Hello everyone and welcome to this new podcast series. My name is Patrick Tian. I'm a life. Since clinical therapists specializing in childhood trauma and what this podcast series will be focusing on, we're gonna be focusing on people's individual's expressive stories, getting to the heart of the matter that what happened to us in our childhood.
We're also gonna be omitting a lot of clinical jargon and just focusing on the story, not the diagnosis. And lastly, we'll also be focusing on the relationship recovery program, which is the model of therapy that I practice, also known as RRP. So let's get into this episode. So you may be wondering what is limerence?
Limerence is a present and deep emotional preoccupation or obsession with another person, and it's something that can really take over one's life until it runs its course. Or we can do some work and get out of limerence faster, like burst the bubble. So a couple quick signs of Limerence is obsession with a person, infatuation with a person, intrusive thoughts about a person and loss of your daily focus and priorities in your life due to thinking about them becoming dependent on the smallest signs from them or about them, and having the fantasy kind of take over your life.
Um, sometimes in extreme ways such as having like almost stalking like behaviors. And I see limerence as a carrying over a symptom of poor attachment in childhood due to childhood trauma that can come up in our adulthood and take over like, like a, like a negative coping strategy. Probably the best way to explain NCE is a personal story that I think kind of gets to the root of it in a, in a more personal way.
You know, I see RINs as an attachment issue and not just a standalone thing. So I must have been about seven when I think about this memory, um, which would've made it 1984. You'll get a sense of what RINs is from this little story. So it was, I think it was like warm out. Yes, it was warm out. So it must have been spring, maybe the school year had just kind of wrapped up and we were out for the year, like early summer.
Um, kind of felt like that in this memory. And I, I must have just completed the first grade. And my family wasn't doing well at all. Um, more so than the usual disaster that my family was because back in November of 83, this would just be about six or seven or eight months prior, is my older brother passed away and he was 10 years old and I was six years old.
So it was major catastrophe crisis, heartbreaking thing in the family. So this is in context though of an already highly dysfunctional marriage between my parents. Alcoholism, domestic violence, neglect of the children. So the family was living without any emotional resources, especially the kids. And we must have all just still been in this like stunned dazed, this existential kind of.
You know, existence that happens when you lose a family member. So my mother would later tell the story that she didn't wake up from that grieving days, that existential days for a couple years later when she noticed that I had lice and that she says it intensely brought her back to life as a mom and back into that role kind of woke her up and she didn't really stay there for very long, but that's the narrative she kind of had about it.
So, but in 84 I was still a little boy going about life in school or around the neighborhood, and no one was talking about the loss. And kids don't stop being kids when something like that happens. And I thought about it every day, but those thoughts were more private and just my own. So, you know, there was this suburban grid system of streets that I would hang out in my walk home from school, a little corner called PJ's Market.
Like pajamas, PJ's, um, that was by a sandy playground park across from this old grammar school that was being converted to condos around the time, which that seemed, that kind of blew my mind. I was like at seven. We're like, what's a condo? You know, near PJ's was this sandy playground and where this dark, sketchy bar was, and as a side note, the map of my childhood.
Can be arranged in terms of dark, sketchy bars and taverns since they were such a daily part of my family's life back then. So PJ's was where you would get things like garbage pail, kids and candy and subs and cookies, and we would dig through the couches to find loose change. I'm sure you guys did that too.
Um, and we would just hop the fence in my backyard or I would, and you'd be in PJ's in about less than a minute. And I actually miss the excitement. Maybe you do too, of having like 75 cents and going to a corner store and making the best outta that 75 cents with like handy and stuff. So down the block from PJ's on the same side of the street where these one story kind of offices, like maybe an accountant would be there for a little while.
And this was in a residential neighborhood with little businesses scattered throughout. Like maybe there was a pizza place. Maybe there was a dry cleaners. And that year the small workout gym popped up. Um, and I think for like a series of weeks, I've been wandering past the gym and walking in and out since the adults really weren't looking.
And I would put on someone's like finger cutoff workout gloves, like the kind of Arnold Schwarzenegger would wear and something like commando or predator. And the stuff that I would watch on cable, like, you know. Get to the Choppa, there's a bomb in there, get out. You know, so the gloves were super cool.
The cutoff gloves were super like an eighties thing where everything in boys culture around the time was about ninjas and BMX bikes. So the gloves to me at seven years old were totally badass. And I would go in there and like lift a few weights and maybe kind of have a fantasy that the adults would be like, whoa, did you see how many reps that 7-year-old did?
He looks cool in the gloves. Um, and I remember this big cut guy would kind of get a kick of me kind of coming in and outta there for a little while, and then he would tease me about whether I had a membership or not, and I would feel some shame about it and not understand what a membership was. And I was at the age where I might bring in my transformers as a way to barter.
For a gym membership or walk in with like a buck and 15 cents in my pocket and ask them if that was enough to work out there forever, kind of a thing. But there was also this reception area with a young woman working behind this desk, and I didn't know how I kind of wandered in there, or she took an interest in me or thought I was cute that I was working out, but no one was kicking me out of this place.
So it started to feel like I was a little, a little mascot that week or something. And this young woman, she could have been 16, she could have been 20, she could have been 30, I don't know. I was seven. So she was so beautiful and extremely kind to me, and I think I assumed that she was the cut guy's, the big guy's girlfriend.
I was already interpreting at the age of seven that she would be more focused on someone else, which is kind of a sign. For childhood trauma, trauma survivors think that we're gonna lose people before we even get to say hello to them. I think she knew that I was a little bit emotionally lost or in need or just cute or whatever.
Or maybe she just liked kids. She did like kids. And I remember like around the receptionist area, there was a whole bunch of magazines like you would see in a doctor's offices, and one of them was this magazine called Highlights, which is actually still around sort of Kids magazine. You might read a little story that was like, Richard Scary esque, or you do some connect the dots, whoa, connect the dots, or you do some matchup games.
And this lovely woman sat down next to me in this little area and she wanted to know if she could read me a story, read me some of the things in highlights. And she just kind of took me in for a little while on that little afternoon and this little bench nook where these magazines were in front of this reception desk.
And I'm 46 years old and I still remember like leaning into her on her left and kind of curling up beside her because I. Being read a story and taking interest in me just kind of made me totally melt. And you're probably thinking like, you know what the F, you know, stranger danger, what was going on? And you're right, but I didn't have a sense about that stuff myself because I wasn't taught that.
So my family kind of lived in this fast friendship kind of existence, and that usually ended bad with people. So it was just doing what it was modeled for me, and it was also the eighties, which is slightly like less of a wild west in terms of safety than the seventies and so on. So it's like, it's, it's, you know, thankfully it's very different for kids right now in terms of like connecting with strangers, but I believe this memory stuck with me because it was perhaps the safest I ever felt in my childhood.
And it was with a stranger, and thankfully she wasn't a perpetrator. Maybe if you're lucky, if you grew up like, like I did in childhood trauma, that maybe there was a safe teacher or a babysitter that you just felt safe with and you kind of longed for, which is kind of a point to this video. So this woman was this like magical being to me, and a crush started, but it wasn't a romantic crush, but it was.
Really kind of becoming something, like being in RIN with somebody. So it was about though being malnourished for a, a solid attachment and connection and kind of getting it from somebody. So this little moment with her. It could have been just like 20 minutes. You know, it could have been just like a couple stories outta that magazine or a little bit of hangout and connection, but it was like feeling, I felt so seen, I felt so safe really for the first time.
And it felt like we both actually kind of enjoyed the connection in that tiny little moment together. She fit this puzzle piece that was missing in an abused child's life, and that was just simple attention and care. So she finished the story and I had already secretly probably wanted to be adopted by her, and I kind of went home, or she sent me home as it might've been getting close to evening or late afternoon, and she maybe she needed to get back to work.
So when I got home, both my parents were there, which was rare, um, and they were intensely angry that I wasn't home for dinner. Despite our dinners not really operating like that. You know, like our dinners were, or connection was really inconsistent, but it was, I was also seven and couldn't tell time yet, which they expected you to without helping you in that.
A toxic parent will expect adult behaviors from small children without teaching them those behaviors. Weird side note about how angry they were. My parents could feel unified and forget about how they were so poorly paired or abusive to each other by joining forces against someone else. It's like a dramatic triangulation thing that goes on so often.
It felt like once in a while they would pretend to look like engaged in active parents, but it always felt a little bit off to me given how absent they were at baseline. So there's a bit of weird drama in there between both of them and that as a kid you don't really quite understand, but you do feel the sketchiness or a little bit of the betrayal about it.
So, um, most days they weren't home and sometimes I'd go a full day without seeing them. So that's what I mean about the inconsistency and confusion. But I do remember coming home from that safe, wonderful experience with that lady at the gym. Um, and her taking time with me to all of a sudden be like really hating myself and, and for not being home when dinner was going on, but also hating being home.
That experience and the feelings and the, and the rest of life such as like my, my brother feeling my brother's absence. All those feelings for an abuse kid has to go underground. And until they pop back up in our adulthood in some way, which I think is related to this Limerence thing. So how I think about limerence or attachment, I think about those experiences, and I'm gonna come back to this story later, but the main point I'd like us to think about is the child development in context of that story with things like children need a safe home base, and she was that safe home base for those 20 minutes, however long I was there.
Children need their person who is interested in them, notices them, seeks out time with them, shares a special connection with them, um, and other issues. When children don't get this from a safe parent, they'll seek it out elsewhere just like I did. And this can often become a lifelong habit of seeking external care from a self deficit of love.
So if anyone out there, you'll know what I mean. If anyone out there eventually became like a teacher's pet or wanting to answer all the questions in classes from kindergarten all the way through college, does anyone out there have an adoption fantasy about your best friend's family taking you in or something like being adopted by the Brady Bunch?
I think all of that stuff applies here. Think deficit of connection with people. So some more about Limerence. Um, limerence is a present emotional preoccupation with another person or obsession with them. It can take place as an intense infatuation or longing for someone that does not have to be sexual nature, although it very much can be.
Um, it goes beyond a crush. And it tends to be longer and takes over one's daily consciousness until it kind of gets resolved. It's emotional, it's melancholic. It will last a long time, and it's often intrusive in our lives. RINs can take place when you're falling in love with someone or in the beginning of a romantic relationship, and eventually.
That kind of evens itself out as things become more real, the first bumps of conflict come up when a relationship starts like, you know, I don't know, second or third or fourth month or something like that. So Limerence can take place with people we know personally or people we've never met, such as being in limerence with a celebrity or someone we met just once and now we've idealized them or we had this one brief connection with them and due to poor attachment.
And neglect and excessive magical thinking. Childhood trauma survivors often struggle with RINs in their presence, but I see it again like that story as an older issue. When a child is not the center of someone's world in a good enough way, they'll try to find a home in other people, and that can often become horribly dangerous in both childhood and adulthood.
As a child all the way through my early twenties, I had this debilitating preoccupation and crushes with teachers, coworkers, and I that I now interpret as being in rin, which isn't really about the person that we're actually infatuated with. I believe it's about belonging to someone and kind of coming home to some kind of connection.
And before the nice young lady at the gym, there was my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Kelly. Who I was in RINs with probably for the, that whole year until she fussed at me when she was trying to like attach this like paper graduation cap to my hair with a paper clipper get, you know, gets, it was like graduation day.
She got frustrated. She's like, stand still. And I interpreted her fussing at me, um, to stand still that she now hated me. And that ended the limerence there. It was just. The bubble had burst as an adult now, and having done some work on myself, I see her as the kindergarten teacher as at the end of the year trying to paperclip.
I was one of 28 kids that she was trying to get on a stage for graduation and giving us a little rolled up diploma with a little bit of smarties candy in it. And she probably just hit her wall. It wasn't even about me, but that's when the bubble burst and the limerence, it kind of got extinguished, and that was between the ages of six and whatever.
So, but the clue to limerence issues is the melancholic nature that comes with those feelings. Uh, please love me. Please take me in. Please let this be perfect from now on, kind of a thing. Longing, idealization and possibly desperation seem to be common themes and liens. Here are some present problems, like problems in our adulthood with liens and those attachment issues.
Some people can really get themselves into trouble, such as stalking or acting outside the boundaries of their relationship due to being in liran with someone. If you've ever experienced any of the following, you may have been in liran with somebody. So constant fantasy about building a life in the future with this person.
Excessive inclusion, um, of them in all of your daily thoughts, creating or imagining scenarios of mutual like integration with each other, like moving in or dramatic changes like they get, they get a divorce tomorrow and they now need you in their life. Um, powerful feelings of perfect love and a soulmate type connection, placing them on a pedestal of perfection, not seeing any human flaws.
It's a big one. Losing ground in your present reality in big and small ways with this person preoccupation with this mutually reciprocal intensity and love. Another is starting an emotional affair with them. Whether you are in a relationship or they're in a relationship or both, and there's this really, they take up a lot of, of your daily connection.
So how is all that different than a crush? Well, they look very similar. Um, crushes are of kind of longing, but it doesn't involve such intensity or losing one sense of reality. A crush could be simply punctured by the person becoming human to you and not an idealized object. Like you realize that, whoa, they don't like cats.
What the F and that like bursts the bubble. Um, or RINs can involve the person doing no wrong since they're so idealized to you. And I think we can all experience things like RINs in our lives. It's a human and it's common and it's understandable, but again, for childhood trauma survivors, like with many other things, the longing gets so amped up.
Like these amps go to 11, it just gets turned up so loud because of our attachment deficits, I think. So how Limerence is not good for you, not good for anybody. Um, here's what's not good about being in limits with somebody. Um, our inner child is again, living in a fantasy about surviving their poor attachment.
Another issue is our inner adult is caught up in it too, and it becomes like a coping strategy. Like, you know, thinking about them is not like, not unlike getting a hit from sex or drugs or achieving or something like that. Another is we might ignore our present partner or our family and we, which that we currently have, which isn't good for anybody.
Probably makes you feel a lot of intense shame. Um, we are waiting for a rescue by having this intense, perfect connection with someone that we've made up in our mind. Instead of focusing on our present lives, like we really lose our present. Um, you can get into an emotional affairs, like I said, where we get more into a fantasy about a person more than our actual partner.
That's creates guilt and shame, which isn't good. We might act out on this. The inner children have these powerful ways. Or dissociation to cross boundaries if our inner adult isn't awake to it and kind of in charge. So that's why it's not good in our present. Here are some reasons about our childhood trauma vulnerability that kind of sets us up for things like limerence.
One is obviously not being securely attached to healthy parents. Sort of needs to be said. Another is having a childhood trauma story that would warrant a rescue. The abuse is so bad that children fantasize about a distant relatives or a friend's mom is going to pull strings and just show up and have us pack our bags and get us out of there.
Kind of a think really rescue. Another is feeling anonymous as a child, the neglect that the child is experiencing and. Develops into not having a sense of self because they aren't special to anybody. Perhaps the fantasy is about finally being important or worthwhile to someone else in an intense big way.
Another is having like Cinderella type childhoods where other siblings are more valuable, um, and you are treated like a forgotten tag along, or you're treated like an employee. Something really blatantly unfair in your childhood. Um. That other people matter more. Another is being parentified or having a strategy of being perfect where your needs are fully on the back burner.
And then you might have this secret fantasy of being the focus to somebody else. Another is being in a tricky family where most of the basic needs are met, but there isn't any real affection or connection or quality time between parent and child. So all of this, I know I'm throwing a lot at you, all of this to really say it's really important to shift our idea of limerence out of the present away from the person.
And that really taken that it's about 80 to 90% of a charge or energy or deficit of attachment from our childhood. Where the other 10% might be the person that we're in RINs with. So this would mean shifting from the person completes me to, I have some attachment work to do and I just like how this person kind of carry themselves.
It's kind of all that, you know, there's something just attractive about this person. That's all it means. Here are some childhood clues of being in Limerence back in childhood, like I mentioned about that kindergarten teacher or this, this young lady. What would've been some clues from growing up that you were already getting into Limerence with others?
One is debilitating crushes that last a long time, a very long time, and take up way too much of your head space like that one boy from the fifth grade. Um. That you were in Limerence with all the way through senior year, who came from a nice family and they chatted with you once on a bus trip from a field trip kind of a thing from a museum or something like that, but you took that in as a breakthrough in your relationship.
Please don't take that as criticism. I've been there. I lived in that for so long. Another is being infatuated with a friend's family that seems safer than your own or probably is safer than your own in some ways, and there is a want to be adopted and you feel guilty about how much time you might be over there.
Another is teachers. It could be romantic, could be not. It depends on the age, but there's also a focus on them really meeting a lost parental need that you have, such as simply having an adult enjoy you, um, or enjoy the kind of kid you are. Like they got a kick outta you. Another is like, you know, growing up you have a crush on celebrities in a, in too much of a big way.
Like maybe you grew up in the late seventies where you were. Convinced that if you have a life as Stevie Nick's husband, that you would become her roadie and then she'd fall in love with you because you were so dedicated to the band. Or it's like in the nineties, and you created this whole inner fantasy life that you became Bobby Brown's husband or married to one of the.
People and new kids on the block, or in my case, Paula Abdul and you became their spouse and you never looked back at your hometown or your family system again. It was perfect. From now on, um, I'm trying to cover a lot of nostalgia, nostalgia, and generation gaps here. Think Brady Bunch too. So I know this sounds funny or maybe way too familiar, but what is hard about this is that these examples become intense and really self consuming.
Ence goes beyond the crush and takes over one's life. And we wouldn't have been so desperate for a rescue if, if home was actually safe to us growing up. And another good way to look at it is simply good for you for fantasizing or dreaming about a rescue or being perfect to someone or mattering to someone.
Like those are the things that, that they aren't good for us in our adulthoods, but those are the things that keep a kid going through their childhood trauma. And any kid growing up in abuse will find sex or drugs or achieving or eating or being perfect or living in fantasy because what else are we gonna do when we're being that abused on a daily level by a narcissistic parent or experiencing emotional, physical, or sexual abuse?
So limerence like those other strategies are all that some children have. Like I mentioned, it just kind of gets us through. But unfortunately, like those other things like achieving or sex or drugs, they carry into our adulthood and make our life really small and pretty messy. So being in NCE is not a good time, um, because our inner child is really in that old coping strategy and the inner adult is usually like, oh, this isn't good, but I'm kind of obsessed, so I'm just gonna go with it.
So, or there is no inner adult present and you're just so in that fantasy. And kind of enjoying it. But any, any time we're in that space, our real life becomes so small, which takes us away from being more healthy and more actualized, which is really the point to all my videos. So how to work on RINs issues.
Here are some journal prompts in detail that are designed to help clients tackle this issue and try to come. From it. These were recently given out in my Healing Community membership who received these journal prompts on a weekly basis every week. And you can find the membership like right up here if you're interested in checking it out.
Um, let's see. Here's the first journal prompt. I'm just gonna kind of run through these. Number one, write out examples throughout your life. Where Limerence might have been going on for you. Like I mentioned in those examples, you might recall these as crushes, but maybe, you know, after this video you can see them as more in that, see them as attachment issues.
Some examples, and this is what the person might write down in their journal prompts, like I wanted to be Greg Brady's girlfriend, but also living with the family like Alice did. I'd obsess about being a fantastic addition to the family and especially to Greg, and this went on for years and I begin to.
End my day and start my day thinking about him. Another example would be I wanted my third grade teacher, Mrs. Johnson, to be my person or my mom. Not like a girlfriend, but like someone who would be super into me and was kind. I'd get nervous being around her. So those are some examples to journal prompt number one.
So journal prompt number two is walk yourself through the limerence preoccupation that you have with someone. If you're currently in something like this or recently were. What do you actually want as an experience with the person you are in NCE with? So here's an example. Like the person would write down, I want them to leave their current marriage and become interested in me, and that we would buy a new house together and get along better than any couple ever did in the history of humanity.
So journal prompt number three, and coming back to that one, you might feel a little bit of shame about being sort of infatuated with a married person. It's just how the inner child works. There's a big difference between having thoughts about a person and acting on them. So journal prompt number three is going on with what came up in journal prompt number two, can you define.
Or name pieces that are rooted in healthy attachment for a child. Think infancy, toddlerhood into grammar school. Think early, early childhood. These are the unmet needs that childhood trauma survivors didn't experience and are often the root of our limits problems. So examples with some things to come up with about really bonding with a parent, uh, for the parent to have really daily active engagement with you.
You being appreciated or loved for your uniqueness. Um, you being there being a mutual connection that feels kind of completion, like the mother and child connection, um, feelings of being home with your family, feelings of enjoying each other's company and time and a deep shared understanding that kind of only exist in the dyad of parent child relationships.
Those are the things I think that we're seeking. So journal prompt number three is to come up with some of those, and not just from that list, but really kind of think about like what was missing. Um, that one might be hard. Journal prompt number four, given your responses in journal prompt number three, write about any of those elements that were missing with your parents and childhood.
I know this may be hard is some relationships are so broken or horrific, but every child is in need of attaching with someone who matters to them and vice versa. So examples, the person would write down. My father was a workaholic and my mother was profoundly depressed. I spent my childhood waiting for us to be a family and was almost treated like a pet to them.
Even in grammar school, I would be super uncomfortable being the focus and then extremely sad when I wasn't the focus with the teacher. I've never felt bonded to my, both of my parents, um, but I felt more like I was an adoptee, that they were just kind of helping out. I never felt special to them. So that's kind of coming off of that list of things that we're missing to kind of spell it out.
General prompt number five, what does your inner child need from the adult you, the inner adult? In the examples from general prompt number three. And I'll put all of these in the description of the video, so don't, don't feel like you need to kind of rush and scramble. Um, examples. My inner child needs.
Daily tokens of affirmation. I love you. You did great. I'm here for you. My inner child needs connection at bedtime 'cause that's where most of the anxiety comes up for me or whatever, like a good night ritual. Um, my inner child needs conversation and engagement from my adult self. Usually, probably in a, in a good enough daily way for a while, try to be consistent.
I know that's hard. My inner child needs my adult to make the home feel special to both of us is another way to put it. My inner child needs time with me alone doing something we both enjoy, like a little inner child day. These examples may seem silly, but they're rooted in action. Action oriented inner child work, pulling oneself out of limerence or codependency or any of our issues that hold us back are helped, really helped if we become more integrated with our inner child, which means more connected with ourselves and not seeking an outside fix for our inside problems.
So here are some resources that I will, I'll put this in the description again about finding. Concrete activities to become more integrated with our inner child, which will get us out of RINs, hopefully, which is really like seeing a rescue in others. So the first resources might. Monthly healing community membership with journal prompts that go out.
There's also webinars and how to, how to work with our inner child in a deep way. Something called dialoguing. It's all right up here. Another resource is, um, the Artist Way, which is a, it's a, it's a, it's a workbook on reclaiming your creativity, but there's something called an artist state, which I would just kind of say.
Translate that into an inner child date. It's a very powerful, action oriented, um, thing to do. Um, there's daily affirmations for the inner child, which is a book to connect with the missing parental pieces or affirmations. The daily affirmation of, I love you, you're, you're important to me, kind of a thing.
Another is these two videos that I did. One is anxiety at night and anxiety in the morning to get a sense of doing some more inner child work in action with doing something called dialoguing. And those links will be in the description. So some final thoughts. So notice how in this podcast, I'm more focused on our early attachments in childhood trauma story about our nuclear families and our history.
Not so much about the person in liens that you are in liens with, or doing some major reality testing with you. You know, the Limerence thing with the other person is not real and you, you know, it's not really about the present. On some level, they are not the issue. The issues are our security, our attachment wounds, and simply the deep wound of not being the apple of someone's eye, which is what every child needs for a healthy sense of self and a healthy sense of development.
So our inner child looks for that experience. In those we are in limerence with. It's really that simple. We're just looking for a parent. We're just looking for a perfect from now on. Experience in our present relationships enhance our lives. They don't complete them. That's a inside thing. Um, that word complete when we say the person would complete me.
It's about not being bonded to a healthy caregiver growing up. And that bond needed to be mutually enjoyable. So imagine having a parent that enjoyed you. Enjoy time with you just as much as you enjoy them. That's what makes a child more healthy and more integrated with themself. 'cause they get a healthy sense of self from that.
So what do you do about the person you're in limerence with, um, from the inner adult? Those journal prompts will help you find that inner adult space in you or the idea of it. Hopefully you can learn to let them go. Or try to burst the bubble and just see the person you're in limits with as both human and a symptom of not growing up with attachment safety.
It's not even about them. I, I know I'm being repetitive there, they're just kind of another bozo on the bus of life. They're, it's good to normalize them so. It's also never gonna work or come true to the level of fantasy and pressure our inner child puts on the other person we are in limerence with.
What I mean by that, let's say I was an adult in 84 when I met that woman at the, at the gym, and let's say we had a nice connection and maybe we even dated. So with my wounded inner child looking for a parental attachment bond through her, it would never work because that's way too much to ask of another human being in adulthood, and no one can ever meet the unmet needs left by our parents except ourselves.
In our inner reserves. I know hearing that kind of sucks, but I think it's really true and part of becoming more of a healed and actualized individual. And I say this from experience, it was a series of asking women to fill the needs of my parents and have that fail time and time again. That got me into therapy and I kind of woke up to this stuff with some help.
It's super messy when survivors are in that place of please love me. Please tolerate me, which was like my dating style or my kind of wrapped up in my longing for someone fantasies. Um, it's healthy actually when other people don't want to take on that pressure from us, from our inner child or, or, or meet those needs.
So let's walk through this, and if you've been here before in your relationships, the pressure my inner child would've put on, that young woman would've looked like this, needing her to be perfect. Way too much pressure, needing her to be in awe of me. Eh, it kind of doesn't work. Doesn't really work like that.
Needing her to be only intensely into me and nobody else, lots of pressure there. Um, a million percent exclusive even on the first date. Lots of pressure there. Needing her to provide safety and accommodation and care, um, needing to her, her to have, and a big one here is an omnipotent understanding. Um.
That's a lot. I know that that sound kind of sounds creepy, but I'm definitely not the only one that would, our inner child would look to someone unconsciously to fill those needs. We just kind of need to name that stuff and spell it out. It's just how inner children operate when they have these attachment wounds.
So it's not anything. It's not like you're bad or you're, you know, don't freak out about it. It's actually a pretty comment. So about that person you're in limits with or you have been in the past, they don't want that kind of connection with us. No one wants that kind of pressure or idealization or desperation, and you wouldn't want that from someone else either.
It's like, whoa, you know, um, they're just human and they're not like a catchall for us. So most of this childhood trauma stuff is about not seeing the humanity in others. Um, so there's that. I hope that this was helpful. If you can burst the RIN bubble, whether you're falling in love with someone or there's just someone in your life, or you have this intense fantasy from afar, it would be a real big victory for you to.
Get there and bursting that bubble and kind of doing so is to battle our childhood trauma. It's not good for you to be back there into that place of childhood needing such a rescue. We're adults now, and we have so much more power, and we have so much more individuality than you think you do. So that's it for me on this one.
