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Hello and welcome back to the psychology of your twenties the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties 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 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 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
base behind it many psychologists have 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 whole learnt 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 trusting 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 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 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 and that was how you deserve 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 always makes me so sad and i think when we're talking about inner 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 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 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 behaviors 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 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 acknowledgement 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 u .s 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 syrus fan i loved that movie i memorized all the songs i brought clothes like miley syrus i think i watched that movie like in the cinema four times and re -watching 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 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 and 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 with that version of me with 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 decisions 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 sundae 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 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 by connecting with a 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 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 do so please feel free to leave a five -star review on apple podcast
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post here please follow the podcast at that psychology podcast on instagram we do a lot of stuff over there so it'd be great to have you on board as always have a lovely week thank you for tuning in i hope you enjoyed this episode and we will be back next week for another episode this year i've been
really rethinking my relationship with alcohol and so i decided to commit to dry january to really kickstart 2025 and just test myself heineken 00 platinum card do you want to see into the future do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life do you want to experience the frontiers
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