Who's your inner child?

[Intro] Hello, welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm your host, Corinne Powell.

I'm an intuitive mentor, and I help people pleasers to find happiness, embrace courage, and experience peace of mind. But say you're not a people pleaser, and you're desperate for change and not sure how to make it happen, then I'm here to help. In this space, you're gonna find motivation to live a life full of joy and resilience.

We'll talk all things inner wellness. And because I'm a mom, we'll throw in some knock-knock jokes. Just kidding.

We'll talk mom hacks and parenting sometimes. Whether it's your first time here or you listen week after week, I am wanting you to know, as I'm always wanting you to know, that your life is so significant. You are so valuable.

And I, for one, am happy that you are alive. I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. And would you do me a favor? Would you go ahead and subscribe to my podcast? Give me a good rating and write a written review? Any of those three things would help me so very much, and I would appreciate it.

Enjoy the episode. 

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Hello, my friends. I am so happy to be here with you.

How are you doing? I know last time that I came on to speak just you and I, I was telling you how I was in a difficult spot, I'd been in a difficult season, and that continued on. I would hope to say that I'm coming out of it just because that would be so exciting. And I'm not 100% sure, but I've had a couple days that have been easier and lighter, and I'm grateful for those.

But I'm not here to talk about what to do during the hard times. If you wanna hear that, go back a couple episodes and take a listen. Today, I just wanna talk about inner child.

And for those of you that aren't sure what I even mean by that, just think of it as your younger self. So you've always lived within your body, and your mind and your body stores memory. So there's things that happened in your past that are still gonna affect you in your present day.

And some people would call it being triggered or being activated. And basically, it's when you're in a situation present day, and you feel this very strong reaction within you, maybe your emotions feel a bit extreme, over the top, excessive to what somebody just said or what happened to you. Let me give you an example.

For me, in the past, if my children were to hit me, now, mind you, I don't advocate kids hitting parents or parents hitting kids, but hey, that happens sometimes. So if my kids were angry and hit me, that would send me into a spiral. I would become very defensive, I would get very upset, and I would act on the defensive.

I'd put my hands in front of my body, and I would say, you can't do that to me, don't hit me. And I was acting as if I was less powerful than my child, and my children were all young enough that I actually am even physically still more powerful than them if you were to gauge it. And my response was that way because I was actually flashing back to when I was a young child, and a parent figure did hit me.

And so because I experienced that multiple times and was powerless because I was a young child, and I was smaller and less powerful than the adult, I wasn't able to really defend myself. Sure, I could run away, but anytime I returned, that potentially could happen again if that person was to get upset and take their anger and their frustration and their disappointment, their overwhelm out on me. So I would say in that moment, I was being triggered or activated because I felt as if when my child did that, that it was happening to me all over again.

There was actually the little girl inside me, my younger self, my inner child, however you feel comfortable, whatever term you feel comfortable with works. I just want to make sure you understand the concept. And for that part of me, I needed to find healing, love, and nurturance because otherwise every time, say my child went to hit me or if it were to happen to me in another setting, I would have been always reacting in the same way, defensive, afraid, needing to protect myself when in reality, as my child does that, if I wasn't flashing back, I could stand there and say, hey, in a calm way, feeling very steady and grounded, hey, I'm not okay with you hitting me.

I'm not okay with either of us hitting each other. And I don't want you to disrespect me in that way or treat me in that way. It's not kind and it hurts me and it makes me feel really sad.

And can you tell me, I could go on to say in a calm tone, fully feeling steady and stable. I could ask my child, what's going on right now? Why do you feel so upset that you are taking out your feelings, whatever they might be? Because again, anger, I've said this before, but it's worth repeating. Anger is always masking something.

There's either sadness, there's overwhelm, there's disappointment, there's pain of some sort underneath the big emotion of anger. And so I could ask my child, what are you feeling? What are you, tell me your thoughts right now. Tell me what you're feeling, what I did or what happened to you?

What's going on within your mind and your body right now that's making you want to hit me? And we could have a conversation about it. And if they're not sure, I could help them to try to figure that out. You know, there's a lot of energy running through their body and they need to release that.

And they need to express how they're feeling and what is going on within themselves. If I am over, I don't wanna say overreacting because it's actually the reaction that I would have even as an adult to my child hitting me is valid if it's my inner child who is reacting because say I'm a five-year-old, a seven-year-old, a 10-year-old in my body and my mind when I'm being, you know, triggered. And in that way, if that's what's happening, that's a really valid response to react the way I did.

But looking at it otherwise, it would seem out of place for me as the parent figure, the adult to react in that way. So I've needed to give attention to my inner child in not just that respect, in that respect, in regards to those memories and being physically hurt or abused, whatever you wanna call it. And, you know, oftentimes, I'm just gonna put this little plug in.

I'm not so worried about qualifying what something is. Usually my heart just wants to make sure that for both you and I, we feel validated, understood, and embraced. So whatever you wanna call something is not of as much importance to me as the idea that we are gonna validate each other, we're gonna recognize each other's experiences, and we're going to honor what we've walked through, not dismissing, not denying or minimizing what you or I have experienced.

That can be super painful when anyone dismisses or minimizes or denies what another person has experienced. And I don't know your story. Perhaps you've shared some of it with me.

But there are those of you, I don't know your story at all. And you only know whatever part of my story I've shared with you thus far. But we each have walked through multiple experiences that have traumatized us, hurt us, caused emotional pain, psychological traumas.

And this is all worth recognizing and validating. And so, as I've focused on my inner child and what she needs, it has been super healing because I've given her the attention that she always desired. Every child needs it and should be receiving it.

But for many different reasons, we don't always receive what we need as children. And I believe the gift to us as parents or as those that have influence as teachers or just influence with children, because we all see children, we all meet children, we all impact children. Whether it's at the grocery store, it really doesn't matter.

You're going to interact with children in some way throughout your lifetime. And the gift in that, in my opinion, is that we learn how to have compassion and love towards children. And it starts with us.

It starts with having compassion and love, kindness towards your own inner child. Giving recognition to that part of yourself. That might be your infant self.

It could be the toddler self. It could be you as a preteen or teen. There's so many times in your life where you were feeling alone and you were hurting and you just needed somebody to see you, to recognize where you were at and to give you a listening ear.

To sit or to hug you and to say, hey, I know what you're going through hurts. And I want you to know that I can't perhaps make it better, but I'm here because I care. That love right there, that exchange of compassion and love is super healing.

And so I want you to know that for any moment in your life where you did not receive what you needed, what you should have received, my heart feels sadness and grief for you. Don't worry. I will not leave this episode and be in a depressing spot.

I feel for you in this moment and I'm able to engage back with my own life experiences when I am done empathizing with you. But I really truly do feel for you in this moment because I see you and I know that it hurt in those moments when you just needed somebody, especially a parent figure, but it could be a teacher or an adult that was significant in your life and you just needed them to understand they didn't have to fix it. If they could have just listened, if they could have just sought out your heart, what do you really think? What do you really feel? What do you know about this? How is this time and this experience that we're walking through affecting you? You needed that.

You needed somebody to sit down or to give you a hug and just hear you out. And I want you to know that you have the opportunity to be that support to your inner child. As your present day adult self, in your mind's eye, you go back in your memory bank, you see yourself, whether it's sitting in your bedroom or crying in the bathroom, and you see yourself, and I'm gonna try to walk you through this as I often do for myself.

So I walk in, say, to that room where my younger self is and I offer my inner child whatever she needs. So I'm aware, I'm in tune with her. I'm attuned to her.

So I can sense, oh, she needs me to sit next to her. She needs me to give her a hug right now and to just let her cry. Or she needs me to hear her out, to just listen to what's been going on for her in her life right now, and to just offer her that listening ear and to offer her that validation and that compassion.

Hey, wow, that would be so hard to walk through. Oh man, I wish I could make it better. I'm really sad that you're going through that.

I'm angry that people are treating you that way. And I'm here to let you know that I will always protect you. See, that's the key here.

We are an adult now, and we are able to offer protection and nurturance to our inner child that they once needed and did not receive. That inner child never has to feel isolated and alone again. Your inner child never needs to feel as if he or she is not seen and not heard and not understood.

No, now we can offer that to our inner child. And so it's in that exchange of offering that to our inner child that healing takes place because whenever love, compassion, nurturance, acceptance, understanding, any of those things and more, whenever they're offered, healing takes place. It's actually very easy to offer healing to ourselves.

There's a sense of healing that comes when comfort is offered. There's a sense of healing that comes when love is exchanged. And I really do wanna simplify it because I see it as that.

I see it as a very simple but profound offering. Perhaps it's complex, but as you practice it, as you offer your inner child what he or she needs on a regular basis, and hey, if this is so new to you and you're hearing this maybe for one of the first times, you don't have to do this alone. This is what I offer in my mentoring.

It's a support. It's someone to help you walk through these experiences and offer to your inner child what he or she needs. But in this exchange, this simple yet complex exchange, the healing that takes place makes all of life so much better.

To know that you never have to feel like you are alone again, like you felt so often perhaps as a kid. I know I felt that way as a child. Very neglected emotionally and very misunderstood and overlooked.

And it wasn't because my parent figures or others in my life meant to send those messages. Not at all. Sometimes it's just that the adults that we have around us as we grow up don't have all the tools they need.

They weren't offered it as a child themselves and they don't know how to offer it to now the children that are theirs. So I have a lot of even compassion and understanding for my parents or others that were a big part of my life as I grew up. But even as I hold that compassion, I'm still willing to hold to the reality that I missed things I needed growing up.

That there were certain elements to my childhood that caused me trauma and a lot of emotional pain. And as an adult, I am feeling the effect of it. And I have been working through these things for years now, over a decade and a half.

So it takes time and it's a process, but it helps me to recognize that yes, there was a lot that happened during my developmental years that I'm now feeling the repercussion of. And that is worth recognizing and just giving honor to, just letting it be. We don't have to always do more than that.

We can just recognize it, acknowledge it. And then of course, you've heard me talk about what we can do to help ourselves to recover and heal. So I hope that what I have shared in these last several minutes has been helpful to you.

But say it's brought up some questions, you can always either leave me an audio message right here through the podcast, and I can answer that question that you have. I can even answer those questions in an episode. Or if you want to directly message me, go ahead on Instagram at @corinne_changeradically⁠ and send me a DM, or you can always email me.

And that is corinne@changeradically.com. As offering this care to our inner child is super healing, it's transformative. And I want to encourage you to take small incremental steps to help your inner child to heal and be able to live fully, vibrantly. That's the point of life.

And that's where I am, that's the journey I'm on. That is what I love helping other people with. And I hope that you have a great week.

[Ending] Here we are, we've made it to the end. What'd you think about what you heard today? Is there something you heard that you know you need to take action on? I'm one of those people who loves to not just sit and hear something, but to sit in here and then go ahead and start implementing, taking action on what I hear, what was stirred up in me. And I encourage you to do the same. 

If you enjoyed today's episode, or perhaps you heard an episode in the past that really stuck with you, would you go ahead and share that with some of your friends and your family? It would mean so much to me. And also, if you want to connect with me, remember you can always find me throughout the week on Instagram, I'm @corinne_changeradically⁠ Or you can email me anytime, corinne@changeradically.com. 

I'd love to be in touch. And if there's any way that I can help you, please seek me out. Until we speak again next week, I hope that you will remember in the moments that are loud and busy, and in the moments that are quiet and still, that who you are is super important.

You are valuable. And I am so glad that you're alive.