Healing the Inner Child (2026 Update)

I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on healing the inner child. I'm your host, Dr. Donnisee Snipes. Today we're going to learn about the inner child, examples of behaviors that can traumatize children and essentially the inner child, the impacts of trauma, childhood trauma on the inner child. core issues faced by many people with a wounded inner child and strategies to begin healing the inner child. When children are wounded or traumatized and can't get the comfort they need, the safety they need, they often withdraw. Some act out, don't get me wrong. They're trying to get somebody to stand up and say, "Hey, you're safe. I've got this." And for children who don't get that, that wound often stays open. They're acting out behaviors may get punished, but the adults are not looking at the behavior saying, "What is this child saying through their behavior?" Because we know behavior is communication. Behavior is always communication. What is this child saying when they are throwing a temper tantrum? when they are refusing to eat, when they are withdrawing to their room all the time, what's going on? Uh when we don't ask those questions, a lot of times the underlying wound stays open because we're not responding to what the child actually needs. We're responding to their behaviors. When a similar situation arises, the child still doesn't have an effective way to deal with it and they still feel unsafe. And this can be in adulthood when children feel abandoned in childhood and then in adulthood when they break up or somebody dies or what have you and they feel abandoned again, they may still have never developed the tools to deal with grief and abandonment. So it triggers all of those unresolved issues plus the issues that are going on right now. This can lead to the development of unhealthy behaviors to prevent rejection or abandonment and to try to stay as safe as possible. People want to survive and a lot of times the behaviors which may appear on the outside as dysfunctional may be designed to help the person survive and that's the best they could do at that time. Children, and I may say this later in the presentation, but I'm going to say it now. Children think differently than adults. They their experiential vault is all but empty. So they don't have much to compare what happened now to you know what happened in the past and go oh this is no big deal it feels like it's huge maybe huge may not be but to that child it's huge. Children think dichomously. Younger children you know under 11ish tend to think more in all or nothing terms. They have difficulty seeing the middle zone. You either love me or you hate me. If you're angry at me, you hate me. You don't love me. And they personalize everything. It's not you're angry at something I did, you're angry at my behavior. It's you're angry at me, therefore you hate me, therefore I'm in um danger of rejection. Children think dichomously. Children think personally um and egocentrically. Children often take responsibility for things that are not their fault and that are completely out of their control. They maybe they got a bad grade on their report card or they'd been acting out for a variety of reasons and then one of the parents leaves, moves out, the child may internalize that as that's my fault. Um likewise, children may also wonder, you know, if one parent leaves for whatever reason, they move out, they get a divorce, they die, they're deployed, you know, children may not understand all this, and they may wonder when I'm when am I next? When am I going to be kicked to the curb? Examples of traumatizing behavior that children often internalize. What do I mean by that? The behavior happens to them and they program that, they store that in their experiential vault and their inner critic, those tapes that they play in their head, those things that they say to themselves um be take on those behaviors. if they were raised by a caregiver. And it doesn't even have to be their caregivers. It can be other people that are important to them who shame or criticize them. They may internalize that memory. They may internalize that criticism and continue to criticize themselves using those same words. I remember when I was little, um, well, younger, I think I was nine or 10, um, I was eating breakfast at my grandparents house and, you know, they were passing the food around and there were a bunch of us at the table or whatever and I took more than two pieces of bacon and my grandfather said, "My, aren't you a little piggy?" That stuck in my head to this day that sticks in my head. Um, and I can recognize it. I can recognize he wasn't trying to be mean. He was in his own way trying to say, you know, leave some for other people. I don't know. Um, but it stuck with me and for years I had difficulty eating in front of other people because every time I started eating in front of people, I was afraid they were thinking, "My aren't you a little piggy?" So, this is how we can internalize some negative messages. Um and that shaming and criticizing again the person continues to tell themselves those things. Physical or emotional withdrawal or abandonment in a lot of chaotic households and I use the term chaotic not addicted because adverse childhood experiences create chaos. They can be due to addiction. They can be due to mental health issues. They can even be due to chronic stress from stuff, low SCEs, um, discrimination, um, oppression, what, what have you. But in these households, when the caregivers are so overwhelmed with their own stuff, they may not be able to be present for the child. So, the child feels abandoned. You don't care enough to pay attention to me. You don't care enough to help me out. I need you. And where are you right now? I can't trust you to be here. Uh I believe that most of the time this is the result of the parent or caregiver being overwhelmed, not an intentional shutting out or icing out a child. Now sometimes that does happen. the caregiver believes that hey if I withdraw from them then maybe they'll change their behavior. I don't know what where they would get that but it can happen. However, when children experience similar behaviors in later relationships, even in adulthood, when they feel like they're being abandoned, when they feel like the people that they care about, that they rely on, their partners, their friends are withdrawing or abandoning them, it triggers those old wounds. And remember they are basing their assessment on core beliefs that were formed when they thought personally, egocentrically um and dichomously. So those core beliefs are actually likely way too rigid and inaccurate. But the child couldn't do any better cognitively. They couldn't go look at PJ. He will say ch youn younger children have difficulty understanding alternate explanations why my caregiver be withdrawn besides they hate me or they're getting ready to abandon me. Well maybe caregivers withdrawn because they've got migraines and most of the day most days and some people have that. It's not your fault. You didn't do it. But some children will take it personally because when a caregiver has or somebody in the house has a migraine, what happens when the child starts to make noise? You need to be quiet. You need to be quiet. You're going to make so and so's headache worse or migraine worse. Um there can be again that sense of withdrawal because people with migraines are sensitive to light. They have nausea. They have difficulty functioning in a a neurotypical world, if you will, because the the pain is so intense. Blaming and guilting kind of goes along with shaming and criticizing, as does teasing, laughing, or belittling. And some people mean it in good fun. Um, but they don't realize how it lands. And and that can be difficult. Which is why with a lot of people who have wounded inner children, especially those with who have a wounded inner child, a child that never felt safe and empowered. In addition to a really wicked inner critic, one that's criticizing, blaming, guilting, shoulding, all those things. um we need to take a look at some of those core beliefs and we need to take a look at that inner critic because a lot of times in their mind the person is replaying that situation from the past. This is what happened before and this is how I had to survive. We also see behaviors in chaotic families that include manipulating, betraying, patronizing, invalidating, inshment, and conditional love. For those of you who aren't familiar with that term, conditional love means I love you if. I love you if you behave. I love you if you get good grades. Not just I love you. Unconditional love means I love you. I may not like all your behaviors, but I love you. Thinking about these behaviors, we want people to uh explore which behaviors their caregivers used on them and which behaviors they use on themselves or others. Now children learn what they live and they will treat themselves the way they were treated often and they may learn to treat others the way they were treated because they don't know other ways. U when children feel unsafe and powerless what happens? They're stressed. When they're chronically stressed what happens? Their ability to learn decreases significantly. Why? because that prefrontal cortex is offline. Their brain is focused on survival. Again, asking clients, think of situations in which these things happened. What would have been a more nurturing response um or a more appropriate response and having them restate what happened or if I was in that position now, what would I do? encouraging them to recognize that there were alternate ways that this could have been handled can be helpful. And this can be an interesting group activity. If you're doing an inner child group, having people share which behaviors their caregivers used, which behaviors they've internalized and they use now, how those behaviors help them survive or hurt them. The wounded inner child learned how to relate to others based on what they had to do to stay safe. Our main if you want to call it love map is developed in childhood. We learn how to interact with others. We learn how to have empathy and compassion. We learn how to love basically when through our interactions first with our caregivers then some with our friends and those other important people in our life. However, a lot of people who are adults who never felt safe, who never felt empowered, who never felt lovable, experienced the need to be inauthentic. They weren't in in addicted families, we say don't talk, don't trust, don't feel. That's kind of the epitome of inauthenticity. In a lot of families, even if there's not addiction, the child may have been needed to be inauthentic. They may have had to smile when everything really wasn't great. They may have had to um be quiet and be solemn even though they were happy. They're having a good day, but caregivers having a bad day. So, we need to walk on eggshells. Inauthe in. They may have had uh to be envious or or they they didn't have to be envious. They may have been envious or critical of others. They were afraid of abandonment. They were seeing other people get loved. They were seeing other people feel safe. And in order to feel safe themselves, they may have had felt like they had to criticize others to bring them down to the same level that they felt they were on. They may have had to be perfectionistic, that unconditional or that conditional love. If I'm not perfect, I'm not lovable. If I'm not perfect, I'm going to get ignored. I'm going to get punished. I'm going to get abandoned. whatever they learned that the only way to get caregivers appropriate responses was to be perfect. And I think most of us know that perfection is an illusion. They may have been overly conforming and that kind of goes along with inau inauthenticity. But they may have done whatever their caregiver wanted them to to do. You tell me. I will be a chameleon. If you want me to be a cheerleader, I'll be a cheerleader. If you want me to play football, I'll play football. If you want me to stand on my head and cluck like a chicken, well, by golly, that's what I'm going to do. Because I'm going to do what you tell me to do in order to avoid your wrath. In order to avoid your wrath. And when people become adults and they don't have someone telling them how to conform, what to do, they may feel insecure. They're like, "Well, I don't know what to do to be loved. If you're not telling me what I need to do in order for you to love me, you know, that conditional love again, then that feels really scary." They may have learned to deny or hide feelings or be passive aggressive because feelings weren't safe. If they got angry, they were punished or ridiculed. If they were sad, they were told to get over it. It's no big deal. Um, if they were happy, people wouldn't notice, you know, and then they would feel rejected. They would feel overlooked. So, they just said, you know what, feelings not worth it. I'm just going to hide them. They may have an overdeveloped parent script. In some situations, the caregivers were not able to be caregivers. They were having difficulty doing the basics like getting the ch the laundry done, keeping the refrigerator stocked, getting the child to school, you know, all those things. And the child may have learned on their own that well this ne this needs to get done and I can't trust caregiver to do it. Therefore, I'm going to take on that parent role. As adults, they continue to be over responsible and often tend to somewhat be inshed and over responsible for other people because they're afraid if they let go of control, woo, all hell's going to break loose. They may have had to always pretend to be strong because if they showed weakness, they were ridiculed or ignored. They may not trust others. Well, if you're experiencing these other things, I don't blame you. They may try to control and then alternate that with withdrawing. I'm trying to control this situation. I'm not succeeding. I need to get away. You know, that um borderlineesque uh intense relationship dynamic and they often may act out prior relationships. their relationship with their current partner may mirror the relationship they had with their primary caregiver. Um, it's important to explore what's going on in the present that is related or relevant in the present versus how they're feeling and reacting in the present. that is more appropriate to how they reacted to try to stay safe in the past. Do you need to keep repeating those behaviors in the present to stay safe? Hopefully not. Inner childs or inner childs, inner children that are wounded often have low self-esteem. Well, duh. If you didn't feel like there was any consistency in the house, if you didn't feel like anybody wanted to pay attention to you or cared enough to care about you, uh, and if you felt like love was based on conditions, I can see how low self-esteem would develop. They often have difficulty with emotional regulation. Chronic stress disregulates the stress response. It disregulates the nervous system. So we become or develop something called sympathetic dominance. And what sympathetic dominance is, it means our stress response system has become much more easily triggered than it should be. There's not a balance between the relaxation and the stress response. That stress response is super strong. Which means when people feel triggered, when they feel unsafe, they go from 0 to 250 like that. There may be polarized thinking or dichomous thinking. Those core beliefs that were formed in childhood that were polarized or dichomous are often carried to the present. Why? because they didn't have anybody helping them out as they were developing, as they were growing up, saying, "All right, Sam, let's sit down and look at this and is it all or nothing? What are some other exceptions?" Children don't automatically develop problem-olving skills. And caregivers that develop secure attachment with their children are there to be responsive and help children evaluate their thought process and develop this more advanced thinking that can consider alternatives that can consider hypotheses that can consider things not immediately seen. People who experience trauma as children and are con currently wounded. They never did resolve that trauma often have low motivation and a fe fear of failure. Life just keeps pouring it on to them. So I can understand why someone who has regularly been criticized or belittled or ignored may not have a lot of motivation. And when we ask them about their prior attempts to do things, to succeed, if you will, what happened when they failed? Were they punished? Were they rejected? Were they ridiculed? Were they just ignored? For some children, they were ignored if they did well, they were ignored if they failed. It didn't matter what they did. Nobody seemed to care. And for a child, that's terrifying. You want to know that your caregivers are going to say, "Okay, let's talk about this for a second." Or, "Hey, great job, but just to get a radio silence is terrifying." A lot of times, children who experienced ACEs or trauma um and especially those that never resolved it may have a lot of abandonment anxiety. In many cases, the wound involved some type of abandonment. It doesn't necessarily mean physical abandonment where the caregiver left or put the child up for adoption or something. It may mean emotional abandonment. The caregivers just were not emotionally present. They were scrolling on social media the whole time. They didn't have time for the child. They didn't care. They may have generalized anxiety. They worry about a lot of things. Well, they never felt safe from the time they were knee high to a grasshopper. So, why would they feel safe now? Generalized anxiety makes sense. As a child, the world was terrifying. I mean, think about again when you don't have a lot of experiences to compare stuff to. The world can be terrifying. and they didn't have a caregiver to hold their hand or give them a hug or sit them down and go, "I've got this. You're safe." And they may have internalized caregiver coping and interpersonal behaviors, whether that was substance abuse or withdrawal or >> [snorts] >> um video game addiction, yelling, the list goes on. We do want to look at behaviors and ask ourselves where did this come from? Where did this person learn this behavior? Or conversely, I guess, where did this person fail to learn alternate behaviors? Both are true. If they had a caregiver that was extremely critical, extremely harsh, tended tended to yell at them and berate them, well, they may have picked that up as that's just how you respond. So, that's where they learn the behavior. Why didn't they learn alternate behaviors? Because nobody taught them. Nobody was there to go, hey, you know, okay, that's one way to react. Let's look at some others. Let's try this out. Many times the child's emotion regulation and interpersonal skill development gets stuck at the age of the traumas when they started feeling unsafe when their stress response became persistently activated or disregulated. Then that prefrontal cortex just wasn't kicking in very much. I mean, it was there a little bit, but it wasn't able to help the child learn and develop the academic skills, the interpersonal skills, the whatever other skills you want to put in there that they could have because most of their energy was devoted to hypervigilance, scanning, safety, and trying to stay safe and survival. The child often felt unsafe which caused a strengthening of the connections between the amygdala where we do fear processing and what we call the default mode network. And we haven't talked about the DMN in a while. Default mode network is our autopilot. And for people whose nervous system gets disregulated and they have sympathetic dominance their that stress response becomes super strong. The amygdala starts connecting with the autopilot and constantly just telling the autopilot, "Hey, threat, scan, threat, scan." Well, that's exhausting. When the salience and emotion network identify sim similar or reminiscent stuff of prior threatening experiences, so the salience network is the one that's looking around. It's kind of part part of the hypervigilance. When it notices things that are similar to the past, salience means similar. Basically, this is meaningful to me. I know what this means. And the the default mode network kicks in and it triggers the stress response even more. The person begins reacting in their emotional mind based on old schema. Um, example, not related to a wounded inner child so much. Um, well, maybe sort of. When I was six, I had my tonsils out. And there's a lot I don't remember from my childhood, but I remember this vividly. When I was in the hospital, the nurse came in and tied the band around my thigh, I think, and jabbed me to get the blood blood draw that she needed. But it hurt like crazy. From then on, I was afraid of needles. I was afraid of doctors. Um, that script all or nothing. People, medical people cause pain. you know, that's kind of what got programmed in my default mode network. So, whenever I saw a needle, I would expect that kind of pain and I had to relearn my expectations. Thankfully, I finally had one doctor who was really good at giving shots and I I overcame that recognizing that needles don't always equal pain, that dichomous thinking. But the salience network, when I see a hospital, when I'm going to the doctor's office and I know I'm going to get a shot, my salience network kicks in and it goes and says, "Okay, what do we know about situations like this that have happened in the past?" And that brings up those traumatic memories. My default mode network says, "I know what we're doing. We're just going to go. We're not going to think about whether is this actually still accurate in the present context. We're just going to base it on prior experiences. Core issues for people with wounded inner children. Um the need to be in control. Core issue is maintaining safety. And that comes out as in order to be safe, I learned from my past I can't trust others. That I have to be in control of what's going on because ain't nobody else going to help me. We want to evaluate that in the present context. How did this behavior help you stay safe in the past? How did staying in control help you survive? and stay safe. How is your need to be in control now the result of what you experienced? When is your need to be in control triggered? Is it all the time or is it only in certain circumstances? And is staying in control, for example, is this still necessary to keep you safe? Is it still necessary that you are in control of everything all the time to stay safe? The person will have their own answers and I'm it's not for me to tell them what's right or what's wrong, but we want to examine them. Inability to trust again go through that list. How did refusing or being unable to trust others, how did it help you stay safe in the past? How is the inability to trust a result of what you experienced? When is your difficulty with trust triggered? Maybe with certain people like in romantic relationships but not at work or it may be with everybody. I don't know. Um depends on your past experiences. And is this difficulty developing trust, is this still necessary to help you stay safe? Or could you potentially explore developing trust and intimacy with certain people? Of course, we're not going to trust everybody. That wouldn't be safe. But can you start trusting yourself? Are is there anyone in your life you can trust to a certain extent? And remember intimacy, there are multiple types. There's physical intimacy, but there's also emotional and cognitive intimacy. Sharing my thoughts and feelings, trusting you with what's actually inside my head instead of trying to put on this facade and be inauthentic. Over responsibility or perfectionism, another symptom of the need to stay safe. A high tolerance for inappropriate behavior in others, even enabling. Some people will have this high tolerance. You know, you can cheat on me, you can not call me, you can break dates, you can whatever, and I'll just tolerate it. Other people may go so far as enabling that behavior and trying to cover up for it and keep their significant others from experiencing negative consequences. Why? Because it keeps them from being abandoned. It keeps them from being alone. And often times when they were growing up, they had to tolerate inappropriate behavior. Uh, we want to go through that list of questions and I'm not going to go through that list for every single one of these or we'd be here all day. They may neglect their own needs. When they [clears throat] were growing up, they didn't have the time, energy, or resources to attend to their own needs and nobody else was doing it. They learned to be inauthentic and may have become impulsive in order to ma maintain safety. They didn't play the tape through when something made them feel anxious. Default mo default mode network kicked in and they reacted. They started screaming. They started running. They started hitting. They started biting whatever they started doing. Um, and in some cases in adults, this impulsivity may come as breaking up. If we're having a discussion and you disagree with me, well, fine, I'm leaving. Or, let's just break up. You know, if you don't love me and agree with everything I say, we can't be together. That may be an impulsive decision. We want to encourage people to examine again how these helped them stay safe. Normalize the behavior. How did you learn this? How is it a result of what you experienced? Again, normalizing it. We don't want to pathize, criticize, you know, certainly don't want to repeat what they went through. when or what situations trigger this behavior or these behaviors in you and are these behaviors that you're experiencing or symptoms that you have, whatever you want to call them, are they still necessary to keep you safe? And follow on question, if not, what would you like to have as a replacement behavior? Would you like to be able to relinquish some control? Would you like to be able to trust others? What does a rich and meaningful life look like to you? A lot of children um or people who have uh wounded inner children felt unsafe and they have this constant fear of abandonment. We want to explore where that came from. In what ways were you abandoned as a child? In what ways were you threatened with abandonment as a child? Children think differently. I know I've said that like four times already, but it's important to recognize when people get divorced and one caregiver moves out, even if they've got weekend custody or something, the child may think that they're feel like they're being abandoned. They may may feel like it's their fault. They may feel like, "Why are you leaving me here with them?" Depends on the situation. But what the caregivers did or didn't do may have caused the child to fear that they were going to be abandoned, that they were not going to be taken care of. Could have been because sometimes the the caregivers weren't taking care of them. the caregivers weren't meeting their basic needs of food, shelter, you know, um medical care, whatever. So, they were being abandoned in some ways. Caregiver wasn't physically leaving, but the caregiver was checked out. Again, low self-esteem. A lot of people who have wounded inner children have a lot of grief. They have a lot of losses. they didn't have the childhood that they deserved that they should have. They have to grieve that. They can't change it. They have to grieve the fact that they didn't have the parents that they wanted. They didn't have Warden June Cleaver. What other losses did they experience as a result of their childhood, their chaotic childhood, and potentially as a result of the behaviors that developed to help them stay safe? Maybe they have ended a bunch of really good relationships because of their abandonment issues and difficulty with trust. Well, they may have to grieve that. They may have to grieve what they have lost as a result, direct or indirect, of their childhood trauma. The emotional dysregulation, we've talked about this a couple weeks ago in terms of emotional dysregulation is a symptom that tells us that the nervous system is out of balance. The stress response is way too strong. and rebalancing the nervous system. Establishing a sense of safety and empowerment to reduce the chronic sense of um fear goes a long way. They may experience depression and anxiety. When you feel unsafe for a long period of time, it's freaking exhausting. You know, we have fight, flee, freeze, fawn, and flop. And a lot of people by the time they're adults with wounded inner children, they're at flatout flop. They're exhausted because they're constantly hypervigilant. They've never felt safe. And addiction, addiction is one way that people survive untenable stress. Is it the healthiest way of No. No, not saying that. But it is one behavior whether it's um gaming addiction, gambling, um substance addiction, porn addiction, the list goes on. It's a behavior that they engaged in to escape pain, physical or emotional pain, um that they continued to engage in despite knowing it was causing significant negative consequences in two or more areas of life. So, the assessment when we're talking to people, what current behaviors do you have that you view as problematic? What what behaviors do you have that cause you problems in relationships that people have said are problematic? Did you learn them from your caregivers? Did they help keep you safe? Are they still the best skill you have to try to feel safe? what would you rather do instead? And then envisioning themselves responding that way. Instead of responding to something somebody by getting up and walking away as soon the minute you start to disagree, what would you rather do instead? And let's roleplay that. Envision yourself or let's practice that situation and responding differently. What did you not develop or get as a child? Having the person look inside and ask themselves, what is my inner child angry about? One technique that I've had a lot of success with with people when we're doing inner child work is I have them get a picture of themselves as a child and different ages, you know, 2, three, five, what have you, and I have them look at the picture and tell me what that child is angry about. And that can help anchor them in the moment without having to write a full autobiography. How can you help that inner child grieve? How can you help that inner child acknowledge their anger? Don't invalidate it. Don't tell them, "Well, it what's done is done. Get over it." That's what the person has heard their entire life. It's important to validate what that inner child is feeling, what that person felt when they were six and that happened. Validate that child. validate how that person feels. Help them grieve what's going on. Acknowledge the unfairness of it. For example, creating safety for exploration and change. Develop secure attachments with yourself and with your inner child. And normally I use the cares pneummonic for secure attachments, but with inner child there's more. It's more visceral. Hence the term visceral. First thing is to validate what the person needs to learn how to validate their feelings to enhance emotional awareness. I feel really terrified right now. Now, as an adult in 2026, I recognize there may be nothing to be really terrified about. However, I'm feeling really terrified. Well, what does that tell you? That tells you that somewhere in your memory, there's some memory where something similar to this happened where you felt terrified and there wasn't somebody there to protect you a lot of times. So, we want to validate people's feelings to help their em emotional awareness, not tell them they're overreacting or underreacting. It is what it is. We want them to develop intimacy and connection with their younger selves to understand the child's point of view. Connect with that 2-year-old, connect with that seven-year-old. How did they feel? What did they want? What were they yearning for? Um what were they doing or what did they learn that they needed to do to stay safe? You know, really get to know that child. different ages, different versions. Especially if this trauma was ongoing, there are going to be different issues. Safety and boundaries, helping the person develop a sense of safety and the ability to maintain boundaries with other people, the ability to maintain boundaries with that inner child. I sense that you're really angry right now. As an adult, I recognize that yeah, I'm angry or I'm miffed and I don't have to act on it. The child, you know, children are impulsive. They tend to want to act on it. But creating those boundaries where I acknowledge how I'm feeling and I set boundaries so that inner child is not continuing to act in the in the present. And I'm helping them feel safe. I'm helping. I'm saying, you know what? I got this. This is the way we're going to respond now. Providing consistency and predictability, encouraging the person to be consistent in their awareness of how they're feeling. cons consistency in their response if they're angry and they recognize maybe as an adult you know with fresh eyes in the present context I am reacting more strongly to this than it really deserves okay that's fine however accepting that one moment and two days later or two hours later criticizing yourself and saying it was stupid to feel that way that's not consistent that's not predictable. Being consistent and predictable encouragement and nurturing for self-efficacy, trying things out. A lot of people with wounded inner children don't have a lot of self-efficacy. They have low frustration tolerance. They have high fear of failure and criticism. So encouraging them to try new things and to recognize or to nurture themselves and recognize, hey, I did that. And for example, painting, I am artistically, no, not me. Um, and I recognize that I tried it. I love it. I watch Bob Ross and I think that I should be able to do it, but I can't. Um, and that's okay. It doesn't mean I'm a bad person. It doesn't mean I'm unlovable. It means I'm probably not going to be in some art show somewhere. But that's okay. And that encouragement is what's important. You're loved for who you are. Being responsive to help with coping and problem solving. Too often, most of us, not only people with wounded inner children, uh may be on autopilot. When we feel a certain way, we just kind of shove it down. We ignore it. We don't respond to downregulate, evaluate what's going on and work on problem solving. And that's a really important skill. Encourage the person to develop self- authenticity to feel feelings and grieve losses. become get in touch with themselves and practice unconditional love to enhance self-esteem recognizing that they are lovable. Period. Not if they're not lovable if they're just lovable. encourage people when they're experiencing distress to explore whether it's from their past experiences as a child, their inner child, or the distress is from what's going on right now in the present or a combination of both. Encourage the person to reassure themselves, reassure the inner child that they have this and if needed, they'll intervene. It sounds, you know, kind of hokey to some people, but there is a big part of our brain that is full of memories and that's kind of what we're calling the inner child and reassuring ourselves in the present that hey, you're not going to be unsafe again. As an adult, I am going to make sure I am protecting myself and therefore you, the inner child. Many times when you react in unhelpful ways, you're reacting from the place of the child's default mode network. Um, people may find that at work they can engage different behaviors, but in their personal life, oh, it's different. That's because the default mode network is programmed differently with different schema for work versus personal relationships. If school was safe, then work's probably going to be safe. If personal relationships were a hot mess, then they probably have schema expecting other people and relationships to be a hot mess. encourage people to start recognizing when their inner child is emerging, when they're acting like a child and throwing a temper tantrum instead of acting like an adult. It's not a criticism. It's a recognition. My my past traumas are are bubbling out right now. There's a part of me that feels unsafe. I need to explore what's going on. validate that there's a part of me feeling unsafe and figure out what I need to do, what I would have wanted my parent to do to help me feel safe in this situation and processing grief. There's a lot to grieve and like I said, it's not just not having the childhood that you wanted. A lot of people with wounded inner children developed behaviors that negatively impacted their work, negatively impacted their, you know, ability to pursue certain goals and dreams, negatively impacted their adult relationships, and they may need to grieve those things. Remember, in the grief process, there's denial. Okay, we're not going to try to confront denial. Is what it is. When it starts to come out, we'll start seeing anger. People will be angry that they messed up that relationship or that this person left them or whatever happened. Okay, let's talk about that anger. Anger is a response to a threat. We fight or we flee. Anger is that fight. People often move into depression as they realize they can't change it or they may be powerless to fix it and then they move to acceptance and possibly forgiveness. It's a long process. It doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen in a week in allowing people to process their grief and acknowledge their grief because grief is not just about death. It's about a loss of dreams. It's about a loss of time. You know, you regret all of the things that you could have done had you been healthier. Blocks to grieving, not wanting to confront the realities or destroy the illusion. I've worked with some people who have wounded inner children that started out therapy telling me how wonderful their parents were and how wonderful their life was. And as we get into it, I start to see little cracks in that vision. They're not ready to confront the realities that maybe their caregivers weren't as perfect as they wanted them to be. Some people don't want to go there, don't want to process that stuff because they're afraid that once they open Pandora's box, there aren't going to be no shut in it. They don't want to be overwhelmed. They may not want to grieve because they fear rejection or abandonment. Um either from other people or they fear that if you know if I start going through all this stuff and people find out about it, you're not going to love me. Blocking behaviors include denial, trying to believe it was just a nightmare that just that it wasn't that bad. It was just a nightmare. excusem making for those caregivers for that trauma or accepting all the blame. Those are blocking behaviors for grief because I'm taking it on me. It was my fault. I can be angry at myself instead of feeling safe enough to be angry at people maybe who deserve to be angry at. Other strategies include encouraging the person to respect and integrate their inner child, not just when they're in distress. If when I was uh working in Florida and my children were very young and I remember on more than one occasion just kind of bebopping through the halls humming or sometimes singing Goober Peas. And for any of you who know that song, once you get it in your head, it gets stuck there. Um, but [clears throat] hey, I was having fun. You know, I had connected with my kids over it and little inner child in me was still coming out going, "We're going to sing Goober Peas." Uh, that's okay. You know, uh, make a personal bill of rights. What do you deserve? What do you have the right to do? Encourage people to take it slowly and be curious. The inner child was wounded and has been wounded for a long time. It's going to take a while before you understand the depths and breadth of what that wound looks like. So, let's be curious about what that inner child needs and potentially encourage the person to forgive their inner child and their adult self for things that they did that maybe they wish they hadn't. They can take responsibility for that which is within their control. Only take responsibility for what they're responsible for in the situation. They can experience remorse. They can rectify to the degree possible. Some things you can't fix. You know, if you wanted to go to medical school, but instead, you know, you drank so much during your freshman year, you got kicked out of kicked out of college. All right. Well, you know, you may not be able to change that. If you're 60 years old now, it may be too late to take all your prerexs and go to medical school. So, what can you do to rectify it to the extent possible? And then release. Once you've taken responsibility, you've experienced remorse for it. You feel bad for what you did. You know, that's a normal grieving feeling. you rectify to the extent possible. Letting go of it instead of continuing to be angry or beat yourself up for it. That's a hard one. And a lot of people come back to that release and have to remind themselves, I did what I could to fix that situation. Every person has an inner child. We grow up, but those memories are still a part of us. When the inner child is wounded or traumatized and can't get comfort, it often withdraws. That wound stays open. The first step is to create a safe, non-judgmental environment for the inner child to be authentic and learn new skills. That's allowing the person to create a safe, non-judgmental environment so they can learn new skills. Maybe they're learning them in the present. Well, obviously they're learning them in the present. And that's okay. Maybe they're skills that other people learned 20 years ago. All right. Well, they weren't afforded that luxury. They can learn them now. But they're not going to be able to learn until they start feeling safe, unjudged, and empowered. Identify inner child behaviors and what triggered those behaviors. And begin to identify and rehearse new responses to old triggers. Finally, encourage people to allow their inner child to identify and grieve those losses. Are there any questions?