The Psychology of your 20s - 75. Healing your inner child!

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

This week on the show we dive into what it really means to heal your inner child. From reparenting to relearning your attachment style, the power of play and protecting your inner childlike wonder and curiosity, we discuss the psychology and everyday practices we can enact to connect and heal our inner child wounds and bring that joy and vulnerability to our adult lives. Listen now!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. 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 is so great to have you here. Thank you for deciding to tune in. This week's episode is essential listening for everyone in their 20s, or really, whatever age you are right now, wherever you are in your life. It is such an important concept, such an important topic.

And it's also been a long time coming, something I'm personally really fascinated by, but also excited to be able to share and discuss here. We're talking about the process of nurturing and healing our inner child or reparenting ourselves, healing attachment wounds, by connecting with our childlike wonder, our childlike curiosity and innocence. So you may be wondering, this is a podcast dedicated to people in their 20s. Why are we talking about childhood? That's already happened.

That's in the past. But reconnecting with your inner child is a fundamental task that I believe every single one of us has to do at some point in our lives. And we may as well start now. I think many of us do not take the time to really consider how. our early life experiences have changed and altered us and made us who we are and that whatever has happened in our lives whether you've been hurt you know whether you feel all these obligations to do things whatever society has convinced you whatever society has told you about yourself at the end of the day at our core there is still this tiny innocent vulnerable

joyful version of us that really does deserve to be nurtured and to feel safe. And realizing that can be really life-changing. And I think a massive step in our self-discovery and kind of self-healing and self-growth journey. Before we jump in, I also just want to note that I think that this idea of inner child work, it's been floating around across a lot of platforms like TikTok. and Instagram. I see things about it all the time. And I think with that comes a lot of confusion, I would say, and misinterpretations of the true science and psychology behind this phenomena.

Often when we see psychology kind of converted onto places like TikTok, when we see it converted into fast media, the concepts kind of lose some of their validity because, you know, it's social media. And we're increasingly skeptical of some of the content that we see on those platforms. So if you're listening to this being like, this sounds like a little bit crazy, this doesn't sound particularly scientific. I understand where you're coming from. But when it comes to healing our inner child, even the existence of our inner child, This is very much a real thing. It has an evidence based behind it.

Many psychologists have established their entire careers on this idea and on learning more about this connection between our adult selves and our childhood selves on an unconscious level. So I really want to dispel some of that ambiguity today and also provide a bit of a guide as to how we can actually do inner child work on our own. So we're going to discuss the origins of this concept where it came from some of the core elements of what we mean when we talk about our inner child and why it is such a crucial aspect of our identity. Part of that conversation is also some of the wounds that we do carry from childhood. Maybe you've heard of the guilt wound or the abandonment wound.

I really want to dive further into that as well because I don't think. that the specifics are really talked about enough in this space. Of course, we're going to dissect some of the benefits of reparenting ourselves and of course how we can do this, from the big practices like psychotherapy to just nurturing our innate playfulness, you know, listening to music from our childhood, writing a letter to our childhood selves, giggling every now and again, laughing, playing, all of those things as simple as those practices might sound, we're going to see some amazing differences in how we treat ourselves and how we see the world when we take time to really reflect on what is at our core of our

identity, how we got to the place that we are, what happened to us in childhood that's made us into this adult version of ourselves. So there's a lot to discuss, a lot to talk through, and so much that we can use in our 20s. So let's jump into all of the information, all of the facts, all of the psychology around how we can heal our inner child. So let's start with the basics. Where did this idea of an inner child come from? And what does it really mean in a modern day context? So the idea as it kind of stands today, it has its roots in the work of Carl Jung. So if you don't know who that is, it's essentially perhaps one of the most well-known, most influential psychiatrists and psychologists from the 1900s. And his work really inspired people like Freud to dive into this

idea that we have a subconscious or unconscious mind that impacts our daily decisions. So you'll he had this idea, a very in-depth metaphor, that all of us have a child archetype within us, that impacts how we behave, impacts our decisions, how we act, without us really consciously knowing. We all possess this inner version of ourselves, no matter who you are, and like actual children, these inner child archetypes are different. Some of us have a wounded inner child or an innocent inner child and abandoned, or divine or vulnerable inner child. And Jung essentially explained that all of our adult dysfunctions,

all of the problems and the quirks and the trauma and the damage that has been done to us in childhood, that is expressed through this archetype. And it's because of this archetype that we act in this way. When we begin to peel back those layers that we've built up to protect ourselves, when we recognize the existence of this subconscious version of us, we're really able to grow, we're able to heal

because we're able to address perhaps what we didn't have as children and the many factors and circumstances and experiences that have made us who we are. That's kind of a simplified way of putting it, and obviously the initial conception has a very, a lot since then, especially as we've begun to understand more about the developmental milestones of children and the impacts of parenting style and trauma. But I think the thing is that our childhood is the most crucial period of our lives, the most crucial developmental period that

we will go through, not just physically in that it's when we learn how to walk and we develop motor skills and we grow significantly, but also in regards to our emotional and our cognitive functioning and development. We begin to learn our most basic emotions within a matter of weeks of being born. We learn who to trust within a matter of days. By a few years old, we've already begun to form our attachment style. So all of those things that are occurring and happening around us during that time are going to have an impact. Everything since birth is going to influence and impact who we become, from the love that we've been shown to how we've been treated, our childhood environment, those experiences, particularly in terms of our caregiving environment, which we know is super crucial,

where most of our hurt comes from, it's going to create kind of the blueprint in interactions with our genetics for our adult selves. It really shapes our brain architecture. In psychology and even philosophy, there is this idea that children are born as a blank canvas on which our experiences slowly build up image after image, layer after layer, until the canvas becomes a lot harder to paint over,

a lot harder to erase, impossible to start again. Essentially, what I'm saying is that although we might not always think about it, we might not always acknowledge it, the things that we experienced in childhood are going to be one of the single most important determinants for our adult life. And sometimes those childhood experiences, they aren't always positive. And we become severed from our emotional and our creative and our physical and our spiritual needs. and we're wounded or detached from that childlike wonder, from that child version of ourselves. No matter what you've been through though, there's nothing that can remove that inner version of you.

The inner child remains. They're always there. And they're the ones that have experienced all of those things that have made us who we are. They're the ones who hold our emotions, who hold our memories, our beliefs, our hopes, our dreams. This incredible article from a psychiatrist out of the US explained it beautifully. Our inner child is the one who remembers what it felt like to giggle uncontrollably. They remember what it felt like to fall asleep in our parents' arms and then get tucked into bed. They remember what it felt like to be excluded, to feel lonely, to feel bullied, to feel rejected.

They remember what it felt like to be yelled at when we were just trying to be good. They remember what it feels like to be abandoned. But on the other side, they also remember what it felt like to play for hours, to go to the beach for the first time, to fall down and have your mom, you know, kiss your wound better, to eat warm cookies, all of those things. Everything that we've learned and felt and experienced since puberty, that hasn't disappeared. That's still here. And sometimes those experiences create negative reactions and negative behaviors and negative habits in adulthood. And

that's when we would say that someone has a wounded inner child. And the way to kind of identify that that might be an experience someone's had and that their inner child is wounded is by the adult behaviors that they portray. So things like a difficulty trusting others, emotional unavailability, feeling guilty or undeserving of nice things, even nice emotions like love and generosity, people pleasing behaviors, that's a really big one,

abandonment issues, feeling that you need to collect people or collect friendships, difficulty trust, others, I think I already said that, but it is a massive one that comes up quite a bit. Or you might suppress really hard emotions. These are all indicators that we have a wounded inner child. And that's essentially the basis for inner child healing.

The essential premise is that we've all experienced hurt in some way. And in order to heal our adult scars, our adult wounds, our adult beliefs, we have to go back to the root or the cause of that problem, which is the foundational experiences that we had as children. Inner child work, like any other type of work, involves hard decisions. It involves time. It involves energy. But it also involves creating a safe space where your subconscious, your inner child,

is really able to take the lead, is really able to express themselves and have a voice and have freedom. By creating that space for yourself, you give yourself permission to explore the significant events that were perhaps uncomfortable or unpleasant to get in touch with your true feelings and parts of you that you've rejected, parts of you that you've suppressed because you thought they were unlovable or you thought they were too much or you thought they were embarrassing. And there are a couple ways that we can do that, some of which are more valid or evidence-based than others. But before you jump right in, I think it's important to understand what kind of childhood or inner child wound you're trying to heal. I think one of the big misconceptions around this type of work, around this type of healing,

is that it's only reserved for those with really intense familial and relational trauma. And there's no doubt that in those cases, it's highly beneficial. But I don't think anyone goes through life without a couple of scars. And what we may suppress and see as minor, or we may dismiss as being. no big deal, those events, those experiences can actually be highly influential, especially when we consider that as children we were so vulnerable, we had such limited coping skills. And there's even cases in which we become stuck at the age in which the trauma occurred, unable to really move forward. A reminder, like we always say on the show, trauma is subjective.

What may be intense and extreme and severe for one person might not be the same for someone else. But everyone is carrying something with them. We all have different sensitivities. We all have different temperaments. And the content of the experience is not something that we should judge against other people's experiences. It's not some kind of competition. I think everyone's experiences are valid. it doesn't really matter what kind of severity level you think it was.

It's important to acknowledge that the only thing that really matters in this instance is how you feel and the individual impact that it's had on you. Once you start on this journey, you may find that a lot of the behaviours or habits that you currently have that you've learned can be traced back to childhood experiences. For example, if you tend to lash out, become really frustrated and aggressive when you're rejected, it may be because as a child you didn't have the proper coping skills to deal with a caregiver walking out of your life or feeling abandoned by someone who was meant to help you, someone who was meant to love you. or if you shut down when you feel really intense emotions or really intense sadness,

it may be because you weren't allowed to properly express those emotions as a child. Often these reactions stem from what psychologists call childhood wounds. And there are four typical wounds that we generally hear psychologists talk about when they talk about inner child trauma or healing your inner child. And these are the guilt wound, the abandonment wound, the trust wound and the neglect wound. Each of these have their own origins, have their own indicators, but they also have their own exercises and way of healing. Firstly, the guilt wound often comes from childhood experiences in which you felt

that you had to take care of everybody, that you experienced way more responsibility at a young age than you probably should have. Maybe you were responsible for a really ill parent or a sibling and you were made to feel kind of guilty for asking for your needs to be met or undeserving of basic emotional and physical necessities because someone else's needs always took precedence over your own. As a child, you may have responded to this by trying really hard to be good, by always feeling guilty or really susceptible to guilt-tripping or manipulation from those in your life. How does that manifest in adulthood? Well, an unaddressed wound of this nature, it may result in really severe people-pleasing tendencies.

you know you need to constantly apologize you feel guilty for saying no to things that you really don't want to do and you find yourself in situations in which they're almost codependent in which you're giving someone a lot of your energy and time and feel guilty if you ever need to take a step back to heal this wound most therapists i would say would probably recommend that you build your skills surrounding healthy bowel boundary setting, that you build up your confidence in being able to demand your wants, demand your needs, and set a boundary when those are not being met. This might look like accountability around how many times you apologize to others, reiterating that you don't need to say sorry

all the time, that you have nothing to be sorry for. You're just looking out for yourself, you're just prioritizing yourself. And also, exercises and work around forgiveness and self-forgiveness. I saw this really amazing exercise or really amazing kind of practice that the psychologist was talking about in which you journal the things that you feel guilty for, and then at the end of each one you simply say, I forgive you. And you picture it's your inner child who you're forgiving. And you just sit in front of them in your imagination and just say, I forgive you. There's no need to be sorry.

It sounds so simple, but if you've never done that before, if you've never addressed that aspect of your childhood before, it's going to feel really profound and highly emotional. The second common wound is that abandonment wound that we were talking about before. Perhaps, I think, the one that receives the most acknowledgement, this type of wound, it kind of stems from the feeling that at some stage in your childhood, you were abandoned by someone who was meant to care for you. You were left behind, resulting in you feeling like you did something wrong.

That was how you deserved to be treated. It's most often associated with people whose parents were perhaps in the midst of a divorce or separating. Maybe you had a parent pass away or who was very distant. And as you get older, what that manifests in is, deep fears of being abandoned, deep fears of being rejected. You might become very fixated on people, but also incredibly anxious when you sense even the slightest indicator that they might leave, that they might walk away. You find yourself in codependent relationships, or also on the flip side find it very difficult to trust others because you've been taught that and primed, I guess,

that you're going to be hurt. This reaction, it always makes me so sad. And I think when we're talking about in a child work, it can make it particularly profound and emotional to imagine that the version of you now that is experiencing those things, all of that originated from the experiences that you had to have when you were young

and when you were vulnerable. To heal this, I think, you really have to unpack those feelings. You really have to unpack that aband that abandonment with a therapist, I think that can be highly beneficial. Repeating positive affirmations is another one that you deserve to be loved, reminding yourself that the right person will stay, and that your worth is not valued by others' decisions.

The third wound I want to touch on is the betrayal wound. As a child, you may have felt that you could not trust your caregivers, that they failed to fulfill their promises. to you, they would gaslight you, they would put you down or put you in situations in which you weren't safe. They didn't stand up for you when you needed it. And as a result, you've become hyper-independent and you're unable to trust others. You find it really uncomfortable and unnatural to allow others to take care of you or to show you generosity just because they want to. You know, you're constantly questioning their intentions because of this experience that you had when you were younger.

I think building your own trust in yourself, but also surrendering and letting go and allowing yourself to trust others is really valuable in this situation. Sometimes it can be really hard to be stoic about it, especially when you are expecting to get hurt. but stoicism might just be the way forward, being like, okay, I need to remain somewhat detached from the situation, allow myself to float along with this, allow myself to be loved, knowing that no matter what happens, I will be okay. Finally, we have the neglect wound, which often comes from feeling that as a child, you were not supported and you didn't receive your emotional needs, your physical needs, your cognitive, your social needs, you were ignored or treated as an afterthought. And this can come from parents and family, but also from teachers and mentors. An example of this that I saw from someone who was recounting their experience, healing from a neglect wound, was a situation in which her sibling was highly successful.

I think they were like a child actor. And she wasn't. She wasn't. She wasn't successful. She didn't want to do movies. She didn't want to be the next Lindsay Lohan, whatever it was. But what that resulted in was her parents constantly giving preferential treatment to this other sibling. These situations, they can be super nuanced and different for everyone. But often this childhood wound results in low self-worth, a pessimistic outlook on life, repressing. and suppressing our true feelings and lowering our standards for our relationships. To nurture an inner child who has experienced this, therapists and psychologists, they've come up with some amazing exercises, mainly to do with honoring and expressing our feelings through what they call shameless release. Be that, you know, screaming at the top of your lungs in the forest or in nature, screaming the lyrics to a cathartic song in your car or creating art that allows you to bring

your emotions to the surface and express them freely and with beauty and without shame. Additionally, I think children who have experienced this type of upbringing, they're very used to hearing no, they're very used to hearing people not give them what they want. And I don't mean, you know, giving them junk food all the time, but I mean giving them their most basic needs and wants. So to heal that, maybe that involves saying yes to yourself. You're now your own parent, right? You're reparenting that inner child.

So say yes to the food that you want to eat. Buy yourself something because it makes you happy, even if it's impractical. Say yes to nice things like nights out with your friends and going to the movies just because you want to, you're the parent now. That's your role in this healing journey. You have to look after your inner child and treat them with the love and generosity that you deserved, but maybe you didn't receive.

I think regardless of this wound, regardless of whether you think you had a guilt wound or an abandonment wound or a betrayal wound, it's also about accountability. When we embark on the journey of reparenting, we recognise that caring for our inner child, it isn't just being goofy and silly and giving in to all our whims and wants and desires, but it's also about making hard decisions. We wouldn't allow our actual child to eat junk food all day and say yes to every social event to the point where they were exhausted. or continue being friends with people who brought them down. So you can't allow yourself and your own inner child to accept that treatment either.

It's just as much about responsibility as it is about compassion and love. They come hand in hand. I think it's worth mentioning. We listed out those typical childhood wounds. And I think that they sound really intense. Often when we list them out, when we dissect them, it can really seem that they're rooted in a lot of extreme trauma. But like I said before, neglect, abandonment, guilt, betrayal,

these can all occur on a micro level as well, on a micro scale, even in ways that we don't always recognize because of the subconscious nature of our inner child. I truly believe that no matter how hard you think you had it or how easy, all of us deserve the opportunity to show our inner child love and compassion. It's just a good practice to have because not only can it help us resolve problematic behaviours that are rooted in our childhood experiences, it can also just let us tap into that joy and tap into that silliness that I think a lot of us lose as we get older. And how sad is that?

How sad that we're not allowed to be silly and we're not allowed to play. We become hardened by adulthood and seriousness and obligations and expectations and jobs and bills. But giving yourself space to release those constraints, it is truly emotional magic. So I want to dive into some of those specific practices that I'm. use that I know other people use for reconnecting with your inner childlike wonder and joy and how you can make that part of your daily routine. It always shocks me to think of how many people out there leave their childhoods and never think about it again or how many people are so serious about what it means to be an adult,

that they are completely opposed to play or to laughter, as if those things no longer have value once we reach a certain age. But activities like playing children's card games or listening to music from your childhood, re-watching old favorite movies, buying yourself snacks that are normally reserved for children, they're honestly such a mood booster. And more than that, they're amazing for our mental and emotional health.

That's one of the amazing parts about being an adult is that now you can say yes to the things that as a child you wanted to do all the time. The other day, I had a friend bring orange slices to a soccer game I was playing, and let me tell you, the absolute delight that brought me was insane. I could just feel baby Gemma being so happy, feeling so deep, feeling so nurtured, so looked after, and we can create that feeling for ourselves. So maybe you're not a big fan of orange slices or board games, but what are some of the ways that we can not only recognize our inner child, but nurture them, love them, heal them,

and allow that part of us to live on in how we treat ourselves and how we treat others? Staying in tune with your inner child's presence, it all begins with ignoring. You cannot have a relationship with this version of you if you don't acknowledge that it exists or you choose to stay ignorant to its influence. Kim Eagle, a therapist in the US, she made this amazing point in an article she wrote on this and I think it's so important to share here. Anyone can get in touch with their inner child if they're open to exploring this relationship. if you feel doubtful or resistant to this idea of exploring the past, if you feel doubtful that this version of you even still exists,

you're going to have a harder time beginning the healing process. I think a great place to start is to reconnect with the things that remind you of the childhood version of yourself and take note of how exposure to these things makes you feel. For example, the other day I watched the Hannah Montana movie. I know. Huge throwback. But that movie was released when I was nine years old and I was obsessed with it. I was a massive Miley Cyrus fan. I loved that movie. I memorized all the songs. I brought clothes like Miley Cyrus. I think I watched that movie like in the cinema four times. And rewatching it at 23 made me so incredibly emotional,

but also aware of the childhood version of myself. That positive reaction reminded me that she existed because those emotions I was experiencing, they were derived from memories of that time. They were derived from the joy that baby Gemma, childhood Gemma, had for that movie, the memories that she had made. And that moment, that wonder,

that emotion of rewatching something that meant so much to me as a child, that emotion wouldn't have occurred if those memories didn't already exist and if she hadn't existed and been feeling those exact same things at some point in time. If you're feeling detached from your inner child, try and recreate moments and memories from childhood to reorientate your current conscious version of you and your former subconscious version of you, your childhood version of you. that can be aided like things like smell and sound and sight.

Activities like watching a classic movie, cooking your favorite childhood meal or reading your favorite childhood book because our memories are strongest when they're tied to multiple senses. So you'll be amazed by how much your mind and body responds to these experiences from a procedural and unconscious place and how in touch you feel. with that former version of you. The other tip I have, and I'm guessing many of us have heard of this before, but change your phone background to a photo of your childhood self. Right now. Do it right now. Ask your mom, ask your grandma, your aunt for a photo of you when you were five or six years

old and make that the first thing you see every day. I have a photo of me from like when I was in fourth grade, next to my computer at home, and anytime I'm working or getting stressed out at my job, I just look to my left and I'm reminded that everything I'm putting myself through, everything I'm doing, I'm also doing to her. And would that version of me, would that little baby version of me be proud of me right now? Is this what her dream was? Would she be happy with where we are now? Would she be happy with what we're doing? And it really puts your decision, and your treatment of yourself into perspective, and I found that it's made me a lot more gentle in my self-judgment.

Other things I find really useful. I've said this before, but like engaging in play. You know, go and play tag every once in a while. Pull out those Monopoly or Uno cards. Make yourself like a really big chocolate Sunday. Buy yourself something, I don't know, ridiculously fluffy just because you want to. pretend that you are taking the little version of you out for like the best day ever and give them everything that they would have wanted then buy them ridiculous candy that is just full of sugar and

looks disgusting but your inner child wants it sing along to your favorite songs feel joyful go and look at children's books in the bookstore it's a great step towards healing through acknowledgement of that past version of you i think this really really links with the next step to healing and connecting with your inner child, and that is to put your acknowledgement into practice. Being aware of your inner child is one thing, being in touch with them, and giving yourself the space to be vulnerable and to nurture them is another. The biggest impact, this relationship or journey has brought to my adult life, is the way I now speak to myself, and the way that I honour my emotions and my feelings.

I think we all have this tendency to be very hard on ourselves, to say things to ourselves that we would never imagine saying to someone else mean things, hurtful things. That is terrible for our self-worth and our identity, but also a hard habit to break out of. Being in touch with your inner child is really useful for that. when you find that you've failed, when you've been rejected, when you feel unhappy with yourself, take note of your inner dialogue and imagine that your five-year-old self is sitting in front of you right now

and you're saying those things to them. You wouldn't yell at your childhood version of you. You wouldn't yell at your five-year-old version of yourself. You wouldn't call them fat. You wouldn't tell them they're useless. You wouldn't tell them. that they're worthless or they're stupid. So why would you say those things to yourself now? Once you acknowledge that that version of you is still within you, it completely changes your perspective. And the same goes for how you let others treat you. If you wouldn't let someone treat a child the way that your friends or your partner or your parents or your colleagues treat you, then a boundary needs to be put in place.

Obviously, we have more emotional maturity at this age than we did as children. So someone offering you constructive criticism or asking you to do your job or to be independent, that may seem intense for a child, but acceptable for an adult. I think it goes without saying that healing your inner child isn't about regressing to that version of you. It's about being better at acknowledging how people and situations make you feel. where that reaction may have come from and how you can properly respond to that from a place of maturity but also acknowledging your own emotions. I want to leave you with a few final strategies and practices that you can integrate into your life that have been shown to really improve how people emotionally connect with themselves by connecting with the vision of their younger selves first. Firstly, do something creative.

You know, when we were children, we used to have art class as part of our curriculum. You know, do you remember you used to have like a period every couple of weeks where you would go and just make art all the time and you'd wear your little smocks? We don't always have time to do that as we get older. We don't always make the time to do that. But we can integrate that if we make it a priority. If we make it a priority to heal and connect with that inner version of us. go to a life drawing class, go to a pottery class, take up knitting by coloring books, any of those things. A study from the journal Frontiers in Psychology, they published this article in 2019 that found that art doing something creative,

it improves health and well-being amongst basically every individual who was studied. It promoted resilience, it promoted coping skills, and overall happiness levels. but it's something we don't always do as adults. So it's a way of reconnecting with that inner childlike wonder to bring happiness to the adult version of you, to your adult life. The second thing is to be messy. Mess is so acceptable in childhood, but not so much in adulthood. Find a way to let yourself step out of the constraints of

always needing to be clean and tidy and put together, you know, cook with rash abandon, make a mess. Repots and plants, get your hands dirty. It's good for your neurons. It's good for your synaptic connections and growth and it's good for your happiness. This one was really sweet. And when I read it, I was like, this is gorgeous. I want to integrate this into my life. Hug yourself. I know it sounds really, really strange. And we often think that we need to receive physical touch from others, which is very much true. But any form of being touched really does release a lot of oxytocin, which is otherwise known as the happiness or pleasure hormone. And we can release that ourselves. Our brain can't always tell the difference between someone giving you a big hug and you

just wrapping your arms around yourself. I know it sounds really silly, but do it now. Put your arms around yourself and hold them there, squeeze yourself in. It will immediately make you feel better. And it's also a great way to practice self-love as well as healing your inner child. Two for one. What a great deal. Finally, in order to re-parent ourselves, we need to show ourselves that we are a responsible parent for our inner child, that we can be independent and can take care of ourselves. It doesn't mean that we can't accept help from others, but it does mean being able to meet your own needs. Do something nice for yourself. Eat food that is going to make you feel good. Take yourself outdoors, see the sun. Make sure you get good rest, find time to socialize, the same things that you would

do for a real life child, you need to do for yourself. And I think it helps our brain really learn that we are not helpless or vulnerable, like the childhood versions of us may still feel. We're not in that wounded place anymore. We're adults now. We're responsible and we can look out for ourselves. We can take care of that little version of us who needed someone else to take care of them. And we can put ourselves on a really fantastic. path. I hope this episode was really useful for those of you out there who are considering doing some inner child work and some inner child healing. I know that it sounds a little bit ridiculous, but as someone who really prioritizes this, as someone who's done the research, looked into

the science, it's incredibly valuable. It's also incredibly valid. And I would really recommend it. Think about how you can integrate those daily practices into your life. Think about how you can take a moment during the week to just be a little bit silly, to just push back a little bit on the responsibilities and seriousness of adulthood. And when you have the time, when you have more time, really dive into why you are the person you are today. What was it about what you experienced as a child that has created you. I think it's really, really valuable. And you'll find that once you really take the time to do that,

once you really put in the energy and the vulnerability and the effort, you'll see that your entire outlook and the way you treat yourself and the way you treat others and the way you treat life, it completely changes for the better. So I know that sounds like a bit of a rant, but it is just really something I believe in so deeply and I hope that this encourages you to give it a go as well. Thank you so much for listening.

If you did enjoy this episode and you think someone else would benefit from it, please pass forward, pass on the love. Share it with your mom, share it with your auntie, share it with your best friend, whoever it may be, whoever you think might enjoy this. It really helps the show great. row and I honestly love when people tell me that their parents listen to the show and they're like,

oh, my parent loves this. My parent, like, my relationship with my parent has improved so much. That is like the best thing ever. Um, additionally, if you do feel called to do so, please feel free to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening right now. It really helps the show grow. It helps us reach new people. and just makes my day. Finally, if you want to be more involved in the community, if you want to get updates on what's coming up, on merch, on new episodes,

if you want to help me choose the episodes that we post here, please follow the podcast at That Psychology podcast on Instagram. We do a lot of stuff over there, so it would be great to have you on board. As always, have a lovely week. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this. this episode and we will be back next week for another episode.

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 selling, 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, a lesbian, 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.

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