Inner Child Work That Will Change Your Relationships

You bring some insights and some new concepts into your relationship,

Into the conversations that make a difference inside of your home.

I think it can be so beneficial when we start feeling lighter inside of our relationships and then it turns out that our conversations feel clearer and then our relationships can offer us more and we feel aligned and so much more like ourselves again.

And so if we begin to look at tonight's topic,

The inner child,

The inner child isn't just a metaphor or some sort of concept.

The truth is the inner child lives within us and she ends up really informing us.

You could think about it like she gets activated when a situation feels familiar.

So many of the experiences that happened in our childhood,

They're still alive in the body.

And so begin to think about your experience,

About what happens for you.

Let's say in the moment if you disagree.

You disagree with a sibling or your spouse or a dear friend,

Somebody that's really important to you.

Are you getting sort of signals from the body,

It's better not to rock the boat?

Are you questioning somewhere inside of yourself,

Do I dare speak up?

Do I risk expressing myself honestly?

A lot of the times these kind of messages,

And those are just a few examples of course,

But that's the inner child.

And she's informing us how to be on guard,

How we might stay protected,

How we might be walking on eggshells inside of a situation.

You know some part of you inside is saying some version of,

You know,

Just smile and play nice in order to keep everything okay.

And now in a little bit we're going to explore an exercise together.

Because I always like to make sure we're taking these concepts and these larger ideas from out here and bringing them into our body.

An exercise that you can connect with that little one inside of you.

We want to be able to have a practice where we can locate the child part of us.

The one that's reminding us,

You know,

Not to make waves.

The one that ends up holding many of these painful patterns stuck.

The one who might keep the same argument alive inside of your relationship.

The one that you don't consciously want to keep happening,

But somehow it still does.

Now this goes all the way back to when we were young and our own parent wasn't able to stay present with themselves.

Maybe they needed us to be a certain way,

Or they came in really close,

Wanted to be really close with us,

And we had a hard time getting to know what we felt inside of our own bodies.

What we felt when we were trying to make our own choice.

And so we are better at noticing what maybe that parent needed from us,

And now it becomes what our spouse,

What our co-workers,

What our friends might expect or need from us.

And so what we want to explore here together is just how do you access a bit more of that breathing space to find out what you need,

To find out what's true for you,

So that you can step out into the world led by your own inner knowing.

Because so many of us didn't get this chance.

We didn't get a place to practice this when we were younger.

So what started to happen is we formed a sense of ourself from the outside.

So if dad is proud of me,

If mom is happy with me,

Everything must be good.

And now we end up in our adult lives with some version of if our friend thinks we should do this,

We agree.

But if someone disagrees with something that we've decided,

Maybe we start to feel a bit unsure and we question ourselves.

And we're getting further and further away from doing what's right for us.

Another part that we want to look at here is maybe you grew up with parents that were really anxious and fearful or really controlling and a lot was focused on your safety and the fear that something could go wrong.

Maybe you grew up with parents who were emotionally immature or had this inability to tolerate you,

Their child,

Being different from what they thought or what they believed.

So all of those examples,

I know they sound really really different,

But they end up causing a really significant change inside of you,

The one who's growing up inside of that environment.

So instead of checking in with you,

Your own body,

Hey,

Do I want this?

Does this feel good to me?

Is this the right choice for what I've decided is important in my own life?

And you're starting to ask yourself,

Hmm,

What is it that they want from me?

What's gonna end up keeping me safe inside of this relationship so that dad's not disappointed and mom's not angry?

Or now today my colleagues,

My spouse,

My friends aren't upset with the decision that I've made.

So essentially it all really kind of boils down to how do I make sure I secure my belonging?

And so we end up little by little,

Sometimes it's just these tiny little incremental steps,

Losing touch with what we want,

With what feels right in our own body,

With our own natural yes or hmm,

No,

That's not quite right.

So if you can identify with what I'm sharing,

I'd love to see a heart in the comments or just,

Yeah,

It's been really hard for me to ask myself and know what I want because I've been tuned in out here.

What my spouse needs,

What my family expects,

How I've grown up looking at that,

It's called the outside barometer.

And so this creates a lifetime of saying yes,

Okay,

What do you need?

We're scanning out there instead of noticing when the body says,

You know,

I need some rest,

I need some quiet time,

I need to do the things that light me up.

And so all of a sudden what kind of gets wrapped into that is we start feeling responsible for other people's moods,

For other people's struggles,

And it's harder and harder to occupy space inside of our own lives.

And so now if we built ourselves from the outside in,

Adulthood kind of carries echoes.

And I just am going to give you a few examples to see if you're like,

Oh yeah,

I've got that one going on,

Or I've got a couple of those.

And so just see where you find yourself in this spectrum.

You notice you go into people-pleasing or over-accommodating in your relationships.

You notice it's really difficult making decisions without checking in what others think first.

So you're looking outside for cues before making a decision.

You know,

I'll never forget a client,

And I think she said she had about 18 phone calls out here before even deciding in herself,

What's right for me.

And so we want to be sure before we ask a friend's opinion,

There's nothing really wrong with that,

But make sure you know what you decide first.

Because sometimes when we put it out there for the poll of our friends and our loved ones,

That can really shift what we know to be true and right for ourselves.

Maybe you feel like you're always on somehow,

And you're really in a mode of doing what others expect of you,

Instead of just being you,

Instead of just noticing what you need.

Guilt comes up if you want to really set a boundary or set a limit,

And maybe even a sense of struggling to trust your own instincts.

And if you notice something else that you struggle with in relation to these early life experiences coming,

Shaping us from the outside,

Instead of really coming from the inside.

And so I want to make it really clear how common this is.

And it's not that anything is wrong with you,

Not at all.

It's more that our earliest experiences trained us,

You know,

Often before we're even five years of age,

That we're looking outside in the environment,

What is needed,

Instead of understanding what we need from the inside,

From the signals of our body,

Like sensations,

Choices,

Noticing what we need,

Noticing the difference between what does yes feel like,

How does yes feel in my body,

And how is it different from no.

And so the next thing I want to share with you is why this matters in our relationships.

And so if we don't have a way of reclaiming what I kind of like to call some breathing space inside of our adult experience,

We lose an essential connection within to understand what we need in any given moment.

I mean,

My gosh,

We probably have,

You know,

78 choices in a day.

And it's all just coming at us.

And we're in if we're in the default of doing what everyone else expects of us,

We're going to be the very last on our own list,

Day after day after day.

You know,

I had a client this morning who said something like,

My mom's anger and rage just became mine.

When I was so young,

I tried to make things better,

Lighter,

I didn't ask for anything,

Because I just wanted mom to be okay.

And it wasn't until I started to understand my own emotions,

That I could even understand the difference between mom's rage and anger,

And my own.

And she's now lived,

I think she's in her 70s,

Carrying this rage and anger,

In many of the ways that it's been so heavy and difficult inside of her relationships.

So this is where we end up mistaking someone else's expression,

Someone else's needs,

For something that we just take on without question.

And I just want to slow this down a little bit,

Because as you're listening to this,

I want to give you the chance to start to listen inward.

Just to pause,

To feel what's kind of cropping up,

Even as you're listening.

Because we want to start to make that shift,

To notice from the inside what you need,

Instead of responding from the outside.

And so maybe for the first time,

You're starting to recognize,

This is what's happening inside of me,

And it's going to change the way I interact with the relationships I have on the outside.

And so here's an example.

If you grew up with a sad mom,

And let's say a depressed or addicted dad,

Developmentally,

We go outside of ourselves to take care of them.

And our individuality,

Our sense of self,

Becomes blurred.

Others needs come before our own.

And the truth is,

We actually don't even get to know our own needs.

And this is where,

In this developing,

Growing part of ourselves,

We lose connection with what I feel is the most valuable resource there is.

And that's our gut instinct.

And that's our body voice.

And that is our inner child trying to speak to us.

And so a lot of the times,

I'll deal with clients,

You know,

50,

60,

70 years old,

And they're inundated by the responsibilities in their lives,

By the relationships in their lives.

They're so overwhelmed,

They don't know how to respond.

So they shut down,

They get defensive,

And then we're in this cycle of responding that's actually exhausting.

So let's imagine the difference of being in your core,

Being in your center,

Where you really feel grounded,

Where you're answering from the inside,

Where you're very aware of your needs.

And this can be the absolute opposite end of the spectrum.

If you've spent a lifetime living outside of yourself,

People pleasing,

We can just become exhausted.

And one of the greatest skills we can learn is how to navigate our lives from the inside out.

That's how we align with what's most meaningful to us.

Let's not make this just a theory out here,

But let's get some practice right now together.

So taking a moment,

As long as you're not driving,

To close your eyes and take a deep breath.

I want you to let go of everything that's come before this time and check in with yourself,

Turning all of your attention to the sensations within your body.

And let's just take a few deep cleansing breaths to deepen your connection inside.

Let's do this together with intention,

Imagining that every breath connects you a little deeper to your inner wisdom,

To your inner knowing,

To this new ground you'd like to stand on.

And releasing anything you feel might be getting in the way of accessing that new ground.

Finding a natural way,

Your own way,

To feel open and curious without the need to change anything.

We're not making anything wrong.

It's understandable why things have been running from the outside in up until now.

And as we bring our awareness,

These things can shift and change.

Back to your body awareness.

Let's tune in to any physical sensations you might be aware of in how your body feels in the here and now.

Noticing how the air raises across the tip of your nose and the space between your toes.

Notice how your body is supported where you're now laying down.

And noticing how breath is moving through your body naturally without any effort on your end.

I want you to tune in next to any of the emotions that might be moving through.

What are you aware of?

A full spectrum of emotions are welcome here.

If there's anger,

If there's restlessness,

If there's just a bit of impatience that you're kind of done responding from the outside and you just want things to be different.

Just giving yourself the gift of space to notice whatever emotions are here in your body so that they can be your guide.

And so that as you scan your body you're becoming more connected to your emotions.

You're much more aware and almost intentionally releasing the activity of your mind.

And as you do so maybe you notice your jaw is feeling tight.

I like to run my fingers down the sides of my face almost just encouraging the jaw.

Let go.

And to my surprise sometimes it's tighter than I realized.

See what you notice.

And perhaps by encouraging that relaxation,

That release,

That letting it loose,

Any tension that might be hiding out there.

Something else can open within.

If you notice that your breath feels shallow you might gently choose to lighten it.

You might decide to deepen your breath and just a little bit more of that deepening,

A little bit more connection with every breath that follows.

This is what it feels like to start to decide from the inside.

To live in connection with your body's needs and awareness.

To let the emotions,

To let the amount of energy you have in any given moment be what starts to direct the decisions you're making.

And I want you to turn towards this inner experience as a way of honoring yourself.

This pause in itself is an act of radical self-love.

It matters what's arising and it deserves your full attention.

And so you might notice inside of this inner awareness that you're feeling let's say sensations of relaxation.

But you're also noticing some uncomfortable emotions of maybe remembering when you said yes and your body clearly was feeling no.

Some regret you might have had.

Some hurt or upset about what the inner child had to hold and what's still repeating in your adult experiences.

So we're really in this practice now of holding both.

Holding what's comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time.

And this is a bit of an advanced somatic practice.

But let's step in together.

This concept body,

I'm here with what's comfortable and with what's uncomfortable.

And I'm gonna breathe with you until it's integrated.

So we start to be able to be with what's most difficult.

What's been held.

Sometimes like holding a beach ball under the water.

I'm getting that image that it's so difficult.

It takes so much effort to keep that beach ball underwater.

And there's just something that happens in life.

That beach ball of course submerges.

It's like all the triggers,

All the emotions.

And it starts to happen less.

We don't have to put so much effort in holding so many of these difficult emotions under the water because we're here and willing to integrate them.

And so just breathing in a way that allows yourself to come back into the here and now.

To bring your awareness back into the room as we move into the next exercise together.

I'd like you to bring to mind a reoccurring argument that you've had in a close friendship or in your current relationship.

Now you don't have to go digging for all the details and the content of it.

That's not all we're doing here.

Just the moment and paying attention to what's rising up in your body as this sort of situation escalates.

I want you to pinpoint where do you feel that in your body?

Does it go to the chest?

Is it tightening?

Is it in the throat?

Feeling like,

Oh,

I better not say that.

Does your stomach drop back to that jaw?

And where sometimes we hold,

Does it tighten?

Do your shoulders rise up?

I want you to tune into the physical sensations of your body.

Stay with your body,

Not the reaction or the trigger with your partner.

It's almost like we want to say to them,

Thank you for showing me where the gold is in my body.

We're going to utilize that trigger as a guide.

What's also so incredibly connected is the memory.

And I'm going to say nine times out of 10,

If not every time,

It goes all the way back to childhood.

And so we want to start to track,

Oh,

My body has been here before.

Long before this relationship began.

And I just want you to stay with that sensation.

What's familiar here?

And does this escalating feeling remind you of anything earlier in your life?

So I'm just going to give you a moment to sit with that.

Reflect on that.

I have one teacher,

She speaks like she's a poet.

And she said something when we were doing an exercise like this in the class.

Where am I in time with you?

So am I the angry teenager,

You know,

Digging in my heels?

Am I the child who's in a heap of sadness?

Because I'm not going to get my needs met.

My needs don't feel as important as the work as the bottle as the argument mom and dad are having out there.

And so I'm just in in sadness and collapse.

And so this is almost your key here.

This is your clue to why some of the elements,

Some of the hurts,

Some of the painful history parts of our childhood are running the show inside of our relationship.

And this can be one of the greatest challenges to overcome.

This can be the greatest keys towards our freedom.

So that we can feel that we understand what's going on,

To release it,

To not let that sink us.

Every time we want to go and be with our little one.

So let's just walk through that from the very beginning.

So let's say we have a recurring argument with our spouse,

Or our dear friend,

And we either feel misunderstood,

You know,

Disregarded,

Or that our needs don't matter.

Like those are sort of flavors of the same kind of pain.

And we notice I either get very inflamed and very angry and almost like my reaction is bigger than the moment.

Then there's this piece where I recognize I'm responding out of time.

If we go back to that quote,

I'm responding from the angry teenager,

I'm responding from the sad child that feels like I'm not going to get what I need inside of this interaction.

We want to go to that sensation,

Even the image of us when we were that age,

You know,

The angry 15 year old,

The hurt seven year old,

The scared four year old.

And as if to find where in my body am I noticing this?

Okay,

It's all up here in my upper chest.

I'm tight,

I'm angry,

I'm in defense.

And I start to breathe into that space.

And the language that I use with myself and my clients is,

I'm not going to leave you alone.

When you're feeling this way.

When you're feeling like you have to fight to be heard.

When you're in the pain of feeling misunderstood,

Or that your needs are somehow pushed aside and disregarded.

I'm here,

The wise Joanna,

Listening to the little Joanna.

And I'm going to breathe with you until you and I are integrated as one.

Because the deepest pain of that little one inside of us is that they were left alone,

Left alone with feeling disregarded,

Left alone with the fear,

Left alone with the sense of your needs don't matter.

And I think the big practice is kind of like where we hit gold is I'm going to give to you what I wished mom or dad could have given to me.

And so body,

Fear,

Anger,

Anxiety,

I'm going to listen to you.

I'm going to sit with you.

I'm going to breathe with you.

And we are no longer being led by those feelings,

Reacting in our relationship by those feelings,

Because we're meeting them.

I have challenges with fear of rejection that I know come from childhood.

Yes,

Fear of rejection will keep us,

You know,

Sometimes we're leaving a good relationship before it goes bad because we're preemptively avoiding the pain.

Sometimes we will misread even like feedback,

But we'll just use that neutral word as criticism and rejection.

And so we're very sensitive to it.

So if we have felt rejected by a parent,

Sad truth is we end up rejecting ourselves most of the time.

And we fear rejection from those that are close to us.

And so one of the most honest and vulnerable ways,

Let's say you're in a committed relationship and you feel really safe to expose,

I guess that's what we do in relationship,

Isn't it?

We expose the deepest parts of us to be able to say,

Every time you turn away,

Like even if you're exhausted from work or we're overwhelmed by the kid's behavior,

Or you're giving me feedback,

I hear it with such sensitivity.

And then give them the understanding,

It shuts me down,

It makes me feel terrible.

I need to be able to communicate that with you because I feel like the optimum element of our relationships is to heal these parts of ourselves.

And our partners cannot read what's going on inside of us.

And so those of us who are in the safety of a relationship where we trust our inner experiences would never be used against us,

That we can ultimately communicate that with our partner so that they can be more careful with those parts.

Now,

It's a little different if we're just dating,

Or if it's more of a friendship.

At that point,

We want to be able to take the outside information,

It's kind of like we take it home with us.

And we think to ourselves,

Okay,

Wow,

I got,

You know,

They were stressed after work,

And so they couldn't meet my needs,

Or they ended up canceling plans at the last minute.

And here's what I've made it mean.

And we start to meet that part of ourself that has felt so shut down,

So terrified,

So triggered by that last minute canceling of plans,

That's a pretty benign example.

And this is how we start to use the outside trigger to bring us home to ourselves,

To breathe into the parts of us that are so sensitive,

Of feeling rejected,

That we even have the fear that it will happen before it happens.

So that we take full responsibility for healing those parts of ourselves.

And we don't have some sort of fantasy or hope that our partner can heal it for us.

That we're doing exactly what I described earlier,

Which is,

We find where is it living in my body?

Where is this trigger?

Where's this reactivity?

I'm going to breathe into it,

So that I can start to feel a little bit more freedom around where it's holding me.

I'm going to begin to shine some light on the story that I'm making in my mind about,

Because they canceled last minute,

They're definitely rejecting me.

I thought this was going somewhere,

It obviously isn't.

You know,

And they call the next day,

And you're thinking,

Wow,

Like I really took that to the edge.

And so we're really being honest with ourselves.

We're really stopping the story making.

And we're connecting it to any little girl would feel like because they canceled plans,

The whole relationship is over.

Because I remember sitting on the school steps,

You know,

Waiting for dad to come and pick me up,

And he never came.

And this is what's happening.

This is what I'm reliving.

But it's okay,

Little one,

I've got you.

And I'm never going to leave you alone when you feel this way.

I'm just going to breathe with you.

And you let the tears come.

And you let your body process it.

And here's how we metabolize that stored pain that we keep going back to unconsciously.

So that's a great question.

Thank you,

Addy.

Maddie says,

I've been adulting since nine,

Lots of pressure growing up,

And had to move forward and just brush my feelings under the rug.

It's been a journey to allow myself to care about my needs and take care of my feelings too.

Thank you so much for sharing.

I can absolutely resonate with that.

I'm a therapist for a reason.

I really get it.

And growing up before we're developmentally ready,

It can be so painful.

And I don't know if this has been your experience,

Maddie,

But everything has a good and a bad.

So perhaps being an adult since I was nine,

Has given me resources and resilience.

And you know,

I think sometimes we think,

Okay,

Enough with the strength and the resources.

I just want somebody to have my back for a little while.

And to be honest,

The ability to allow yourself to be held is to trust that it's possible.

Some of us who've been adulting since the age of nine,

That there's this sense of nobody's going to be able to have it,

Hold me,

No,

And so I'll just do it.

And we create a bit of a barrier around ourselves in feeling that we've got to push,

You know,

That heavy thing uphill,

Meaning life and getting it to move in the way we need it to.

And we are not so sure about trusting somebody else to have our back or even walk along beside us.

And so part of healing that peace is beginning to heal the deeper wounds of what it meant to have to grow up before our time.

If the person of today is behaving just like the person in childhood from our past,

Even if not reacting from past feelings,

It evokes the same because the person of today is behaving as the same as the person in the past.

I'm here now for the inner child.

So now what?

Oh yeah,

Great question.

So here is the truth of relationships across the board.

What happens in the here and now often the painful parts of the here and now have their roots in the there and then.

And I've been in relationship work for 20 years and I am of the firm belief we have these relationships so that we can heal these deepest,

Deepest wounds.

It's like my beloved,

My partner,

That's the one that's going to pull it out in me.

And maybe that's the whole reason we partner with someone because we fall in love with the familiar.

We don't even fall in love with say like the list of attributes we might write out for our ideal partner or that we would say to our friend,

Oh,

This is what I'm looking for.

If we're in a room full of a hundred singles,

We fall in love with the familiar.

It's almost like at some unconscious level,

A part of us is saying,

You look ultra critical.

You're going to bring up the critical dad I grew up with once we get past the honeymoon phase.

And so what if there is some divine plan that that person pushes on those buttons to finally allow it to heal so that we are finally not reacting from that place.

And so we can start to look at our relationships from that sort of broader perspective,

All kinds of different solutions come forward.

What a great question.

And that is just so absolutely true.

And so our final exercise together is to write a short note to the wise one that is here taking time in this class to learn about these pieces to the little one.

So it can be short,

Like three to five sentences.

And if you'd like to carry this on a little further after our class today,

It's so beneficial.

But let's write from your adult self to the younger version of you who learned,

Let's call it a particular way of being in relationship.

Like,

I won't have that many needs.

I'll be the one that listens.

I'll be the one that gives.

It's okay,

I've got it.

Or if we grew up,

Maybe with a lot of illness as a child,

We lean in to be taken care of inside of our relationships.

Again,

These patterns are highly unconscious.

And so just begin to recognize what are some of the patterns for you.

And maybe you start writing this note by just letting them know you're seeing them now,

You're listening now,

That you can understand why they're doing what they're doing,

Why they're protecting in the way they're protecting.

I want you to think for a moment,

Just a memory of childhood.

Like certainly don't bring up the hardest memory.

Just something that feels a part of a pattern.

Something that's like,

Oh,

If I speak up,

I get yelled at.

Or maybe you had to wait for your parents to calm down before you could ever ask for what you needed.

Maybe so much of your childhood,

You were trying so hard to be good enough,

To be liked,

To be quiet enough so that they wouldn't yell.

And notice what that might be repeating in the here and now.

I'd like you to also notice where you might feel that memory in your body right now.

Are you aware of a heaviness or a tightening or a kind of holding,

Like your body is bracing for something?

And just placing a hand on that part of the body if that feels right,

Whether that's your heart or your chest or your throat,

Or maybe the head feels full,

Wherever you feel.

And I just want you to acknowledge to that little one,

You've been carrying so much.

And in this note,

Taking the time to add something meaningful.

I see you.

It's understandable that you learned this,

That this is where you've been responding from.

I get it.

And just taking another moment,

I'll be quiet so that you can write what might be rising up for you.

Taking a nice,

Deep breath.

And notice how your body feels.

Ah,

Yes,

What we're writing is a letter,

A note to our younger self.

Just three to five sentences to begin to explore what that little one felt she had to live by.

Because when we understand what her needs are,

When we understand what might have gone unresolved or what the unmet needs were,

We understand our relationship today from such a new lens.

That oftentimes,

Let's say we had a depressed or emotionally unavailable mom,

Well,

We end up married to a workaholic.

And we argue with them,

You don't prioritize me,

Your work is more important,

And da-da-da-da-da.

And while those things might be true,

You might need more time together.

The deepest work is what it brings up in you in the body memory of not feeling prioritized by mom,

Because her emotions,

Her trauma,

Her pain,

Had her offline with you.

So sometimes when we connect to that little one inside of us,

It really helps us to understand what's been in our blind spot,

Why we react so strongly to our partner who maybe is on his phone and not paying full attention.

Because we had a workaholic dad who would maybe come to the soccer game we're playing in,

But be talking to people in the stands or show up late.

And so that sense of,

Am I really important?

Oh no,

That's living out in my marriage today.

So sometimes this kind of writing and this kind of connecting to our little one,

It brings up all kinds of relief.

It connects all these dots.

It really,

You think,

Oh,

I get it.

And sometimes it also brings grief.

Sometimes it brings some surprising reflections.

And so whatever is here for you,

That's what's right in the moment.

And I just want you each to know,

Showing up for this class entitled,

The Inner Child Work That Has the Power to Transform Your Relationship,

That's quite the invitation that you stepped into.

The exercises we did tonight,

That's no small feat.

You are making contact with a part of yourself that's been running in the background in your most important relationships.

And from my experience,

If we're not able to look at it,

It has the power to wipe out those relationships.

Because we think it's only about the here and now,

But it's almost like that iceberg image.

We just see the tip of the iceberg,

That's the here and now,

And the there and then is what's the bulk of that iceberg.

And that's the work that you can do.

I'm sure it's nothing new to those of you on the call today,

Because you guys are the meditators,

You guys are the live events attenders,

You guys are the book readers,

That I'm sure you've heard a million times,

We can only change ourselves.

And our relationships are the best information to guide us back to ourselves.

So once we can name it and acknowledge it,

We start to open up that pattern,

And then it loosens its grip.

And so a class like tonight allows you to feel the loosening has already started.

So that the next time you feel that familiar tightening,

You know,

The argument starts,

We move into that moment of conflict.

Or you're just think,

Oh,

I'm so inundated.

And I just go quiet.

And I took away because I'm overwhelmed by my emotions.

And you end up kind of disappearing inside of yourself.

The challenge there is,

We build a story in our mind that they did this,

And we lose the track sometimes.

And we can't think our way out of it,

Because this is a body memory.

Because the triggers are a gift.

Let's think of the triggers in our life,

In our relationships,

Like a neon sign,

Or a neon arrow that's just pointing you,

Please look here.

That's how you can neutralize it.

Let's get in touch with that little one who felt like my needs don't matter,

Or who's overwhelmed by the grief that I'm not going to get what I need in my relationships.

And the only way that I've discovered in 20 years of working with couples in distress is to locate where in the body that alarm bell is going off.

That's the inner child saying to you,

This is where you have to protect.

Don't get your heart broken again.

Don't get disappointed again.

So that we want to be able to slow things down and say,

I hear you.

I'm listening.

I see you.

I can understand that this is what you learned,

And how painful that it's replaying.

And so we want to be able to catch and follow,

Where is this familiar?

And so we get very,

Very practiced at naming it,

Having the awareness to track it,

And to know what to do to take care of ourselves in the moment,

So that triggers don't take over our lives,

Don't take over our relationship.

And that you get to navigate them in a whole other way.

So it's so nice to know,

Seeing that there's 80 of us in the class,

That this is such an important topic.

It really encourages me to know that there are so many of us looking at understanding ourselves,

Coming into our most important relationships in an enhanced way,

Not letting the pain lead.

You know,

Sometimes I think,

Or I can look out at the world and feel a bit like,

Oh,

What's happening out there.

And dropping into the Insight Timer community fills me with hope,

To know that there's so many of us looking to improve the way we communicate,

Improve the way we connect,

Come together in the strength of community.

And it just lifts my heart.

And I'm so glad to share this time with you all.