The Childhood Trauma You Don't Recognize - Therapist Nicole Johnson Explains Reparenting

[Music] My mom was my first bully and never really a safe person. It wasn't until I got a bit older that I started to realize like, oh, this isn't a problem with me. This is a problem with you. Nobody explains it to you, gives you language, or helps you understand it. This work is lonely work because we're doing the healing ourselves. There's nobody who comes to rescue us. There's no external love that's big enough to fix these wounds. And the only way to heal is internally with our own work, giving ourselves the love that we needed all along. Nicole, as a psychotherapist, what can you tell me about your mother looking back at her? Now, my mom was my first bully and never really a safe person. She uh weaponized things against me. She didn't have a lot of compassion or sympathy. She at times seemed to like hate me. Like she just really didn't seem to like me. Um she

was the source of mo most of my woundedness and most of my trauma. Especially as I age and like in my teenage years, that's when I really felt like I had nobody. When you're mean to a child, they don't stop loving you, they stop loving themselves. And that was very true for me growing up. Um, I think it started younger than I can remember. My mom had me very young and she had a lot of issues, substance use, mental health issues. So, there's a lot of neglect that happened. But the issue was that Dr. Jackekal, Mr. Hyde. So, one minute there was lots of love bombing, lots of connection, lots of attention, and then the next minute there was lots of belittling and name calling um, and criticism and cold shoulder, right? We all learned growing up that uh don't make mom mad. And part of her response was always that cold shoulder, that withdraw, that withdrawing of love. And I never understood what that meant or why she did that. And as a child, I just thought, what's wrong with me? Um the

first thing I ever learned was that the problem was I was a girl. My mom is very open about the fact that she favors men, favors boys, uh, struggles with femininity, struggles with the fact that I was a girl and am a a woman still today. That's still like a huge issue in our relationship. Um, so the first belief I internalized was being a female is bad or wrong. So, as you can suspect, I rejected that early on and tried to be more tomboyish, I guess, or whatnot. Um, it wasn't until I got a bit older that I started to realize like, oh, this isn't a problem with me. This is a problem with you, right? What mother calls her child these names or puts her hands on her or um bullies her? And it was around my teenagers that I started to realize what was going on, which makes sense for brain development. Um, and as one can

guess, that's where a lot of anger happened and a lot of rebellion happened. Our relationship was riddled with strife. Um, and as soon as I, you know, turned 18 and graduated high school, I was sort of out of there. Um, and it took me years, years to really understand the impact of her behavior on my sense of self, my core beliefs, my relationship with my gender, um, and to begin working through that and healing that. Do you have any context of why your mother was the way she was? Yeah, and that's part of the thing that's been really helpful. Um, learning about a person and their past helps explain their behavior. Um, I always tell people an explanation is not an excuse because that can be really hard, especially toward our parents because we we don't want to think that they don't love us or that they hate us. Um, so we're looking for that answer. And I learned a lot about my mom as I got

older. She had a very very rough upbringing. Her parents were very abusive and neglectful. She was raised in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty. And in so many ways, she moved the the generations forward, right? Comparatively, she was 10 times the mother that her mother was. And she provided 10 times the life that she had. You know, we had a roof over our head and we had clothes on our back and decent clothes and we had good food and we took vacations and had good holidays and um things that, you know, she'd never experienced. And so in that way um you know there was so much good that came from her past where she did what I think a lot of us try to do where we have that like I'm never going to be like that right I'm going to be different. Um and her focus was largely on the poverty side. She wanted her children to have her own room. It was non-negotiable that I was going to college. She was very hard on me academically which I'm grateful for. But then there was the

areas that she didn't heal from or didn't address or didn't understand. And that largely had to do with like secure attachment, connection, uh loving your children, being kind, caring, compassionate. Um, and you know, as a child, while I'm glad that she pushed me and it drove me um to pursue education, not having those things, not having a secure attachment, not having that love and compassion um really takes a toll and leaves a very deep wound. You've written an incredible book called Reparing Your Inner Child in which you say that too many people are suffering in silence and confusion because they are living with trauma related symptoms and do not realize it. What are some of these symptoms and what should you do if you see them in yourself?

>> So the list is very long. Trauma related symptoms I typically break into categories based on the trauma responses that we had as a child or may still be having now. So, for example, if your trauma response, your go-to trauma response as a child was fawning, you would have trauma- related symptoms like people pleasing, walking on eggshells, being hypervigilant, prioritizing people's emotions before your own, lack of boundaries, maybe codependency, an anxious attachment style. Um whereas on the flip side, if your trauma response as a child was to flee, to run away and hide, withdraw, you might be super uh hyperindependent. You might isolate. You might call yourself a hermit, struggle with relationships, um and want to cut cut and run a lot in life. Maybe quit that job at the first sign of conflict or end that friendship the first time you feel like they don't

like you. So, it really depends, right? So, I like to break it down by trauma response um to look at symptoms, but the big issue that I see with people with childhood trauma is that they've had these symptoms for so long, they think it's part of their personality. They just think like, oh, I'm just a caretaker, right? Not to say that people aren't caretakers, but we get it mixed. We get it twisted and we don't understand. And because we still think of the big events are what's traumatic and we minimize the impact that certain behaviors by our caregivers that we experience in childhood can pack a really big punch. We don't connect the dots. We don't see how the way we act now isn't just a personality. Um, but our residual symptoms from ways we learned to cope as a child with experiences that maybe weren't, you know, your worst nightmare, but were not safe for your nervous system.

>> What is the flop trauma response and how is it different from fight, flight, freeze, and fawn? Good question. Um, this is one that's not still widely recognized and it's not accepted by the entire mental health community yet. Um, hopefully that it gets there. But um I like to talk about it because many many people find that what they experienced and how they reacted can't be explained by the fight, flight, freeze, fawn. So the flop trauma response is exactly what it sounds like. Um sometimes it's called the faint response and sometimes people do faint. So if you think about somebody being startled and scared so bad, right, that they just faint. Um when you think about what's happening physiologically in the body, that helps explain the flop trauma response. So whereas with fight

or flight and sometimes freeze, those are very activating um trauma responses, right? Our heart is pounding. Our our blood is rushing. We might feel really hot. Our breathing gets heavy. Things like our um vision gets really like hyperfocused. Our hearing gets more acute, right? Those are associated with those trauma responses because they're so activating to our system. Flop is the exact opposite of that. Flop is when things like our blood pressure drops, which is why we can faint. Our heart rate slows tremendously. Think of a possum that uh is playing dead, right? Um they're not playing dead when you look at them in that state. Their heart rate slows so much that a predator can't detect that it's actually beating. Right? So, it's very similar. our our blood pools to our extremities or from our extremities to our central organs. So we get really

cold or shaky, our hands and feet get really cold. Sometimes we get tunnel vision. Um and this is sort of where dissociation lives, right? So we can um dissociate where we start to feel checked out from reality like maybe we're daydreaming, we're zoning out or to the point where we start to feel detached from our body. Some people express um feeling like they were floating above their body. And the thing to know about flop is that it's the trauma response that your brain picks when it senses that there is um inescapable pain. And that can be mental, emotional, or physical. Our brain doesn't really differentiate. Um and there's no way out. We can't fight our way out. We can't flee or flight our way out. Um, and so all that adrenaline cortisol is not really useful. So instead, it shuts us down. And the whole point of that trauma response is to simply survive whatever it is you're about to experience, right? To just make

it through. So, it can be a deeply triggering trauma response to talk about because a lot of the people I've worked with that have experienced it have experienced it in situations that are hard to recall. But that is also not always the case. Sometimes we have that trauma response and for reasons we don't really understand. Like maybe there was no physical imminent danger that was happening. Um, and it can take a really heavy toll on our nervous system. Um because a prolonged state like that can cause a lot of mental, emotional, physical issues. So people that are flopping consistently throughout childhood are people that have the potential to struggle with things like depersonalization or derealization or a dissociative disorder because we sort of get stuck in that state. So I think it's one we need to talk more about and understand. And for the people that I have spoken to them about this um and it's something they've experienced, I've

seen a lot of people have so much relief in understanding that there is a name for it. That you didn't just choose not to fight back. You didn't just um not run away because you didn't feel like it. Your brain hijacks your body. It chooses their trauma response that it thinks is the best case scenario for getting through the situation. um and then the you know symptoms follow along. So it can be very healing if that's something you experience to realize that um you weren't weak and you weren't um not fighting back or whatnot that it is a trauma response and it has a whole bunch of symptoms with it that you can heal from.

>> Yeah. Listening to it, it seems like it's probably a very common one in sexual abuse. Is that right? Yeah, especially continuous um or ongoing or in situations where you don't you realize that there's not a chance to fight back or flee. So, if somebody's much older, much bigger than you, or there's multiple people. Um and a flop trauma response once or twice um can be a really surreal experience but you can understand like oh you know what happened there like that seems so different than how I normally would have responded. People who flop continuously like say maybe they're raised in an environment where physical or sexual abuse is consistent. It's all they know.

It's becomes their norm and that's how they can think that it's their personality right as they get older. But yes, it's common with both sexual and physical abuse. Yeah. And you touched on it there a little. Can you talk a little bit more about the shame that it breeds? That feeling of I didn't do enough. It's my fault. I should have xyz. Yeah, I'd say that that's the biggest component here. When I first taught on these trauma responses on a Tik Tok, I was not anticipating the response about flop. And it ended up leading to like several additional videos because the outpouring of responses was two things.

The first was, "Oh my god, it has a name." which our brain needs language to process our experiences. And so if we don't know what we're experiencing, we're kind of stuck with it. So having a name for it. Oh, I flopped. Uh starts the healing process, right? It helps your brain start to process through what was happening. But the second thing was uh so you're telling me it's not my fault. And it was heartbreaking to see how many people blamed themselves as children for what they experienced because they didn't fight back. I had so many people tell me that police were dismissive to them because they're like, "Well, if you didn't want it to happen, then why didn't you fight or run away?" Or even therapists were like, "Well, why didn't you fight back?" Or, "Why didn't you scream for help?" Um, and people who even said their own family members and parents struggled to think that the experience was traumatic or that they

didn't want it because they didn't fight back, yell, scream for help, or run away. Um, and a lot of people carried that shame, that belief that they could have or should have done something else. Um, and so it's their fault that they didn't, that almost they deserved what happened. Some even question like, did I want that to happen? and they were talking about situations like being little children experiencing sexual abuse. No child wants that. So once they understood that your brain, when I say it hijacks your body, I mean things like if you were in an earthquake and your brain decided to have the trauma response of flee, you're going to be running down the street before you even realize that you're running down the street, right? like your brain takes over your body. It gives the necessary chemicals to accomplish what it wants to accomplish and it kind of happens without your awareness sometimes, right?

Think about a blind rage when people have the trauma response of fight and they just go crazy and then they sort of come to and they're like, "What happened?" Right? They don't really remember. They don't feel like it was them. We understand that in those contexts. We understand uh trauma responses like that. But flop is no different. Your brain basically said, "Play dead." And so you did. And you couldn't have fought back or screamed if you wanted to. You weren't even really in your body. And so it's very important that people that have experienced that understand it so they can begin to release that shame and further heal from those experiences. The only people that I have had push back on that are people who have not experienced the flop trauma response. Every single person that I've talked to who has has this aha moment where healing can begin. So I think it's

important that we continue to learn about it and understand what's happening in the body because as I always say, you can't heal what you judge. So if you are judging yourself for the way that your brain responded to a situation, you're not going to get very far in your healing. What are wounded inner children? Who has them? And how are they created? So wounded inner children is sort of a term that I use to describe parts of oursel experiences from our childhood where we may be trapped or frozen in time. So the way I like to think about it is as you go through your childhood um you are sort of whole and then let's say you experience something traumatic.

You get lost at the grocery store and you can't find your mom and you're terrified, right? Um and then your mom finds you. Maybe she's mad but also relieved and is like, "Come on, let's go." And she doesn't talk to you about it. you don't really feel like you can cry about it because you feel like you were in trouble or you weren't supposed to do that and you sort of move on. Think of it like a piece of you, that three-year-old you gets stuck in that moment, hiding behind the shelves at the grocery store, terrified, and you move on without her. Right? We have lots of experiences like that in our childhood.

So that's why I call them wounded inner children instead of singular child. I tend to say plural because I find that it's easier to kind of compartmentalize it and go, "Oh, there's three-year-old me lost in the grocery store." And then there's 5-year-old me who was sent to my room for breaking a dish. And I just remember crying alone, not understanding what I did wrong or why they're mad. And then there's eight-year-old me, right, that got hit. And there's 10-year-old me that got shamed or whatnot, right? So it helps you sort of identify these um moments in time where it's not about the severity of the event. It's about how it impacted you and how it was dealt with.

Because the thing that we understand about trauma and what traumatizes us isn't so much the severity of an event, but how it impacts us internally and then how it's handled. And this is really important because a lot of people go, "Oh, well, I wasn't beat. I wasn't hit. I wasn't starved. I wasn't neglected, so I don't have wounded inner children. Um, and that's not the only thing that counts, but if you think of it through the lens of what impacted me as a kid that I maybe never really dealt with or my parents didn't help me with because they didn't even know or they didn't know how. Um, and so we call them wounded inner children so that we can remember to respond and treat them like children.

Um, I think that everybody has wounded inner children because I don't really know anybody who gets through childhood unscathed. Even if you have a perfect home life, things happen in childhood. Maybe you get bullied or you don't make the baseball team or you go through a natural disaster or you move a lot as a family. There's always something because that's just the nature of life, right? We're not saying everybody's broken. We're just saying that wounds happen and sometimes they don't get healed. Um, and we're going to call them in wounded inner children because we tend to be very hard on ourselves as adults. We talk toelves, talk to ourselves in ways that we would never speak to a child, our own children or a friend that way. And if we try to approach these wounds and maybe the same way we've been treating oursel or um like we would talking to another adult, um we tend to be less understanding, less

compassionate. We tend to project our adult mindset back into childhood. So if you've ever said things like, "I should have known better." Um I shouldn't have done that because like I knew better than that or it wasn't my parents fault. They just didn't know any better. I should have known better. We are projecting an adult mindset into childhood. But if you imagine the three-year-old you that got lost in the grocery store and you imagine picturing that three-year-old and approaching that three-year-old, you're going to talk to that three-year-old different than you're going to talk to adult you about the situation. And that's really important for healing because the the foundational thing we need, the main ingredient we need in healing childhood wounds is self-compassion, which a lot of us tend to struggle with. But if you think about how you talk to a three-year-old who's terrified, who got lost in the grocery store, you're going to make more progress than if you're talking to you, grown-up you, the way you're used to treating

yourself. What are some forms of abuse that people might not recognize as such from their childhood or think that's just the way my mother or father was? Yeah. Um, so we all know the big ones, right? Physical abuse, sexual abuse, and even with physical, there's a lot of discrepancy. There's a lot of argument over what counts. Some people say spanking is okay, um, or a slap across the face when they're older. I tend to tell people um if you wouldn't do it to an adult today, right? If if you're talking with your best friend and she cops an attitude with you, if you're not going to smack her across the face, why are you smacking a child across the face? Um we we tend to treat adults different than we treat adult or treat children. Um but we we are aware of physical and sexual abuse. We're becoming more aware of things like verbal abuse and emotional abuse. But even then, it starts to get a little tricky. But the two types of abuse that people miss the most are psychological

and neglect. And I teach on neglect a lot because it's the trickiest one. Neglect is not what happened to you, it's what didn't happen to you. So a lot of times when we're reviewing our childhood trying to find unhealed wounds or wounded inner children, we're looking for a moment in time, an experience to point to. But with neglect, there's no experience. There's no moment. Whereas like if you remember like, oh, I remember when I was five and my dad spanked me. You can point to that. But neglect is what didn't happen. And what a lot of people don't realize is neglect isn't just physical. Like obviously there's severe cases of neglect like not feeding your children, leaving them home alone for very long periods of time. Um but there's emotional neglect.

You're crying and upset and your parent withdraws, gives you the cold shoulder, doesn't comfort you. Um there's psychological neglect. You're confused and overwhelmed as a child trying to make sense of your experience and nobody explains it to you, gives you language or helps you understand it. Um, and these pack a much bigger punch than people realize. There's been research done looking at like what's the most severe form of abuse in terms of how it impacts the brain and brain development. Um, and everybody still jumps to physical abuse, sexual abuse. But the research says something else. And I think a big reason for that is because people don't identify it. They're not recognizing it.

They're just living with it. If you were, you know, beat all the time as a child. When you hit adulthood, you're going to go, "That wasn't okay." And that probably had a big impact on me. you might be quicker to get into therapy or get some help or try to work through that. Whereas, if you had a a really decent upbringing with parents who loved you but maybe were traumatized on their, you know, themselves or and emotionally unavailable and didn't know how to connect with you and left you to try to process through your experiences on your own, which is the biggest way something becomes traumatic. then you're gonna have all these symptoms, but you're not going to recognize why because there's nothing to point to. So, these are really important to talk about and understand um because once we start to connect those dots, it makes it much easier to begin to heal those wounds.

>> What is abuse sprain and how does it tie into the roadblocks of healing that you mention in the book? Deny, minimize, normalize, and defend. Demise. Yes. A little term I put together to describe this. So abused brain is sort of an unofficial term to describe our way of thinking, our way of perceiving things, our way of understanding situations that have been strongly influenced by experiences that were harmful to us psychologically, emotionally, physically, whatnot. Um, and so a common example we see of this are say um, a woman who's been in a narcissistic relationship with a man for a long period of time. He has systematically gaslit her into doubting herself, doubting her perspective, thinking she's the problem, blaming herself, minimizing his behavior, normalizing it. Um, and then let's say she gets out of that relationship. She

may be out of the relationship, but that abuse brain is still with her. So, she may think everything is her fault. She doesn't trust herself. She has no self-confidence. She doubts her perspective. Um, we understand it sort of in those terms. But the thing with childhood wounds is we're extrapolating that over time, right? So, if you were raised by a narcissistic parent or a toxic parent who always blamed you for their emotions, made everything your fault, um, never taught you how to trust yourself, believe in yourself, stand up for yourself, you always doubted yourself, they were the final authority, then you're going to have been raised with abuse brain for so long, you're going to think it's who you are. Um, and I coined the term demise to help explain to people what they're likely going to experience as they begin the healing process with these childhood wounds. So, uh, when we start to prioritize our healing and we go, "Okay, I'm going to

take a look. I'm going to look back into my childhood and find where do I need some healing? What's there? What are some wounds that didn't get healed? Demise tends to pop up as part of that abuse brain. So, the first thing I see is we tend to deny my childhood wasn't wasn't bad at all. It's not like I was beat every day. I always had a roof over my head. I played soccer. Whatot there's this blatant denial that there was any problem. That is a coping mechanism that our brain has used for a very long time, particularly since childhood to deal with our situations. That can be a hard one to overcome. When we're able to overcome that one, and a lot of times I find that psychoeducation is the answer to that. Um, we then tend to move into minimization. Well, it was just one time. It wasn't that bad. Or normalizing it. That's how everybody was raised, right? Um, or defending Well, my parents had it way worse growing up. They did the best they could. They didn't know any better.

These are normal um hurdles for us to overcome. These are normal responses uh of our brain to these really painful experiences. Um but I try to tell people that it's a sign in and of itself that there's a wound here. As an adult, if I touch my hand to the stove and it burns, I'm not fighting with myself to understand that I got hurt. I'm not minimizing it or normalizing it. I'm just tending to that wound, right? It is indicative of childhood wounds, particularly long-term sort of experiences like that example I gave of like gaslighting, doubting ourselves. Um, and I talk about it because a lot of people begin to try to heal, they bump into demise, and they think that that's evidence that there is no wound, right?

Because everybody went through it. It wasn't that big of a deal or whatever. When in fact, I'm trying to help people understand that it's evidence that there is a wound because otherwise, our brain wouldn't be doing that. So, once we recognize, oh, my brain is just trying to protect me, right? it's scared for me to look back at this memory or deal with this wound. Um, and that is a sign that there's pain here, then it makes us makes it easier for us to go, okay, and now I'm ready to heal it. In your book, you share two ways of exploring your past or your traumas. Can you share a little bit about what each of them is?

>> Yeah, absolutely. Um, and you can do both or one or the other. Um, and there's more ways I'm sure, but I gave two to try to help people depending on where they're at in their healing journey and depending on how their brain works. So, the first way is to create a timeline, like literally grab a piece of paper and draw a line um, from birth to maybe early adulthood. And then on that line, mark where you can remember experiences that you feel were hurtful for you. It does not matter if other people told you it wasn't. It does not matter if it wasn't that big of a deal.

The important part of this exercise is you're learning to trust and validate yourself. So, you just make the mark, right? You're not going to get in trouble and no one's going to discredit you. This is just for you. So, you make the mark. And I tell people like put a little note like maybe age if you can remember it or a detail, a single word that helps you recall what that is. Um, for some people that had very chronically dysfunctional or abusive childhoods where they're like there would be a tick mark on every spot of that line, I tell them to break it into categories based on stages of development, which is something else I talk about in the book. It's a way of breaking up our childhood based on where our brain is at. Um, and sort of categorize it like that to help simplify it. Uh, this exercise is powerful because the vast majority of people I've worked with that do this go in thinking they'll have a few tick marks, a couple things they can think of and by the end of it come out with much more than they anticipated. That in of itself is healing because they're able to go, "Oh,

more happened than I have allowed myself to realize. So, I guess it makes sense why maybe I'm so anxious or so stressed or have these symptoms." Uh which leads to the second way to sort of reflect on our childhood wounds and that's what I call backtracking symptoms. Some people don't have a lot of memory about their childhood or recalling memory can be complicated or they're not ready to go back there and look at it directly. Um that's okay, right? You don't have to do that. You can start with right now where you're at um and sort of walk yourself backwards. So, this has a lot to do with understanding what trauma- related symptoms are and realizing that they're not personality traits um and sort of assessing yourself for them. And I have a free worksheet that goes along with a book that lists a ton of trauma response symptoms to help people start to recognize and see. So, you can take that sheet and circle all the symptoms you

feel like you struggle with and then you start working backwards to how long have I had this? When's the first time I can remember feeling this way? Like, where did this come from? Because we weren't born with these trauma responses. We weren't born people pleasers, right? Um, and so either way provides an opportunity for you to start to connect the dots between what happened then and how you are now while getting comfortable looking back on your childhood through this lens, which in and of itself is healing because you're now um validating the memories. And sometimes that allows you to connect with the emotion which you can begin processing or you properly label the experiences. Instead of, "Oh, that sucked." We're now saying, "That was traumatic." Instead of saying, "Oh, yeah, my dad just yelled a lot." We're going, "Oh, he was verbally abusive." Um, and that language is important for healing. So, both ways are helpful. I have lots of people who do both. Um, but I always say start with what you're most

comfortable with. When it comes to the voice inside our head, what's the difference between character and programming? Good question. Uh, and this can be tricky, right? Especially when our programming has been unchallenged, unquestioned, and with us for so long, we think it's who we are. Uh, which is one of the biggest issues I see people have. Our programming is basically a term I use to describe how our early experiences influence our beliefs, right? So, everybody has core beliefs about themselves, others, and the world. They're formed pretty young by time around six or so. And they're basically conclusions that our brain comes to based off of the experiences that we have. Um and I say programming because I think of how a computer sort of programmed where once you say you know return creates a space on a page that programming in a computer uh there's no

changing that right that's the default setting. If you concluded at a young age that you were unlovable and unworthy, then that's your programming. And no matter what hacks you try, that setup remains the same, right? That command, that enter has the same result. Um, and most of us are products of our environment. I'd say all of us are. And our programming largely drives who we are and how we see the world. But there's this concept of our true self. Richard Schwarz talks about this in IFS. Um they talk about this in whole brain living. There's lots of different um therapies to discuss this concept of your true self, who you really are without all the pain and woundedness and issues and maladaptive programming and whatnot, right? Um, and one of the quickest ways to sort of decipher what

might be programming and what might be your character is looking at how it makes you feel. We often think things like, um, I've always believed I'm unlovable. I was told I was unlovable, so it's true. It's just true that I'm unlovable. But that thought causes tremendous pain. That is an indicator that that thought, that belief is coming from your programming, not from your character, your true self. Now, for people who were raised and in ways that had them conclude that they are lovable, they are worthy, that people are good and the world is safe, that tends to internalize in a way that aligns with their character. And so, they're like, I am my programming. I'm a product of my environment. Um, but what we're looking at is the programming that causes pain that deviates from your true character or your values. So, a good example here that I um give people to

help them start to think about this is to reflect on the difference between how they treat others and how they treat themselves. I tend to say that we treat others according to our character. We treat ourselves according to our programming. So if you are the doting mom and the kind friend and you're there for everybody else and you always have a supportive word, you're encouraging and you're loving uh to others, right? That's your character. That's who you are. But if you are self-critical, if you are harsh with yourself, abusive with yourself, if you are emotionally neglectful to yourself, that's not who you really are. That's not your character. That's a result of your programming. And my guess is it's very similar to how your parents treated you, right? If you are emotionally available to everybody else but not yourself, a good question would be how did your caregivers, how did your parents treat your emotions? Um, so that can be a helpful way to begin to reflect on that.

Looking at how these thoughts and beliefs make you feel is a good way. Um, I always use children as well. If you're a parent, uh, think about how you treat your children and how you treat yourself. I say to a lot of my parent clients when they are being very critical or harsh on themselves, very judgmental. I always say, "Okay, go say that to your child, right? Or would you talk to your kid that way?" And they're always horrified, right? Like they are like, "I would never I would never." Um, because that's their character, right? They understand that that's abusive and wrong. And yet they do it to themselves.

That's their programming. There are probably still a lot of people out there who hear reparing your inner child and think we're talking woo woo or hippie type stuff. What does the process actually look like systematically? And why is it not those things? Get this question a lot. Um and it's an important one because if we think it's pseudocience or woowoo, we might be more hesitant or resistant. Um, but the truth is these concepts have been around for a very long time. Uh, inner child stuff goes back to the 1800s. Um, and reparing work can be traced back to the 60s. And so this has been something that's been talked about. It's evolved over time in several different ways for a long time.

Um, but it's also been thoroughly researched because inner child work, the concept of these wounded inner children, these parts of us that hold all this pain that we need to connect with and help heal is very similar to that of internal family systems by Dr. Schwarz who you know has this concept of these exiles which are like wounded inner children um that you connect with to help heal. you know, that's been studied for around 70 years, and it's one of the most evidence-based therapies that we have. It's been thoroughly researched and super substantiated. Um, but it makes us uncomfortable. And so, it's really important that we don't assume something isn't legitimate or evidence-based, uh, that it's woowoo because we're uncomfortable. Reparenting is super uncomfortable. Inner child work is really complicated and uncomfortable.

That doesn't mean that it's not legit. It doesn't mean that it's not helpful. It doesn't mean that it's not healing. I tell people constantly, this is a very awkward process. You are going to feel like you are crawling out of your skin. This is going to feel so weird. You're going to think you're crazy talking to yourself. Um, let's just normalize that. Let's just get comfortable with that and sort of make peace with it. um because it doesn't make it any less effective that we're uncomfortable. And so I uh I spend I think the first chapter of the book kind of giving the history because I know for a lot of people I'm like this. I need to understand the science behind it. I need to understand where it's where it came from, if there's legitimacy to it. Um and I tell people do a deep dive, you know, go research this if this is something where you are thinking it'll be helpful for you, but you're kind of caught on like is it legit or not? Um, and then the other thing I tell people is it's safe to try. You're not going to be any worse off. You're not going to wound yourself more. I mean, your

childhood is over, right, by trying this. And because at the foundation of reparing is self-compassion. And I have yet to meet a person who couldn't use more self-compassion, including myself. Um, we really have nothing to lose here, right? If you come out of this with a kinder, gentler, more self-compassionate perspective toward yourself, if you build your self-confidence and that you validate and believe yourself more, if you realize that, you know, you were more wounded than you thought that you were and now you can tend to those wounds. We're not um doing any damage in doing that, right? But do take it at your own pace. I tell people if you have questions those questions are often roadblocks to us right if we can't get over like I don't get wounded inner children like that that doesn't work for my brain don't swallow your tongue express that ask those questions work through that um and it's why in the book

I give lots of different approaches lots of different ways to come at this because we don't want to let our brain getting caught on something stand in the way of the healing that's available to us. And often times we bump into one of those questions, we bump into a roadblock and we think, "Oh, that's it. It must not be true. It must not work." Um or we give up, right? Um whereas the process of advocating for yourself, saying, "I don't really understand this." Speaking up and asking questions, um taking your time and going, "I need to go a lot slower than this." That is reparing.

That is part of the healing process and provide so much healing. But people don't understand that that is reparing. We don't get over all that first and then reparent. If no one believed you growing up or no one cared about your questions, if you were a child that was supposed to be seen and not heard and you start just going, "No, wait. I have a question." Or, "Wait, I don't get this." You are already in the process of reparing because you're treating yourself different than the ways you were treated in your childhood. And it can really be just that simple. And finally, if somebody is undertaking the reparing their inner child process for the first time, what are the most important things that they should remember or think about as they're going through it?

>> That's a good question. Um, the first I would say is honor yourself. If you have wounds from your childhood um that are that are there, they're not going anywhere. So, it doesn't matter if you take your time, if you take breaks, if you go slow. Um because it's really important that we understand that we're not trying to just get this done. Reparenting isn't something that you it's not a course you take or a worksheet you complete and then you're done. Reparenting is a relationship with yourself that continues on for the rest of your life. So, it's important to honor yourself, respect where you're at, ask for what you need, take your time.

Um, the second thing is boatloads of self-compassion. Even with the people I work with who are like, "Okay, yeah, I'm going to be self-compassionate." It's sneaky how we can that inner critic can sneak in, that self-criticism, doubt can sneak in. Even if we're we're connecting with a wounded inner child and we're being kind and compassionate toward 5-year-old us. Uh we snap out of that and we're right back to criticizing ourselves. So, I say make it a huge priority. Um even if you're like, I'm not ready to connect with wounded inner children. I'm not ready to talk to myself like that. practicing self-compassion, practicing validating your emotions or honoring honoring yourself or um advocating for yourself, believing yourself, um is all part of the healing process, all part of the reparenting process. And we really aren't going to get very far without it.

I've had some people who are like, I don't need that self-compassion stuff. Let's just heal these wounds. and we end up hurting ourselves more, retraumatizing ourselves or or further sort of breaking trust with ourselves because we're treating those wounded inner children in the same ways that originally wounded them. Um and then lastly, um I would tell people to remember that like you're not alone. This work is lonely work because we're doing the healing ourselves. There's nobody who comes to rescue us. There's no external love that's big enough to fix these wounds, right? We could be with the best partner in the world who worships the ground we walk on and loves us unconditionally, but that doesn't change that four-year-old us was rejected by a parent or abandoned or neglected. And the only way to heal those wounded inner children is internally with our own work. giving ourselves the love that we

needed all along, talking to ourselves in the way we needed to be spoken to. And so that can feel very lonely and very disappointing. A lot of people are like, "Man, I was just really hoping somebody would come along and fix it all." Um, but in understanding that while the work can be lonely, you are not alone can be helpful. There are so many of us, myself included, who are doing this work. And when we find community, when we find people on this journey with us, it is not only such a breath of fresh air because you realize like I'm not alone in this and I'm not crazy and this is real. Um, we find support and encouragement and it helps us keep going. So even though the work is lonely, you are not alone. And if you're feeling alone, I encourage people go find community. Find the places where people are doing this work. reach out to people. I say all the time, I said it in my book and I tell people like, "Email me." I've had lots of people, random people who've read the book, email me

with questions and such because that sense of connection is really important when doing such individual work. Thank you so much, Nicole. As I've told you before, I think you've written a generationally important book that literally everybody should read. The world would be a better place if they did. So, thank you for that and for all the work you continue to do to help people heal within our community. Oh, thank you. Will I appreciate it and I'm just happy to be a part of such an important movement. So, I appreciate the kind words.