Ep 50: Why Inner Child Healing Boosts Your Child's Development

[INTRODUCTION]

Sawadee ka, and welcome to the Come Back to Care podcast. A place where we’re re-imagining parenting to be deeply decolonized and intentionally intergenerational. If you’ve been looking for ways to practice social justice in your daily parenting and nurture your child’s development while re-parenting your inner child, I’m so glad you’re here. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatic abolitionist, and founder of Come Back to Care. A dot connector, norm agitator and lover of liberation. In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineages and communities. And we come back to care… together. So come curious and come as you are.

[EPISODE]

Welcome to episode 50 of the Come Back to Care Podcast. My dear co-conspirator, this is our fifth season and this season is all about inner child re-parenting: the what, the why, and the how. 

In this episode, you and I will explore these themes: why Inner child healing boosts your child's development and what inner child wounds are. Then, we’ll wrap up the episode with one action you can play with to care for your inner child wounds. If that sounds generative to you, let’s get started. 

There’s a lot of information out there about raising children to be resilient and to thrive. If I can sum it all up in one sentence for you, it’s this: your child’s development blossoms when you meet their emotional needs promptly, consistently, and predictably at least 30% of the time. And the other 70% when you cannot be there for them or miss their cues because you're surviving under white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy or for whatever reason, you repair and reconnect with your child. To say it another way, what’s important is meeting your child’s emotional needs to make them feel safe, seen, soothed, and supported…most of the time. If you’re curious about the science behind this, I covered the research and theories of both Western psychology and decolonized mental health on this topic in Ep 39: Attachment Basics to Know Before Re-Parenting Your Inner Child.

And here’s how inner child healing or inner child reparenting comes in. To meet your child’s emotional needs, you gotta see clearly what your child needs from you…whether they need you to show up for them with a sense of “I get you” or “I got you” which you can explore more in Ep 37: Where do I start “meeting my child where they’re at”?. Because the evidence-based science and political analysis behind it is too juicy for me to cover here. Once you consciously see what they need from you, you can center yourself, roll up your sleeves, and show up fully for them. Otherwise, you subconsciously see what they need from you through the lens of your past emotional pain and therefore you see their needs as a threat because their behaviors, sounds, or demeanors remind you of your emotional wounds from when you were little (aka your inner child wounds). And what do you do when you’re threatened? You do what you gotta do to protect yourself, even if it goes against your best intention to be there for your child and give them a different childhood from the one you had. This self-protection might look like snapping and yelling at your child because things feel out of control and you need to regain a sense of control; or like sacrificing your own needs and becoming a martyr because people pleasing feels safer than setting boundaries and saying “no” to your child. And our nervous system can only do one thing at a time: protection or connection. That means when you’re protecting yourself, biologically speaking, connection goes offline…yes, the connection you need to show up for your child when they need you to meet their emotional needs. 

So to our question: why inner child healing boosts your child’s development…it’s because your emotional wounds from your childhood or inner child wounds act as a filter that you subconsciously use to see your child. Through this filter you’re not seeing your child’s needs clearly because you’re seeing your own inner child’s need for protection instead. And when you’re not seeing your child’s needs clearly, it’s hard to meet them where they’re at and lay a solid foundation for their development. It’s really hard to meet your child’s emotional needs when your own inner child’s emotional needs weren’t met. It’s like you don’t get what you didn’t get. It’s worth asking: which child am I seeing: my actual child right here right now or my own inner child from the past? And let this awareness guide your next parenting decisions. 

What’s an inner child wound?

Before we put this information in a concrete example together, let’s review what an inner child wound is.

Every child has core emotional needs to feel safe, seen, soothed, and supported. We thrive in environments where we feel safe to be who we are, seen for what we’re feeling and how we’re feeling it, and supported with proper boundaries and consequences. When these core emotional needs aren’t met by the adults raising us, we do whatever it takes to get these needs met because our survival- as a little child- literally depends on them. And here’s what it looks like. As a child, you unconsciously adapted how you behaved to fit in with your family rules, to blend in and belong. You unconsciously adapted your behaviors to meet your parents’ expectations, to make sure you got their approval, acceptance, and availability so you were taken care of. You adapted how you walked, talked, and behaved unconsciously to maximize connection with and minimize separation from your caregivers. 

You adapted your behaviors and literally contorted your posture to blend in and belong. For example, in a family that values being tough, being assertive because “closed mouths don’t get fed”, you contorted your posture so that your chest was puffed up and jaw clenched tightly, ready for action. You also adapted your behaviors by showing less emotion, speaking with confidence, and not asking for help. You learned to become hyper independent and use it as a survival strategy. 

Let’s explore two more examples together.

In another family where you had to be small and invisible to avoid being punished, you contorted your posture so that your spine collapsed and your gaze was downward as if you were never there. You adapted your behaviors too by maybe numbing out your feelings and focusing on being perfect at school because perfectionism made you feel in control and kept you safe from physical punishments or emotional explosions from those who raised you. You learned to use perfectionism as a survival strategy. 

Let me pause here for a second. It can be tender to talk about our childhood so please, please, please take breaks when you need to…as we’re exploring the wisdom in our wounds together. 

Alright our final example: in another family where you had to take care of everyone and everything so those who raised you wouldn’t get upset, you contorted your posture so that your spine leaned forward, arms and feet were ready for any and all caretaking responsibilities, and your eyes were fixed forward scanning for and anticipating what people needed. You adapted your behaviors too by abandoning your needs to focus on other people’s needs instead. It was safer to be a caretaker or a people pleaser and people pleasing became your survival strategy. 

No matter what survival strategy you had to overlearn to protect yourself, this protection comes at the cost of disconnecting from and disowning the parts of yourself that weren’t accepted in the family. You had to leave these parts of yourself behind to avoid experiencing rejection, humiliation, criticism, and abandonment. You had to abandon those parts of yourself to survive. This is why showing up fully as your whole self whether in parenting or social justice organizing requires you to reclaim these parts of you that you disowned and left behind. Contorting your body over and over again to survive leaves bruises and wounds. These are inner child wounds.

How Inner Child Wound Healing Enriches Parenting

And what does it have to do with raising your child to be free and not passing these wounds to them? Let’s start with a metaphor: survival strategies are like a superhero costume. Hahh, I know, your girl loves metaphors and alliterations. Before I elaborate on this metaphor, in the next episode I’ll connect the dots between this metaphor and neuroscience concepts along with political analysis. I got you covered. For now let’s see how this metaphor applies to parenting. 

Your survival strategies that you had to overlearn when you were little are like a superhero costume that protects you from future emotional pain. You wear this protective costume daily underneath your grownup clothes. Because you wear it every day, it feels so cozy and broken in even though you know it’s not on trend. You got it when you were three years old or around that time in most cases. It’s not the most fashionable but you trust it’ll do its job…keeping you covered and protected. And you don’t even notice you’re wearing it anymore. But it certainly shapes (pun very intended) how safe and threatened you feel in adult relationships with your boss, partners, co-parents, people in the community you organize with and certainly your child. 

This costume has three pieces. First, a onesie that acts like armor to protect you from ever feeling the same rejection, humiliation, criticism, or abandonment you experienced as a child. 

The second piece is the cape that acts like an invisibility cloak that hides the parts of you that you had to disconnect from and disown because they were too much or not enough for your family. This cape actually makes your whole self- your dignity, divinity, power- invisible to you, making it hard for you to show up fully and take up space. 

The final piece to complete the look are the x-ray glasses. These glasses help you detect even the smallest signs of rejection, humiliation, abandonment, criticism, and other emotional pain so that you can fight, flight, freeze, people please your way out of danger before you get hurt. A question from your boss gets picked up by these x-ray glasses as a sign of criticism. Your co-parent not texting you back within 7 and a half minutes gets analyzed as a sign of abandonment. It doesn’t matter if the threat is real, right? These glasses are designed for you to see threats everywhere. I know you already see the downside here. It’s the classic case of “when you’ve got a hammer everything looks like a nail,” only in this case everything (your child’s behaviors included) looks like a threat.

Remember our discussion earlier in the episode about how when you look at your child through the filter of your inner child wound, you don’t see your child clearly and, therefore, it’s hard for you to meet them where they’re at? That filter is exactly these x-ray glasses.

Let’s see what this metaphor looks like in parenting. Ander is a mixed-race, single parent raising their three-year-old, Cruz. Ander gave me permission to share their story and I’m using a pseudonym to honor their confidentiality.

Cruz is crying because he’s upset, he couldn’t put the puzzle pieces together like he did three days ago. Ander shares with me that the volume and the high pitch of Cruz’s cry sets them off. Ander tries to label Cruz’s feelings and be supportive but in a split second they snapped. Ander yelled “ugh, stop whining. You know how to do it. Keep trying.” Shame immediately follows and Cruz cries even harder. 

If you’re holding your breath, gritting your teeth, or having your shoulders up by your ears. I know…you’re not alone. Ander’s not alone. 

Ander and I work with their shame by setting aside the good-bad parenting binary for a second to understand the function of Ander’s yelling. And you, my dear co-conspirator, already know how to do this. When your child has a meltdown, you’re not saying they’re a bad kid and imprisoning them in the good kid- bad kid binary, right? Instead, you try to figure out the function of their meltdown which is communicating- as best as they can through the screaming and throwing- what their unmet needs are. You got this too.  

I share with Ander that they reacted to Cruz by using their trusted (but outdated) childhood survival strategy. It simply shows how much their nervous system loves them. It kicks into protection mode when Ander feels overwhelmed. Our childhood survival strategy was exactly what we needed back then, but we can upgrade it to fit with who we are now as a parent or a caregiver. When Ander was overwhelmed, their nervous system sent them into self-protection mode. And when we’re in protection, we’re not in connection. In self-protection mode, Ander had their superhero costume on and looked at Cruz’s crying through their inner child wound filter instead of seeing clearly what Cruz actually needed. So Ander reacted to this perceived threat by “teaching” in air quotes or rather coercing Cruz to be tougher and be more independent instead of responding intentionally to Cruz’s cry which was a bid for connection.  

And if you already guessed, Ander’s survival strategy they had to overlearn when they were little was always being hyper independent, never asking for help or bidding for connection because when they did, they experienced rejection and abandonment. 

Still with me so far? 

Here’s what’s important about inner child healing. How much emotional connection you and I had with those who raised us isn’t our destiny. We don’t always have to be stuck in survival and raise children from this survival-based parenting. With practice and community support and a whole lot more practice, you can slow down your reaction enough to remember to take your x-ray glasses off to see your child clearly and meet their emotional needs. 

To do this, we start with self-awareness, understanding the nuts and bolts of what inner child wounds are and how they’re in the driver’s seat of your parenting when you’re triggered. When you make sense of how your past is affecting your present parenting, it creates so much space for you to add other strategies to your parenting toolkit. 

One thing I say often and I’m going to say it again from my heart to yours: forget about the good-bad parenting binary you’re using to grade how well you’re raising your child. Let’s look at parenting as a skillset. You had to overlearn self-protection when you were little so of course you’re going to be skillful at yelling, shutting down, controlling, numbing out, people pleasing and so on to feel a sense of control and stability. When you overlearn protection, you under learn connection. You’re skillful at protection and you’re unskillful at connection. And connection is a skill we can cultivate and practice in a community with those humans, pets, plants, lands, spirits, and ancestors we trust. 

Your child needs your whole self. Our collective liberation also needs your whole self too with all of your dignity, divinity, and power. 

[MIDROLL]

My dear co-conspirator, I can’t tell you often enough how grateful I am that you’re here doing this radical and liberatory work of both healing yourself and practicing social justice in your daily parenting. And you don’t have to practice alone. Every month I hold a community workshop on Zoom for people who subscribe to the Come Back to Care Newsletter. You’ll meet with me and other social justice curious families live on Zoom once a month to discuss topics like how to discipline young children without using power-over domination and coercion, or how to work with your parenting triggers, and more. Get notified when these monthly workshops are open for registration by signing up at comebacktocare.com/newsletter. I write each email with nourishing care and deep respect for your time. Again, sign up at comebacktocare.com/newsletter. Alright, back to the episode.

[MIDROLL END]

Invitation

Before we wrap up this episode, I’d love to share one exercise with you. Please nurture what resonates, compost the rest, and more importantly make it YOUR method. Everything is invitational. 

To begin connecting the dots between your present parenting triggers and your past inner child wounds, I have four reflective questions for you. So that you can begin to pause when triggered, remove your superhero x-ray glasses, and see your child’s needs clearly for what they are.

If you’re multitasking, the transcript is in the show notes for you at comebacktocare.com/podcast.

Okay, here we go. Question one: What are one to three words you would use to describe the role you had to play to be a quote unquote “good child” in your family? You had to perform these roles to be accepted, valued, and seen.

Question two: Because you had to perform these roles over and over again to protect yourself, what were the survival strategies you had to overlearn? 

Question three: Because of these overlearned survival strategies, what connection strategies did you under learn?

Question four: Who in your ecosystem of care can support you in cultivating these under learned connection strategies? 

I’ll share my responses to support your self-reflection. The roles I had to perform to be the good child in three words are overachieving perfectionist, people pleasing caregiver. Well, that’s five words but you get the idea.

Because of these roles, I overlearned survival strategies like getting things done fast, taking care of everyone, being super independent, super reliable, and super excellent.

Therefore, I under learned connection strategies like taking care of my own needs (because I focused so much on other people’s needs, I didn’t even know what I needed); or letting my guard down to let people know me, help me, and support me. I also under learned rest, play, and being imperfect.

Over the decades, I’ve been re-learning how to trust my body and center my own needs, especially after my gender reaffirming surgeries almost 20 plus years ago by connecting with the land and trusting in the unconditional support of my ancestors. Similarly, through organizing with my comrades, I’ve been softening my overlearned survival strategy of being guarded and independent to become more inter-dependent with those I trust. I learn to mess up and realize “oh I’m not gonna die from making mistakes” because people who love me enough will call me in compassionately and hold space firmly for me to be accountable. 

I hope these questions can be one step towards you getting unstuck from survival.

Closing

As we’re coming to a close, I feel pulled to say that updating our beliefs and what we consider as true, common, and normal is hard. It’s hard to question the oppressive status quo and outdated family cycles, especially when there’re multiple global crises happening, unrelenting grief to process, and white colonial capitalist patriarchy to survive.  Updating your beliefs about who you are and what you’re worthy of is even harder. Yet, you’re here…shaking this belief that what you had to overlearn to protect yourself and survive is your identity. A strategy isn’t an identity. You are more than your survival.

In this episode you began to unlearn outdated beliefs from your upbringing to unlock your fullest potential. Then, we used this potential to stand in the light of our own truth, as my Chinese Medicine teacher would say. And this light will illuminate the path of our highest good and collective liberation. Let’s bring our whole selves, our dignity, and divinity to your school board meeting, to your community’s mutual aid network, or to a conversation about genocide in Gaza with someone at your grocery store checkout line. This is how we heal as we get free, together. 

If this episode fills your heart cup and you have the bandwidth to reciprocate, I have 2 invitations:

I invite to you reciprocate with your time by leaving a review and rating on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Or reciprocate with your money by joining our Patreon. You can find all the details at comebacktocare.com/support.

And to join the newsletter and access our monthly community workshop, sign up at comebacktocare.com/newsletter.

As always, in solidarity and sass. Until next time, please take care.