Transformational Journey of Inner Child Healing

In today's video we're going to talk about what I believe is one of the most powerful methods for fundamental life change and real transformation and that is inner child healing. I think it could be incredibly valuable for just about everybody even if you feel like you know, I had a pretty good childhood, I don't really think things went that wrong. You might still have one of these inner child wounds that is running you behind the scenes that you don't even actually know. exists. So today we're going to talk about what the inner child is, where it comes from, what it does, and how it interacts with us in our life, and most importantly how we can heal in a way that has profound implications for our personal future and can be very transformative to the way we live our lives. So what is inner child healing in the first place? Sometimes it's called inner child work. It is a form of what is sometimes called shadow work, which is essentially work on your subconscious mind. Subconscious is the part of the mind that does things that we don't have to think about, like knowing how to walk or talk or understand somebody who's speaking. When we don't have something ingrained into our subconscious, when we're learning a language, for example, it can be very challenging because we have to consciously think about what the meaning of each word is and try to interpret it and understand it. That's very difficult, but once it becomes subconscious, it is automated. Your brain does the work for you without you having to think about it. That is the power of the subconscious mind. But what can happen is if we are not careful, we can ingrain patterns into our subconscious mind that then run on that autopilot and are operating in the background that no longer serve our best interest. Some of the things that sometimes hold us back in life can actually be these subconscious patterns that we believe are true, where we've integrated this behavior and these actions so deeply into ourselves that they are like walking or talking. They're automatic to the point where we don't think about them anymore, but they have a profound impact on how we interact with the world, how we see the world, and what we do on a daily basis. Because here's the thing, right? Our subconscious doesn't know if something is good or bad. It just gets a program and it runs it. is essentially like a computer. It does a great job at just keeping those things running. But there can be problems with that. Let's say as a child, you maybe had to be a peacekeeper between your parents, right? They argued a lot and it was your job to kind of make sure everybody in the family was happy. Or maybe you felt betrayed by your parents and decided you had to take care of yourself. You couldn't trust anybody. Or maybe you felt that you only got love and validation. You got your needs met when... you performed a certain way, when you were perfect or didn't have any problems of your own, you were able to take care of other people, that's when you got the love and affection you wanted from your parents, right? What can happen is, as children, we form these subconscious belief systems. We think that as long as I take care of other people, as long as I give them what they need, then they'll take care of me, then they'll love me back, and then I get to feel okay about myself. These are experiences that a lot of people have as children that... They internalize into that subconscious mind. This program is now running on autopilot behind the scenes in so many lives. It doesn't have to be just those things. Those are just examples. There are many ways where these kind of insidious patterns we formed as children, as coping strategies, become a pattern that we repeat over and over and over through our adult lives, not really noticing. And then people will find themselves now as an adult. desperately craving that validation, trying to be perfect so that everybody loves them in the world and being confused when they don't get the love or adoration they need. Or maybe they're petrified to take any action because they think they need to be perfect for people to approve of them. Or maybe they have trust issues in relationships and push people away and kind of act a little bit cold because they have that wound that says, if I let anybody get close to me, then they'll hurt me. These are the adult expressions of those inner child wounds we have formed that are unhealed they are still influencing our behavior 10 20 30 or more years after the event itself happened because we have not gone in and questioned those behavior patterns that we've inscribed into that subconscious mind and it also doesn't always matter how bad things that happened to you were it's not really about that you had to have some terrible terrible childhood to form these childhood wounds because the experiences we have as children are filtered through a very immature mindset. So don't judge yourself if you feel like you have some of these things and you're like, man, nothing that bad really happened to me. Realize that it is judged through the perspective of a very immature child. So everything can feel traumatizing and scary to a three-year-old. We have a very warped perspective of reality and we are just little kids trying to do the very best we can to understand the world. So we decide things. Like, well, mom and dad like it when I'm perfect, so I'll just be perfect. Great. And we don't realize how twisted and terrible that can be when taken to an extent until we're 30, 40 years old and crippled by perfectionism. We're afraid to let anybody see us be less than perfect. And we don't realize that it is just an expression of that internalized pattern from when we were like four years old that has been built on for years and years and years. Those Patterns, once they are inscribed into that subconscious mind, we just start to repeat them over and over. We think that's something that is true to the way we need to be in the world to get our needs met. That is not necessarily true. These inner child wounds we want to heal are essentially the subconscious echoes, kind of these patterns that we have ingrained into ourselves as the result of trauma or maybe the story we came up with as a result to trauma that influence our lives now. Maybe... decades afterwards because we have not gone back and healed and given new meaning to those past experiences. We've allowed those moments to replay in our heads over and over and over. And until we go back and examine them, we will never understand why we're doing some of the weird things we do or why we feel anxiety or fear or jealousy in situations that objectively don't make that much sense. If you've ever noticed that about yourself, Like, why did I get so angry about that? Why did that make me feel so insecure? It wasn't really that big of a deal. It's because it triggers that internal child wound where everything feels so big and scary and real and it hits that core fear of like being worthless or abandoned and your body goes, oh, that's why. A lot of people develop pretty twisted coping strategies like, you know, trying to be perfect or please everybody in the world or never show any flaws never connect with anybody so that they don't risk getting hurt. And those things that help us get through those traumatic periods in our childhood don't necessarily translate very well to real life. And having healthy relationships as adults in particular can be very damaging to have these kinds of childhood patterns running because they affect the way you can bond emotionally with other people. Whether you're going to be super needy or super avoidant is... frequently a function of these kinds of internal child wounds that are running on autopilot. And these wounds tend to form around feelings or fears of insecurity, unworthiness, unlovable-ness, the feeling of not being whole or being less than everybody else. These things that are abandonment maybe, these things are intrinsically terrifying when you were a child because you are completely dependent on your primary caregivers for everything, right? You have no ability to really cope with anything in the world. You need this person to give you pretty much everything. And so any insecurity in that relationship, any fear or threat to that pipeline of your needs being met is intrinsically terrifying to a child. And that is the kind of emotional trigger which is set with these patterns. It's a very... visceral like we'll die if this doesn't go our way kind of thing which explains why later in life like you get broken up within a relationship and it feels like you're gonna die it's not rational anymore because you can now take care of yourself but it's hitting that same trigger and that's why it can feel so earth-shattering it's because it's hitting those childhood patterns in my own life that fear of never being good enough or never being enough led to paralysis when it came to anything challenging i loved like school, I was getting good grades, college, all of that was great as long as I was sure that I would get like a 4.0 or I would get the perfect grade. Then I could maintain that image of perfection, be like, you know, I'm always the one doing everything right. I'm getting all the good grades. But whenever there was an area of ambiguity or like, you know, multiple right answers, it wasn't so clear what to do. I would freeze because I was like, I had to do the right thing to to function in the world and when there was not a clear right answer it was like existentially terrifying. I would also experience attracting people into my life who were kind of emotionally unavailable and then trying to fix them. I think on some twisted level I thought that you know like if I could fix them then they would never leave me because that inner unworthiness thing was like you need somebody who's gonna stick around right you don't You can't show them who you really are or they'll leave you. So by fixing people, I could get them to stick around forever because then they'd need me. It's kind of fucked up, really. But it's one of those methods that that twisted, terrified inner child can say, you know what, I'm gonna die if this stuff doesn't go right. I need to make sure it works a certain way. It's very unrealistic perhaps, but it doesn't make it feel less intense in the moment. And this is a huge component of why there are so many dysfunctional relationships going around. It's because people are trying to live out those childhood patterns over and over and over through relationships. That inner child is still in there on repeat, looking for somebody out in the world who's gonna fix them, who's gonna solve their problems and meet their needs, but it's not. mom and dad anymore, right? So they're kind of projecting themselves through your current day self as you go through and repeat the same patterns. You're still looking for somebody to come save you. And here's the thing. Nobody is going to come save you. There's nobody who's going to come fix you. There's nobody who's going to come solve all those problems and make you feel whole inside. Never going to happen. But there's great news. You can be that one person that you are looking for to fix you. Nobody else can turn that energy inward and realize you have the capability to save yourself So how do you do that? You need to go back and heal the wound yourself And the very first step to this process is simply awareness becoming aware of these patterns and behaviors that we are Running on autopilot because until we know they're there. How are we supposed to change them? Right like How do you fix a problem that you cannot see? So something you can do right off the bat is whenever you feel triggered or whenever you notice yourself having a disproportionate reaction, maybe you get really angry or jealous or sad about something that was not objectively that big of a deal, take a second to notice that happening and then pull your perspective back just for a split second and ask, where is this coming from? Why am I doing this? Is this helpful at all? And you realize, probably not. And then you go, Well, why is this a part of me? Like, where does this come from? Where does the voice of that inner critic come from? That you're not good enough, you suck. Well, what are you doing there? You're not good enough for that person. Oh, you can never do that. Don't try. Where do those feelings of shame and unworthiness come from? Where does that guilt and hatred and anger come from within you? So step one is simply to start noticing, to become aware of those patterns that are running under your normal perception that you normally don't see. Just start to notice when you do things and say, Why did I do that? Just be curious. Just have a little bit of fun with it. It's kind of weird, but just go with it for a while. That is step one. You can do that passively throughout your day-to-day life. Really easy. You don't even have to put very much effort into it. Just notice it. Be like, oh, huh, curious. Secondly, there are active steps you can take. And these don't have to be like chronological, by the way. You don't have to do the awareness thing first. You can do them both at the same time. This involves diving deep into your past and engaging in a dialogue with yourself. You can do this via journaling or meditation or just visualization and imagining. It's important to remember that this is not the process about like finding somebody to blame, it's not about saying everything that happened to you is your parents fault, it's not about looking at your childhood as for excuses as to why your life's not where you want to be. This is about going back and healing the wounds that are repeating on autopilot. It's about healing the past, not finding more reasons to get stuck in it. So try to go in with an open mind and not an attitude of anger or blame. If those things come up a little bit, it's okay, but just do your best to release them and realize that it's not about attaching more to the past. It's about letting go of it. So try to have that as your frame of reference. Give yourself some time and space to just experience this and sit with it. I'd say maybe half an hour, probably want to do it in your room or someplace where you won't be interrupted. The first time I did it, I thought it was a little weird. I thought it was a little out there. I didn't know what to expect and I ended up Like bawling my eyes out for like 20 minutes So just be prepared to have an emotional response because you are connecting with those unhealed traumatic Experiences from your childhood But the good news is by doing this you are able to bring healing to those past patterns and kind of set yourself on a New path in life. So you're gonna have a dialogue with your inner child And if you're journaling you can write down, you know both perspectives. If you're meditating or visualizing, you imagine yourself in both roles or imagine the conversation. Once you get into it, you'll kind of know intrinsically like what to do. And it's not really about doing it right anyway. It's about feeling through the experience and healing it. So just go with what feels right. What you want to do is remember a time as a child where you felt stuck or you felt hurt or you felt... abandoned. You felt like maybe nobody was around to take care of you or meet your needs. You didn't know what to do. Maybe this was a traumatic memory. Maybe this was some time that you created a judgment. You decided I have to be. This way I have to make sure everybody likes me. Something that sticks out to you. Don't worry too much about choosing like the perfect memory. You can definitely do this multiple times so it doesn't really matter. But also just trust yourself to kind of come up with a few off the top of your head and whichever one feels most pressing, just that's probably the right one for you. So don't stress too much. Take some time to recreate the memory in your imagination. To relive it but from the perspective of a third person. Objectively able to... watch and see what happens, to see whatever the younger version of you is feeling or experiencing in that moment when nobody else was there for them. And then imagine yourself being able to give that younger version of yourself a hug, to go pick them up, to say, hey, I got you. I'm going to take care of you. I love you. Whatever it is that they needed in that moment, tell them everything's going to be okay, that they're brave and strong and they've got an amazing life ahead of them full of so many experiences and allow yourself to just sit with this memory and sit with this feeling and ask your inner child what they need what they're feeling what they are experiencing and be that for them be the person you need for yourself because now you can in the moment They might have been helpless. They might have not had the capability to express what they needed. They might have not known. But now with this hindsight, with the power of this exercise, you can go back and kind of close that loop. And this sounds kind of strange, I know, but I believe it can be tremendously healing. I've found it incredibly useful. You can now be essentially on an emotional level, on an energetic level, that powerful comforting adult figure that that other half of you is seeking out in the world. We tend so often to externalize and we go around looking for people to fix us, to make us feel whole. We are ignoring the fact that we now have that capability. We just need to take that power into our hands. So take some real time to sit with these feelings and kind of experience these emotions and just care for that inner version of yourself that never got what it needed in the moment. Be the person they needed. Once you've taken some time to go through the experience and sit with your inner child and feed them the emotion and the healing that they need, the next step is to begin to integrate them back into your current self. To rewire the meaning you have attributed to that particular memory or event. Ask yourself if in this frozen moment in time in the past if your inner child came up with a decision about who they had to be or what they had to do to get love or be valuable or that they had to hide away or that they had to do the specific thing in the world in order to feel okay and realize that those patterns that the younger version of you integrated into themselves in this moment are often the very same patterns we struggle with as adults and that have very real ramifications in your current life. You are looking at the source, and now you have the potential to both heal it and rewire it into a new positive meaning. So look and see if your inner child decided anything about the world as a result of this event. Did they decide that they had to be cold and detached? Did they decide that they had to be perfect for everybody to love them? Did they decide that they had to... go around people pleasing or mediating conflicts and trying to make sure everybody else was okay in order to hopefully get their own needs met What did your inner child decide as a result of this event of this memory and you might experience some? resentment or even anger at your younger self for Realizing that you know all they screwed up my life but they were just the emotional reactions of an insecure little kid who didn't know what to do and they were really doing the best they could and it's about loving them and forgiving them and noticing how far you've come anyway, but also realizing you now have the power to let go of these patterns. Maybe there's a story you came up with that you had to react a certain way or you had to be a certain way, but maybe as a side effect of that, you became a more caring person. You became a more loving person. You learned how to make sure that other people were protected. Maybe something happened to you and you decided you were never going to let anything like that happen to other people. Maybe it made you stronger. Oftentimes these experiences have hidden benefits that we can choose to see there's a good side. Something that we otherwise might not have developed in the same way. A characteristic that we are proud of in our modern lives. that might stem from these traumatic memories. Look at the beliefs or patterns of behavior that you might have formed as a result of this particular memory, this experience, and ask yourself, does this still serve me? Am I still benefiting from expressing this pattern in my life? Is it getting me the results I want? And if it's not, can I let go of it? Can I decide that I no longer need this childhood survival mechanism that I've developed? Can I see it objectively for what it is? Not intrinsically part of who I am, but the survival mechanism of a frightened child who was just trying to do the best they could. And it might've worked. It might've gotten them so far in life. It might've protected them through that vulnerable period in their childhood. But now you might be in a place where you want to be able to open up to people. You want to be able to experience a loving relationship and you don't want to be clingy and needy, but you don't want to push people away, but you do. don't know how to do that, you can start to let go of these childhood patterns by noticing that is what they are. They're not you, they are a twisted survival strategy created by a frightened kid. Ask, how many of these are still serving me? They might have been intended to protect me, I might have tried to become a protector, but am I overdoing it? Are there things that I can let go of? Things that are warping my perspective and making my life now? harder than it otherwise would be. Things that I can decide to shed and no longer be part of who I am. Notice those things and start to let go of your attachment to them and then give that inner child another big hug and feel them merge back into you and you're done. This is probably not going to be a one and done type of thing. This is the kind of thing you might need to repeat several times or just once every so often going forward so that you continue to move. move forward and you remember what you want to express in your life versus the patterns that are part of those past child memories. You can go back on different occasions to heal different memories, to go back to different experiences or different traumas and be there for yourself now in the way that nobody was able to in the time in a way that I have found personally very healing. It's very empowering to be able to go back and kind of reclaim your energy. from these frozen moments in time that are still affecting the way you perceive current reality, even though they happened maybe decades ago. It can be challenging and painful to go back and experience those things all over again, but by doing so, you free yourself to an entirely new type of expression in the world. You begin to see things from a different perspective and understand your own thought process on a whole new level and see that you might not be as limited as you think you are. as you thought you were and more importantly than that even, you can go back and heal those wounds and come to some sort of even positive experience as a result of the past trauma that you had interpreted negatively. You can begin to rewrite your own story in a way that has tremendously positive implications for the future of your life. You can transform yourself from being a victim to being a hero and I believe that in an interview. of itself has pretty profound implications for transforming your life. This can just be a really healing methodology for a lot of people and I've found it very valuable. I hope you do as well. There are some great guided meditations you can find on YouTube to go through this process. You can, like I said, journal it out, write the whole thing down. You can just visualize it or imagine it as vividly as possible. Whatever methodology works best for you, I strongly suggest you do. do it, I have found it very profoundly healing for myself to just understand myself in a new way and to begin to let go of those patterns of being clingy and attached. And now when I feel those things come up, when I'm, you know, talking to somebody I'm attracted to or whatever, and I feel that neediness come up, it's like this weird, you can, you'd be like, oh, that is not me. That is a pattern on autopilot that is trying to express itself. And when you have that level of awareness, there's a choice because then you get to decide whether you are going to act the way you previously would have always acted or the entire whole new world of choices open up to you because you no longer are a slave to those automated patterns. And that is so helpful and so illuminating to the broader perspective of life and what you can be and who you can be in the world. If you'd like to learn more about the process of letting. go specifically processing those old emotions and patterns and kind of freeing yourself not just from the childhood ones but from kind of all of them or as many years built up inside you as possible check out this video right here where I go through the four steps to just letting go of all the emotional patterns we've stored within us that are controlling our life and warping our perception on reality and how we can kind of let go of those things through experiencing the emotion, through feeling it to heal it, we can transform our life in an incredibly positive way. That's a video that a lot of people have liked and it pairs very well with this topic so I strongly suggest you checking that out. Aside from that, thank you so much for watching. I appreciate you and we will see you next time. Bye bye.

exists. So today we're going to talk about what the inner child is, where it comes from, what it does, and how it interacts with us in our life, and most importantly how we can heal in a way that has profound implications for our personal future and can be very transformative to the way we live our lives. So what is inner child healing in the first place?

Sometimes it's called inner child work. It is a form of what is sometimes called shadow work, which is essentially work on your subconscious mind. Subconscious is the part of the mind that does things that we don't have to think about, like knowing how to walk or talk or understand somebody who's speaking.

When we don't have something ingrained into our subconscious, when we're learning a language, for example, it can be very challenging because we have to consciously think about what the meaning of each word is and try to interpret it and understand it. That's very difficult, but once it becomes subconscious, it is automated. Your brain does the work for you without you having to think about it. That is the power of the subconscious mind.

But what can happen is if we are not careful, we can ingrain patterns into our subconscious mind that then run on that autopilot and are operating in the background that no longer serve our best interest. Some of the things that sometimes hold us back in life can actually be these subconscious patterns that we believe are true, where we've integrated this behavior and these actions so deeply into ourselves that they are like walking or talking. They're automatic to the point where we don't think about them anymore, but they have a profound impact on how we interact with the world, how we see the world, and what we do on a daily basis. Because here's the thing, right? Our subconscious doesn't know if something is good or bad.

It just gets a program and it runs it. is essentially like a computer. It does a great job at just keeping those things running. But there can be problems with that. Let's say as a child, you maybe had to be a peacekeeper between your parents, right?

They argued a lot and it was your job to kind of make sure everybody in the family was happy. Or maybe you felt betrayed by your parents and decided you had to take care of yourself. You couldn't trust anybody. Or maybe you felt that you only got love and validation. You got your needs met when...

you performed a certain way, when you were perfect or didn't have any problems of your own, you were able to take care of other people, that's when you got the love and affection you wanted from your parents, right? What can happen is, as children, we form these subconscious belief systems. We think that as long as I take care of other people, as long as I give them what they need, then they'll take care of me, then they'll love me back, and then I get to feel okay about myself. These are experiences that a lot of people have as children that...

They internalize into that subconscious mind. This program is now running on autopilot behind the scenes in so many lives. It doesn't have to be just those things.

Those are just examples. There are many ways where these kind of insidious patterns we formed as children, as coping strategies, become a pattern that we repeat over and over and over through our adult lives, not really noticing. And then people will find themselves now as an adult. desperately craving that validation, trying to be perfect so that everybody loves them in the world and being confused when they don't get the love or adoration they need. Or maybe they're petrified to take any action because they think they need to be perfect for people to approve of them.

Or maybe they have trust issues in relationships and push people away and kind of act a little bit cold because they have that wound that says, if I let anybody get close to me, then they'll hurt me. These are the adult expressions of those inner child wounds we have formed that are unhealed they are still influencing our behavior 10 20 30 or more years after the event itself happened because we have not gone in and questioned those behavior patterns that we've inscribed into that subconscious mind and it also doesn't always matter how bad things that happened to you were it's not really about that you had to have some terrible terrible childhood to form these childhood wounds because the experiences we have as children are filtered through a very immature mindset. So don't judge yourself if you feel like you have some of these things and you're like, man, nothing that bad really happened to me.

Realize that it is judged through the perspective of a very immature child. So everything can feel traumatizing and scary to a three-year-old. We have a very warped perspective of reality and we are just little kids trying to do the very best we can to understand the world. So we decide things. Like, well, mom and dad like it when I'm perfect, so I'll just be perfect.

Great. And we don't realize how twisted and terrible that can be when taken to an extent until we're 30, 40 years old and crippled by perfectionism. We're afraid to let anybody see us be less than perfect.

And we don't realize that it is just an expression of that internalized pattern from when we were like four years old that has been built on for years and years and years. Those Patterns, once they are inscribed into that subconscious mind, we just start to repeat them over and over. We think that's something that is true to the way we need to be in the world to get our needs met.

That is not necessarily true. These inner child wounds we want to heal are essentially the subconscious echoes, kind of these patterns that we have ingrained into ourselves as the result of trauma or maybe the story we came up with as a result to trauma that influence our lives now. Maybe...

decades afterwards because we have not gone back and healed and given new meaning to those past experiences. We've allowed those moments to replay in our heads over and over and over. And until we go back and examine them, we will never understand why we're doing some of the weird things we do or why we feel anxiety or fear or jealousy in situations that objectively don't make that much sense. If you've ever noticed that about yourself, Like, why did I get so angry about that?

Why did that make me feel so insecure? It wasn't really that big of a deal. It's because it triggers that internal child wound where everything feels so big and scary and real and it hits that core fear of like being worthless or abandoned and your body goes, oh, that's why.

A lot of people develop pretty twisted coping strategies like, you know, trying to be perfect or please everybody in the world or never show any flaws never connect with anybody so that they don't risk getting hurt. And those things that help us get through those traumatic periods in our childhood don't necessarily translate very well to real life. And having healthy relationships as adults in particular can be very damaging to have these kinds of childhood patterns running because they affect the way you can bond emotionally with other people. Whether you're going to be super needy or super avoidant is...

frequently a function of these kinds of internal child wounds that are running on autopilot. And these wounds tend to form around feelings or fears of insecurity, unworthiness, unlovable-ness, the feeling of not being whole or being less than everybody else. These things that are abandonment maybe, these things are intrinsically terrifying when you were a child because you are completely dependent on your primary caregivers for everything, right?

You have no ability to really cope with anything in the world. You need this person to give you pretty much everything. And so any insecurity in that relationship, any fear or threat to that pipeline of your needs being met is intrinsically terrifying to a child.

And that is the kind of emotional trigger which is set with these patterns. It's a very... visceral like we'll die if this doesn't go our way kind of thing which explains why later in life like you get broken up within a relationship and it feels like you're gonna die it's not rational anymore because you can now take care of yourself but it's hitting that same trigger and that's why it can feel so earth-shattering it's because it's hitting those childhood patterns in my own life that fear of never being good enough or never being enough led to paralysis when it came to anything challenging i loved like school, I was getting good grades, college, all of that was great as long as I was sure that I would get like a 4.0 or I would get the perfect grade.

Then I could maintain that image of perfection, be like, you know, I'm always the one doing everything right. I'm getting all the good grades. But whenever there was an area of ambiguity or like, you know, multiple right answers, it wasn't so clear what to do.

I would freeze because I was like, I had to do the right thing to to function in the world and when there was not a clear right answer it was like existentially terrifying. I would also experience attracting people into my life who were kind of emotionally unavailable and then trying to fix them. I think on some twisted level I thought that you know like if I could fix them then they would never leave me because that inner unworthiness thing was like you need somebody who's gonna stick around right you don't You can't show them who you really are or they'll leave you.

So by fixing people, I could get them to stick around forever because then they'd need me. It's kind of fucked up, really. But it's one of those methods that that twisted, terrified inner child can say, you know what, I'm gonna die if this stuff doesn't go right.

I need to make sure it works a certain way. It's very unrealistic perhaps, but it doesn't make it feel less intense in the moment. And this is a huge component of why there are so many dysfunctional relationships going around.

It's because people are trying to live out those childhood patterns over and over and over through relationships. That inner child is still in there on repeat, looking for somebody out in the world who's gonna fix them, who's gonna solve their problems and meet their needs, but it's not. mom and dad anymore, right? So they're kind of projecting themselves through your current day self as you go through and repeat the same patterns. You're still looking for somebody to come save you.

And here's the thing. Nobody is going to come save you. There's nobody who's going to come fix you.

There's nobody who's going to come solve all those problems and make you feel whole inside. Never going to happen. But there's great news. You can be that one person that you are looking for to fix you.

Nobody else can turn that energy inward and realize you have the capability to save yourself So how do you do that? You need to go back and heal the wound yourself And the very first step to this process is simply awareness becoming aware of these patterns and behaviors that we are Running on autopilot because until we know they're there. How are we supposed to change them? Right like How do you fix a problem that you cannot see? So something you can do right off the bat is whenever you feel triggered or whenever you notice yourself having a disproportionate reaction, maybe you get really angry or jealous or sad about something that was not objectively that big of a deal, take a second to notice that happening and then pull your perspective back just for a split second and ask, where is this coming from?

Why am I doing this? Is this helpful at all? And you realize, probably not.

And then you go, Well, why is this a part of me? Like, where does this come from? Where does the voice of that inner critic come from? That you're not good enough, you suck. Well, what are you doing there?

You're not good enough for that person. Oh, you can never do that. Don't try.

Where do those feelings of shame and unworthiness come from? Where does that guilt and hatred and anger come from within you? So step one is simply to start noticing, to become aware of those patterns that are running under your normal perception that you normally don't see. Just start to notice when you do things and say, Why did I do that? Just be curious.

Just have a little bit of fun with it. It's kind of weird, but just go with it for a while. That is step one. You can do that passively throughout your day-to-day life.

Really easy. You don't even have to put very much effort into it. Just notice it.

Be like, oh, huh, curious. Secondly, there are active steps you can take. And these don't have to be like chronological, by the way. You don't have to do the awareness thing first. You can do them both at the same time.

This involves diving deep into your past and engaging in a dialogue with yourself. You can do this via journaling or meditation or just visualization and imagining. It's important to remember that this is not the process about like finding somebody to blame, it's not about saying everything that happened to you is your parents fault, it's not about looking at your childhood as for excuses as to why your life's not where you want to be. This is about going back and healing the wounds that are repeating on autopilot.

It's about healing the past, not finding more reasons to get stuck in it. So try to go in with an open mind and not an attitude of anger or blame. If those things come up a little bit, it's okay, but just do your best to release them and realize that it's not about attaching more to the past.

It's about letting go of it. So try to have that as your frame of reference. Give yourself some time and space to just experience this and sit with it. I'd say maybe half an hour, probably want to do it in your room or someplace where you won't be interrupted. The first time I did it, I thought it was a little weird.

I thought it was a little out there. I didn't know what to expect and I ended up Like bawling my eyes out for like 20 minutes So just be prepared to have an emotional response because you are connecting with those unhealed traumatic Experiences from your childhood But the good news is by doing this you are able to bring healing to those past patterns and kind of set yourself on a New path in life. So you're gonna have a dialogue with your inner child And if you're journaling you can write down, you know both perspectives. If you're meditating or visualizing, you imagine yourself in both roles or imagine the conversation. Once you get into it, you'll kind of know intrinsically like what to do.

And it's not really about doing it right anyway. It's about feeling through the experience and healing it. So just go with what feels right.

What you want to do is remember a time as a child where you felt stuck or you felt hurt or you felt... abandoned. You felt like maybe nobody was around to take care of you or meet your needs.

You didn't know what to do. Maybe this was a traumatic memory. Maybe this was some time that you created a judgment.

You decided I have to be. This way I have to make sure everybody likes me. Something that sticks out to you.

Don't worry too much about choosing like the perfect memory. You can definitely do this multiple times so it doesn't really matter. But also just trust yourself to kind of come up with a few off the top of your head and whichever one feels most pressing, just that's probably the right one for you. So don't stress too much. Take some time to recreate the memory in your imagination.

To relive it but from the perspective of a third person. Objectively able to... watch and see what happens, to see whatever the younger version of you is feeling or experiencing in that moment when nobody else was there for them.

And then imagine yourself being able to give that younger version of yourself a hug, to go pick them up, to say, hey, I got you. I'm going to take care of you. I love you. Whatever it is that they needed in that moment, tell them everything's going to be okay, that they're brave and strong and they've got an amazing life ahead of them full of so many experiences and allow yourself to just sit with this memory and sit with this feeling and ask your inner child what they need what they're feeling what they are experiencing and be that for them be the person you need for yourself because now you can in the moment They might have been helpless.

They might have not had the capability to express what they needed. They might have not known. But now with this hindsight, with the power of this exercise, you can go back and kind of close that loop. And this sounds kind of strange, I know, but I believe it can be tremendously healing. I've found it incredibly useful.

You can now be essentially on an emotional level, on an energetic level, that powerful comforting adult figure that that other half of you is seeking out in the world. We tend so often to externalize and we go around looking for people to fix us, to make us feel whole. We are ignoring the fact that we now have that capability. We just need to take that power into our hands. So take some real time to sit with these feelings and kind of experience these emotions and just care for that inner version of yourself that never got what it needed in the moment.

Be the person they needed. Once you've taken some time to go through the experience and sit with your inner child and feed them the emotion and the healing that they need, the next step is to begin to integrate them back into your current self. To rewire the meaning you have attributed to that particular memory or event.

Ask yourself if in this frozen moment in time in the past if your inner child came up with a decision about who they had to be or what they had to do to get love or be valuable or that they had to hide away or that they had to do the specific thing in the world in order to feel okay and realize that those patterns that the younger version of you integrated into themselves in this moment are often the very same patterns we struggle with as adults and that have very real ramifications in your current life. You are looking at the source, and now you have the potential to both heal it and rewire it into a new positive meaning. So look and see if your inner child decided anything about the world as a result of this event.

Did they decide that they had to be cold and detached? Did they decide that they had to be perfect for everybody to love them? Did they decide that they had to... go around people pleasing or mediating conflicts and trying to make sure everybody else was okay in order to hopefully get their own needs met What did your inner child decide as a result of this event of this memory and you might experience some?

resentment or even anger at your younger self for Realizing that you know all they screwed up my life but they were just the emotional reactions of an insecure little kid who didn't know what to do and they were really doing the best they could and it's about loving them and forgiving them and noticing how far you've come anyway, but also realizing you now have the power to let go of these patterns. Maybe there's a story you came up with that you had to react a certain way or you had to be a certain way, but maybe as a side effect of that, you became a more caring person. You became a more loving person. You learned how to make sure that other people were protected. Maybe something happened to you and you decided you were never going to let anything like that happen to other people.

Maybe it made you stronger. Oftentimes these experiences have hidden benefits that we can choose to see there's a good side. Something that we otherwise might not have developed in the same way. A characteristic that we are proud of in our modern lives. that might stem from these traumatic memories.

Look at the beliefs or patterns of behavior that you might have formed as a result of this particular memory, this experience, and ask yourself, does this still serve me? Am I still benefiting from expressing this pattern in my life? Is it getting me the results I want?

And if it's not, can I let go of it? Can I decide that I no longer need this childhood survival mechanism that I've developed? Can I see it objectively for what it is? Not intrinsically part of who I am, but the survival mechanism of a frightened child who was just trying to do the best they could.

And it might've worked. It might've gotten them so far in life. It might've protected them through that vulnerable period in their childhood.

But now you might be in a place where you want to be able to open up to people. You want to be able to experience a loving relationship and you don't want to be clingy and needy, but you don't want to push people away, but you do. don't know how to do that, you can start to let go of these childhood patterns by noticing that is what they are.

They're not you, they are a twisted survival strategy created by a frightened kid. Ask, how many of these are still serving me? They might have been intended to protect me, I might have tried to become a protector, but am I overdoing it? Are there things that I can let go of? Things that are warping my perspective and making my life now?

harder than it otherwise would be. Things that I can decide to shed and no longer be part of who I am. Notice those things and start to let go of your attachment to them and then give that inner child another big hug and feel them merge back into you and you're done. This is probably not going to be a one and done type of thing.

This is the kind of thing you might need to repeat several times or just once every so often going forward so that you continue to move. move forward and you remember what you want to express in your life versus the patterns that are part of those past child memories. You can go back on different occasions to heal different memories, to go back to different experiences or different traumas and be there for yourself now in the way that nobody was able to in the time in a way that I have found personally very healing.

It's very empowering to be able to go back and kind of reclaim your energy. from these frozen moments in time that are still affecting the way you perceive current reality, even though they happened maybe decades ago. It can be challenging and painful to go back and experience those things all over again, but by doing so, you free yourself to an entirely new type of expression in the world.

You begin to see things from a different perspective and understand your own thought process on a whole new level and see that you might not be as limited as you think you are. as you thought you were and more importantly than that even, you can go back and heal those wounds and come to some sort of even positive experience as a result of the past trauma that you had interpreted negatively. You can begin to rewrite your own story in a way that has tremendously positive implications for the future of your life.

You can transform yourself from being a victim to being a hero and I believe that in an interview. of itself has pretty profound implications for transforming your life. This can just be a really healing methodology for a lot of people and I've found it very valuable. I hope you do as well.

There are some great guided meditations you can find on YouTube to go through this process. You can, like I said, journal it out, write the whole thing down. You can just visualize it or imagine it as vividly as possible.

Whatever methodology works best for you, I strongly suggest you do. do it, I have found it very profoundly healing for myself to just understand myself in a new way and to begin to let go of those patterns of being clingy and attached. And now when I feel those things come up, when I'm, you know, talking to somebody I'm attracted to or whatever, and I feel that neediness come up, it's like this weird, you can, you'd be like, oh, that is not me. That is a pattern on autopilot that is trying to express itself. And when you have that level of awareness, there's a choice because then you get to decide whether you are going to act the way you previously would have always acted or the entire whole new world of choices open up to you because you no longer are a slave to those automated patterns.

And that is so helpful and so illuminating to the broader perspective of life and what you can be and who you can be in the world. If you'd like to learn more about the process of letting. go specifically processing those old emotions and patterns and kind of freeing yourself not just from the childhood ones but from kind of all of them or as many years built up inside you as possible check out this video right here where I go through the four steps to just letting go of all the emotional patterns we've stored within us that are controlling our life and warping our perception on reality and how we can kind of let go of those things through experiencing the emotion, through feeling it to heal it, we can transform our life in an incredibly positive way.

That's a video that a lot of people have liked and it pairs very well with this topic so I strongly suggest you checking that out. Aside from that, thank you so much for watching. I appreciate you and we will see you next time.

Bye bye.

Transcript for:Transformational Journey of Inner Child Healing

Transcript for:
Transformational Journey of Inner Child Healing