TRANSCRIPT: 30 Day Inner Child Therapy Challenge
==================================================
Duration: ~14 minutes
So some of you guys might love this video and some of you guys might hate it. This video is a challenge of getting our adult part of ourself in place so that our inner child isn't emotionally reacting and being triggered as much as we normally are. I came up with this process, this 30-day challenge, in my trauma groups because I wanted each member to have a sense about how their inner child runs them when they're triggered, emotionally reactive to everything, sort of having a couple days where you're depressed or you're anxious when you're massively triggered, or being aware of how depressed and anxious we are at baseline, all kinds of stuff. So how this challenge works is that everybody in my group gets a dog and the dog represents your inner child and you carry this dog with you around in your bag with you as best as you can 24-7 to have an awareness that when you're having an emotional reaction, a little trigger, some feelings, is you're starting to become aware that your inner child is
up or your inner child is like something's going on there. That awareness, which is the exercise, is strictly about kind of awareness. That awareness gives us a little bit more curiosity and control and we're more on top of our emotions as opposed to kind of drowning in them. And why people love the exercise because some people are just sort of like they're into sort of this idea of the inner child and they love that kind of version of tenderness towards themselves. Not everybody has that and that's perfectly okay and some people have an aversion to that kind of tenderness itself, which is something to explore in your own sort of childhood. Another reason why people kind of hated it because they feel silly carrying around a dog, which I totally get. So that is basically the challenge and what the other piece of the challenge is, is we go over this whole list of core beliefs which comes from cognitive behavioral therapy where generally most of us are made up of emotionally sort of like
three to five major primal core beliefs like I'm bad, the world is not safe, people are disinterested in me, it's my fault if things go wrong. And those core beliefs which are held by the inner child affect our automatic thoughts and our triggers. So everyone gets this list of core beliefs and they're done in sort of categories and I'll read through some of these to give you guys an example of what core belief, what they are and how a core belief works is that let's just say you get an email from your boss or you're dating someone and they, you know, after a couple dates they kind of say like, you know, you're a great person, gonna move on though, we're not really, you know, having a really good fit. Most likely if you grew up in trauma and dysfunction, those are some examples where you're going to get triggered. Let's just say the email from the boss could be, where's your project on the share drive or we thought you were in the meeting right now, we thought you'd be joining us, is a core belief that
could be activated, could be something like, so just an example sort of like under the category of core beliefs as defectiveness, it could be like I'm inferior, I'm worthless, I'm a bad person, I'm a failure. Those are some examples of core beliefs. And then in the other example about the dating example, that could be most likely falling under the category of abandonment or unlovable. I'm gonna read some examples from each category and this list is available on my website where you guys would pull this list and spend some time really narrowing it down. Most likely if you grew up in trauma and dysfunction, you're gonna relate to everything on the list, which is what most people do in sort of my group, and then a little bit of tricky work is to narrowing these down to three to five basic things. If your core belief, the major thing that runs you, isn't on this list, you can also think about what that is and write it down. So you'll see what I mean. So under the category of defectiveness, I'm nothing, I'm not good enough, I'm always wrong, I'm abnormal. The category of being unlovable, I'm
unacceptable, I'm always left out, nobody wants me, I'm unlikable. The core belief of abandonment, I'm unimportant, I can't be happy if I'm on my own, I will be abandoned if I love or care for someone or something. The category of helplessness, I'm vulnerable, I'm needy, there's no way out, I'm a loser, I can't stand up for myself. The category of entitlement, this one is tricky, this one is sort of, this one's kind of a shot to the ego, we all have little chunks of this stuff. The category of entitlement is if I don't excel, then I'm inferior and worthless. If people don't respect me, I can't stand it. Other people don't deserve the good things that they get. And then lastly, the category of caretaking is people will betray me, I have to do things perfectly, I'm responsible for everyone and everything. So this list will be, again, it'll be available on my website and it's just, you know, this is, these core beliefs are
all over the the CBT cognitive behavioral therapy model, which is very helpful. But what we're doing it with this exercise, the dog core beliefs and being aware of it for 30 days, we are doing some cognitive behavioral therapy, we are also doing some mindfulness, and we're also doing some trauma work, trauma awareness, to be aware of when we get triggered and the dog is up, you know, we get that email and instead of reacting to the email, we notice, we pause, we say, whoa, I'm having a reaction, the dog must be up. What's beautiful about that level of awareness is research is pointing to just seeking something else that could be wondering or engaging in thinking about why we're feeling a certain way is the complete opposite of drowning in those feelings. And that seeking causes our system to be a little bit less adrenalized. So what I'm trying to get my
clients to do in this group work with this 30-day challenge is to not be reactive, to be more aware of our emotions. So the benefits to this is people start to say like, whoa, I'm realizing how much my inner child runs me, I'm reactive to everything, and that this exercise allows you to maybe have a little bit of a pause. And there's some brain stuff going on in those two things, where the dog represents our inner child, and our inner child resides in a chunk of our brain called the amygdala, which is our sort of emotional memory system. It carries all the conditioning. And it's not all bad. Our inner child also represents our emotional creativity, that the music you like, the creativity, what you like to wear is also in that sort of part of that brain region. But usually for trauma survivors, that brain region is way too activated. You can also think about the amygdala as the brain's smoke detector. So it's really
hard for us to be on the beam or on top of our SH whatever, and have more mastery in life, if we have this smoke alarm going off in our brain. And that smoke alarm was there from childhood, if you grew up in trauma. So there's that. Then what this exercise is also, we're trying to shift our focus away from that part of our brain and get our frontal lobes online. So the frontal lobes are the parts of our brain that allow us to think and feel, and at the same time, it's also a very pragmatic, logistical part of our brain. And you can almost think about that part of our brain as where the adult quality of our brain resides. So these two parts, the adult part and the inner child, you could think about that as like frontal lobes and amygdala. And if you grew up in trauma and you struggle with this stuff, where complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is the amygdala is way too activated, and there's a lot of
adrenaline going through your system because of that. So when we get triggered, it's kind of a hot mess. And what we're trying to do is get our frontal lobes online, that we can be aware of the mess, which actually decreases that mess. So that's the whole point to the exercise. An example of how this works is if you've ever had a fight with somebody, and then in that fight you maybe lose your words, or you become really, really upset, or you're too aggressive, or you're too submissive, or something like that. And then you leave that conflict with somebody. It doesn't even have to be a huge fight. It can even be like asking for a raise, and it's too intense for you. You get triggered to authority, and you lose your words, and you don't ask for the raise. Then, when the upset dies down, when the inner child, throughout the day or sometime later, when the inner child kind of calms down a little bit, and the adrenaline chemicals in the system subside a little bit, the frontal lobes come online. And that's when we sort of say to ourself, why didn't I say that? What's wrong with me? Why didn't I say
that thing at that time? That's when the frontal lobes come back online. And when we're triggered, the frontal lobes usually go offline. Why they go offline is fight, flight, freeze, shame, submit. The survival-based emotions are adrenaline-based emotions, and they shut down our thinking and feeling at the same time part of our brain. And we're all smoke detector. And that's just kind of how, as mammals, and sort of that's just kind of how it works. Trauma is a little bit different than sort of like animal-based survival. Because, you know, if you grew up in trauma dysfunction, you're kind of swimming in this stuff. So the idea is to get these frontal lobes online. You can almost think about the frontal lobes, if you're old enough to remember, like a 56k modem. And that it only works with a certain kind of connection at a certain different time. And we're trying to get that thing going with trauma work, so that we're
more on top of our emotions instead of drowning in them. So to recap, you get a stuffed animal. And this stuffed animal represents your inner child, who had the childhood that you had. And sort of, in many ways, probably runs your present life in relationships, and friendships, and works, how you feel about yourself, your emotions, the whole bit. And this thing is almost too big, too much. And we're trying to get a different part of our brain. Actually, the part of the brain that seeks out these videos, and seeks out recovery, and that kind of a thing, that's your adult part. That's the curiosity part. That's like, there's got to be some other way to kind of be in the world. And we're trying to get that part of our brain. You can almost think about this stuff as like a boot camp. We're trying to get that part of our brain more engaged, more front and center, so that it can take care of the inner child. So you got this going on in your life. It's in your bag. You take it to work. You take it everywhere. And I know it's going to feel silly, but you know what I mean? Like it's, you know, we
crack jokes about sort of, in my group, like people kind of will attach it to their chest, and just say, take it easy on me. My inner child runs me, which is funny. But this thing is with you for a full month. And the exercise is for you to become aware of these emotions that run you, instead of sort of drowning in them, instead of having them being front and center. And just that seeking, again, that seeking of what's going on with the dog, what's going on with my inner child right now, which core belief just got activated by my friend who couldn't go out to lunch with me, or whatever. What core belief got activated? Was it sort of abandonment? Was it sort of things, you know, where you go to a shame place about things? And then the frontal lobe, that the adult part of our brain, can start to separate. Sort of like, whoa, I'm having a really big reaction to my friend needing to reschedule. So I hope that this is helpful. This is with you for 30 days. You become aware of your core beliefs, because when the dog or
you get triggered, I want you guys to be thinking about which core belief from childhood is activated. And also that, oh, this is super important, the core beliefs are wrong. So if you have a core belief that is sort of like, I'm worth this, I'm responsible for everybody, the core beliefs are incorrect. Most likely they're there from your childhood, and you need to establish some new core beliefs. And we get that from healing and recovery, that instead of like, I'm responsible for everybody's feelings, switching that over time, and it's going to be a struggle, to the core belief that just basically people are responsible for their own feelings, and I can be present for both of us at the same time. So I hope this video is helpful to you guys. I would love to know if you are going to be doing this challenge. You can use the comments in this video as almost like an accountability about whether you're doing it or not, or what you find. That's going to be very, very helpful. When I'm doing this in a group, if the group meets weekly, where every seven days we're checking in
about, you know, what the week was like with the dog. And there's going to be good days and bad days with it, you might sort of totally forget, but this exercise tends to be really, really helpful, and that people become more and more aware of their emotional stuff running them, as opposed to having some mastery over it. So if you liked the video, hit subscribe, hit the little notifications button. There'll be more videos coming up, and I wish you well. Thanks so much.
