Dr. Erin Hayford [00:00:00]:
Everyone, and welcome to this lesson on the inner child. So, just to kind of define inner child in my terms and in the way we'll be thinking of it and conceptualizing it in this lesson, the inner child is the parts of ourselves that contain all of the experiences that we've had up until this moment. And so that's good things, that's bad things, that's neutral things, right? Kind of the gamut of experiences, interactions, events, et cetera, that have defined our lives and kind of all added up to create this tapestry of who we are. So when we're thinking of doing a healing journey, it's impossible to not work with a version of our inner child, because all of the wounds, all of the limiting beliefs, all the things we've been talking about are from. They were experienced by and held by our inner child. So, for example, if I developed the core belief, I'm not enough, let's say that came from when I was seven years old, from a very specific event. And then that version of me, that inner child, seven year old self, is the one who initially developed that wound. And so when we do this work, oftentimes we are going back to those ages, we're going back into those memories, and we're working with that version of ourselves where they were at the time it happened, who was around, what were they feeling, what did they need? That's how we begin to unravel kind of the harm done to the inner child.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:01:28]:
Think of ourselves as one person, right? And we are, in a sense, but in another sense, we are multiple people. I'm not talking about multiple personalities or anything like that. What I'm talking about is all of these different versions of ourselves who have moved through life, who have been in different relationships, have lived in different places, have been surrounded by different circumstances, even moving through different grades as we've moved through school, all of these environments are different. And because of the differences that happened from one scene, so to speak, to the next, we had different experiences. We developed certain opinions and beliefs and thoughts and all the things we've been thinking about at these different developmental stages of our lives. And sometimes those beliefs, thoughts, encounters, et cetera, are not compliant, but they work together, right? They kind of agree with each other. They mesh, right? So it's like what I learned at seven kind of reinforces or agrees with something that I'm learning when I'm twelve. But sometimes they conflict, they don't agree.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:02:32]:
Or it's like, well, this feels true, but when I was this age, I had, we're not obviously thinking this, but subconsciously, we're having this inner resistance or kind of battle happening because it's saying, I learned something at this age that seemed really important and necessary for my survival, and now I'm developing a new belief, or I'm encountering a situation that's kind of challenging that belief. So what does that mean? And I see this more often, and I'm sure it happens throughout life, but I see this more often as adults, as we become more and more and more conscious of what we want and what we need and inner turmoil and discomfort in this day and age of having access to social media and like Dr. Google and people who are talking about psychological ideas and concepts on the Internet, promoting this idea of self worth and self value and self growth and self healing and all of the self things, right? We're learning a lot more about ourselves and kind of what we're capable of and what we should need and want and strive for in this lifetime, thanks to how much information is now available. And I think the more we learn once we leave our place of origin and we start to really develop into ourselves outside of the influence of our families and sometimes even our immediate communities, if we move away, we start to again have these conflicts of like, oh, I'm starting to feel something like this relationship I'm in, or maybe I've been with this person for years, but now that I'm learning about these aspects of self, or realizing that there's more to life than what I originally thought, it doesn't really add up, it doesn't really make sense. So we start to try to change, right? We start to seek out help, or we start to engage in activities or practices that are trying to help us develop this new part of ourselves, to feel better, to heal whatever it might be. But we are often met with a ton of resistance inside. Like, for example, let's say that I want to pursue a certain degree at school. I want to go to school for something, right? And so I feel like this is.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:04:39]:
I feel excited about it. Maybe I went to school for something else. And then I graduated and I was working in this job, but through just life experiences and exposure to, again, psychology and ideas of self development and self worth, I start to realize what I really like is actually this. And I want to go back to school for this thing and stop my career for whatever this other thing I've been doing for a while. So that might create a conflict, right? So there might be this part of me that's saying, who are you to do that, like, you have a steady job, you have income, you have respect, like, you are climbing the ladder at this job. Why would you do that? Why would you leave? Why would you go away? That doesn't feel good. There's just some sort of inner conflict that's happening there. And so we're going to get into this concept later in much more detail.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:05:30]:
But for the sake of this lesson, I just want to bring it up briefly. It's something that I refer to as the goodness threshold. Oftentimes, whenever we're trying to evolve past a certain point, we're sort of breaking a self imposed glass ceiling. We are often met with resistance. And how I want to frame this resistance is that it's not just a matter of, it's like not a lack of willpower, right. It's not that you're not strong enough or you're not motivated enough or you're not dedicated enough or disciplined enough to meet that goal. Resistance is often an inner child aspect that is saying, no, that is not safe. Whatever that inner child, learned or experienced might be very counteractive or counterintuitive to the thing that you're trying to pursue.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:06:16]:
And so that inner child is going to self sabotage. It's going to create thoughts, beliefs, experiences, actions, words, whatever it might be that kind of gets in the way of this forward progress. And again, we often feel that as like, what's wrong with me? I just want to overcome this and move forward. Like a really common example is with dieting, right? So folks who want to lose weight because for whatever reason, right. There's always a litany of reasons we want to do anything. But let's say it's because of the societally prescribed body. Like, you're supposed to look like this, you should look like this. So you start to try to lose weight.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:06:57]:
I see this, and the reason I'm referencing this is because I see this a lot in my one on one clients who we work with, this particular dynamic, if we're working with this dynamic. But let's say there's an inner child aspect who doesn't feel safe moving the body, moving your body around. Because let's say, maybe movement is associated with some harm that happened or bringing attention to yourself in that way is unsafe because of experiences that inner child had, right. So you might start to exercise, you might start to eat a certain way. Whatever you're doing to lose weight, let's say the weight starts to come off. That inner child is going to eventually find a way to rear up and sabotage you, interfere with your willpower, basically, and cause something to happen. And so this is why a lot of times those things fail, so to speak, because there's a part of us who is not on board with what we're trying to do. They're not on board with how we're trying to move forward.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:07:55]:
The usual approach is, of course, the american way, if you live in the US, is to just push ahead, just force it, overcome it, override it, like that willpower ideas, just go, just push, push, push. Right? But what happens when we start to see that resistance instead, as we do with any challenge, any trigger in this work, as an opportunity to actually go deeper, to learn something about yourself, to explore something that is important, and actually leaning into that resistance and looking at that resistance could be the pathway to the life you actually want versus pushing against it, ignoring it, overriding it is only going to keep you repeating the pattern of self sabotage and lack of progress and so called failure. We start to understand triggers and inner child work as being interrelated in some aspect, right? So again, if you are trying to move forward with something or pursue something or explore something or whatever it might be, and there's an inner resistance that starts to rise up. Rather than characterizing it as a failure or something wrong with you, I want you to start to consider, this is a younger aspect of myself, right? So again, going back to this idea that we're not truly just one person with one identity and one belief system, right? There's many parts of us who had many experiences, who have many ideas about what it means to be safe in this world and how that safety should be enacted, right? So when you feel that resistance, I want you to start to consider what it would be like to instead turn toward that part of yourself and say, okay, this is an inner child aspect, and there's a part of me that does not feel good or safe about this thing that I'm trying to move toward, even if logically, consciously, whatever, you know it's in your best interest. You know it's good for you. You know it's what you want. This part of yourself does not agree. And again, no matter how much you push that part of you, until they are seen, heard, and their needs are met, you're not going to be able to really successfully move forward.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:10:02]:
That's always going to be like this nagging thing in your way, to fully stepping into who you want to be in this lifetime. That inner child, her or his or their needs need to be met. Right? So we are kind of ruled by our unmet needs in that way, driven by our unmet needs. And so again, those unmet needs are always going to override the current needs that we have, right? Like, if we're really needing and wanting a certain thing, our inner child is going to be like, that's cool, but what about me being heard and understood and loved and feeling safe because we're not moving forward if I don't feel safe. And that's all there is to it. So inner child work can be thought of as all of the ages and stages of development, all the way up really until modern day. It's really just like every inner version, younger version of ourselves, right, that has had an experience, which is every version of ourselves who developed a belief, developed a story, developed a core wound or limiting belief around what they experienced. So again, most kind of predominantly, we're looking at ages zero through seven because that's when the primary tracks of our subconscious programming were laid.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:11:14]:
And then still to an extent, but to a lesser extent, ages eight through 25, because that's when brain development was still going on, although again, to a lesser kind of extreme than ages zero through seven. So we're really looking at those ages as the primary inner children that we're working with. And when their needs have not been met, we need to go back, meet those needs and work with them so that they feel safe in basically trusting you. Like we talked about in the last lesson, our ages zero through one is all about trust or mistrust. They need to trust that someone is going to show up for them and meet their needs in order for them to let go and feel safe. And so every part of you, again, needs to have that feeling, okay, someone's meeting my needs, someone's hearing me, I'm getting what I want. This is how it feels. And so they can let go and trust that you are in charge.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:12:04]:
Hint you have their best interest in mind. It does not feel like you have their best interest in mind when you are pushing ahead against their will. So it's really like rallying your inner troops and getting everyone on the same page, making sure everyone feels safe and taken care of in order to open yourself up to the next step.
