Tender Revolution Ep. 9: The Inner Parent

Sometimes we hit a wall when "feel it to heal it" is our go-to approach for personal growth. When we encounter the same cycles of emotional intensity again and again, it's likely that these emotions themselves are the patterns from our childhood that keep us stuck.

This episode describes how to identify when this has happened, and how we can awaken the energy of a kind yet firm parent within who takes our hand and leads us away from the harmful emotional cycle towards our expansion.

Transcript

Welcome to the Tender Revolution.

I'm Katherine Liggett.

Let's talk today about re-parenting.

I use this term generally to mean the turn that we make as adults in our lives when we realize that our lives are our responsibility.

Everything that we wish to experience in our lives is really up to us to create and nourish in ourselves.

Nobody is going to be there for us to take care of us the whole time.

It's really up to us and typically the marker of an adult who's reached emotional maturity,

Which by the way very few have at least in older generations,

But that marker is someone who's really accepted this responsibility for themselves.

Someone who while enjoying interdependent beautiful and supportive relationships doesn't expect that those people will meet their needs without prompting.

Now I have to say that after becoming an actual parent,

My view and feel for what re-parenting means has changed quite a bit.

And here's how.

Before becoming a parent and taking the parenting courses and reading the books that you know I did,

Knowing what I do about early childhood trauma,

You know I did.

But before I did all that and most importantly became a mother to an actual daughter,

I thought about re-parenting as mostly really holding nourishing beautiful space within so that we're holding ourselves through the most difficult emotions.

Basically being an inner mother in the sense of holding nourishing,

Helping us to feel safe with ourselves from the inside out so that we can feel all of what's needed to be felt.

So here's how it's changed.

I now know that being a parent means,

In addition to curating,

Maintaining,

Protecting that sense of safety and holding for the child to feel what's needed,

We need to set boundaries and we need to rise to the occasion even when,

And sometimes especially when,

We really really really don't feel like it.

Really standing up for what's good for our child even though we don't feel like it at all.

Maybe we got two hours of sleep the previous night.

Maybe my daughter hasn't had her diaper changed for three hours and I know she's going to scream like crazy but I really need to do it anyway because I know that that's for her good.

She needs her diaper changed.

Here's how this applies to the inner parent and what we develop when we reach or are reaching emotional maturity.

Sometimes feel it to heal it isn't enough and we get stuck in our emotions.

Sometimes,

And I speak from very personal and frequent experience by the way,

Sometimes the patterns of feeling intense emotions all the way can actually be an addiction instead of an effective release that actually contributes to your growth.

Sometimes,

Really feeling emotions all the way can be a family pattern that we observe.

For example,

If we had very depressed parents or very emotional parents that we get into and it's not actually an authentic expression of energy of our own energy moving through our bodies.

And so in these moments this is when the inner parent is really needed because actually in these moments feel it to heal it which is pretty much the basis of the majority of my work.

Sometimes that isn't enough and we need to step up and make an executive decision to change what's happening even when our emotional body wants to do exactly the opposite and just keep feeling in the cycle that it's been in.

And I'm honored today to be able to share a really beautiful example of this dynamic from a session that I had just the other day with a really amazing client and I share this with her permission today.

Her name has of course been changed.

So let's call her Kate and Kate is an accomplished therapist.

She's gone through many different advanced trauma repair programs.

So she's a trauma specialist and a therapist.

She comes from a very difficult childhood and her intention for having a shadow work session with me was to really get to the bottom of the debilitating shame that was in her psyche.

And no matter what she did,

How many modalities she used with it,

It just didn't seem to budge.

So she was stuck.

As we started to talk about her childhood and her inner child,

A very clear and disturbing image came up for me intuitively which was the image of her as a child gray,

Completely emaciated,

Starving.

And as we began to journey inward into an encounter with this inner child and how she was showing up,

Kate experienced a wave of shock and despair at how this part of her child self was showing up.

She told me that the way that I'd intuitively seen this part of her was always the way that it showed up to her as well.

So here she was deep in this inward journey in total despair and the emotions kept coming up for her very,

Very strongly like a tsunami.

And we breathed into it and I invited her to place her hands on her heart and really feel into what was needed here for this little girl.

And after a little while,

It became clear to me that there was a kind of veil or a wall between Kate and her child self.

There was a way that she was stuck and that the feelings of despair she was experiencing weren't actually authentic to what that child truly needed and wanted to express in that moment.

I had this intuitive sense that her child self was actually much more resilient and vibrant than how she was imagining her to be or that I was imagining.

And I suggested that we imagine that this child part of her have all the support that she needs right now and that we are able now to step beyond this veil,

This wall that was separating them.

We made that executive decision to bring Kate out of the cycles of despair and shock onto the other side of the veil.

We made that decision to bring Kate out of the cycles of despair and shock onto the other side,

Just as an experiment,

Just to see what would happen.

And then the miraculous happened.

The little girl part of her was revealed in her true form,

Which was so fiery and vibrant,

And Kate said,

Actually,

That is how she was as a child.

And we inquired with this version of her child self what was needed.

And the child part of her was so excited and intent on showing Kate that she was,

In fact,

An eagle.

She had wings that she could both spread out and fly with and also hold herself and fold herself in these wings so that she could both soar and feel her own protective embrace.

This was a very deeply moving encounter and it really affected Kate and honestly,

Me too.

But if I would have stuck with the typical direction that my sessions take with most people,

Which is to explore and expand an emotion and work on releasing resistance in,

Of course,

A very gentle way,

But then just keep feeling what arises,

That wouldn't have worked for Kate.

That wouldn't have been helpful for her.

And I think this is such a beautiful example of when we need to take executive action and just make a decision,

Take a step in another direction that seems to be counterintuitive to the typical flow of emotional work.

For Kate,

She did grow up in a home with much depression.

And so the feeling cycle of this despair,

Shock,

Depression was actually her family conditioning.

That actually,

Believe it or not,

Was the safe way to feel.

And that's what I mean when I said before that these feeling cycles can be addictive and not authentic releases that contribute to your growth.

The tricky thing when we're doing work just with ourselves is to make that call,

Right?

Is really to feel into is this emotion right now an authentic release?

Does it feel productive,

So to speak,

To keep feeling this?

Or does it feel like I'm stuck here?

And then when we choose to make that decision and act in our highest good and pivot just like Kate did,

Does that feel like a bypass?

Or does that feel like a wonderful strong parent who's acting in your highest interest?

This is up to you to decide in your own body and mind at that moment.

And I think you'll be able to.

I have a second example for you today,

And that is from my own life.

When I was in the pits of my postpartum experience,

And night after sleepless night,

I would go into our room that we call the ballroom,

Which is where I do yoga and spiritual work.

And I would just be prostrate begging for relief from the insomnia.

And I would just dive into myself and do hour after hour of shadow work,

Hour after hour of somatic trauma release,

Somatic trauma release,

Trying desperately to get to the bottom of whatever I needed to heal,

To get rid of this sleeplessness.

And you want to know the truth was that I realized that this emotional intensity,

This drivenness to get to the bottom of things,

That was my own addictive cycle.

And what actually healed the insomnia for me was completely surrendering to the fact that it was a PTSD response that had to do with birth trauma and newborn experience trauma with my baby.

And it was physiological and chemical.

And I did a very traditional kind of therapy called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia,

Which is absolutely not woo woo,

Or particularly deep in any way.

And that's what ended up healing me was this very practical,

Straightforward approach that took me giving up my own strength,

My own sense of control.

And that was the pivot that I made in myself.

I reparented myself by taking my own hand and gently leading me away from the intensity of my emotions toward a lighter,

Far more straightforward approach that ended up being what changed it.

So I'd like you today to check in with yourself and just this brief meditation for now.

It might be okay to do this while doing something else even.

Just inquire within,

Do I have a pattern of emotional intensity that feels more stuck than productive?

Do I tend to get into the same cycles of feeling over and over again?

Do I tend to get into similar patterns of feeling more than I'd like to?

And in a way that might feel more like a reenactment or compensation than actual productive emotional release and growth.

If we tend to get stuck in the same feelings and they don't really feel like they're changing,

If they feel more like they're stuck in the same place,

If they feel like they're changing,

If they feel more like they're cycling,

Then it's likely that that might be one of these patterns for you that will require your own inner loving parent to take your hand and lead you gently away from that swirl of intensity within yourself.

In my session with Kate,

One way that we describe this inner parent for her was actually her inner masculine energy.

It's the aspect of our energy that's capable of drawing us out of cycles within us,

Of taking care of us and protecting us when one aspect of us is really stuck somewhere.

It's that part of us that can take fierce executive action in the moment and not get drawn in by the intensity.

So I thank you all so much for considering this re-parenting with me today.

And I wish you a beautiful developing,

Perhaps budding relationship with your own emotional maturity and inner parent who can really stay in this space and be with you and protect you when needed.

Thank you all so much.

Reviews

Surprised that my inner child laughed and felt joy.. that was a first for me, something I have little recollection of so, from my heart -thank you

Such a powerful reframe for me. Especially curious about masculine energy directing a loving course correction. It feels like this is what discipline was actually meant to be. An attuned adult making decisions and taking action in MY best interest... Wow

Incredible – I had never considered this before, but realized for me that it is also true. Thank you so much for the amazing content that you are putting out into the world. It is helping me so much.

Brilliant, and with excellent illustrative examples. Thank you so much Catherine🙏💜🌿

Such an eye-opener! This helps a lot. Thank you Catherine 💙

Hi Catherine, I listened to this after your live session. I would very much appreciate a guided meditation for when stuck in emotions. Because yes I do tend to myself in the feeling
but sometimes something else is needed. Really eye-opening, thank you!

💖omgosh yes a glimmer, and to take her little hand in mine and re-parent out of that family cycle, words to what I truly know, profoundly grateful💖

I accept your lesson as a gift, thank you. Since we can’t really dialogue here, I’ll note that both you and Kate have therapy training and presumably significant experience “delving the depths.” For those of us much less practiced what we really need is ready access to wise counsel to learn our way forward. Yes we may be able to hire that counsel but I pray for friendships that feature that level of deep connection and trust.

I'm honestly speechless-- this is exactly the experiences I've been trying to put words to for months now. Thank you so much for this beautiful, eye-opening session. I plan on bringing this up with my own therapist to take a new spin on my healing path. Lots of love. ❤️