Kristen D. Boice

Welcome to the close the chapter podcast. I am Kristen Boice a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a private practice Pathways to Healing Counselling. Through conversations, education, strategies and shared stories. We will be closing the chapter on all the thoughts, feelings, people and circumstances that don't serve you anymore. And open the door to possibilities and the real you. You won't want to miss an episode so be sure to subscribe

Welcome to this week's close the chapter podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. I am so grateful for you. I was just reading through some of the reviews I seriously get teary-eyed, I get moved to my core to read your reviews and feedback about the podcast and the impact it's making. And I know a lot of you will say I started with one episode and then I binge listened to the podcast and that warms my heart more than I can express You are the reason I do this podcast to help change the narrative around mental health and emotional wellness break unhealthy patterns disrupt behaviours that sabotages you and thoughts and beliefs in open our minds up in our hearts to a different way to explore what might be going on inside of you. So thank you for subscribing sharing it because the more people that review rate, and subscribe the podcast, the more apple or Spotify will serve it up as an option to people. And that makes a huge difference. So thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do that. I so appreciate it. And I want to remind you to join the email list every week, I try to pack it full of helpful information to help you on your healing journey. You can join for free and get the free journal which I'm going to reference today. In today's episode, go to Kristen k r i s t e n d Boice boice.com. forward slash free resources. That's Kristen D boice.com. forward slash free resources. I don't spam you, I just want you to have as much information as possible. The more educated you are about your healing process, the better the more empowered you will feel because it can feel lonely when you start this healing journey. And just to know that I'm supporting you and cheering you on, and you're doing this for a reason to heal yourself and break, be the cycle break or break the generational patterns. And today's episode is extremely important. It is work I do in my own life, which everything you hear on this podcast that I'm sharing, I am walking the walk alongside you to continue to do my own healing work, we don't get to a final destination and we're like we're all done. Yes, we're going to enjoy life. Once we start doing this work, we're going to be freed up and there's going to be triggered for the rest of your life. And when you're awake, you're noticing you're curious and you're paying attention. Those are invitations to go. What just got activated in me what unmet need is screaming for my attention. And when you're paying attention and you know what to do and how to handle and heal and nurture yourself through it, it will change your life. And everybody in your life will mirror back to you mirror, meaning you're looking in the mirror for a part of you that still is needing to be nurtured. I believe that and that's why today's episode, we are going to be talking about how inner child work transforms your family system, you and your life. And I'm not saying that lightly inner child work is the key to my healing continues to be the key to my healing. And I'm going to share a little bit about my own therapy session, because it's helpful to hear that the therapist is also doing their own work, I would say impactful therapists are going to be doing their own work alongside you so they can continue to take you where you need to go. Otherwise, sometimes you're going to hit a dead end. And sometimes it's because perhaps the therapist has hit a dead end not to blame the therapist at all. It's just to say the universal need for inner child work is universal is for every human on the planet because there's no such thing as perfect because we're humans, no such thing as perfect parenting perfect boss, perfect mother, perfect wife, perfect husband, perfect partner. It doesn't exist because we're human beings struggling with so many wounds and hurts and fears of rejection and abandonment and being re wounded. And we want to protect ourselves from that. And it all starts early early on in our life from in utero when we are inside someone's womb and that's when it develops even preconception. We have lots of research that shows how generational patterns are transmitted. So let's talk about what do I even mean by her child? And I think it's really important to define it. So we're all on the same page about what is she even talking about this inner child stuff doesn't even apply to me. I don't really think this matters. So let's define it. What is inner child work, inner child work is an approach to recognising and healing childhood trauma or wounds. And here's the thing I want to say about this, if you think you had a perfect childhood, it doesn't exist. It's a way to cope with it's a way to think about our lives. So we don't have to feel any of the hurt and pain. Here's the kicker, I believe it's rooted in unmet needs and healed through re parenting ourselves. So when you take the time to do this work, you will heal yourself, break generational patterns, know how to handle the hurt, that does come up, because there will be hurt that continues to come up, there will be fears that come up, there will be shame of feeling not good enough. And you will be equipped to know how to deal with it, to know how to heal it to know how to nurture yourself and repair it yourself. It recognises that our behaviours and patterns as an adult stem from childhood experiences, typically, our patterns and the way you show up relationally I don't care what relationship it is, and your triggers meaning when do you get mad? When do you get sad? When do you feel certain emotions is really rooted in your behaviour of how you're showing up in childhood experiences. We all want to skip on forward, we're like that's in the past, it's over. Now, it doesn't matter. It does matter. It doesn't define us. That's the difference. It refines us. And when you can recognise take responsibility and radical ownership for your reactivity, your triggers, you will change your life. And I want to teach you today, how important this work is, how do you begin inner child work, and then practical ways that you're going to apply this in your life, it's one thing to listen to a podcast and have it be abstract. It's another thing to take away practical ways that you can implement in your life to begin this work today. Today, today, today, today, and I'm going to share how I just had a therapy session. And something I thought you know what I've worked on this, it's over, I'm over it now. But there was other pieces and parts that needed to come forward that needed more healing. And it was my little girl. And however you self identify whatever parts you self identify, that's all that matters. It's starting to love all of your parts. And we've talked about this on this podcast, we all have different parts. It's not an all or nothing. It's not a right or a wrong, it's not a good or a bad. And that's how we were conditioned that everything goes in these categories. And first of all, it's not real, it's not accurate, because we all have different parts. So let's talk about why is this important? Why are we even doing that because people want to move on from their childhoods, or maybe you've suppressed maybe you've pushed down maybe you've tried to lock away your past. And I'm here to tell you the truth that you are still lovable. Even though the shame wants to tell you a different story. That shame wants you to hide what you've been through that shame wants to tell you that no one's gonna love you. Because of that, no one can possibly think you're okay in that crazy. And the truth of the matter is everybody's got wounds, we just think our wounds are more damaging than others. And I'm here to tell you, it's not true. And when you start deciding, you're going to face the pain, you're going to face those unmet needs, you're going to face the wounds. And it's not easy, because I'm right there with you. I'm doing this work with you. It is the best work of my entire life. As a parent, I'm responsible for healing these wounds, so they don't get put on my children. And they still do. And this is the truth of the matter. They still leak out on to my kids. Now I hope I'm awake enough to recognise sometimes I'm sleepwalking sometimes I'm not awake. The key here is recognising when you do it. Take swift responsibility for it own, how you hurt them be specific and clear. And then get into therapy, do your journaling. I'm gonna give you a whole bunch of ways to then deal with it. So it's important for many reasons. First of all, projection, which is putting your issues putting your thoughts, feelings, beliefs onto somebody else, and you're convinced they're true, that has to be disrupted. And I did a whole podcast on projection, you can go back and listen to that. It was an important one. And I see this all the time we write a story about what the other person thinks feels does or why they're behaving the way they do without checking it without saying hey, what are you feeling? And they're like, if they say fine, which as you know, I've taught feel feelings inside not expressed, you could say something like no, I'm really, really want to know how you're doing. And a lot of us didn't get raised with emotions. So we don't know. So the person doesn't really know. And then you could say the story I'm writing in my head is that you don't think I contribute around the house and that you're doing everything. And I just wanted to check and see if that's true. Now you have to discern in your own self, whether shame is blocking you from hearing truth. So if they say, I don't think that at all, I think that is absolutely not the case at all. I'm really tired today, I've had a stressful day at work has nothing to do with you. We have to believe them. Now, a lot of people might not say it that clearly back to us. We have to call out the stories we're making up the narrative or writing in order to transform it and check it many of us live in this narrative of we know what the other person is thinking. And we don't we don't we're not mind reader's, they don't know what I'm thinking. I don't know what they're thinking unless I share it specifically or ask them for a call that story I'm making up to the light. So inner child work helps disrupt projection number two, inner child work helps break this cycle of triangulation. What is triangulation is when one family member typically can also be in any system pulls in another family member that has nothing to do with a conflict. It's really between conflict A and B, we pull in Person C, because we are afraid to talk to a about what we really feel. So be posed and see. And then here's a good example of that is when I see this in, in my own life growing up, and I'm going to share a lot today about that because I think it helps you relate to this inner child work concept deeper. So what happened is my parents got divorced when I was separated in second grade divorced in third grade. And in that moment in time, the whole system of my family completely shifted. And so my mom, even though she's the one that wanted the divorce was threatened by us going over to my dad's and then several years later, my dad got remarried. And that became a real threat. My mom was afraid of being displaced, afraid that we would want love her more my stepmom more she was afraid that we wouldn't want to live with her anymore. She was afraid that we would think this is one happy family Leave It to Beaver over there. And she didn't have that family that my stepmom was Martha Stewart and my mom was it and I would want to be there. And what she didn't know is that was what was a barrier for me to connect with my mom. Now she knows because we've done our own therapy together. We've done a lot of healing work around this. She recognises now that that was her own fear her owns insecurity that she was attending to that got put on to me and my sister. And then what happened was everything was a threat to my mom versus being able to meet my needs. As a child, everything was threatening. When we would go to my dad's house, when we would go on a trip with my dad, whatever that looked like it was a threat to her of abandonment, displacement and rejection. And the truth of the matter was, nobody can replace your biological parent, no one can replace even a parent in general, if you're adopted, that is a role that can't be replaced, if that makes sense. So if you have an adoptive mom, biological mom, it doesn't matter, that person holds that place. Now, if we have an unhealthy biological mom, adoptive mom or parent in general, that can be the issue of that person that's not healthy. Does that make sense? So meaning that you can't replace the person but there could be somebody that steps in that is able to be regulated, that's able to acknowledge you, it's not about them and their unmet needs, they're able to meet some of your needs that can be healthy. In this case, it wasn't a threat to my mom, no one was going to replace her. I still loved my mother. And she would then triangulate my sister into the mix between issues and even between my parents and she would have my sister be the messenger to get the child support paycheck to ask my dad questions, and my sister and I kind of became the go between and that was not our role to adult and I'm using this in general I know there's different circumstances so please do not hear this as just cut and dry because everybody's got a different story. This is our story and our story triangulating us into it and children in general into adult issues is not okay. And what inner child work can do is had my mom been doing inner child work, she could have recognised that her little girl was online felt scared of abandonment, displacement and rejection and she could have identified that that went back to her father who travelled all over the world and she never knew when he was coming home and that would tap into her stuff. Had she dealt with that piece in that time and her her own grief over the divorce, then she would have been more emotionally available for my sister and I and not triangulating us into their dynamic and their issues. So that's why inner child work is so powerful, because we're all going to have triggers, we're and I'm not picking on my mom, it's just this is the reality, I currently have triggers as a parent, you probably have triggers we all do. If you're a parent, even if you're not a parent, and you're in a relationship, you're going to have triggers. And so this helps stop that generational pattern of passing down shame of passing down hurts passing down fears of passing down these threatening what feels like threats that aren't really threats. It also inner child work also helps work through blame and shame and judgement, and your defensiveness that we often use to protect ourselves. So there's wounded parts in us that get trapped. And those are experiences that you didn't get to process your emotions, your thoughts, your feelings in real time. So let me share an example of this. So as I was doing my own therapy session, I want to share this because the reason I want to share this is you can maybe not relate to exactly my story, you can relate to emotions that may come up, as I alluded to, my parents got divorced when I was in third grade. And I've done a lot of therapy on this a lot. And I was feeling this idea of my own needs and wants are selfish. And it was coming from someplace I kind of knew, but I just didn't put all the dots together. Because anytime I feel like I have my own needs or my own wants, I felt like that was selfish. I knew it was rooted in a child. And the therapist asked me what feelings are feeling do you have when you think of selfish and I immediately felt sad. And if you have done any EMDR work, eye movement, desensitisation, reprocessing, our whole team at pathways to healing counselling is all trained in EMDR, I highly recommend it. There's also many other modalities such as brain spotting, somatic experiencing internal family systems, the list goes on that are very helpful as well. So this is not the only modality. It's also kind of deep hypnosis work, which is sort of like EMDR, although you're not erasing any memories, that's not how this works. You're reprocessing thoughts, body sensations, emotions, beliefs that did not get processed in real time. So we identified that I had sadness around this feeling selfish. And what came up in my reprocessing is a memory of I'm at my kitchen table. And I remember my parents telling me we're going to separate and possibly divorce but I knew in my mind that that was it, they're not going to come back together like this was the end of the road. And I was able to go back to my little girl. So part of the work is how old do you feel? What age do you identify, it can be a grade, it can be an age, it can be a, it doesn't have to be exact, but what age is it and I knew eight is a monumental time, because that's when my parents got divorced. And if you do a timeline of your life and events that had major impact on you, whether they're positive, not so positive, they were traumatic, or it could be experiences, something someone's said to you. It doesn't have to be what we would call a big T trauma, like abuse or a car accident, it could be something that someone said to you on the bus, you write that out in your timeline, and this helps you get started on an inner child work. How old were you a grade were you in? What was the memory and what was kind of the negative belief you had about yourself? And so this particular reprocessing, I'm selfish, even though not all of me believe that part of me did. So it took me back to the sadness because she had me pull up sadness. What was the time I felt the sad the sadness that I'm feeling that was the memory that came up and I realised that my mom's defensiveness. In that moment, her wounds her defensiveness prevented me from processing how I really felt because I was scared to upset my mom, because she was already upset, which is okay for her to have feelings. It wasn't her emotions. It was her defensiveness that was her. And what I mean by that is, she made it about her and her guilt over making this decision over her pain over the divorce, rather than being able to see the impact this could have on me. Now, I want to disclaim this, that I'm grateful for my parents divorce. I wouldn't change it for anything. It has helped me be who I am, I am done so much healing work around this. I know that was meant for me to grow. I've had so much more I was already an empathic child. I feel like it's offered me so much more understanding on relationships, and I'm so grateful for it. So I want to disclaim this not to bypass the process to know that's truly where I'm really ended. Now, as I've done my work is in gratitude, which is why inner child work is so helpful wasn't always this way. And so noticing my mom mom's defensiveness shuts me down from doing my own. I'm not blaming her. But that's just the reality of my own process because she was in too much pain to be able to process with me and hold space for me. And then my dad didn't know what to say or do. So he did the best he could, although I didn't feel scared to tell him how I felt because I didn't feel that defensiveness from him, it felt more from my mom. And that shut me down from processing my pain. That's why this inner child work is so helpful because I was able to go back with my adult self. And what I mean by that myself now today that's done this work and offer her what she needed, which was to be held, just held and told she's loved, and just let her cry, let her have her experience without trying to fix it, but all and also be there to support her. And that's when most of us needed, we needed to be safely held appropriately, perhaps allowed to let our feelings out without the parent making it about them, or the person making it about them. This is where people get off the rails, in terms of being able to offer their children, grandchildren, friends, empathy, they make it personal, their own pain blocks them from sitting with someone in their pain, we want to fix it, we want to rescue it, we want to defend ourselves. And I see this a lot with a strange families where the parents want to get really defensive. And I'm like, can you just even if you don't agree with it, just hold the space and listen and acknowledge you don't have to take full responsibility for everything, what they need from you is just to be heard, stop interrupting, stop getting so defensive, start listening for the emotional pain that lies underneath. And that's the beauty of doing your own work is you're able to do that and offer that without feeling attacked without feeling like someone's out to get you without feeling threatened. I'm not talking about in abusive situations, by the way. And so what I was able to do is offer my inner child, my eight year old self with my adult self comfort, acknowledgement nurturing of what she needed in the moment that she didn't get. And that sounds woowoo. And I'm here to tell you that it works. Believe me, when you do this, you're gonna be like, oh my goodness, why are we doing this? And when you start doing it, and you start saying, Oh, sweetheart, you're sad, you're hurting, you're not sure what the future holds? You're scared of uncertainty? Where are you going to live? How is this going to work? Where are you going to go to school? All of those things. And you can go Oh, honey, it's okay. Let it out this okay to feel sad, sweetheart. That's what inner child work looks like. Instead of beating yourself up, why are you crying get over, it's not that big of a deal. So and so has it worse than you they're really going through something hard. And it takes you zaps you out of processing. And processing is essential to healing feeling is essential to healing. But our parents didn't know that they didn't have all the neuroscience. And so I want to go a step further in this inner child healing work in this therapy session.

Kristen Boice
The

Kristen Boice
reason I'm giving you this example is maybe it will spark something in you, maybe this will open up something in you, maybe you'll start looking at things different, maybe you'll feel a little bit more courageous to lean into doing some of this inner child work. So to step back to the memory I had of feeling selfish, I had this memory where my mom had a migraine and she was sick in bed. And this was a repeated pattern, which is interesting, because when she was sick in bed, and I needed something like I needed to eat, or I needed something, I always felt guilty for going in there. And then of course, she didn't feel good. So she was getting mad at me that I wasn't meeting her needs and getting her a meal or taking care of her. She didn't feel good. And I get that as an adult I get she didn't feel good. And so we would get in like she would get mad at me. And she would say you're being selfish. And man, man, did that hurt because I thought I'm just needed aid like what are we doing for dinner, and she didn't mean anything by that she did. It was a projection of what she felt she felt like she was being selfish because she didn't feel good. And it was like a light bulb went off. And I saw the projection of being told I'm selfish, which is really how she felt because she felt shame that she was at probably meeting my needs. And it all started to click and what I had to come into this healing session, we'll call it that because it was a very powerful session is I loved my little girl and I was able to offer like I was something shifted inside me that was able to go Oh, she didn't have a nurturing parent that she wanted. And so when she's sick to she had a nurturing parent to take care of her so she could just rest and here she is having to be a parent i Something shifted in me was like I get that I understand that and I was able to offer love and forgiveness in that moment. And forgiveness isn't just forgetting everything. Something opens up inside of you. That's how I can explain forgiveness. It's a process. It's a journey of doing inner child work. The end goal isn't forgiveness. By the way, that wasn't how this whole started. The end goal is for me to love myself to work on me feeling okay, having my own needs and once and not feeling selfish. And the byproduct of that is my heart opened up bigger, it was already big, I already had my heart opened up, it opened up bigger than I was able to see how and when anger started being a defence mechanism with my mom, because my mom would interrupt me, my mom had a hard time listening, my mom had her unmet needs. Because of that she had a really hard time taking feedback, she had a really hard time understanding my own emotional needs, and not blaming her, I was able to go, oh, the anger I had, as a teen towards my mom was to protect myself, from her shaming me, I'm not a bad person, of course, I was using the anger to try to protect myself from her projection of her unmet needs and her pain. And when I was able to shift inside of myself, not just in my head. So what I love about doing inner child work is it helps shift the thoughts and the feelings start matching up and the EMDR really, and brainspotting really help integrate that in. And so then I was able to go in nurture my little girl and say, You're not selfish. And I really believe it. Like, I guess, can we all be selfish at times, of course, part of that absolutely. developmentally appropriate, we're not supposed to be we could call it egocentric at some point twos is very notorious for that. That's okay, that's age appropriate. And I was able to have more compassion, and so much love for my little girl. And my adult self was able to come in and offer her those unmet needs, which is just to say, Oh, honey, Mom, does it feel good, it's not your fault. You're not being selfish Mom, just feel selfish. Wow. And then I'm able to kind of merge my eight year old self with my adult self, I know this sounds woowoo. If you haven't done this work, I can only explain it from my experience and the power of it. And it frees you up in sustainable ways. So when I am struggling, now been doing work for 10 years now. Now, I'm able to have my nurturing self, rather than my inner critic Come on, and say, Oh, sweetheart, you are just really tired. And you know what, you probably need to go to bed, honey, tomorrow's a new day. Let's tuck you in, take a deep breath. Let's go to bed. And so tomorrow, you can start fresh. Instead of berating myself like you're a horrible person. You're a terrible parent, what were you thinking that just helped me in any way that takes me into more shame and into the dark abyss and I've learned that nurturing myself, which is what we needed from our parents, we needed that. So that could be the driving force when we quote unquote, make a mistake, or we get dysregulated that voice can nurture us and calm us in ensue this rather than shame and criticise us and berate us and take us down. That's what inner child work does. The nurturing voice becomes louder, more prominent than the inner critic in the inner critic is just longing to be seen loved acknowledgment and to feel safe. That's what the inner critic is. And I realised my inner critic, and that moment was my mom's voice. So whose voice is it in your head whose voice is telling you these things? And in that moment, when I got really quiet and attuned, it was my mom's voice. And then I was able to see that that was how she felt about herself in that memory, not how she felt about me. It's based on her own unmet needs. And I was then able to shift something inside of me and go, Oh, honey, you're not selfish. Yes. Do you have needs and self care is important. Yes. And I've been sick. And I've been like, oh my gosh, I have these children that I can't take care of. Because I am sick. I need help. I was able to identify when I felt that way too, and offer my mom more grace and compassion, not letting the whole thing Envelop me and believe that I'm selfish, I was able to rise above it, process it see it in a different way. And it frees me now I have so much freedom right now, I just got done with a session. That's why I wanted to record this. It helps you to learn love all of your parts and helps you to work through your triggers and understand where those triggers come from. Instead of blaming someone else for the way you feel are blaming that person, you're able to go okay, let me take a deep breath because you know, I'm about the breathing to self soothe and self regulate. Let me take a deep breath. And when they said they're too busy to talk to me making this up, but I know this is a trigger for many clients. I am not going to take that personally. I'm going to say okay, they're too busy and you're Okay sweetheart. It doesn't mean they don't care about you. You've been busy too. You're able to comfort yourself through it. Whatever your triggers are, it's why important help Wouldn't it is to write out your triggers and identify them. So you're not putting those on somebody else. That's why like you tip quit taking it personally so hard. Many people, I would say 90%, I would even put it higher 95% of people's complaints unless you're an abusive relationship or taking that off the table is a projection. So if someone says something unkind to you, unless you've done something unkind, then you have to own that it's a projection, maybe of their unkind part, maybe a part, they don't want to take a look at nurture and see. And if you are in abusive relationship, what I want to say is abuse runs deep abuse runs generationally. So if you are in abusive relationship, have you grown up in a family system, where you were raised by children, and I don't mean like, they look like they're adults, but they're really stuck developmentally, I call it rested development. In a certain age like I experienced my mom is very young parts of her were not not all of her was young parts of her were very young, because she didn't get all her needs met, nobody did. This is the truth of the matter. And those parts that were stuck at young ages were then as a result of my unmet needs, not blaming her. It's just the reality we all have I met needs. That's why you doing work can break generational cycles me as a parent right now, I am working on breaking generational cycles, not feeling threatened. If my child says I don't want to talk right now, or I just want to be by myself right now. No threat to me that's perfectly healthy and developmentally appropriate. If you haven't done your work that could be perceived as rejection, when in fact, it's developmentally appropriate, and there's no rejection in it, they need space, they need time to themselves Perfect. Now, that was just an example. If you're taking a lot of things personally, that means your inner child needs some tending to anytime I feel a sense of not belonging, aloneness, sadness, that is my eight year old self or younger, that is a part of me that didn't feel good enough that feel left out, that didn't feel belonging, and that is on me to heal, to tend to my therapist, I said, You know what, I know my next target for my next work. And that's the beauty of journaling, being self aware, and knowing where I still need some work. And I was able to say, hey, I want to work on this. And if you're curious what that is, it's kind of a feeling of overwhelm, and anxiousness. So fear, as schedules are busy with some of my kids activities that can create like, Oh, I gotta be someplace on time, I've got to manage myself, my life, their schedule, and I want to feel regulated in that. And my breath is my greatest regulation tool, taking deep breaths, I want to feel at peace and at all. And so I was just really aware of, oh, I think I have some more work to do. And guess what I'm going to do before my sessions are session, I am going to be journaling about it. So when I'm ready for my therapy session, I'm ready to hit the ground running. Sometimes I'm not sometimes I'm not ready to hit the ground running. And I don't know what I'm going to work on. The beauty in it is I can feel it in my nervous system, I can feel it tightening in my chest, I can feel this cortisol running through my body, the stress response, and that signals me to go, whoop, I need to do a clearing here. And journaling, breathing, prayer, meditation are all helpful things, listening to a podcast, reading a book are all helpful things to help me in the process. And how it all works is the first thing that I encourage you to do is we're going to go through kind of eight ways to start your inner child healing. And this is kind of the beginning of the work. And I already mentioned a few but I'm going to add on to this actually, I'm gonna give you some bonus tips. I would say your timeline is essential of your life experiences to begin to work and how old you were and what happened. And that's great. If you're working currently, with a therapist, you have your timeline. And those are great targets what we call targets for reprocessing with EMDR. So those are places you've gotten stuck and that keep coming up. Like I knew this selfish, if I say what I want and need, I felt selfish, okay, I keep coming up that keeps coming up, meaning I need to attend to that. That's my stuff. I need to attend to that. That's no one else can go you're not selfish, you're a giver, or you're so loving, okay, that's all nice. That doesn't really heal the deeper wound that doesn't heal it. That's why when parents go well, you got friends and you're so loving and you're wonderful. That's nice to hear. And that's really important as parents to affirm our children and when they're in pain. That's not what's helpful. What's helpful is, I'm right here. It's okay to let it out. It's okay to have your feelings and then quiet. Let them process might even say something like, is there anything you really need from me and mine are clear now and they'll say I just need you to listen and don't try to fix it. Great. Now I'm having to do My own work and that because I want to fix that I want to rescue them from the pain, I don't want them in pain. That's my stuff. That's my work. So doing the timeline is so important. Ask yourself how old you feel when you're triggered, please ask yourself that question that leads you down such a path to where the root and if it's not the root, you're on the path to some deeper healing work there. Okay, awareness and acknowledge your emotions. Let's stop bypassing shoving them down, drinking them eating them, all the ways social media, let's start connecting. So today in my therapy session when she said, What emotion do you feel when you think of selfish sadness came up, I had to be willing to go to the sad place, I had to be willing to connect to that emotion and to be willing to let myself go there. And I know that if I do that healing will take place if I fight it, which is very often the case. I mean, sometimes I find it I'm not giving myself the full permission to do that healing. Number two, listen to what's inside of you listen to what are the voices saying like the selfish voice was coming up whose voice was that I needed to attend to that to break it notice, get curious about it. Don't shove it down, busy yourself out of it. Please perform placate pretend, let it rise to the surface. Number three, please, please write a letter to yourself. Your younger self. Part of my work was writing a letter to my eight year old self. I've written many letters over the years and journal letters all the time. I'm a big believer in letter writing, you don't have to give it to the person. Oftentimes I don't. There are occasions where I have and that frees you up from the other person's response. You don't have to hear their tone. You don't have to misinterpret anything, you can just send it and release it and be done. You can go back and edit letters, I like and LeMans term and then Brene Brown brought it to the front is SFD. And that's shitty first draft. And you don't have to have a perfect forget the grammar. Forget it. I love the book homecoming. I've mentioned it many times by Dr. John Bradshaw in that book. I also like healing the shame that binds you. So homecoming is a book and healing the shame that binds you. That works on a lot of inner child work. He was known for healing, he's no longer with us, but for healing inner child work. And there's letter writing in the book on homecoming. That is beautiful. There's affirmations if you don't know how to repair it yourself in the book that help you. Number four have mentioned this, you've got to get quiet. You've got to get still in prayer. I pray out loud a lot. If you listen to the last episode with philosophy kumara. We talked about saying it out loud. Part of re parenting yourself and we talked about this on that episode is you're talking to the little soul inside the part of you that needs nurturing that needs compassion and empathy. It doesn't need to be shunned. It doesn't need to be shamed. It doesn't need to be criticised. It doesn't need to be blamed. That will only keep you stuck. So prayer, meditation stillness. That all is so helpful to get yourself connected. Journal how you feel journal, how you feel journal journal journal, I cannot tell you research backs this up that the people who are writing it out to get it out the people that are facing their pain will transform it. Is it going to happen overnight.

Kristen Boice
No, this is not a sprint. This is a marathon with no finish line. Can you feel better? Yes, you're gonna have some days you feel like crap. And some days you feel good. This isn't going to be like an all or nothing healing journey. I hate to tell you people like I thought I worked on that. And I'm like, yep, welcome. There's more little pieces and parts that need more nurturing, there's unmet needs that are rising up to the surface in a romantic relationship. They're rising up to the surface and parenting relationships. They're rising up to the surface and co working relationships are rising up to the surface with neighbours. They're rising up to the surface with extended family and they're here the invitation is for you to tend to it please I promise you you're worth it you matter you're important choose you you choose you don't wait for someone to choose you. You choose you you choose that little soul inside that needs that attention that needs that acknowledgement that needs that validation that needs that comfort you choose you stop waiting for someone to give it to you, you give it to you that's icing on the cake with the other person gives it to you. Number six, build a support system, whether that's getting a therapist, a 12 step programme, maybe you're gonna get involved in some exercise class, a yoga class, whatever class maybe you're going to pick up knitting, maybe you're going to start in a dance group making This up whatever. birdwatching floats your boat, get into a support system, get into a group, start putting yourself out there a little bit more. That's what the inner child work is. They're scared you're scared your little girl or little boy or what have you self identify different parts doesn't matter how have you self identify, you're saying, honey, you're lovable no matter what, no matter what anybody has told you. You're lovable. It doesn't matter what anybody thinks of you. You're enough just the way you are. Number seven, educate yourself. Read books on this subject. It's the greatest gift you'll give yourself. listen to podcasts, binge listen to this one. There's so many excellent podcasts out there, listen to podcasts, educate yourself on emotions, and how important it is to be able to tolerate them, process them, acknowledge them and nurture them. And number eight, be open and watch your defence system your defence system was used to protect yourself. I gave you my example of mine defences with my mom and different defences, come up with different people, different defences come up with different issues, you can go back and listen to the defensiveness Why are you so defensive episode, where I break all this down. And as you repair it yourself, you begin to change the trajectory of your life. Because what does that mean? you free yourself up, you free yourself to be yourself, you free yourself to no longer live in the past. you free yourself to live in the present moment. You're no longer shackled and tethered to closing yourself off and protecting yourself and not sharing the love that exists inside you loving yourself as re parenting yourself, period. Loving yourself as re parenting yourself. And I hope today I gave you some practical examples of how to do that. So the next time you want to take yourself down, offer yourself some empathy and go Oh, sweetheart, you're doing the best she can. And I love you. We're gonna get through this. In order to repair it yourself. You have to process your emotions, the body sensations, and the beliefs you've built around yourself. Listen to last week's episode on building the courage to say it out loud. It ties in nicely to this inner child conversation and why it's important and how to begin the journey of healing all the parts of yourself. And I thank you for your willingness to face your pain, face your hurt, Face your past experiences, and take action and that taking action looks like taking a few deep breaths, self soothing and stepping in to the discomfort of at all. I love you. I'm grateful for you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being on this healing journey with me. Can't wait to be with you next week. Have a good week. Thank you so much for listening to the close the chapter podcast. My hope is that you took home some actionable steps along with motivation, inspiration and hope for making sustainable change in your life. If you enjoy this episode, click the subscribe button to be sure to get the updated episodes every week and share with a friend or a family member. For more information about how to get connected visit kristendboice.com Thanks and have a great day.