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เด็กในตัวเราและการบาดแผลทางใจ

well welcome to another friday night um we've been working through a series on complex trauma recovery really is learning to re-parent ourselves and part of what originally comes to a person's mind as soon as they hear this term re-parenting is the thought of an inner child and that's what i want to just talk about tonight to really help you understand better what we mean when we talk about this inner child because there's a lot of misunderstandings initially for people around that really basically it's learning to re-parent the wounded part of yourself that's what we're talking about now there's been so much written about this over the last 10 years and there's so much stuff on the internet on youtube so i don't want to go into tons of detail on it i just want to give you really comprehensive teaching that will lay a foundation in understanding so kind of a thorough introduction to this whole concept of an inner child now i have to tell you that for many people when they hear talk about inner child because it's becoming such a common term that's bantered about for many they immediately go that's just hokey that's just weird psychological mumbo-jumbo don't really want any part of it or they go to i can't quite wrap my head around i don't feel some inner child inside of me so i'm not sure what you're talking about and so they just can't connect to this whole concept and and so that's really what i want to focus on today is just helping you maybe connect better to this concept of an inner child now if you're looking for resources um really somebody has done a lot of really important pioneer work around the inner child from the context of trauma it's the late john bradshaw he passed away just a few years ago but he wrote the book called homecoming and has done all kinds of different things around the inner child and i'm going to borrow some of his material today just because it's very helpful so i want to begin with the definition he gives it i think is a very good definition of what we're talking about when we talk about about the inner child so he says it's the part of you that got repressed that you weren't allowed to express as you were growing up the parts of you or he says it's the part of you that is made up of unresolved childhood experiences so the painful things that happened to you that you weren't allowed to resolve so they got repressed left unresolved that's your inner child that part of you so the it's the hurt you the rejected you the parts of you that you had to hide because if you showed them you got rejected abandoned punished made fun of so it's the part of you that was never validated or accepted and so it's the wounds that you picked up as a child that were never allowed to heal so that's all part of what we're talking about with this inner child this wounded part of you now let me just see if i can put it into a way that might help you connect a little bit better i would say your inner child is kind of the part of you that got left behind the part of you that got rejected and abandoned and hidden so think of it this way it's really the brain's way of responding to hurt that can't be resolved in a child so let's say that you are expressed a lot of sadness growing up and immediately your family judges you that you're bad for being sad go to your room don't come out to your happy and so all of a sudden you realize wow if i show sadness then i get rejected i don't get loved so i don't like being sad i don't like this part of me that's sad so i'm gonna push it down lock it away never let it be seen again so i'm gonna get rid of one emotion and then you find out you you have a lot of anger that comes out because life is unfair you're getting hurt a lot but every time you show anger you get the same response you get judged you get rejected nobody loves you so you say i hate this part of me that's anger i'm going to lock that away and then you find out that you're quite shy you're an introvert but everybody makes fun of you for that and they they make it sound like you're inferior because you're shy and so you you go i hate the fact that i'm so shy and you reject that part of you lock it away and try to wear a mask and so everything you lock away you wear a mask to try to create what you think people are wanting and then you're made fun of for being sensitive and so you try to lock that away so over the years of childhood as you express different parts of yourself and they are not accepted you're not loved if you express that you lock that away you wish you could cut it out of yourself you hate those parts of you and so you lock them away in a closet and it's like part of you the wounded part of you that was rejected got left behind and the rest of you was allowed to grow up so but here's what i want you to see at first you lock those parts of you away because other people rejected them but did you see what began to happen is eventually you rejected those parts of yourself you hated those parts of yourself and the reason is is they rejected those parts of you and you believed that if you didn't stop them you would be abandoned you would not be loved so you saw those parts of you as bad as getting in the way of love of being loved as something that would cause people to abandon you not just your family and so you hated that you had those parts that would cause others to be abandoned so take it further not only did you reject those parts of yourself you actually abandoned those parts of yourself so because you didn't want anybody else to abandon these parts over here you rejected and abandoned those parts over there so that you would never be abandoned so there's parts of you that you are not just left behind there's parts of you that you've rejected and abandoned and do not like and so your inner child is the part of you that wasn't allowed to express itself wasn't allowed to grow it's all of the pain the wounds all of the parts of you that weren't loved weren't accepted and so those parts are stuck in the past but here's two problems that i want you to understand though those rejected parts of you that's still part of you you may have locked it away you may have abandoned it yourself but it's still part of you but here's what i want you to see in rejecting those parts of you you've become less human now you have not a full range of emotions you only allow a few emotions so you're not a full human you're less than human but more than that you're less than who you really are because you've cut away parts of yourself so they're still there but they're cut away so you're wanting to be less human less you in order to get accepted and so what happens because of that is people in complex trauma go i don't really know who i am i've locked away parts i basically don't have many emotions that i feel or express i wear mass all the time and so as soon as you start rejecting parts of yourself and wearing masks you don't know who you are but there's a second problem that comes out of this you may think you've locked everything away and it doesn't affect you but that wounded part of you still affects you today it might have been wounded 40 50 years ago but it can still affect your behavior today so to lock it away does not mean it's no longer there and it doesn't matter and it doesn't affect you no it still does and it affects you in negative ways let me explain that we talk all the time in recovery about the reality of triggers so if somebody disrespects you or somebody treats you like you're stupid all of a sudden you can just lose it and in those moments you can do a lot of damage when you lose it because you go to in a nanosecond to anger to lashing out what is a trigger a trigger is your wounded child getting the wound of the childhood pot and it's going ouch and it's reacting so what happens today you get disrespected yes it happened today but what i want you to see it's something that happened also 40 years ago and that's what's causing you to react the way you do today it's not about just what happened today it's that you're still being affected by an unhealed wound from 40 years ago your inner child the wounded part of you is being hurt again and it is responding and so it's something that happened years ago that hasn't healed and it still affects your behavior today okay some of you might be saying okay i'm still not quite sure i connect to this idea of an inner child that there's some part of me that i've abandoned so let me give you a test and it's a very simple test it's just six indicators that you have abandoned parts of yourself so number one you deny or repress inner feelings in order to avoid conflict so you're willing to say what i want doesn't matter because i have to stay safe so i won't stand up for me or what i believe in order to avoid conflict because in conflict somebody's going to get hurt so you are willing to abandon yourself to not get hurt that's a sign of self-abandonment second one avoid you avoid setting boundaries or confronting those who cross your boundaries so again you're not willing to stand up for yourself you've abandoned yourself because you want to please others or avoid conflict or you go into a new relationship and you see all kinds of red flags but you ignore them so you don't stand up for what's best for you by listening to the red flags you've abandoned yourself or you use drugs or alcohol to self medicate you don't want to pay attention to the pain and resolve it in a healthy way you just want to numb it and make it go away you've abandoned that part of yourself you say yes when you really want to say no you abandon part of yourself you withhold your desires wants or needs in a relationship in order to not seem needy so you don't tell people what you need or want because you're afraid they might reject you so again you don't stand up for yourself you've abandoned part of yourself okay now let me give you another test and we're gonna do three tests here in total this one is okay i think maybe i might have this inner child this wounded part of me but i'm not sure so this is known as an inner child suspicion questionnaire and if you answer any of the questions yes you can expect that there's this inner child in you has been wounded there's a part of you that has been wounded and so because there's degrees of woundedness you're going to be somewhere on a scale of mildly wounded to severely wounded and the more questions you answer yes the more severely wounded you have been okay so 16 questions do you have or have you had in the past an ingestive addiction in other words overeating over drinking over drugging that's a sign that you're there's something wounded inside of you two do you have trouble trusting your ability to get your needs met do you believe you must find someone to meet them for you yes or no three do you find it hard to trust other people do you feel you must be in control at all times yes or no those are indicators that there's a wounded part of you four do you fail to recognize bodily signals of physical need for example do you eat when you're not even hungry or are you often not aware how tired you are yes or no five do you neglect your physical needs do you ignore good nutrition or fail to get enough exercise or rest do you go to a doctor or dentist only if there's an emergency number six do you have deep fears of abandonment do you feel or have you ever felt desperate because a love relationship ended yes or no seven have you considered suicide because a love relationship has ended your lover has left you or your spouse filed for a divorce number eight do you often feel that you don't truly fit in or belong anywhere do you feel that people don't really welcome you or want your presence number nine in social situations do you try to be invisible so that no one will notice you number ten do you try to be so helpful even be indispensable in your love relationships that the other person friend lover spouse child parent cannot leave you number 11 is oral sex something you most desire or fantasize about that's a very interesting one i don't have time to explain the connection to that wounded person inside of you number 12 do you have great needs to be touched and held this is often manifested by your needing to touch or hug others without them even asking you to 13. do you have a continual and obsessive need to be valued and esteemed 14. are you often biting and sarcastic to others 15. do you isolate yourself and stay alone a lot of the time do you often feel it's not worth trying to have a relationship 16. are you often gullible do you accept others opinions or swallow things whole without thinking them through how did you do on that all of those indicate there's something wounded in you that you're responding to with unhealthy things and so again the more you have the more wounded you are now i want to go to a very detailed questionnaire and this comes out of john bradshaw's work but it's a wounded child questionnaire so again do i have my inner child what what are its wounds and what indicates that i have this inner child so we're going to begin with identity so i experience anxiety and fear whenever i contemplate doing anything new yes or no number two i'm a people pleaser nice guy a sweetheart and have no identity of my own outside of pleasing everybody or number three i'm a rebel i feel alive when i'm in conflict or four in the deepest places of my secret self i felt there is something wrong with me five i'm a hoarder i have trouble letting go of anything number six i feel inadequate as a man or as a woman seven i'm confused about my sexual identity eight i feel guilty when i stand up for myself and would rather give in to others nine i have trouble starting things ten i have trouble finishing things eleven i rarely have a thought of my own twelve i continually criticize myself for being inadequate thirteen i consider myself a terrible sinner and i'm afraid i'm going to hell fourteen i'm rigid and perfectionistic 15. i feel like i never measure up never get anything right 16. i feel like i really don't know what i want 17 i'm driven to be a super achiever 18 i believe i don't really matter except when i'm sexual i'm afraid i'll be rejected and abandoned if i'm not a good lover 19 my life is empty i feel depressed a lot of the time and 20 i don't really know who i am i'm not sure what my values are or what i think about things so those are questions around identity and it's the identity of somebody very wounded next one are basic needs that reveal deep wounds i'm out of touch with my bodily needs i don't know when i'm tired hungry or horny number two i don't like being touched number three i often have sex when i don't really want to four i have had or currently have an eating disorder five i am ashamed of my bodily functions six i rarely know what i feel seven i feel ashamed when i get mad eight i rarely get mad but when i do i rage nine i fear other people's anger and i will do almost anything to control it ten i'm ashamed when i cry 11 i'm ashamed when i'm scared 12. i almost never express unpleasant emotions 13 i'm hung up on oral sex 14 i'm obsessed with sex 15 i'm obsessed with sadomasochistic sex 16 i spend an inordinate amount of time looking at pornography 17 i've exhibited myself sexually in a way that violates others 18 i'm sexually attracted to children and i worry that i might act it out in other words deeply wounded people usually have sexual issues 19 i have sleep disorders 20. i believe that food and or sex is my greatest need so those are how woundedness affects my response to my basic needs the next one is how woundedness affects how i approach socialness number one i basically distrust everyone including myself number two i have been or am now married to an addict three i am obsessive and controlling in my relationship four i am an addict five i'm isolated and afraid of people especially authority figures six i hate being alone and i'll do almost anything to avoid it seven i find myself doing what i think others expect of me eight i avoid conflict at all cost nine i rarely say no to another suggestions and feel that another suggestion is almost an order to be obeyed ten i have an over developed sense of responsibility it is easier for me to be concerned with another than with myself eleven i often do not say no directly and then refuse to do what others ask in a variety of manipulative indirect and passive ways twelve i don't know how to resolve conflicts with others i either overpower my opponent or completely withdraw from them 13. i rarely ask for clarification of statements i don't understand 14. i frequently guess that what another's statement means and respond to it based on my guess 15. i never felt close to one or both of my parents 16 i confused love with pity and tend to love people i can pity seventeen i ridicule myself and others if they make a mistake eighteen i give in easily and conform to the group nineteen i'm fiercely competitive and a poor loser 20 my most profound fear is the fear of abandonment and i'll do anything to hold on to a relationship and then at the end of the test says this if you answered yes to 10 or more of these questions you need to do some serious work so what i want you to understand is for most people coming out of complex trauma you've got lots of wounds from childhood and until you learn to parent re-parent that wounded part of you you're going to continue to have problems in adult life and next week we're going to look at re-parenting that wounded part of me and my inner child and how to do it but let me just go to a couple other things for today that wounded child initially is in pain and doesn't want to be in pain they try to resolve the problem often it doesn't work but what we've come up with are seven what we call inner child archetypes and what we mean by that is the brain's initial response to the wounded child adaptations it does to try to protect the child from getting hurt again so those are the seven inner child archetypes so number one is the caretaker so this is the wounded child who doesn't want to get wounded again so the brain goes to let's set up codependent relationships where i gain my sense of value identity self-worth through helping others but i neglect my own needs and i believe the only way that i can get love is i have to care for others and earn their love and that means i have to ignore my own needs and make the needs of others the priority the second archetype is the overachiever and so basically is i don't want to get wounded today again so i need to be respected and that means i need to get it through doing through achieving through succeeding so i'm going to become the best at everything and then people will respect me value me and love me and i won't get hurt again then the third one is the underachiever and they go the way to not get hurt again is to keep myself small invisible under the radar unseen so that nobody will criticize me then because they don't notice me nobody will put me down or punish me because they won't see me or notice me so they take themselves out of life by isolating by never asserting themselves never putting their desires or opinions or needs out there they try to be unseen and part of what they hope is if i never cause create demands on anybody problems for anybody then maybe people will love me then the next one is the rescuer the protector and so they ferociously run around trying to help everybody in a crisis trying to heal them protect them get them out of the crisis be their savior be the hero and so they burn up all of their energy by finding people who need them creating dependent relationships with them people who are not helping themselves or not able to help themselves and they do everything for them and they go wow if i am their basically their savior i'm the one who takes care of them and meets all their needs then they're going to adore me and they're going to love me and value me the next one is the life of the party so the way i never get hurt again is i will be happy all the time i will be funny i will entertain others i will never show pain never show weakness never show vulnerability everything is going to be fun i'm going to make people laugh i'm going to keep everything light and so people will never get angry people never want to hurt me they'll like me i'll they want me at their parties they'll value me and that's their solution and then six the yes person so whatever you want i will drop everything i'm doing and do what you want i will be a people pleaser i will never say no to you i'll never set boundaries with you and so again you get drawn into whatever you want matters i will repress all of my desires all of my needs and serve you and please you and take care of you and we've covered many of these in the past and then the final one is the hero worshiper and what that basically means is if i adore you if i make you the center of my universe if i just pour all kinds of praise and adoration on you and constantly give you positive feedback and tell you how wonderful you are and do stuff for you and bend over backwards to support you will you love me back and so those are the seven art archetypes of what a wounded child initially might try to not get wounded again and those can become masks and roles that they play into adult life so let me take it to healing so like i said next week we're going to look at how do you connect with this wounded part of you because you've rejected it you've ignored it you've abandoned it and for some it's going to take a while to kind of be aware of that part of them and reconnect so that's next week but let me just give you some cautions there's three issues that many people need to be aware of so a lot of people when they hear that there's a wounded part of them they go okay i got to go and love that part of me and they want to rush in and just say oh i love you i love you but what you have to understand is that wounded part of you basically has your personality from when you were wounded and it doesn't trust you because you abandoned it you hated it you rejected it and so it's wary of you and if you come rushing in and you just want it to have a relationship with you it's not going yeah i've been waiting for you to come and i want to have a relationship with you right now no it's going i'm not sure i can trust you i'm not sure i've seen enough change in you to be convinced that you are going to stick with this relationship with me and so what you have to understand is that building a relationship with that wounded inner child the wounded part of you could take time before it begins to even open up to the idea of a relationship with you and before it can trust you the second thing i've seen so many people do is when they hear about this wounded part of them and they identify yeah i can feel it i see it they're in their limbic brain they're feeling all of this empathy they're feeling sorry for that wounded child and they want to rush and have a relationship with that wounded child but all of their motivation is coming from their limbic brain which is emotion driven what happens is a month down the road two months down the road when that empathy and that compassion for that wounded child kind of disappears and having a relationship with their wounded child gets boring gets to be a routine oh this is just too much work it's not fun anymore i'm not feeling all those warm emotions anymore and they start neglecting their inner child they start abandoning their inner child again and doing even more damage so don't rush to start a relationship with your inner child if it's coming from your limbic brain only start a relationship with your inner child if in your cortex you have thought it through and you have said this is a long-term commitment and i have to be willing to show up every day and i have to be willing to show up on days i don't feel like it and i have to be present every day i just can't go through the emotions without being present because if you do this inner child work without that kind of commitment from the cortex you're going to just re-traumatize and hurt that inner child and then the final thing is a lot of people say okay i want a relationship with my inner child and they think okay this will be like a one month or a two-month program i'm going to do with my inner child and it's going to all be good and then it's going to be fixed and i'll go back to my normal life no this is a relationship that's going to go on for the rest of your life because you're starting to relate to a part of you that you've cut yourself off from so trauma basically is dissociating or disconnecting from self and you've allowed yourself to reconnect with some parts of yourself but now in reparenting the wounded part of you you're now connecting with that part of you not in a temporary way but for the rest of your life now you want it to heal and you want it to grow and you want it to all be integrated as part of who you are again so that you can express that sensitivity and that sadness and be proud of that that's the way i am and be okay with being shy but there's still going to be this relationship you have with your interior life with your wounded self that goes on for the rest of your life so that is just an introduction i hope it just gives you a little bit to think about helps you connect a little bit with this concept and next week we'll come back and explore it further so that's the end of part one we're gonna take a short break come back for part two which is the christian part if you're not interested in that not a problem um we're not offended at all you're free to go we'll see you next week everybody else will be back in just a minute well welcome back we're getting near the end of our study in the book of ruth where we've been looking at the life of naomi and her daughter-in-law ruth and over the last two weeks we've had a new character that we've been looking at boaz and boaz is a relative of naomi's husband who has died and so he's known as a kinsmen redeemer and so two weeks ago we looked at ruth under naomi's direction going to boaz in the middle of the night when he was threshing grain and proposing to him and asking him to marry her and say because you're my kinsmen redeemer you have a responsibility to care for me and my ancestors because there's no other men in the immediate family to take care of us and so that's where we left it and we looked at what it means to be a kinsmen redeemer the sacrifice one must be willing to make so today boaz goes into action and he knows that there is actually a closer relative than he and so the closer relative has to get kind of the first opportunity to marry and be the kinsman redeemer and if he refuses then boaz can respond and decide whether to marry ruth or not and so what boaz then does is we're told as he goes to the town gate and he took a seat there now what's important to understand is the town gate in that culture was basically the city hall that's where the leaders of the town met and sat there that's where they talked about legal issues court cases problems policies laws that's where people who had a problem could go if they're looking for the authorities of the town to talk to about their problem and so all of that happened at the town gate and so that's why boaz goes there and so just then the family redeemer the closer relative he had mentioned came by so boaz called out to him come over here and sit down friend i want to talk to you so they sat down together then boaz called ten leaders from the town and asked them to sit as witnesses so these are the ten of the leaders who were at the city gate and and they were the heads of the main families of the town in other words they were the most respected powerful men in the city and why boys is calling them to come as witnesses is in that culture you didn't write down a legal contract you didn't have the paper to do that and so you would give a verbal contract with the person you were making contract with and then you would have the significant people of the town act as witnesses so if ever there was a debate down the road about the contract you would just bring in the witnesses and they said no that's not how it went down this is what was agreed to and so everything would be kept legal everything would be done properly and and then the other reason that these 10 witnesses were brought in is that if there was anything that wasn't being handled properly or legally by boaz they could point it out so they were the legal advisors the experts in the law in the customs of that town of that culture so boaz says to this family redeemer in the audience of these 10 witnesses you know naomi who came back from moab she is selling the land that belonged to our relative eliminate and so the purpose of the kinsmen redeemer was to buy the land so that it stayed in the family okay so he says i thought i should speak to you about it so that you can redeem it if you wish if you want the land then buy it here in the presence of these witnesses but if you don't want it let me know right away because i am next in line to redeem it after you so the man replies oh okay i'll redeem it now it's important to understand why he responds so quickly so we saw last time that the kinsmen redeemer let's say the land was a million dollars 10 million dollars he would buy it then he would have children with the wife and that land would go to those children but those children would not be considered his children they would be considered the children of the late husband so that when the wife died the children would get all the money and he would have no access so basically he would lose that million 10 million dollars it would be gone be gone to the that other person's family so there's a huge sacrifice so why does he agree so quickly well he thinks he's going to be marrying naomi naomi doesn't have any children and she's too old to have children and so what would happen in that case is once naomi dies the land would go back to him and to his existing children so the money would not leave his family in that case well boaz is ready for this response and so he says this of course your purchase of the land from naomi requires not that you marry naomi but that you marry ruth the moabite the widow ruth is substituting for naomi ruth is still young in her 20s she can have children and more than that she's a moabite she's cursed so if you marry her there's a good chance you're going to lose your money and if you marry her you're marrying somebody that people look down on and that could affect your reputation and so immediately the man says then i can't because this might endanger my own estate you redeem it i cannot do it so bo says okay and then we have this legal transaction so i'll explain it as we go now in those days it was the custom in israel for anyone transferring a rite of purchase to remove his sandal and hand it to the other party this publicly validated the transaction so the other family redeemer drew off his sandal and he said to boaz you buy the land and so what that was saying it was a metaphor is i am foregoing my right to walk on the soil of this land as if it was my own i'm giving you the right to walk on the soil of this land and make it your own what i want you to understand in all of this is here's this kinsman redeever and in his mind he has good reasons to reject taking care of naomi and ruth because but then it's easy to not think too deeply about those reasons because boaz is there and boaz is going to step in and do it but ultimately you see either a man who there's a selfishness there or a man who there's a prejudice against this other despised country and he's trying to say well no i'm just consid concerned about my own estate my own and my own children and their inheritance when really there's probably some unh very unhealthy stuff there and that just brings into greater focus boaz this man who is saying i'm not ashamed to identify with a mole bite widdle i'm not afraid of losing my millions of dollars and that she gets it a man stands in greater contrast because of this other kinsmen redeemer to see how beautiful loving caring he has the true heart of god is the point he cares about the outcasts he cares about people that others are prejudiced against he isn't wrapped up in greed and getting more money he's care carried about meeting people's needs and i hope that just again challenges us and encourages us let's pray father thank you again for this example of boaz and again continue to create in us a heart like yours a heart that truly loves people and isn't hung up on the color of their skin isn't hung up on whether or not it might cost us a lot of money but we truly love the way you love amen well that's the end of another friday night thank you so much for being with us hope it's been helpful to you have a great weekend we'll see you next friday