Kristen D. Boice

Welcome to the Close the Chapter Podcast. I am Kristen Boice a licenced 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. I am so excited. You're here joining me today for this really important episode on the three parts of ourselves, and why these three parts will change your life. Once you know what they are, how to work with them, and how to heal them. It's powerful information, you don't want to miss this episode. If you are not on the mailing list, you will definitely want to jump on that you will get a free journal to kickstart you to really working with these three parts learning how to connect more deeply to yourself and be more self aware. Self awareness is the number one key research says and finding healing and success. So all these business folks that are out there listening, it's the number one thing and leadership is self awareness, you would think it's something different tenacity, determination, courage. While all those definitely play a role self awareness is number one. And we're going to be talking about that today and how to become more self aware when we talk about these three parts. So in order to get on the mailing list, you will get a newsletter a week and your free journal at kristendboice.com forward slash free resources, Kristen D boice.com. forward slash free resources, we will also put that in the show notes if you're driving or don't have access to pen and paper. But don't forget to jump on that you will get the helpful newsletter and the healing guide. So you don't want to miss that. And you won't miss an episode from this show. If you find this episode helpful, please share this. So you can be on a growth journey with other people, whether it's your partner, a family member, a friend, a co worker, I know people have set up like pods, I love it, when I would go to the dentist, they would say we're all listening to the episodes. And I cannot even tell you how powerful that is to have other colleagues, friends, family members doing this work together. And you can talk about what you're learning, you can talk about the insights you're having about yourself, how and what you're doing to work on your own healing process. It's transformational. So thank you so much for being here with me, I don't take it lightly. And the reviews that you guys are posting are life giving, truly life giving. So thank you a million times over. Okay, let's jump into today's episode. If you do have access to paper and a pen, grab it, you're going to want to write these things down because I'm going to invite you into going deeper in yourself to become more self aware. So the more you sit with this information, be with it, meditate over it, pray over it, dive into it, the more you're gonna get out of this episode or listening to this podcast. So if you binge listened to this podcast, it's so helpful on your healing journey because it keeps you going and moving towards breaking generational cycles as a marriage and family therapist. It is my passion to rehabilitate systems and it starts with you listening to this or doing your own healing work or going to therapy, reading books, whatever you're doing. Thank you. Thank you for breaking cycles, because there's a lot going on in the world right now. That is heartbreaking, gut wrenching, grief stricken, devastating, angering sad, and I want you to have a safe place to come to tend to those emotions, to transform them to nurture them and we're gonna be talking about all of those things today in the framework of our relationships entail these three parts of ourselves. And I want to set this up I was listening to a relationship summit with Terry real and he had Dr. Basil Vander Kolk, who wrote the book, The Body Keeps the Score. He had Dr. Gabor Ma Tei. On the show, he spoke he has a new book called us out and he created a framework that I already use. I changed some of the language to incorporate how I utilise it. And I'm going to give credit where credit's due on a lot of these concepts that I already integrated into my therapeutic process not only for myself, but with clients, and so does our team at pathways to healing counselling. And I want to set the scene of how inspirational this was to me to share with you, I was taking vigorous notes, vigorous notes, I was sitting with my own work, I had a conversation with my husband Mark, we had some really deep conversations around this. And that's my hope for you that you will sit with this with yourself, share some of the key insights, inquire about your partner, maybe you have an older kid, maybe you have somebody you're in relationship with a friendship that you can do this together, but it starts with you. So let's set this framework up, grab your pen and paper. Okay, the first thing when I'm in therapy with my clients, I am asking myself, How old does this person feel to me right now? It's not a judgement on the other person. It's to know who am I? What part of them Am I speaking to? Am I speaking to their inner child? Am I speaking to their wounded little girl or boy or self? Does it matter the gender? Am I speaking to their inner younger part? Am I speaking to their adult self? Am I speaking to their defensive child? We're gonna call that adaptive child, we're going to break these three parts down in knowing and yourself who is online right now. So let's break down. And that's a question I want you to sit with when you are activated by something when you are feeling tension, resentment, anger in your body or any emotion and wants you to say what part Am I speaking to, and let's break down the three parts of ourselves. So here we go, we're gonna go these are in no particular order. So number one is the wise adult self. This is the mature, rational part of you. This is the part of you that can take a deep breath has some space in between what's coming towards you, maybe some feedback, maybe it's something you've gotten activated by. And before you respond to the person. This is the prefrontal cortex, the executive function of the brain that is the rational part of the brain that says, take a deep breath. pause before you say something you're going to regret can think through and gain perspective, it can hold space for your perspective, and at the same time, try to gain understanding and listening for the other person's perspective. This takes a lot of self work. And keep in mind if we're looking at human development, that the brain doesn't fully mature and develop until 25 years old. So we're expecting a lot of our children and are teens to be functioning like, why is adults when they are children and their executive function, that prefrontal lobe is not fully developed until the age of 25. If we've had trauma, if we've utilised drugs, alcohol, overuse prescription medication, smoked marijuana at a young age, chances are we have significant what I call Arrested Development, emotional development, we may look like we're 30. But we're functioning like we're four or five. So it's important to know that addictions and the age you start an addiction can freeze and lock your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and body sensations into the body that need to be processed and expressed, intended to and nurtured. And if we've had any kind of trauma, those are also things that are kind of frozen in time, if you will, and we're going to be talking about that more. So let's talk about that wise adult self. That's the mature rational side. That is what we are hoping to work with to nurture these other two younger parts that didn't get their needs met in childhood. So if you look at this from a human developmental model, I want you to think about something for a moment, we are meant to be born naked, we are meant to be skin to skin with our mother, we are meant to be held skin to skin for extensive periods of time, like they're saying up to two to three years as some other cultures, that is the norm, the mother is holding their child's skin to skin make it you know, for years because of the bond and the sense of safety and security it creates for the child. If we didn't get this and most of us didn't, because it wasn't taught it wasn't known. How important that that bonding which creates an attachment, which is healthy we have what's called a secure attachment creates a natural ability for us to deal and navigate with hard because we were tended to and regulated consistently during our childhood. And so we naturally have empathy, we naturally are able to offer ourselves grace and kindness and nurturing because it was offered to us consistently. So I'm going to be talking about that theme as we're woven in to these three parts, the wise adult self is the part that I really want to cultivate. And I want to work on healing these other two parts in therapy. And this is what I do in my own life, because my inner child, my wounded child will come out, my adaptive child will come out and explain those other two parts, okay. And what we're working on in romantic relationships is majority of the time, the adaptive child that I'm going to tell you about in a minute, and you've married someone that's functioning also in their adaptive child. So let's dive into the other two parts. The second part is the wounded part, it's the little soul inside of us, it's a little child inside that wants to curl up on someone's lap, it's usually a very young part three to five, even earlier, two to five, and they just want to be held, they want to be rocked, they want to be nurtured, they want to be cuddled, they want to be loved on and nurtured. And that's our part that has gotten buried, it's gotten buried, because it wasn't oftentimes, okay for us to be vulnerable and cry in need tending to, we were supposed to be strong and shake it off, and you're fine. And we've buried that part of ourselves. And I'm trying to unbury that with clients, I'm trying to bring that part to the surface, so you can love and nurture that part that needs it so desperately. And that's typically not the part that is going to come forward, that is a part that's been buried, that's been defended against that's been trying to survive all this time, and how that gets buried as the adaptive. So this is the third part, we have the wise adult self, you had the wounded part, a wounded inner child, and we have the adaptive child part. And this adaptive child part is not using relational skills, they are in survival states fight, flight, freeze fawn, or flop doesn't usually want to be intimate or vulnerable, because they are self protecting, they want to feel safe, because that's their whole goal is I'm going to create safety. So you didn't get hurt, you don't get Shun, you don't get shamed. You don't get beaten, you don't get yelled at you don't get any of that. So I will protect you from that. That's why it's called adaptive, it's adaptive. What's adaptive in your childhood to survive is maladaptive, typically an adult romantic relationships in parenthood, so what was adaptive, then we want to go thank you for your service, you really helped me survive this. And now it's maladaptive in romantic relationships, the child adaptation, when you adapt to your environment, it's wise because you're trying to protect that wounded child. So for example, what I did to protect myself, so my mom felt very threatened. If I went over to my parents got divorced when I was eight, and I would go to my dad's house, and she would kind of come home, I would come home from my dad's house, and she would just tell me, what did you eat? What did you do? What did she say? What did your dad do? And if I shared what happened, she would get angry, she would get upset because her inner child, her adaptive child felt threatened by that. And so I learned to kind of protect that little girl inside that didn't do anything wrong. And I wouldn't say anything, or then I would start getting upset back with her. Because I'd be like, Why are you mad at me, I would try to get my needs met that way. And what that adaptive part learned to do was kind of stuffed down the authentic truth of what I felt that Yeah, it wasn't great over there. But it wasn't terrible. You want me to come home and tell you how bad it was. So then I wouldn't say how I really felt my authentic self started to be split off. And I would just say what I thought she wanted to say or wanted to hear. So then she wouldn't be angry. So my authentic self, which is my core, authentic self means you're allowed to have your own feelings, you're allowed to express them in a safe way, you're allowed to have boundaries. And when we are trying to maintain connection with a parent, we will kind of split off from authentic self. And we will start what I call fawning up people, please, I'll tell you what you want to hear, which is it was okay, which was sort of the truth. I just didn't want to get into detail over it. Or perhaps let's say you had an angry parent that yelled and I've had clients have this situation where the parent was so angry, yelled and shamed them and they learn to hide their truth in order to stay safe. And sometimes then you become the angry one to try to protect yourself. And that's the adaptive child. That's not the adult wise self. That is the adaptive child and that was smart because if you had an angry alcoholic parent, like I've had with clients and you got angry back chances are you would not be okay. There would be physical violence, perhaps more shaming, more abuse, and so you've learned to be quiet and shut it all down. Not To say the whole truth and maybe your relationship to try to protect yourself, but that's the inner child functioning, not the adult self, because we know truth and adult relationships is essential. So we have to start looking at the function of the adaptive child. And a lot of times what I see in couples that come in are there to adaptive children, their adaptive self, that learn to protect themselves or functioning, we marry at our same developmental level, and it's not the wise, mature adult. So let's dive deeper into this. Okay, what we do, the adaptive child learns to numb and suppress automatic responses, and the wise adult self wraps their arms around the Wounded Child in the adaptive child to try to sue them. That's what we needed as children that we didn't get Come here, sweetheart, let me hug you do you need a hug, Sweetie, you're okay, it's okay to cry, it's okay to let it out a parent that would take full responsibility for their own emotions, and not put that on their kid to make them feel better. And so we're going to break down five losing strategies of the adaptive self. And I see these playing out between couples a lot. And these are from we've learned from childhood to protect ourselves. So I need to make sure we're clear on the adaptive child shows up in ways that it's trying to protect themselves not trying to protect the relationship, they're trying to protect themselves. Because we're functioning from our younger self, we're not functioning from the wise adult self, because we're functioning from automatic responses. So let's jump into the five and you can grab your pen and paper. Okay, number one being right, we're going to jump into these five, and then I'm gonna highlight the differences between the wise self and the adaptive self, we're gonna go through the two, so you really hone in on this. So number one being right, righteous, this is where you're kind of bringing you feel like you're in the court of law, and you have to have all your facts straight, you have to have all the details in a lot of times, people when they're being right, they'll bring what we call bringing in the troops will say, Well, last night at dinner, you yelled at me, and you might say and Susie and John also felt like you yelled at me, that's what we call bringing in the troops. And that is not recommended. Because we're trying to get this person to see the light and take responsibility for it. That's not going to work in relationships, because you guys are functioning from your inner children, not your wise adult self speak from humility. So if you want to work on this, you've got to check and go Oh, am I doing my defensive response? My adaptive child automatic response needing to be right to try to protect myself from hurt, rejection, abandonment, it's a dead end road, if you're going to fight to be right, you're going to fight the relationship is going to go To Nowhere Would you rather be in a relationship? Or would you rather be right? It's literally going to be the case long term having to rewrite is that adaptive child part trying to protect themselves from shame. Think about it. If you're right, then you don't have to feel stupid. If you're right, then you don't have to be told that you're an idiot. If you're right, then you don't have to feel your shame or your pain. It's a protective it doesn't really work. But it's a protective barrier to your emotional state. Okay, so that's number one is righteousness or being right number two. And these again, are five losing strategies of the adult adaptive self, Terry real came up with these. And the three parts were Pia melody, she has written a lot on love addiction. But that's the three parts of that we talked about earlier, the wise adult self, the wounded inner child and the adaptive child part. Remember, the adaptive is trying to adapt to the environment when you're younger, to try to survive, or get through it or maintain connection with the parent. Okay, number two, and the five losing strategies as controlling your partner, Oh, I see this all the time, play out getting your partner to dot dot dot, fill in the blank if you're trying to get your partner to be accountable, or you're trying to get your partner to go into therapy, or you're trying to get your partner to apologise or you're trying to get your partner to stop drinking or smoking pot or you're trying to get your partner to not be a workaholic. If only they would do X then you would feel happy. Here's the bottom line of that you can't control anybody think of the serenity prayer God grant me the wisdom to control what I can which is yourself and grant me the wisdom to know I can't remember the whole I'm not quoting this exactly. But what I can't control which is everything else. control is an illusion control was bred out of you feeling controlled, or you feeling out of control, which also feels like a form of control. The illusion is we can't control anyone. Now, when we are young. Our parents have power over us to power over position and we're seeing that a lot in the world power over in that recreates. trauma. So as adults, we have zero control over really anything, I can work through my responses and my emotions and manage them. But I need you to see that control is an illusion, it's a way you're trying to protect yourself. And you need to get a handle on getting your partner to and if that's something you struggle with, I need you to write down what you're trying to get your partner to do, that you have powerless over. And there's grief in that. So that's part of all of this work is grief, grief over what you don't have versus what you do, and grief over what you didn't get your childhood and those unmet needs of affirmation to be seen, to be understood, to be acknowledged to be heard. You've got to grieve through that. Or you're going to put that on your partner and put that on your children. Okay, so five losing strategies for the adaptive self. Remember, you're adapting to your environment when you're young. Okay, so number three is unbridled self expression. And what does that mean? That means you vomit all over someone else, and you feel better, because you've got it all out. But that other person, you've just vomited and projected everything onto them. It's like the couples that will come in and go and 10 years ago, and 20 years ago, and yesterday and an hour ago, and it's a pile up and a pile up and pile up and pile up. Well, that's because you've repressed and suppressed so much from your childhood, and you didn't learn how to acknowledge and communicate in a healthy way in your present relationship. And you got to take ownership of that you wanting to vomit all over someone or call it the barf bag approach. What is that going to leave you with, it's going to leave you feeling absolutely flooded the other person yucky, you're not going to get what you want. So work a lot with people taking deep breaths, regulating themselves, write it out, sometimes before you're going to have these conversations because the vomiting, the unbridled self expression isn't going to get you connection, it's going to create more of what you don't want. And I want you to think of this as the adaptive self is creating more of what you don't want. Number four, retaliation. This one's huge. And I see this, like, let me hurt you the way you hurt me. This is kind of passive aggressive to or you're going to be like I'm going to show them I'm going to do what they did in me. So if they you went out and let's say your partner was talking to another person and was ignoring you, they had too much to drink. And you're like, I'm going to do that and show them how it feels. That is your inner child. That is not your wise adult self because it doesn't work. That's your teenage self. That's your little girl or little boy or little self no matter what how you identify that's trying to get this person to understand how much they hurt you. It doesn't work. clear and direct communication works. Let me hurt you the way you hurt me pervasive impulse to heal, you're hurt. You're like so desperate to heal, you're hurt that you want them to see the pain that they've caused you in retaliation does not work. You want them to hurt the way you have hurt. And this also leads to maladaptive relationships. Okay, number five is withdrawing. So you're shutting down you're stonewalling. You're like I'm out of here. I'm not dealing with this. I definitely believe in taking breaks and having pauses. If you're highly activated, that is healthy. So what that looks like is I'm going to take a deep breath. I'm going to get myself centred, I'm going to recenter myself so I can shift gears from my adaptive self, which is trying to manage and control situations and I have automatic responses that I learned from childhood, I've tried to disrupt that pattern. So I can nurture the wounded self to get to my wise adult self. Does this make sense? I'm embracing I'm gonna go Come here. Honey, you are really scared right now of rejection. You're really scared of abandonment, that shame is coming up. And shame says there's something wrong with you, you're defective, you're not good enough. And if you function from shame, you're going to really run away with these five maladaptive strategies that are going to create what you don't want, which is disconnection, disengagement, discontentment in your relationships and with yourself. So we have the five. And as we look at these five, it's important for you to now do some reflection. So the adaptive child doesn't want to work on the relationship. So if you are, let's say you're in the middle of a conflict, and this happens all the time, in most relationships are in the middle of a conflict. Intimacy will feel too vulnerable. So you want to stay people who say I put my wall up, I have my guard up, I don't want to get hurt, I want to protect myself then you are in the adaptive child. That means you are trying to protect your wounded self because you're afraid to get hurt. That's your tell if you're like I'm putting a wall up. I'll be darned if you treat me this way. There's a difference between a boundary of what's okay what's not okay and a wall a wall is more of your inner child a boundary you're able to communicate the boundary clearly and directly into insistently, that your wise adult self, your inner child will be more likely to play a game be passive aggressive, try to retaliate and get back maybe Stonewall, which means you're just hard as a rock, you are cold, you might get super rageful and angry. And that's how you're going to try to protect yourself. That's how you know you're in your adaptive child, you are not in your centred part of your wise adult self. Where do you go? This is an important question. Okay, when you are in your adaptive child, which one of those do you go to? And it might be more than one out of those five right out which one you go to? Okay, what's one of your go twos? Let me name them again. So when you're in your adaptive self, having to be right, controlling your partner, so getting your partner to be accountable going to therapy, if they would just do X to try to get him to see the light. Number three is unbridled self expression, you kind of just dump everything out on the table retaliation, let me hurt you. The way you hurt me withdrawing number five is withdrawing shutting down or stonewalling? Which one do you go to write that down, and it may be something else, then write that down? So you're going to sit with this, you're going to spend some time doing this, then you're going to write out what is your partner's go to when they're in their adaptive child, you're gonna guess, okay, you're going to take a wild guess? And then you're going to share this episode with them and have them listen and figure out what did they write down? Or what are their go twos. And then you're going to compare notes, you're going to share vulnerably, as long as it's in a relationship, or two people want to, they're willing to do this. So if someone's willing to listen to this podcast, that's a good sign, or they're willing to listen to what you got out of this. That's a good sign. And I've had to spend a lot of time doing this work, because I can shift around depending on how hurt I am or how threatened I feel. Even though the person isn't threatening me. It's tapping into something from my past that's old, that's younger, that needs attention that needs to be dealt with. So you can compare notes, what is your partner's, have them explore what their thoughts are, here's the key to differentiating these three parts. When you and your wise adult self, you can take responsibility, you can talk through it, you can get curious as to where it's coming from, you are open to listening to understand, you're open to working towards the relationship, what I say there's a three legged stool, there's you, there's your partner, and then there's the relationship, if you're in your wise adult self, you can hold space for all three, if you're in your adaptive child or Wounded Child, you're only going to be able to hold space for yourself. And that's it, you're not going to be able to perspective take, you're not going to be able to recenter what I'm teaching you is how to recenter and that's so important. And I really welcome you to explore your pattern between the two of you. So for example, if you go into control as one of your adaptive child strategies, losing strategies, as we call it, and then your partner goes into more withdrawal. And then I asked the question who was controlling in your family system on both sides and who was shut down passive and didn't was conflict avoidant? So we then can drop into couples therapy, we can drop into our younger parts, start doing that family systems work that is so important self awareness, I know I said this in the opening of this podcast is the key to breaking cycles. The more self aware you are, the more able you are to shift from the adaptive child to the inner child, soothe that part nurture that part and get to your wise adult self. Here's the other component to this if you have something that's triggered from your past, okay, that's activated from your past, please tend to it please don't numb it and shove it down and lock it away like you might have unconsciously or consciously done in the past. It's time It's time to attend to it. It's time to free yourself from the shackles of that pain. And I highly recommend a trauma therapist E M, Dr. Therapist, you can go back and listen to previous episodes brainspotting therapists Somatic Experiencing therapist there's a lot of good options out there and I highly recommend you tending to that inner child part. If you are in your adaptive child, chances are you need to explore why are you talking so I love the weight acronym it stands for why am I talking? Are you talking to make things better? Are you proving you're right? Are you trying to control your partner? Here's what you need to do to get to the wise adult part and make it sound so easy. Of course there's layers to this. It's understanding what's activating you. It's getting connected to your body sensations. We can do that with our feet on the floor, taking a deep belly breath.

Kristen
Come into this present moment. You're not in the past. You're not in the future. Come right here and now and take a break I love Tara Brock's reign are a i n acronym. And why do I love that so much? Because when you can cope with what comes up, you're going to be able to access your wise adult self. I promise you this takes work. I want to say that number one, you have to work at this. You have to work at this, the more work you do, sometimes it's automatic, then, and a lot of times we're reconditioning our whole nervous system or hallway we were brought up So Tara brach rain acronym stands for recognise said that very funny. recognise how activated you are in your nervous system in your body. That is your tell you're tapping into something from the past how activated Are you in your nervous system unless there's an imminent threat then that's a different conversation I'm talking about just your day to day activation recognises are a is allow the emotions, the body sensations to be what they are, don't try to suppress them, numb them move away from them, I is investigate what is going on with me right now? I mean, what's happening? What are you feeling? What are you afraid of, investigate, get curious about don't just move away from it. And then the N stands for nurture. This is when you're going to nurture the Wounded Child, which typically isn't going to be what you're going to see in your relationship because that is vulnerability. And when we're in our adaptive child, we're not going to be vulnerable, because we're going afraid, you're going to take advantage of us, you're going to punish us, you're going to take something precious away from us, you're going to hurt us you're gonna be in an S you're gonna reject us, you're gonna judge us. So the nurturing part that why is adult self will start coming online where you can welcome the Wounded Child and the adaptive part to just sit on your lap, hug them, love them. If that's triggering to you, you can do what works for you, whatever that looks like, go play. It's you not putting that responsibility on your partner to caretake you that's icing on the cake. When you do this work mutually. It's a give and take. So using that rain acronym is important and asking yourself why am I talking? Am I talking to be heard and understood? Am I talking to be right? Explore that part, especially with their children to like, why are you talking? Is it your fear that they're gonna go through the same thing you went through? Is it your anxiety, check that take responsibility for that when you take a break, and you can come back, you can be the person you want to be the wise healthy adult self, you're not passing the buck on somebody else. Here's the other thing that's really important that we need to talk about because harshness and meanness there's no redeeming value in that living a contempt free life, even towards yourself will be life changing. So if you have contemptuous parts, meaning there's parts you just resent and hate and don't like, there's a younger part that needs healing there. There's a younger part that needs healing. And it's essential that you do that deeper inner child work because Loving yourself is essential for healthy relationships. Let's see it again, loving yourself is essential for healthy relationships. You're not always going to love yourself. So I don't want to be like, Oh, it's all peaches and cream. No, we have parts of ourselves that we are working on trying to embrace. And these are parts that really got shunned in childhood. These are parts that really got belittled shamed in childhood that we're trying to see that that wasn't truth, that was a projection from somebody else. We're learning how to grieve what we didn't get and celebrate what we did get or grieving what we did not get to be seen, understood, loved, acknowledged, and we're celebrating what we did get not just in childhood, but with our partner now now like what Gabor Ma Tei said is we often in partners and partnership and romantic relationships, you often don't see the wound you see the scar, and I want to say something about that he describes trauma as it disconnects us from our feelings in our self. It's like a scar that gets hard. It's not what happens to you. It's a result of what happens inside of you and how you see yourself in the world around you. We need to be able to be our authentic selves know what we feel be able to express how we feel know our boundaries. And we often like I said had to give that up to stay connected and attached some connection with a parent or a primary caregiver to recognise your wound. It's important that whenever there's tension in your body, that it requires your attention. So tension in your body requires your attention, pay attention to it, ask what it's trying to tell you. If you have tears come up, ask what the tears want to say. What are the tears trying to say? Let them say it write it down on paper say it to a therapist, get it out. What are those tears trying to say? What is the grief trying to release to process Pay attention to resentment. It's often something that's old that's buried deep inside, that you might have had resentment towards a parent, a sibling, a family member, an abuser, and that resentment you've displaced on to somebody else. And it's important that you really look at resentment and the birthplace of resentment so you don't project it on to other people. And I thought it was also important to really make a note of this, you know, hi said we marry at our same developmental level. We also we marry our unfinished business, we marry our wounds, because it's normal, because we, unless we do premarital counselling, which I did many episodes about, or you've done your own therapy and premarital work, or a couples counselling, because that early stage is the romantic stage where we are putting our best foot forward, we really are. And we're not even aware of our own wounds. And it's important you're doing that, that you tend to your unfinished business, that you heal your wounds, and they will come up throughout your lifetime. It's not like oh, you get married and you have no more wounds. No, you have children, and that's bringing up so much inner child work. I am constantly working on my inner child with my children because guess what they don't listen. So times I don't feel heard. And I'm like, I've told you that five times. That's all my inner child stuff. It's all my inner child stuff. And I know it and sometimes I can function from that place and it's my responsibility to recognise and have self awareness around it and take responsibility for it because all relationships move from harmony or we're on our best behaviour to disharmony. We all have disharmony if you haven't had any disharmony, that means you're probably not dealing with any of your deeper stuff. We are on automatic pilot, you might be so disconnected, you might be so detached, dissociative, and then we go to repair. If we're in sometimes couples never get to repair. They're just stuck in disharmony. They don't know how to do that repair work, how to work on their three parts of themselves. This is a funny example. But we were in the car the other day. And I want to share this because my husband and I were able to talk about these three parts and how they actually played out in our in real time, the night before was such a good conversation because he was willing to look at his stuff, I was willing to look at my stuff. And for some reason, we were eating ice cream. And he was like chewing the ice cream. And I said, Oh my gosh, I don't think I've seen someone chew the ice cream. I didn't mean it shaming, and it definitely landed his shame. And I needed to own that which I did, I said and then immediately he likes shrunk down into his chair literally shrunk down into his chair kind of hunched over and went into his little boy self. And we talked about it in real time. This is before I even was talking about these three parts. Because we do inner child work. We said oh my gosh, you just went into a little boy, Mark. Oh, honey was that shaming. And he said, Yeah, I really felt shame. And then I said, Thank you for sharing that I can really see how that was shaming. And I'm so sorry, I didn't go I didn't mean to because I didn't I didn't mean to and all the things. And then the irony of it was the next day I was eating ice cream. And I started showing my ice cream. Not he wasn't around, and I was like, Oh, this is normal. This is normal, it's cold, I'm trying to not, you know, get a frame freeze. And we're able to go back and I said, there's these three, I was listening to this. And he framed it in these three parts. And I do a tonne of inner child work. And it made sense like the adaptive child. And I said, You know what you did last night, when you were hurt you let me into your Wounded Child, you went into your little boy three or four year old self, you didn't go into your adaptive child, which would have gotten angry or gone will fine and gotten real defensive. You let me into the Wounded Child part. That's what I'm working on in couples therapy let you having it safe enough where you can be vulnerable because the adaptive child is preventing vulnerability, which is preventing hurt and pain, it doesn't really prevent hurt and pain it did as a child, it's maladaptive now that really clicked for both of us. And we were able to go Yeah, I did let you in, I did feel safe enough to let you in and tell you that. And I was in my wise adult self when he told me that. So I was able to acknowledge and nurture him in a healthy way. And then he was able to shift right into his adult healthy adult self,

Kristen
his wise adult self. And that's what I'm working with couples to create safety for you to be able to do that in order to be able to do that you have to learn to self regulate. And if I can be aware of who's online? Is it my wounded child? Is it my adoptive child? Or is it my wise adult self that can have the three legged stool? Same with my children? It's how I feel how they feel in our relationship is the third component of the stool. Am I saying things to enhance the relationship or am I wanting to be in control because I'm afraid of something bad happening? That is my adaptive child. And you have to understand the difference between the three and I know I could go so much deeper. I don't want to overwhelm you but I want to say something about trauma. The legacy of trauma lives inside of us in in Our family systems for generations. So what happens on the outside in the world impacts us on the inside and in the family. That's why I love this work. Because if you decide you're going to do this work, you can change how you feel. And you can show up and break cycles, but it takes consistently self awareness to do it. So my encouragement to you is you can get any of Gabor Montes books, you can also get the there's so many books on this, and I want to pause to really reflect on some of these books. Okay, Homecoming. I know I've said this many times by Dr. John Bradshaw healing the shame that binds you, by Dr. John Bradshaw, you also have any Brene Browns books that talks about shame What happened to you by Dr. Bruce Perry, that's all about trauma, because this inner child work is the essence of true transformational healing. It just is. So when I can nurture my little eight year old self, and go, Oh, that's who came online right there. That is not my wise adult self. And not to shame my little girl, it's to go, oh, you can nurture her. Now. Remember, rain, recognise a lot, allow, investigate, nurture. And when you have that, and you can do this work, you will feel differently about yourself, you will be more authentic, you'll be able to recognise what you actually feel. You can go back and listen to the core emotions episodes, you can get the book, it's not always depression, to learn about emotional wellness and emotional intelligence, you can then recognise what part is online. And then you can tend to that part and not project that on to other people. It's really transformational. There's also other inner child podcasts I did one four episodes ago, I think that you can listen to but this is another framework to look at it in that I hope was helpful. And if you need to go back and listen to it, I encourage you to do so. And here's the bottom line. It's never too late to heal. I promise you I would not be putting this podcast out if I didn't believe that. And I don't see this in my own life and with the clients I work with. Don't give up on yourself. Shame wants to tell you that you are too late are terrible person. You're terrible mom, you're terrible partner. You're no one's ever going to love you. You're going to be alone forever. It's all lies. When you decide to start facing yourself and be more self aware face your pain. It's gonna change your life. I love you. And I'm grateful for you. And I want to encourage you if you need to hear this over and over and over, please put it on and no, I'm right there with you going. I know it hurts. You're doing it. You're doing it. I promise I was light at the end of the tunnel. It's up and down and up and down. Sometimes it's 10 steps forward and 20 steps back and it will pay off. Thank you for being here with me. And I will look forward to our time together next 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 Kristen k r i