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro.

Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free iHeartRadio app.

Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct?

I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Alespian and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When I think about my teenage self, I really remember the,

this girl who was really struggling with a sense of place and identity. I haven't really spoken much about my high school experience because it feels like a lifetime ago, but I went to this like really progressive school where everyone was studying, you know, music or art and, you know, it was in Brunswick in Melbourne. So everyone was just like really cool. They were really cool. And I did not, I did not feel cool. I was academic. I was really studious. I played the trombone and I never really felt like anyone understood me. Felt very alone and that created a lot of negative feelings, probably a bit of depression, but also anger at the world for kind of treating me unfairly. On the other side of this was this need to be a good girl. I wasn't going to be a bad girl

because I didn't fit in with the kind of kids that were rebelling and I also wanted everyone to like me. I needed the validation of others like it was water. And when I didn't receive it, when I didn't get the grades that I wanted or I felt excluded, I would project that kind of onto my parents or onto like the system. So I think what I've reflected on a lot is that in many ways, I really didn't allow myself a teenage experience because I was A, always worried about what others thought of me. And B, I was really deeply committed to being good.

And you know what happened after high school? I completely regressed and I became incredibly rebellious because I hadn't allowed myself to act out to try different versions of myself. So when I went to uni, I decided I wanted to speed up that progress. I wanted to grow up quickly like we talked about. And I kind of partied really hard. I got tattoos. I spent all my money going to Europe. I dyed my hair.

I smoked cigarettes behind my college blocked. I missed classes because my inner teen, now I can see. really missed out. And she was trying to make up for lost time. Slowly, as I got older, I obviously have begun to settle down. And I came to terms with what was really at the root of this behavior that seemed so very contradictory to the version of myself, you know, 12, even six months before. And the first step to coming to terms with that was noticing where I hurt. What was I afraid of that was causing this behavior? Because, not all of it was bad, as we'll talk about in a second, you know, contained rebellion is actually

one really valuable way to get in touch with your inner teen. But really, you know, what was I fighting? What was at that core? And it was this very foundational insecurity. I wanted to belong. I wanted to be liked. I never felt like I was meant to be somewhere. And I never really gave myself permission to make mistakes. And so all of that pain and suppression had bubbled to the surface. I think if you want to heal your inner teen, you have to be able to identify when they have control or are reacting to this situation. I want to return to those indicators from before. So things like being highly emotionally reactive, angry outbursts, self-sabotaging, withdrawing, replicating early romantic experiences and regression. I also, I think part of that is under self-sabotaging behaviors is

things like overspending and things like procrastination. So let's kind of look at overspending as an example. Money is something that we all struggle with, I would say. I think our relationship to spending is highly influenced by how money was approached in our adolescence and within our family system. It's a very unique in a teen experience to worry about money because I think we only really become conscious of its value in those later years. So if your family always struggle with money when you kind of begin to make your own income, you might find that it's really hard to not spend without thinking, kind of as a way to fulfill material needs that you never felt you got to experience at a younger age.

And adulthood is expensive. So, you know, spending money on your rent or to fix your car or for healthcare, that is not what I would call overspending. It's the money we put towards our wants rather than our needs. So if you find that you have a tendency to overspend when you're stressed or when you're lonely or you feel out of control, maybe that's your inner team. In that moment, you have to recognize this version of yourself. It's kind of asking you to recognize them, is asking you to look at them face on and really

trying to assert their independence and authority kind of at the detriment of your adult sense of responsibility. Now, the crucial tip here is to not fully suppress this behavior. We know from psychological research that suppressing certain urges is about as effective. as complete avoidance or abstinence. It may feel effective in the short term, but over time, you cannot rely on wheelpower alone. That behaviour of feeling or instinct is going to feel more taboo and therefore a lot more attractive and I guess you'll relapse, you'll feel shame, you'll spend more and you're back in the toxic cycle with your kind of wounded team at the wheel. So you need to

find an outlet and give yourself permission to actually connect with that need, acknowledge where it's coming from and why, and then treat it like a welcome visitor. For example, budgeting for free spend money that you can spend on whatever you want within limits. Anger is another example. Often when our wounded teen is kind of speaking up, it's through things like rage or outbursts or tantrums and it's possibly caused by us feeling the need to suppress this feeling for quite a while and if we look at the origins it may have been that as a child you weren't really given permission to feel emotions intensely so as an adult you don't have the same level of

self-control that others may have it feels nice to be angry it's highly satisfying but you need to channel that in a productive way to satisfy both your inner teens needs and your adult needs as well. So go to a rage room. I did one of those the other day. It was honestly so fun. You can go to a boxing class or better yet, go to a nice secluded spot out in nature and just scream or dance intensely in your room. Headphones on, Blink 182, some fearless by Taylor Swift, classic teenage angst albums, and let out all of that stuff. emotions like rage and anger, they are stored in the body. This study conducted in 2016, it was published in the Oxford Academic.

It found that anger can create muscle tension and automatic arousal in certain areas of the brain. So giving this feeling of physical expression will stop you from doing so inappropriately. And it feels so nice to give yourself permission to actually feel. rather than scolding your inner teen as, you know, was often done by your parents or by teachers, do express that in a productive way. And that's also really important because a lot of researchers have concluded that when we store anger and then we let it out through lashing out or drinking or other things like that, this just creates addictive behavior. So give in and let go in a way that is emotionally fulfilling.

and when you catch yourself governed by your wounded in a teen, it's important to not believe everything that they're telling you. You don't want to feed into those beliefs that you'll never be loved or accepted or happy. Positively reaffirm why all of that isn't true, speaking to them as if they are a separate person, as if they, you know, that version of you, that angry, depressed teenager is sitting in front of you right now. and then try to switch back to your adult self, focus on the life you've now created for yourself, knowing you'll be okay, and comfort them with that foresight. There's one final method here that I really want to discuss. So I discovered this technique through this podcast called The Adult Chair Podcast

by Michelle Chalfent. Now when I say this method has absolutely changed my life, I'm being dead serious. And in all of my courses and psychology studies, I'd really, I'd never heard of this before. So what this method asks you to do is to use three chairs to represent or symbolize your inner child, your inner teen and your current self, your adult self. And working with this model, we're going to understand how you feel on the inside and what needs to be healed, what might be damaged. So you sit with the three chairs real or imagined and you speak to each of these versions of yourself. What stories would your teenage self tell you? What was going on in that phase of life? And how did that feel? Literally monologue as if you were that version of yourself writing your autobiography.

I don't know, this is kind of intimate and a bit vulnerable. But the first time I did this, I also had my old journals from when I was a teenager. If you've got your old journals, you should really read through them because it was so emotionally profound. I genuinely cried because it felt so real and so honest and raw and it made me contemplate things that I hadn't for so long and remember things that I could see in my current behavior and take that load for them, you know, tell them that everything is going to be okay, tell them about the things they never would have expected that it does get better, that you're pushing through and that you love them. Now, I know when I talk about these techniques, will find them quite strange. But I think what the very simple psychology would tell you is that

it is your job to process how your memories and experiences have shaped you. And part of that is integrating them into the current version of yourself. Finding a place where these experiences sit in your current reality. This is kind of just one exercise that allows us to do that. and it kind of lets us answer that deep question at the very core of inner teen healing. What does this version of myself need? What are they missing right now that is causing them to react? And how can I give them that? It's also valuable to know, I think, much like in a child healing,

healing your inner teen is a lifelong process, but one that gets easier. I think some final reminders would be this. With anything that happens in life, you need to choose. to be gentle with yourself. Self-punishment, unfortunately, never works. It's really just our ego punishing us or relieving a sense of guilt that we don't know how to process. Two, make friends with who you are. Your past self helped you get here. Whatever they went through. Whatever ways they were misbehaving or were cringe, it's all still valuable. It's all part of the journey. And part of that is three, getting to know yourself better. I think at the core of this podcast,

is the idea that all of us could benefit from some additional introspection and self-awareness. And if part of that is acknowledging your teenage wounds, then I really think that's amazing. So I really hope that this episode has benefited you. We talk so much about inner child healing on this podcast. I think that our teenage selves get a little bit neglected at times, which is not helpful, as we have learned. So I'm hoping that this episode has really allowed you to contemplate how this version of you was showing up in your life.

And yeah, just where you're at with that version of you, did you feel lonely? Did you feel neglected? Did you feel angry at the world? And have you really come to terms with what that meant and how that's still impacting you? So I'm so glad that you've made it this far. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to share it with a friend or give us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening right now. I'm going to plug my Patreon here if you like this episode for just $1 a month, $1, $1.

You can help me make more of this show. It's really just me here doing it all, writing the episodes, doing the research. And I love it so much, but there is a lot of work that goes behind it. So I really appreciate the support. And if you have an episode suggestion, follow us at That Psychology Podcast on Instagram. I love to hear what's going on in your lives. And you can see video content over there and just be part of the community. So we will be back next week with another episode. Thanks.

Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen and learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice in someone, correct?

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