Who's in Charge? You, or Your Inner Child?

Music. With many years experience as an eating disorder and bariatric therapist, I know exactly what it takes to help you break free from your diet history and develop a more healthy relationship with food.

Please follow this podcast to make sure you don't miss a thing. Today, I wanted to chat about something which is hugely important in terms of you understanding yourself, understanding your emotions and your reactions. And that is the understanding of the two parts of you, the adult part and the child part. I've spent the last few weeks writing an online course called Connect to Your Inner Child. So I've been deep into this for a few weeks now.

And this is something I use quite a lot with the people that I see because it's a real way of understanding yourself, which is really, really important. So connecting those two parts. Now, the inner child, let me try and describe the inner child part of you. There's sort of positives and negatives for the inner child. It's the part of you which often feels scared or unsure.

It's the part of you that needs reassurance and guidance, but it's also the part of you that is really joyous and fun and creative and imaginative. So this isn't a part of you that you want to get rid of. You just need to learn to kind of recognize when it shows up and kind of learn how to have a conversation with it.

I know that sounds weird, but understanding it, relating to it, and actually nurturing it, kind of being the parent to it is really important as far as understanding yourself and also managing your life a lot better, setting boundaries a lot better, dealing with other people, relationships, all improve if you can understand this part of yourself. So reconnecting with this inner child might be one of the most powerful steps you can take towards emotional healing and an authentic self-growth.

So I'm going to explore today what the inner child is, how to recognize yours when it's asking for attention, and some simple sort of ways to begin that sort of healing process between the two parts of you. If you've been feeling disconnected or creatively blocked or emotionally stuck, this could be exactly what you've been waiting for.

So if you're ready, we will dive into it. So the inner child, this isn't just a memory of childhood. This is a part of you that carries kind of the emotional imprint of your earliest experiences, both the good ones and the bad ones, the joy and the pain. It's the version of you that learn about love in its earliest form. It's the part of you that learned whether it was safe to express emotions or not.

And also the part of you that first experienced some sort of connection or reliance on somebody else. And when we're young, we don't have the language or tools to process everything we go through. So we simply adapt. We either shut down or we perform. we over-function or we hide. And these coping mechanisms get carried through into our adulthood and often they show up in our relationships and our confidence, our creativity, and even somehow how we treat ourselves.

So reconnecting with your inner child means turning towards that younger part of yourself with sort of compassion, but curiosity as well. And sort of for the first time saying, okay, I see you. I see your. Different functioning part of me that travels with the adult part of me. And just seeing that part of you, acknowledging it and being there for it, I suppose is the first step in actually learning how to live with it in a more compassionate and viable way.

So for a lot of us, we walk through life with this inner child there, because we've all got one, but it's invisible. We ignore it. We don't hear it. And there's a few signs that you might be due to reconnect with that inner child.

So if you find it, for instance, hard to trust yourself or trust other people, or if sometimes you're in a situation where you have a really big reaction to something actually quite small that's happened and you don't really understand why you've had this huge reaction to it. Also, are you someone that needs constant external validation? You know, you need everybody's approval. You need people to congratulate you and tell you how well you're doing.

Are you someone that maybe struggles to rest or struggles to play? You know, struggles to kind of let yourself go and be silly or just simply enjoy life without having some level of guilt attached to that. I find this a lot with some of the people that I see where, you know, they're everything to everyone. And if they take time for themselves, they feel really, really guilty about it. And also, you might feel sort of emotionally numb or disconnected in some way.

And these patterns aren't character flaws. They're protective mechanisms quite often. And they were built in childhood, and they're still running the show behind the scenes. And you kind of don't realize where they came from and how much actual effect they have on your everyday life.

So when you begin to sort of see this relationship, the inner child and the adult in you, and when you begin to sort of connect the two and kind of heal that rift between the two of them, that's when this real transformation happens. And this work goes along behind the scenes, basically. So what we're going to do is sort of bring it into recognition through the work that you do as far as the inner child works concerned.

So what will happen? You're likely to become more in control of your emotions. So you start to sort of process things differently as far as your reaction to your own emotions, but also to other people, which I'll get on to shortly. You develop more of an authentic confidence. So stop sort of faking it until you make it. Stop performing and actually start to be authentic and actually feel that you kind of belong where you are. You don't have to pretend anymore.

Also, creativity. Once we recognize that inner child part of us, creativity flows. You feel more able to play and use your imagination. And you can feel more inspired as well when you connect with that part of you which maybe hasn't drawn a picture for a while or hasn't sung a song or hasn't created something with your imagination. You also are likely to develop stronger boundaries.

So with the people that you surround yourself with, but also personal boundaries as well, You have more of a sense of what feels right to you and what doesn't feel right to you. So this isn't about sort of staying stuck in the past. It's about offering your past self the care that they needed and the understanding that they needed so your present self can move forward more freely. So there's lots of ways you can begin to do this.

I'll just say a few here. The course that I've written is, I think, 13 modules and 28 lessons within those modules. So it's quite a comprehensive course and I haven't got time to cover it all here, but just to give you a little taste of what it is and the really profound effect that it can have on your life going forward and on your relationship with food. Because for the most part, the people that I see.

Have problems in some way with food, overeating, undereating, erratic eating, eating disorders. I see a whole spectrum of people. And quite often, this lack of attention to the inner child is what plays out in our relationship with food. People that go, I must have my treats. I must have something sweet to treat myself. I deserve that donut. Those sort of thoughts that go on in our head actually come from our inner child.

When you think about it, if you've ever had a child or seen a child in a supermarket where they point something out, some sort of food, and they say, I want that. And you as the parents say, no, you can't have that. Think of the little strop that they get into. They scream and they shout. They might cry. They might beg. And as an adult, although we don't do that overtly, you know, we don't scream and shout in supermarkets, hopefully.

Maybe some of us do. I don't know, but I don't. We don't do that overtly, but we do still reward ourselves with food if we've had a bad day. We reward ourselves if we've had a good day. It's almost that recognition and validation of who we are that often we seek through food. So this is really, really, really relevant to those food relationships.

So the first thing to do is just to kind of create some space and recognize what's going on. Recognize that sometimes your reactions don't come from the adult part of you, that sensible, responsible part that pays the rent or the mortgage and drives a car and does all those adult things that we recognize as part of adulthood.

Some of the decisions we make come from that little sort of petulant child, that one that doesn't get its own way or has some sort of little moment where it's feeling disconnected or scared. So the first thing is to recognize. When you find you have a big reaction to something, just leave yourself a little space and go, okay, which part of me is this coming from? Is this coming from the little kid that wants to get its own way?

Or is this coming from the adult, the sensible, mature adult who has a much more educated experience perspective on life? where is this coming from? And the more you do that and the more you recognize that the source of your emotions, you can really start to see this pattern forming of, okay, who's running the show here? Who's in charge of me? Is it actually me, my adult self, or is it that little kid that I once was? So the first step is recognition.

If you are a writer or a journaler, you can actually write a letter to your inner child and actually sort of say to them, what is it you need me to know? As the adult, which is sort of in charge of you now, that child part of you, what is it you want me to bear in mind? What do I need to know about you? Tell me how you feel. And that inner child might say, I feel really scared. I feel as if I'm faking it in an adult world. I'm not sure about what I'm doing.

I feel that I need people to love me. I don't have that connection. And you might be surprised at what comes out of that if you're a writer. Some people are, some people aren't. But if you do like to write, write a letter to your younger self, or even write a letter to your younger self back to the adult in you as well. And also start to reclaim some of what that inner child enjoys, because maybe that inner child won't call out for so much attention if it's doing the things it loves to do.

So think back to what you love to do as a child and ask yourself, do I do any of that now? Do I sit down and draw a picture? Do I sing? Do I dance? Do I build a fort? Do I play in some way? Have I got that outlet? Have I got that capacity to be creative as well as productive? So play isn't just for kids. Sometimes it's medicine for us as well. How do you play? How do you let loose? How do you have a good time? Are you silly sometimes? Do you allow yourself to be silly?

We all need this. We all need that outlet in any way that you think would be enjoyable. So just think back to what you really used to enjoy as a kid. And also have some self-compassion. So the way that we speak to ourselves really matters. And I did this the other day with someone that I see regularly. And I asked her, she's quite young, so she doesn't have children, but she does have a niece. And I said to her, how would you react if your niece came to you and she said

she was scared? Let's say she's crying. She's scared of something. How would you react? And this young person that I see, her first words were, I would give her a hug. And I said, okay, great. And what would you say to her? And she said, well, I would hug her and I would tell her it's going to be okay, and she doesn't need to be afraid. I said, okay then. And I said, so you wouldn't tell this child, this scared child, you wouldn't say, oh, for God's sake, don't be stupid.

And she looked horrified. She said, well, of course I wouldn't. And I said, well, how do you react to... To yourself when you're scared? Are you compassionate? Do you sort of recognize that scared part of you? And do you sort of tell yourself compassionately, it's okay, it's going to be fine? Or do you snap at yourself and say, oh, don't be stupid, you know, you're being pathetic. And she sort of started to smile and nod and she went, yeah, yeah, I see that.

And I said, well, if you wouldn't treat a child in that way, why would you treat yourself in that way? So compassion is really, really important with this. So if this stuff resonates with you, and if you're ready to explore this work a bit further, I'm going to put the link to the course that I've written in the episode notes today. It's a self-paced course. So you take it slowly, you go back over the things that you think need more attention.

It's mostly a course. There's a little video of me right at the beginning, but it's mostly a reading course. And that I've done specifically so that you can easily find what you're looking for. Often when you have a long 20, 30 minute video of someone talking and you just want to skip back and find that little bit that they said, which really resonated with you, it's really tough to find it.

So with this one, I've done it pretty much all written so that you can go back and find little snippets that you go, yeah, that bit's really important to me. And hopefully you can find them easily. So what you'll understand on the course is the psychology and kind of energy of the inner child. I go through a how to recognize the inner child and also how to recognize the adult part of you and how to recognize when sort of both are in the room at the same time and what we do about that.

I also go through recognizing the triggers that you might have that sort of set off this inner child reaction. And I go through a whole section, which I think is the most interesting thing, about once you realize your inner child and how it functions and how it influences your behavior and your decisions and your boundaries, you can much more easily recognize it in other people.

So quite often when people are having big emotions around you or they're reacting in a certain way, it suddenly becomes clear because they're reacting from their inner child and you suddenly get this The world opens up and you kind of go, oh, okay, I see this. I see why they're reacting this way. This isn't the adult in them reacting. This is their little inner child reacting. And you start to have a much greater understanding of...

Other people's reactions in life and perhaps towards you, which really, really improves your relationships. And also, when you think about it, most parents parent from their inner child as well. If they haven't done the work to recognize the difference, quite often the parent you get is parenting you that way. So you were sort of brought up and raised by someone maybe that was kind of exhibiting those childlike behaviors as well.

You know, the narcissistic parent or the toxic parent or, you know, something that was going on in your household where your parents perhaps weren't ideal. And you've got to kind of look back and say, hmm, okay, I see that more clearly now. This isn't to excuse everybody else. This isn't to make you into someone that becomes soft and compliant because you understand everyone and they can't help it.

It's so that you can recognize where those emotions are coming from, and it enables you actually to set better boundaries for yourself. That better understanding, that clarity that you're going to get with this allows you to set those boundaries, which has a really positive effect on your life going forward. And it also brings about this sense of, I don't know, calmness, I suppose I would describe it as. This calmness that you kind of go, okay, I get it now.

I think that's one of the most frustrating things in our lives is when we don't understand ourselves. We don't understand our own behavior. We don't know where it's coming from. We don't know why we get triggered with things. What's that all about? And that's so frustrating because you have to live with yourself every single day. And if fundamentally you don't understand what the hell's going on, that's very frustrating. and I have found over the years and I've done a lot of work on myself.

And everything I've learned from a professional perspective, I've also tried to kind of apply to me because everything I learn about human behavior and psychology, I find absolutely fascinating, which is why I do the job I do. But everything I've learned, I've also applied to me. And over the years, I have become, well, a lot happier, a lot calmer, a lot more empathetic towards other people. And there's not much that actually really bothers me or affects me anymore.

Not like it used to. I used to be constantly overthinking and reacting and it used to feel like there was a constant white noise in my head that just never left. And it was, I mean, looking back on it now, it was terrifying. It really, it wasn't a good time for many years, but the clarity that has come with the work that I've done on myself primarily, but also that I continue to learn and help other people with has been genuinely a lifesaver.

I'm not overstating that. It genuinely has saved my life. So if you would like to find out more, then please do. I'll put the link in the episode notes to the course on this. We've got a few other courses. There's one on people pleasing. There's one on procrastination. And of course, there's the six-week change your relationship with food course, which is on there as well. So if you feel you need to dive deeper, then please take one of those options.

Now, next week, I have a guest with me, and this should be a really fun one. We're going to be talking about body image and dating and how this all kind of binds together and affects the choice of partner for us. So hopefully that will bring about some really interesting discussion. I'm looking forward to that one. Thanks for listening today and I really hope to have your company next week as well. Thank you. Music.