Retrieve Your Inner Child - Insight Timer Live

In this recording of an Insight Timer Live from November 2021, Catherine shares her uniquely embodied understanding of the Inner Child, and guides a gentle shadow work practice to help identify and compassionately integrate this vital energy within you. We create safety within, so that we may unfreeze and gradually restore our wholeness. Trauma-informed.

Transcript

Welcome everybody to Retrieve Your Inner Child and we're going to start today by taking a comfortable seat or lying down wherever you are and you might if it feels nourishing to you place one or both hands on your heart and start to inquire within why am I here today?

What brings me to this session called Retrieve Your Inner Child and take a few breaths and let the answer arise for you.

Is there a feeling or a small voice within you perhaps that has called you here today?

That is calling to be retrieved and you don't have to know what that is now.

Simply note if something like that is there for you.

Just breathe some softness there into the place in your body where it feels like that energy lives.

That energy that has called you right here right now.

Alright so slowly bring yourself back if your eyes are closed or you're inward slowly taking some deepening breaths and opening the eyes again coming right back.

So today what we're doing is I'm going to be talking just a little bit about what the inner child is and then we're going to be diving into a very beautiful and intimate practice where we will retrieve part of that energy within you that inner child energy.

So the way I talk about the inner child is probably going to be different from the way you've heard it anywhere else because from what I understand it is very unique and it's also always evolving.

So if you started following my work a long time ago how I talk about it now is going to be different as my own practice with myself and my own inner child energy changes and evolves and grows.

So first I have a picture to show you and for those of you listening to the recording it's a picture of me when I was about four years old and I am outside in my backyard growing up and wearing a rainbow colored one-piece bathing suit and playing in this gigantic mud puddle and my whole lower half of my body is covered in mud and I have this gleeful look on my face.

I'm so happy to be playing in the mud.

So what is the inner child?

The inner child is our uninterrupted self.

It's the self that is whole.

It's the self before we started to try not to feel our feelings.

And I'm gonna really unpack this now.

The inner child is our uninterrupted self.

So how does our self get interrupted?

How does this 360 degree personality that we are coming out into the world,

How does this energy that we are,

This life force get interrupted?

So what happens is,

So I am a mother to a two-year-old,

So I am living with full-blown uninterrupted life force energy.

It is extremely challenging,

Right?

And those of you who are parents or have been parents to young children can understand this.

No human parent,

At least in the society that we live in now,

Can handle 360 degree full force life force,

Right?

It's part of the socialization process for everyone,

No matter how conscious,

How wonderful your parents were.

It's part of the socialization of us all to reroute and interrupt some of that full-blown force.

And I'll give you an example.

I have to tell my daughter not to hit people,

Right?

Very kindly,

Right?

But she needs to know not to hit.

She needs to know not to throw things in the house,

Right?

She needs to know that screaming at the top of her lungs in certain contexts is not okay.

She needs to know that,

You know,

Generally you speak in a polite way to people.

So these are just examples that we all,

We all come out as this uninterrupted stream,

Like imagine this river rapids of life force energy.

And that becomes routed as we go through socialization.

Generally speaking,

The more rigid the environment you grew up in,

In other words,

Generally speaking,

The more rigid that box of a good little girl or a good little boy was for you,

The more that life force is going to be interrupted as you grow up.

Now,

It's also interrupted through developmental trauma or shock trauma very dramatically.

So developmental trauma is ongoing stress.

You might call it complex PTSD.

So the ongoing stress of growing up in an environment that was not,

That didn't feel safe to your child's body.

And that could mean emotional neglect that you weren't seen or heard for who you are.

Could mean that there was strife in the home.

Your parents were fighting.

It could mean that you were criticized harshly.

It could mean really an infinite number of things.

But you know,

If you feel into what it felt like for you to be a child in your home,

Your body will tell you if it felt safe,

If you could kind of open up and be vulnerable,

Or if it didn't feel as safe and you had to protect yourself and be more guarded.

So these are all ways that our life force energy becomes interrupted.

And the way that I really like talking about it now is that it's like that river of life,

Certain streams of that river become frozen as we grow.

So the stream of my spontaneity,

For example,

Had to freeze.

Because it wasn't safe for me to just do to have an impulse,

No matter how beautiful and do it because I would be criticized,

Right?

If it wasn't perfect,

Or looked a certain way.

That's just a personal example.

So the stream of my spontaneity got frozen.

Maybe the stream of your gender identity got frozen,

Right?

Because it was assumed you were a boy when you were a girl when you write or otherwise,

Or non binary,

Right?

Or maybe the stream of your sexual orientation got frozen or the stream of your I mean,

All of us had to freeze our own vulnerability.

In order to grow up in the society that we live in,

To some extent,

Your vulnerability in certain contexts,

In certain ways.

And this is how I now talk about the inner child is the inner child is our frozen vulnerability.

I don't like anymore to talk about the inner child is something that's like locked in the unconscious mind.

That's a more classical psychoanalytical approach,

A more Jungian approach,

That it's somehow in our mind.

I don't like after doing this work with myself for 20 years and working with hundreds and hundreds of people.

I don't see the unconscious is in the mind anymore.

I see it as in the body.

And all of our frozen vulnerability is still here in our bodies.

And that's another this is another reason I love using the analogy of frozenness instead of like locked in the unconscious.

Because it's still here.

It's just frozen.

And how do we unfreeze our vulnerability?

In other words,

How do we retrieve our inner child energy?

In order for us to be whole again,

Right?

How do we do it?

We bring warmth to it.

We bring presence and warmth and loving acceptance.

And that warmth is what freezes that,

Sorry,

That warmth is what melts,

Thaws that frozen energy inside us,

Gradually over time,

Gradually over time,

Right?

Because this is embodied,

Because everything,

All of this energy is in the body,

It takes time,

But it is beautifully consistent in my experience.

As we grow in this attitude,

This empathic stance toward ourselves,

This warmth,

We naturally,

Through creating this relationship of safety with ourselves of warmth with ourselves,

We will naturally unfreeze and unclench against our feelings.

And then naturally,

As a process of nature,

We will heal.

We cannot try to heal.

We cannot try to heal.

Because our body is very intelligent,

Is intelligent beyond our understanding,

Right?

And what I mean by that is that our body knows,

When we're trying to make something happen,

And that is an aggressive approach,

I'm trying to change myself,

I'm trying to get better.

Can you feel how that's a kind of violence toward yourself?

That's not warmth,

That's not patience,

That's not the attitude that you would have as a loving parent to a child.

And we need to have the attitude of a loving parent to a child toward ourselves,

In order to integrate the energy of the inner child in order to unfreeze in order to feel safe with ourselves so that this clenched frozen vulnerability is free to unfurl and grow and deliver us to wholeness again.

So we cannot try to heal.

This is why I have a lot of problems with a lot of the personal growth industry.

Because there's a whole lot of trying,

There's a whole lot of effort,

There's a whole lot of marketing and selling a promised outcome when that's not how healing works.

Because healing has to be an open loving relationship with the self that's completely accepting as you already are.

And that lays the groundwork for healing.

All of this frozenness in you,

You could call your shadow.

So in more traditional Jungian psychology,

Right,

The shadow is like part of our psyche,

Part of the collective unconscious part of the mind.

But I really do see shadow as in the body.

Shadow is our frozenness.

It's those streams of energy that had to be frozen inside of us in order for us to adapt to our environment growing up and get approval,

Right.

So we froze these parts of ourselves in order to get approval from our caregivers,

So that we could survive,

Right?

Because all children do that completely unconsciously,

Completely and utterly unconsciously.

It's a function of the autonomic nervous system.

It's not your choice.

And Tracy says,

Thank you for pointing that out about the wellness industry,

Right?

Those ideas of what you should do,

Right?

Make it look so easy and that I'm doing something wrong.

Yeah,

Tracy.

Those kinds of ideas and ideals that make it look like just do this,

Right?

And you'll heal just do this and you'll get rid of your trauma or your imprints or your wounding,

Right?

It's BS.

I mean,

It's not it's certainly not trauma informed.

It's certainly not compassionate,

Right?

And so folks very much including myself who buy those courses or products or do that really intense yoga or intense meditation with this attitude of changing yourself.

What usually happens that I've seen is you might feel better for a little while,

But then you're just going to go back to the old patterns because you haven't really healed your baseline attitude toward yourself.

And that's what creates safety with yourself with which is what lays the foundation for actual healing to happen.

We create a container of safety within ourselves.

And you can think of this like cultivating building up the banks of a river within ourselves.

We build ourselves up we create the safety so that more and more water more and more life force can flow through us can return to us.

You can think of an iceberg melting that iceberg of frozen life force energy just melting and moving into that riverbed that you've created for yourself.

And the more water is in that riverbed,

The happier we are,

The more fulfilled we are,

The more at peace we are with ourselves.

And one example from my own life of that frozenness versus creating that safe riverbed and having the water of myself flow through it was when I was working in academia.

So my old job was I was I was teaching German at a large research university German and German studies.

And I was very,

Very good at it.

But I noticed some high functioning depression and I noticed myself doing yoga and meditation compulsively,

Like I had to do my yoga and meditation or to be okay.

It wasn't like I thought to myself,

Oh,

It would feel really good to do yoga today.

It was like I have to do yoga today.

And that was my tip off that,

Oh,

This is an addiction.

This is a coping mechanism.

And I'm experiencing this depression,

Something has to shift and change.

So I started my journey of shifting my attitude toward myself from kind of puppeteering myself and making myself do these things and bullying myself internally.

And like I used to use the language a lot of allowing myself,

I'll allow myself to have one piece of chocolate today,

I'll allow myself to watch one television show this week,

You know,

I'll allow myself to do this.

And that was that frozenness.

Can you all feel that?

Can you feel how rigid that that just lands within you?

I'll allow myself to do this.

And so largely with the help of Tara Brock's work,

Like her book,

Radical Acceptance really changed my life.

And I ended up going on retreat with her and like,

It was amazing.

So Tara Brock's work was instrumental for me personally,

For starting that process of unfreezing,

And then lo and behold,

Like the more I unfroze within myself,

And I'll talk about how we'll do that,

How we unfreeze like on a moment to moment basis in a minute.

The more I practiced unclenching against my own feelings,

Unclenching against my body tension,

Unclenching against my life or making myself do certain things,

Unclenching against myself,

The more I practice that on a very,

Very everyday level,

The more kind of energy started to come to me and new people into my life.

And pretty soon it became clear I needed to change my career.

So it's a it's a process that just happens one hour at a time,

One day at a time.

And then a year went by and I had changed my career.

I went back to school for counseling psychology.

And I kept opening and then I realized counseling psychology was not the path I wanted.

I left the program because it wasn't trauma informed enough.

And I don't want to tell my life story.

But I'm just saying that where I am today is very much a result of my own unfreezing and I'm still unfreezing every single day.

I'm unclenching and unfreezing more and more and I just feel more and more peace inside.

Like peace inside like as a deep ocean,

Even though yes,

Of course,

The waves of life wash over me,

Right?

The sadness,

The grief,

The anger,

All the waves of life are washing over.

But the difference because I'm on the path of unfreezing is this deep inner peace here and deep happiness and fulfillment.

Because I'm committed to integrating this energy,

This this frozen energy unfreezing and thus integrating,

Retrieving that inner child life force within me.

So basically,

The more energy is frozen inside of you,

The less happy you're going to feel.

The more of your own energy is frozen,

The more symptoms you're going to feel be it mental,

Physical,

Right?

Relational.

Another way to put that is the more of you that's in shadow,

The less happy you're going to feel.

The more of you that you bring out through unfreezing,

The happier you're going to feel.

So how did we get frozen?

Like what is this process of freezing?

It's because way back when,

So this little girl,

And I'm holding up the picture of my four-year-old self here again,

So this little girl,

Your little children selves,

There were things that happened that were too much for you to feel.

Too much,

Too fast,

Too soon,

Simply too much or too much over a long period of time,

Too much ongoing stress.

When things are too much for us to feel,

Specifically our little bodies and also when we were left alone with these feelings,

When there wasn't someone to be an empathic witness for us and say,

Hey sweetheart,

I see that you're really sad about that and just let it all out,

I'm here for you.

How many of us had that growing up?

If you did,

You wouldn't be here right now.

Because that,

When we have empathic witnessing growing up,

We don't freeze as much.

We can still move through the feelings,

We develop an internal resilience so that we don't have to freeze.

We only freeze when things are too much for us to feel and we are left alone to feel our feelings.

And I don't mean once,

I mean like chronically for most of us,

Right?

And because emotions,

So feelings,

Our feelings are life force energy.

And so when we clench against our feeling,

We clench against ourselves,

We clench against life and we freeze that part of us.

Emotions are life force energy and so when we try not to feel them,

We freeze that part of ourselves.

And again,

I'm not talking about once,

I'm talking about repeated over years.

Yeah,

Exactly.

Savarna,

Or told that not to feel what you're feeling.

Absolutely.

Or for many of us,

Told we were gaslit,

Right?

Oh,

You don't feel that.

You don't feel sad about that.

Or not to cry.

Yeah,

Exactly.

And so our inner child is that unclenched self,

Right?

That's the energy.

The inner child isn't one thing,

Right?

Isn't one part of you.

It's actually a whole spectrum of that unclenched,

Unfrozen,

Full life force energy that is you.

And I think in a lot of ways,

Adulting in our world,

Right?

We have this word now that never used to exist,

This word adulting.

Adulting means freezing in many ways,

Right?

If you think about the amount of pressure that's on a given person in our world,

A given person,

A given person who's living,

For example,

In a nuclear family,

Who isn't in a community,

Who isn't a village,

Who has to manage things like health insurance,

At least if you're in the United States.

Their health insurance,

Their money,

Making all their own money,

Getting all their resources all by themselves,

Like taking care of their children all by themselves,

Like that is a traumatic state to live in.

We did not evolve to have this level of individualism,

Right?

We evolved to have support and live in community.

So I believe that simply like the Western model of living now is traumatic in and of itself and it encourages us and in fact requires us to freeze our vulnerability,

Our full spectrum life force energy.

So your inner child is already here within you and that's the beautiful part about it.

It's a beautiful thing about thinking about inner child energy as frozen vulnerability within you.

It's all right here and so what we need to do to unfreeze it is quite simple.

We practice noticing when we're feeling something and unclenching against that feeling.

We notice when we're feeling something and we practice this process of unclenching.

We'll practice this in just a minute and Carol says,

Yes the idea of a strong independent woman like adulting for someone who identifies as a woman is so much about freezing in the society,

A hundred percent agree with that.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Strong independent woman,

Strong independent anyone,

Like we're not,

We didn't evolve to be independent,

Right?

So the more we practice unclenching,

Unclenching against feeling,

Allowing,

Flowing,

The wider and deeper the banks of our riverbed become within us.

In other words,

The greater our sense of safety becomes within ourselves and when we feel safe with ourselves,

When our feeling energy is safe within us,

Then more can unfreeze,

Right?

We have more capacity for life force to move through us.

So I want to share with you all a list of ways that we clench against feeling.

In part so that you can start the process of awareness and you're probably already,

You've started this awareness within yourself,

But you can start or continue this awareness of things you might be doing to freeze,

To clench against your feelings that are coming up to be felt.

You can think about many of our feelings as the voice of our inner child energy wanting to be seen and heard and what do most of us do or what do most of us or many of us have to do.

For example,

If you're a single parent or if you're just stressed out,

Like we have to clench against it sometime,

Right?

So I'm not saying that you should stop doing all of these things I'm about to list off,

Right?

We can't,

We can't stop doing all of them,

But I just want to bring awareness to them,

Okay?

You ready to hear,

You ready to hear the list?

These are the things I just journaled about the other day.

So this is a list of how we avoid our vulnerability,

A list of ways that we clench against our feeling.

The internet,

Distractions,

Food,

Alcohol,

Or other substances,

Other addictions or habits like television,

Our literal body tension is a way that we clench against feeling.

So body tension is of course unconscious way that our body has through our nervous system frozen pain that we can't handle.

Body tension is frozen pain,

There you go.

For example my jaw,

Like I'm a chronic jaw clenched clencher,

I'm very aware that that's some frozen pain.

Yeah,

Perfectionism,

Intellectualism and over analysis and overthinking.

Nervous tics,

Spiritual bypassing,

Like saying,

Oh it all happened for a reason,

It's happening for me not to me.

That might all be well and good in the big big big big picture,

But it's not helping you right now to say that.

It's not helping you unclench.

Spiritual bypassing,

Self-judgment,

Self-criticism is a way that we clench against our feeling and our vulnerability.

Self-harm and self-sabotage behaviors.

Fatigue or oversleeping,

Procrastination,

Constant improvement,

Staying busy all the time.

Achievement is a way that we keep from feeling and clenching against our pain.

Needing to do the right thing all the time and this is a tricky one.

Addiction to other emotions that were more acceptable growing up than the one that's really frozen within you.

Addiction to other emotions,

For example I had a client who was addicted to despair because in her family they were all depressed and despair was more accepted than for example anger.

So she had frozen her anger and she defaulted to despair but that despair was not an actual authentic feeling that was moving through her,

It was an addiction to a feeling.

And if by the way if this is like landing with you that you think you might be addicted to certain feelings,

We all are,

But if it's landing specifically for you I highly recommend my podcast episode it's on Insight Timer called The Inner Parent.

The Inner Parent,

It's on my teacher profile on Insight Timer.

So I'm also seeing some other really good ways people are coming up with that we that we clench against our feelings.

So people-pleasing,

Yes I'll add that to the list,

Thank you.

Feeling superior,

I've definitely done that.

Yeah,

Oh people-pleasing is a really good one.

Done that too,

Plenty,

Still do.

Petal says I've just ticked off every single thing on your list.

Well welcome,

Welcome to the club.

Oh and also I have an I have another one,

Over positivity,

Like staying positive,

That's another way that we clench against feeling.

All right and again like take a deep breath after hearing this list and know that this is not about judging you for participating in these behaviors any more than you would judge a soldier in the middle of battle for wearing armor.

Would you judge her?

So I'm not judging you and you should not judge yourself for any of these.

It's just self-defense,

It's self-protection.

All right so I want to move into practice with you all.

I see that there are some questions like V2 and some others and let's treat those questions at the hour.

So I'm going to be staying,

I want to practice with you all for about 15 to 20 minutes because we talked about this a lot but we need to practice it right this practice of unfreezing.

And so after the hour I always stay you know for about 10 or 15 minutes to answer all your questions or offer any more support that's needed.

So just hang tight,

Keep your questions close to your heart and we will talk about them.

So I'll I'll give you all an idea of what we're going to be doing now and you can assess whether it feels right for you to participate now or if you would like to participate with a recording later.

So I'm recording this and it will be on my teacher profile within the next week.

So we're going to be closing our eyes in a moment either seated or lying down and the invitation is to place hands on your body.

We're going to be starting with some humming to engage our calming branches of our nervous system,

Parasympathetic,

Vagus nerve and then we're going to be getting very intimate with ourselves and asking the question,

What am I trying not to feel right now?

You might imagine like you doing one of those behaviors I listed and we're going to just explore what's underneath that and then we're going to have a very loving encounter with the age you were when you froze that feeling within you as a way of bringing empathic witnessing to yourself at that age and that is how that's one way that we unfreeze.

It's a very powerful way that we can unfreeze.

So know that my work is trauma-informed and the goal here,

First of all there is no goal,

But the purpose is not to bring you back to a memory.

Most people don't have specific memories and I don't want you to go specifically to a like a really painful memory or certainly not a traumatic memory.

We only do that with support and if at all.

It's not actually trauma-informed to go to regress to traumatic memories.

It's not how our nervous system works.

It's not how we heal.

We know that now.

We didn't used to know that.

So anyway that is the that's the trajectory for today is inquiring in our bodies,

What am I trying not to feel?

We're going to allow our psyches to show us the age we were just very intuitively when we stopped feeling that when we froze against it and then we're going to be doing some deep validation and loving witnessing of that part of ourselves.

Okay that's where we're going.

So hopefully you have already found a comfortable spot to do this either seated or lying down.

If you haven't then do that now and go ahead and place your hands if it's comfortable for you on like I really like one on my heart one on my belly.

Anywhere that feels deeply present like you're present to yourself and deeply nourishing and we're going to begin here with a practice of humming which is an ancient way that humans have been using for many thousands of years to engage the parasympathetic nervous system.

In other words to calm down and to get into the body to get present with exactly what's here.

So I'll do it once to demonstrate and then I'll guide you through it.

We're going to do we're going to keep our mouth closed.

I'm going to inhale for approximately five counts but whatever is comfortable and then so I'll demonstrate.

And I want to hum as low as I can you could hear me adjusting it so I'm gonna hum as low as I can without straining my voice and just let the hum continue for as long as it naturally does and we're not doing this we can't hear each other so I'm just going to start guiding the humming now and then you just continue after you've exhaled the hum just pause for a moment or two and then take another deep breath for five counts and then let out another low hum and really focus on the the vibrations in your body as you hold your hands on the body just notice that those vibrations and allow the vibrations to bring you into the body to bring you right here and feel your awareness dropping down from the head into the gut area.

Alright so we'll begin now again I won't be guiding every single hum so when you exhale to completion just start again and then I'll let you all know when we're done with the humming.

Ready okay inhale for about five hmm hmm and do one more cycle now hmm pause and notice notice what that action of humming has done to how you feel in your body and now with your eyes closed imagine yourself doing one of the behaviors that I mentioned from that list for example if it's perfectionism imagine yourself behaving in that way and as you imagine yourself doing the thing or doing the habit the addiction notice what's happening in your body when you do that thing perhaps there is an anxiety that's rising or a fears without any judgment without trying to change it just notice what the sensations are in your body when you do that behavior I'm noticing for example that it's more difficult for me to breathe deeply simply make note without changing it and imagine now imagining yourself still in this place of doing this behavior and having these body sensations can you sense already what's underneath can you sense the feeling that you're clenching against now name it in your mind or if it's hard to feel viscerally in your body think to yourself if there was a feeling I was trying not to feel by doing this behavior what might it be and now knowing that you're holding yourself knowing that you don't have to feel it all at once see if you can bring an attitude of spaciousness and unclenching to that feeling what might it be like to open to it just a little bit not all the way and now can you name in your mind what you're experiencing the body sensations the emotions that are here you might not have a specific name for it maybe it's just a feeling in the body like tension clenching constriction keep staying close to yourself keep breathing here and now very very gently ask your psyche to show you to just reveal to you the age that you were when you first clenched against this feeling and just allow your first impression to be truth how old were you when you started to clench against this feeling deep breath taking a moment now to feel inside the body of that young version of you now now are they with another person specifically can you sense the location they were maybe not that's okay breathing into what they're feeling in their body here breathing into perhaps the emotion that was too much without any pressure to feel it all the way just noticing and now we're going to be shifting perspectives now you are no longer in the body of your younger self but rather you're inhabiting the body of the strongest most deeply loving version of your adult self and you're looking at them from a respectful distance we don't want to run to them or hug them or say anything to them simply witness them from perhaps across the room or just a little bit away from them so that you can really see their body language now feel in your heart this deeply loving open curiosity to the experience of this little one here and feel this energy as you communicate to them perhaps telepathically the following sentence i'm here for you i'm here for you i see you and now mirror back to them what you see them feeling for example i see that you are all alone i see that you are so scared right now let's take a few sentences to validate them now continuing to breathe just say one more validation to them now and then we're going to ask them the following question and just see what they say and if they don't have an answer just continue to validate in a deeply loving way whatever they're feeling so the question is what do you really need and whatever you hear see sense and feel yourself now meeting that need for them with a heart of open compassion and commitment to them see sense and feel yourself meeting that need breathing into your own adult body noticing how it feels for you to be meeting this need for them it's okay if it's a complex set of feelings breathing loving acceptance into yourself and we'll ask them one last time what else do you really need and see sense and feel yourself meeting this for them wrapping up your visualization now of meeting this need for them knowing that in a moment we're going to be transitioning back to the reality that your body is living in in the room that you're in just very casually inquire to them telepathically if they would rather stay where they are or come with you knowing that the healing has already taken place it is neither better nor worse for them to come with you or not so with total openness asking them would you like to come with me or are you comfortable right where you are knowing that they're here with you regardless of what of what they've said truly but with such love and openness and gratitude for them regardless of what they've chosen really feel your hands on your heart or your body now again and feel that they inhabit you that they are part of you and that in this warmth that you've shown them with your empathic witnessing you have thawed the ice of feeling and you're returning a stream of your life force to yourself to the riverbed you don't need to understand how with your mind just know that it is happening it has happened already so starting to lengthen your inhales now as you begin to imagine the room that surrounds you as you begin to notice the weight of your body and as you come back and open your eyes if they were closed take some looks around your space to orient yourself to here and now and take any stretching or shaking movement that feels like it's bringing you back to right here right now coming back all the way and noticing how your body feels now noticing how your state has shifted even if just a tiny little bit you notice some softness that perhaps wasn't there before and yes I am recording this whole thing and it will be on my teacher profile on insight timer within the next week so if you came in late then you'll be able to do the whole thing again so I would love to address your questions I know that there were a couple that I couldn't respond to during the guided practice so Michelle says my body is having a hard time doing the supportive step like the empathic witnessing step I'm imagining why is this it's because you had to freeze your worthiness in order to survive your childhood you could not believe that you deserved support and so part of you hesitates resists supporting yourself because you have an entrenched belief that I don't get that I don't deserve support and I can't ask for it it's part of your vulnerability yeah I hope that helps Michelle so actually the belief that you're not someone who gets supported that belief is part of your frozen vulnerability it's something that is also asking for your attention yeah and if anyone else has a need for any support or other questions let me know now now's the time and if you asked a question further up like earlier in the live that I couldn't respond to if you wouldn't mind reposting it I'd greatly appreciate that and in the meantime just know that I have a ton of guided shadow work and recorded lives on insight timer on my teacher profile so there's a lot more where this came from and I go live pretty frequently this one is recorded yeah and it will be on my teacher profile so thank you Andrew and everyone for your donations so if you got something out of today if you learn something if you feel like you retrieve part of yourself donating is a great way to communicate that and I truly truly appreciate it okay so v2 says looking for support on your process but guided is there a resource for persons who work this method yeah yeah so my method is called empathic witnessing so I am a shadow work teacher shadow work practitioner but my own personal version of shadow work a version of which you practice today is called empathic witnessing and I train folks in that method and I have a lot of beautifully talented skilled practitioners who have gone through that program so please email me if you would like referrals some of them are licensed counselors as well I train a lot of psychotherapists so if you need that too then let me know but I do my best to match someone's need with a particular practitioner who I feel like would be a good fit for them and Liz I don't offer one-on-one mentoring anymore as a mom of a two-year-old I have an online program but if you want to learn about what I do beyond insight timer you just need to go to my website which is going to my teaser profile and then about and my website is right there or it's just katherinelega.

Com and there you'll see what else I do so Belinda says how does the shadow work for inner child healing in March of 2020 differ are you talking about my guided practice shadow work for inner child healing here on insight timer that one is it's similar but it's a little bit it's just a little bit different I practice in a more embodied way now than I used to then I have a few early recordings on insight timer which are still really helpful for many many many people I just practice like we went in through the body in just a different way this time and I stay a little bit closer to the body but it's it's pretty similar so I do recommend it still anyone else have any questions or any okay so Laura says that's very important why can't why we can't let support in or why we can't support ourselves I'm dealing with this okay Laura um and thank you all for your continued donations by the way yay so why can't we support ourselves um well the thing about humans is that we have to first in our infancy we have to receive support we have to receive loving support in order to as grown-ups support ourselves we first have to have it mirrored to us this is what it looks like to be supported in order for that to be an imprint in us for us to then retrieve and support ourselves later in life now we can learn this if you didn't have that experience growing up and many of us didn't um you can absolutely learn that and the process of empathic witnessing is what I've developed to learn that to start to unfreeze learn to support yourself and start to unfreeze and remember what I said the process was for unfreezing is simply in your everyday life notice when you're feeling something and unclench against it notice when you're feeling something notice if you're clenching and then just practice what might it feel like for me to unclench at this time and place and if you're doing one of those behaviors so maybe maybe you're so estranged from your feeling that you don't know when you're feeling a feeling so you'll know when you're doing one of those behaviors the the trying not to feel behaviors that I listed off earlier in the live you'll notice when you're for example feeling superior or being a perfectionist or intellectualizing or doing that habit or taking that substance right or having that nervous tick you'll notice when you're doing that and here's what you do you don't stop the behavior but you slow it down and pay exquisite attention to the body sensations that are arising when you slow it down so for example if I'm like I do this thing where I pick at my nails when I notice I'm picking at my nails I'm like oh I'm trying not to feel something so let me just take some deep breaths and slow that movement down and inevitably when I do that and I really tune in I notice this huge anxiety start to arise in me and then what do I do I just breathe into that and I practice unclenching unclenching unclenching not all the way perhaps if it's too much but even 10% can I unclench 10% does that make sense Laura that's how you offer support to yourself that's how you support yourself and unfreeze and unclench so that you can then receive the support of others or receive you know professional support or whatever you need to I hope that that makes sense Tracy you said this was almost too much to bear but uncovered some really important aspects oh thank you Tracy feel free to reach out to me on email info at katherinelega.

Com if you need some additional support at any time or if you need other resources too.

Karg says what if I don't know how to offer what the inner child is asking for I might be able to not beat myself up for this but wouldn't this still mean to let the envisioned inner child down again how could it feel better when the answer is I don't know how to make this to give you this well you ask them so if they if they request something and you don't know how to do that you ask them sweetheart can you please tell me how to meet that need for you tell me specifically show me in an image you know and you let your imagination create that for you I hope that that helps and at the same time like if like some people say like my inner child was just angry at me and didn't want to engage with me that happens a lot that means you're just in the initial phases of creating this relationship and what's needed is deep unconditional validation of that anger or of that violence toward you they're feeling and I know this is a hard pill to swallow but that's what's needed is unconditional acceptance and validation of whatever they're feeling and that's what builds trust between you and this energy you and this inner child so deep support and then Kaya said can you spend too much time doing shadow work absolutely guilty as charged in the past yeah we can do too much we can absolutely do too much shadow work so what's really important we know now from trauma healing is pendulation and what that means is after feeling something after we allow the wave of feeling something uncomfortable to move through us all the way then slowly make your way to noticing what feels good can you feel something in your body maybe it's a warmth in your hands can you feel something that feels good can you go outside and enjoy the outdoors for a little while can you look at some beautiful flowers right that that kind of balance that pendulation is really essential to nervous system retuning which is one way to put what we're doing here okay there's been a lot of questions let me scroll up carol says i keep wanting to tell my inner child don't be afraid i need to give myself the space to unfreeze the fear and anxiety while reassuring myself yeah so carol um don't be afraid is a gaslight because she is afraid don't be afraid is gaslighting your inner child say instead i see that you're afraid and it's okay and that is what builds trust that is what builds trust so a lot of this work that i've developed is actually influenced by parenting so by conscious emotionally intelligent mindful parenting i actually i apply that to inner child work so we learn in conscious parenting that you never say that you never say don't be afraid or you never say oh it's not too bad or oh don't be sad don't be blah because they are feeling that way so what they need to build trust with you and to feel safe this goes for outer children and inner children is for you to say i see that you're afraid it's okay to feel afraid or if they're crying i see that you're crying and just let it all out i'm here for you i can hold your big feelings just let it all out i'm here for you no matter what you feel liz said is being a mom helping you get through recover your own childhood yeah in a really really challenging way yeah yeah absolutely um i'm glad um t you say that this is helping you parent even your adult children i love it yeah like it's the same our the way we heal our inner child energy is the same as the way we parent in a healing supportive way it's the same yeah i'm looking uh so karg says so you know what your inner child needs but you don't know how to do it even if you ask them what i would say is ask them how how can i show you the love how can i show you protection show me an image and if if you're still coming up with nothing and this is hard to hear but your job is to fully sink into that unknown like and there's grief there's going to be grief that comes up i don't know how to do that i don't know how to be there for you grief will arise and that is what needs to be felt if that's the case um amy says how do we find your podcast well it's on apple and spotify but my podcast is also there are some episodes here on insight timer too so the inner parent episode is what i recommended for those who feel that you might be addicted to a certain feeling um that it might not be like a product i don't like this word but like a productive expression of feeling that keeps moving through you and contributes to your growth but rather an addiction to a feeling that's actually a cover for another feeling um that episode of my podcast is called the inner parent my podcast is called tender revolution by the way so all the episodes are on you know apple and spotify or some of the episodes are here on insight timer too including the um including the inner parent episode again tender revolution is my podcast yeah and um i should mention too uh that if this work has resonated with you know that we have a wonderful group on insight timer called shadow work that's my group i'm the admin for it um and it's a place where you can continue to discuss things that come up for you in these lives or when you listen to my recorded stuff on insight timer um it's a way to connect with others who are on similar paths of making the unknown known within them um and with all of this work with all this shadow work it's so essential to have support whether that's a trusted friend with whom you can share your heart or professional support um just know that it's important because shadow work is not to be taken lightly like some people say you shouldn't do shadow work if you aren't ready to really change your life because it tends to show us things that we can't unsee or unfeel right um and it makes it hard for us to be in coping patterns right because we we become aware that there are things under the surface that want our attention yeah i don't i don't recommend doing it alone but reach out to me on email or or in the circle or sorry it's called a group now or in the group shadow work if you want some referrals for how to have professional support in my methods um robert you say you've been doing reparenting for a year but my inner child still doesn't trust me how can i find out what he needs so there's a lot of different reparenting techniques um one of the things that makes my techniques unique is that it's all about well it's it takes like actual parenting and applies that within ourselves so it sounds to me robert like what your inner child needs is um total validation of where he already is it feels to me uh it feels to me like you're still wanting him to change and that's what keeps us in a stalemate with our inner child or with any shadow that we're integrating any frozenness that we want to melt anytime we're trying to change it it stays stuck and i know that's not the way that we're used to thinking about things in this culture that we live in right but that is the way that's the only way that you build trust with your inner child is complete then you need to give him permission not to trust you so you're saying you accept his feelings and what you need to do is say it's okay not to trust me that can be the game changer for a lot of people is saying you don't have to trust me yeah so heidi says what's the best book on trauma-informed care um that would that would depend on what kind of care you're looking for um and what kind of trauma-informed stuff you're interested in so you could let me know if there's anything specific i mean there are a couple of classic books there's um the body keeps the score by bessel van der kolk is like kind of like the bible of of contemporary trauma healing the body keeps the score um so amy says books on shadow work on carl jung so there's a good introductory book on shadow work called owning your shadow by robert johnson it's a pretty thin book it's easy to read and it will that will give you like the the conceptual basis to it um my own methods are not traditionally youngian like i call carl jung like the the great the great grandfather of my work um my methods are more informed by somatic trauma healing by nervous system repair um and by like tara brock's compassion like self-compassion self-acceptance among others yeah um i don't know that book amanda i don't know parenting from the inside out by dan siegel um right now i'm reading simplicity parenting by someone i can't remember anyway i have to get going but i highly recommend joining our group shadow work on insight timer if you haven't already and thank you so much for all your donations today and remember to visit my website if you're curious about other things i do beyond insight timer it's catherineligget.

Com or just go to insight timer in my about page and it's the link that's right there you'll see other stuff i do so don't hesitate to reach out for support in the group or an email for me and i thank so i thank you all so much for being here for bringing your hearts this work is not for the faint of heart but in my experience it's the most deeply loving and healing thing we can do for ourselves so thank you for your courage in feeling your feelings thank you all so much bye bye have a beautiful day

Reviews

I really appreciate this informative & helpful approach. Thank you so much!

Thank you, Catherine! I have listened to all of your tracks at least once, and they all have gotten five stars from me ! Now I’m listening again so I can learn and grow even more. The way you deliver the talks and the information is so understandable, and the way you guide us in the shadow work feels so safe and soothing. Thank you, thank you! ❤️

It resonate so much with me. The eye-opener this time was that you cannot force healing 🙏
Thank you su much Catherine! 💙💙💙

A validating source of clear cool water to a thirst to be seen and acknowledged. 🙏

It is really helpful. I have a little more distance from my mean judgments, self analysis, the stress of “should”, … I feel movement inside my body.

Tremendous insight. This gentle approach enables one to connect with those parts of ourselves that we have abandoned or at least pushed aside. Rather than force a change we lovingly accept and include these shadow parts.