Hello everyone. I hope you're well on my channel. I try to offer concrete things for you all to work on instead of just listing or identifying problems and stuff that comes with childhood trauma and C-P-T-S-D, because just naming problems is not really sort of. Therapy and many of you asked for specific inner child tools to specific problems.
And the best thing that I can offer outside of face-to-face therapy, which we're limited here in the YouTube world, um, is simply resources from these videos. So I put together a video of journaling prompts from I think all the videos that I've given, journaling prompts. And these are inner child based, trauma-based journaling prompts for you to have if you're stuck on an issue and you can't seem to make headway.
Um, or how your childhood trauma contributes to that stuckness and kind of mucks up your present people, places and things and reactions and relationships. So in the description of this video, I will have timestamps about the issues that are relevant to the prompts and related to the link to the original video that the prompts came from.
Things like codependency. The blind spot video, the gaslighting video, like all that jazz. So you can watch the video the whole way through if you want, and sort of take all the the prompts in, or you can kind of skip ahead to find the prompts related to maybe an issue that you're struggling with. If you're new to me or new to the channel.
Welcome. If you like this video, feel free to hit some buttons on this screen. You really can't miss with any of the buttons, especially the like button or the subscribe button, which greatly contributes to. Developing more of a community around childhood trauma, inner child stuff, and recovery. Um, and if these videos are helpful to you and to your recovery, you can consider supporting the work that goes into this channel over at my Patreon.
And in addition, you can also go to my website to do some childhood trauma e-course work that I offer there, including an upcoming webinar that I'm doing on Saturday, April 9th. And the topic is overcoming the toxic family system. This is a live event followed up by a q and a afterward, um, q and a on the material and other stuff.
And if you're struggling with the effects of your family system and want to move beyond it, the webinar is really gonna be for you. Um, and if you follow this white ball up here, it'll take you how to register to the video, the information on it, um, or the webinar actually. Um, the cost, all that jazz. So it's right up here.
Prompts are gonna be coming without context to the issue. They're just gonna be. Jumping right into the prompts. So just pay attention to what the issue is listed on the screen. I think it's in a purple thing. Um, or you can just simply go to the description of the video and find the video that you're interested in.
Watch the whole thing. Either way, I hope it's helpful to you. So there's gonna be no outro to this video, so I'll leave you as usual with may you be filled with loving kindness. May you be well, may you be peaceful and at ease. May you be joyous. How does my family respond when I question abuse or problems?
How did my parents do with their partnerships and intimacy in life? Does my parent or parents really see me for who I am? How and why to that? Do they show? Do they show up for me in ways that I need? Who shows up for who More? The how and why to that, like, like write about it. Does it feel like I'm an alien in my own family system?
How and why? How does my family system manage present conflict? Is it mature? Is it healthy? How does my family talk about my childhood? Are they defensive or do they not remember themselves? Or do they assume normalcy because basic needs were met, like the food education, shelter stuff. Does your family say stuff like, you were fine, or You were always the problem, or, I wish I'd never met your mother, or, what do you want?
I had to work. What do you want? I needed grandma's help. That's the kind of stuff you might be looking for in this journaling, writing about, about that last question. Find a therapist or he or a healer of some kind, a reiki person, a somatic person, whomever. It doesn't really just have to be in the therapy world.
I would recommend that top tier. But you know, this stuff is extremely hard to find. It is like a, a needle in the haystack. But we need to find someone who can guide us through this and also be a witness and advocate for what happened to us. Witnessing the, the impact of it and advocating that we sort of are able to sort of heal and grow out of it.
Um, this is such a huge issue that it just does require some significant work for reference. What I do in my own practice is that I will recreate a traumatic experience for the client with a completely different outcome. From how it actually originally went down. It's called experiential therapy, and I will do this in either a group setting or individual.
When the client is ready, I will bring in, say for example, doing some empty chair work where I'll bring in an empty chair or many chairs of the abusives. Sibling and the parents and let the client speak their truth to them, to both the abusing sibling and the parents or the caretakers who didn't take any action that's recreating the trauma and bringing it up in the room, but having a different outcome.
Where we are the ones talking, we are the ones expressing, we are the ones having a bit of sort of some of the power. Um, and as a therapist, I'll also speak to the abusive, um. Sibling as well as the parents in a, in a way to like let them have it and hold them accountable.
Here are two very simple journaling prompts. The first is, what do I feel about myself when one of these secrets comes up? And incidentally, it can be, it doesn't have to be one of these five secrets. It could be secrets about sex, it could be secrets about anything. I'm just giving you five off the top of my head.
Um, is it true that I'm bad somehow in it? Or could it actually be normal given what my family system was like? Is it me? Or is it the system that I was born in? And I will have these two journal prompts in the description of the video in case you guys sort of lose it. The second journaling prompt is what it might feel if I embrace the normalcy around this issue.
Would I be less burdened? Would I feel more human rather than feeling separate? Can I gradually accept that my story is more about my family dysfunction rather than me being faulty? Not seeing that others are triggered too. What this looks like is, I think as trauma survivors, we assume we're the only person in the room, workplace, or relationship that has issues.
That's so not true, and you might have grown. You might have grown out of that by now, but your inner child can still sort of believe in that. And here's what I mean. This one's really related to the last one, by the way. So some examples, you go to that moody friend with a problem and they really zing you with contempt and criticism, and you leave ashamed that they might be right and you missed a lot of their behavior.
Another blind spot. Your boss is super inconsistent. One minute they share too much. The next day lecture, the next day are really awkward and off in a meeting with you. Or, um, you feel confused and bad, but you second guess yourself because, you know, well, they were, they were nice to me on Tuesday. They were intimate with me on Tuesday and that, you know.
The mess of all that. Um, you, this is a big one. You go to a sibling about a dysfunctional parent and they half acknowledge, but they partly defend the parent and you leave feeling abandoned and blamed or maybe ashamed of yourself for bringing it up. Um, we get self-consumed by our own trauma and we miss the bigger picture about what is going on in others in the conflict or the situation.
We miss that our moody friend is self-righteous and blamey, which is a major telltale sign of being triggered. They might have been triggered about mistaking your vulnerability for weakness, which is something I see all the time, especially in social media and or in society right now. And we miss that.
Those are signals of childhood trauma. Trauma in them. The boss because? Because they're an authority figure. Or they were intimate or you know, shared something or sweet one minute, and then in a super cold manager mode the next. We miss that they are inconsistent as a leader and they're messy about boundaries, which is another sign of that they're triggered.
And potentially have some trauma, survive some childhood trauma of the Rome with the sibling. Um, they're playing devil's advocate, which in this case is their codependency about not taking a side. Not taking a side is another potential sign of being triggered or having childhood trauma symptoms like the belief that, um, no one can be bad.
Um, I can't tolerate that, but I'm happy to judge you and abandon you in needing me to be an ally. See what I'm sort of saying there is that their choice to not sort of really acknowledge or their blind spot to not acknowledge the, the parental system being toxic is their own sort of codependency, one of their own trauma, trauma symptoms.
But we might walk away feeling that that sibling might know better when we're starting this stuff. What would happen if you said no or disagreed growing up? What would happen if you needed help from your parents about how to feel or think about something like my Walkman scenario? What would happen if you brought up or wanted to bring up something that didn't feel right to you or wasn't right for you?
What would happen when you go after something you wanted growing up, like trying out for like some kind of like afterschool thing? Um, what would happen with that? Once you get a sense about what the fears are? Here are some helpful new beliefs to, and ideas that your healthy adult can start to re-parent your inner child with.
Like some, these are almost like affirmations and incidentally, affirmations don't work without the concept of childhood trauma or how these, these things got lost. So here's something you can present to your inner child. We, we now have the right to a process, not immediate perfection. We have the right to how we see things too.
That wasn't true growing up. We have the right to our truth about the issue that wasn't true growing up. Nature gave us a working intuition and we are now honoring it. That wasn't possible growing up. We can tolerate being misunderstood. We couldn't grow up because that wasn't safe. We can tolerate disagreements because we couldn't growing up because that also wasn't safe.
I have a hard time thinking about a more idiotic and humane, avoidant and damaging workplace tool than the idea of a performance purview. And I know you're probably saying like, geez, Patrick, like how do you really feel about them? Like, let it all out, buddy. Um, in traditional performance reviews, you're rated usually as an employee on a scale of like one to five or one to seven, with the higher number being more satisfactory of the employee's performance.
And there are strengths and weaknesses listed goals for the upcoming year. And my biggest issue with this is weirdly asking the employee. How they see themselves on that scale to see if it matches up. Both parties sign off on it, like a document to have something on paper and maybe, you know, the company will use that to their advantage later.
All that junk. And um, they can also impact raises or promotions, which is problematic given the subjectivity of these things. And then just function of these things. And it usually feels like a report card, like you often have to wait. For by a person who doesn't know you well and is part of a system that doesn't treat humans in a real dignified way.
So it can sound like Mike, I gave you a 3.2 out of five. I never give anything higher than a four 'cause I don't want people to feel good. And I'd like some more hustle from you this year, like when you started with us. Uh. Maybe come up with some goals. 'cause I didn't, and uh, I put down that your strengths are consistency, I guess, and your weaknesses are, you don't read my mind and you don't like to wear the swag that we gave you, like this.
Um, I'm trying to be entertaining about it. Um, and oh yeah, what did you put down for your rating? You know, um, if you're in leadership or HR or thinking of running your own company, please never use these things and instead just be a human and make good enough, um, relationships with your employees and be direct with them and know them well enough.
And invest more in real human leadership, good leadership. The problem that I have with most jobs, especially corporate, is like the difference between what the, what the corporate values are on paper versus how the company behaves and operates with people just like the abusive family. There's a strong correlation there that I'm drawing.
Well, I think it's strong. Um, here is what issues around this looks like. It's like getting one of these performance reviews and getting those arbitrary weird ratings, especially when you're overworked and not seen. It's really unfair having an odd relationship with the boss, and they have all the power to tell you what they kind think, what kind of employee you are without really knowing your workload.
Or what you do or who you are and the or that the review is just kind of whole hum and flat and you even now feel even more insignificant at the place. It could be the energy, the energy of the person giving the review is off. Most times the supervisor has their own stuff going on about this stuff, and they can range from being really nervous to indifferent, to being avoiding, or to faking a leadership role with you.
So here are some signs that you are triggered by issues around the performance review. Um, really being thrown off by that subjective rating or written evaluation and becoming highly activated about it in many ways. Um, becoming triggered to rage or being shut down or being afraid that you're gonna lose your job.
And the subjectivity is where our inner child can come up and run us, um, because. I think in another video I said something like, ambiguity is a huge trigger for us. And that subjectivity, you could just see the inner child going like, well, a 3.2. Like, that's not even the fence. And what, you know, like, are they just gonna get rid of me?
And like, all that thinking can drive you crazy. Another, you know, could be that you go to a very depressed place like a breakup where because of your trauma we put to way too much stock in our relationship to our job when it comes to our value or comes to our worth. So here is where this trigger might come from in childhood.
Um, this can look like having any of the following abusive parents that have a twisted view of who their children are. They don't know their children. They only see the role that they put their children in, like the scapegoat or the parent or the kid that's gonna grow up and take care of them financially and be all that or whatever.
Um, or parents who wanted you to be something that just wasn't you in any way. Um. Related to that, if you grew up where the feedback was really off, like being compared to others or being held to impossible standards, like you're six and you're criticized for not performing like an adult growing up where you were doing your best to get through things.
This is a big one. Without having any help from healthy adults, and then you're criticized about how you're. Feedback really gets complicated for trauma survivors, it's common for trauma survivors to get deeply triggered around feelings like they're being kicked when they're down. When it comes to feedback, real or imagined, and by that I mean due to our childhood trauma, we might feel like we're barely making it emotionally.
Running in survival mode, worried about how we're being seen at work, and a performance review will just bring all that up. Um, and now that they've found you out and all that kind of stuff, or they've added unfair criticism onto you, um, when you do a fine job of that all by yourself, that kind of a thing.
Another is, you know, you're triggered by a performance review. If you go to a really deep, hopeless place about it, that you're, and you interpret the message like you're. You're never gonna be seen, you're never gonna be valued since they have all the power. Does that feel familiar to you and your childhood in any way?
What's the fantasy? How did you, um, want the unavailable person that you dated or you're currently with? How do you want them to respond or change? How is that like a fantasy? What reaction are you seeking there through your efforts of defaulting to them or people pleasing or whatever's going on there?
To think about whether you're wired to be a caretaker or you're wired to change others is to reflect and do some writing around what's the subconscious fantasy in your codependent relationships with friendships, with relationships or with jobs. Let's just say you dated a moody and critical partner for a long time.
Did you have a fantasy that your patience or your kindness or your shape shifting into. Yourself into what they wanted. Did you have a fantasy that that was really gonna work and that moody person would change and really see you as their key person in life? Can you translate that? Into a fantasy that you might have had with your parents, like being a really, really good kid.
Was there a fantasy that your parents would really see you and really sort of love you unconditionally and really sort of, really sort of change by you? Like doing the dishes or making the bed or being kind or like cleaning up or, or really trying to take care of them? That's what I mean about, and this, it's fantasy.
It's not, fantasy really isn't a good word if it's so subconscious, but that's what I mean by that. If you're wired to be on the right side of that infographic and changing others is, is the fantasy about being listened to? Is it about being maybe valued for the first time? You know that your messy partner or your messy job will all of a sudden get themselves together and maybe the partner will get themselves into therapy or maybe they'll get sober.
Maybe they'll simply just do the di. Maybe they'll simply do the dishes without you being prompting them, you know? And what would it feel like if they got their stuff together for you? Because you finally got through to them. That's what I mean about a subconscious fantasy. Is that similar to your childhood when thinking about your parents or your family system, or your siblings keep doing work?
In my own experience, the more trauma work that I did, the volume of this stuff went down. I think our childhood trauma, the unfinished business, the grief, the rage, the identity issues, the unfinished stories, the abandonment makes our inherent HSP louder and more difficult to manage. Um, an example of that that I give is I couldn't meditate.
Until I actually worked on my childhood trauma first. So there's just a lot of noise with this stuff that happens that gets in the way. I think of our sort of functioning or what we want from life doing more therapy work in our child work specifically. I think a. Boundaries, practicing boundaries, self care, creating good community and processing a tra a trauma with someone turns the HSP volume knob down.
I'd say that after like 25 years of being in recovery, I'd like to think that the noise has been turned down for me from say like a 10 to a two. It means I still feel things deep, deeply. It means that I still sense things deeply. I don't really like noisy restaurants or how my microwave. Beeps, like, let's not get into how loud those seven things are.
And most of my life is very, very, very manageable. However, when I started my therapy work, I felt like I was a raw exposed nerve With these traits, we have a larger window of tolerance after processing our trauma in a good enough way. And I know it'll sound odd, but I like to think about, imagine what your life would be like if, if we had drained our childhood trauma where all of that.
That stuff is just kind of gone from our system in a good enough way. Um, so that's the first one. A plug for keep doing your trauma work to turn down the noise of these traits.
