The Adult Chair Podcast 2: The Child Chair

As humans, we’ve worked for years to understand our inner child and the role the child plays in our adult psyche. It can be an enormous and elusive challenge, facing our child as we struggle with what challenges us as adults. Why is understanding the role of the child important to our overall emotional balance and health? This week on The Adult Chair, Michelle introduces us to the child chair and brings into focus the path we can take to discover our relationship with our own inner child as we continue our series on the three chairs.

Transcript

Welcome to the Adult Chair.

I'm Pete Wright and I'm here with Michelle Schalfont.

Michelle,

How are you?

Hi Pete,

I'm doing great,

Thank you.

Happy slightly post-Thanksgiving.

Yes,

You too,

You too.

You had a wonderfully memorable Thanksgiving holiday,

I'm sure.

I certainly did,

I was with all my family,

It was wonderful.

I hope you did.

I did,

You know,

Well I was sick as a dog.

It was really horrible.

But my family,

Luckily,

We hadn't,

You know,

I did not have any travel requirements,

There was nobody we came to visit,

It was just me and my wife and my kids and they took incredible care of me as I was convalescing on our couch all Thanksgiving week.

They were so good to me,

Deeply grateful.

That's wonderful.

Yes.

But we are back to continue our conversation about the chairs.

We started this conversation last week introducing the show and hopefully getting folks acquainted with what we're doing.

And so this week we're going to be talking a little bit more about the chairs themselves as we introduce the Child Chair.

This inner child stuff,

It's been around for a long time.

Talk a little bit about sort of your take on it and how you got to the point where you are right now in terms of the model that you use and bringing maturity to your practice.

Yes,

You're absolutely right.

It has been around for a really long time.

In gestalt therapy we talk about the empty chair technique.

I mean chairs have been around,

People have been using a similar model to this for a very long time.

And I,

Gosh,

In the beginning of my career I started learning a lot about different,

It's called the Parts Theory,

Is a technique called RAPSI which I really,

Really loved.

But anyway,

I've learned from a lot of different people about the inner child and for me it's really the missing piece.

This part of us holds the keys to really living authentically.

We've got to get this part of us,

We have to learn about it,

We have to embrace this part of us.

And for so many of us it's kind of an abandon or even it's lost.

We call it sometimes even the lost child.

I've learned from a lot of different teachers about this work.

P.

M.

Melody is one of my other favorite teachers and Hal and Sidra Stone talk a lot about different parts to who we are.

But I think I mentioned it a week ago,

Susan Austin Crumpton has given me this framework for the chairs.

I mean this is her model of the child,

The adolescent,

And the adult.

It just is so simple to understand.

I love it.

It is my favorite.

And that's what this is based on is her work and learning about the child.

Again,

It's the missing piece to all of this.

So I'm glad to be talking about it today with you.

Excellent.

Well,

So this child chair.

Now,

I am an adult.

I'm a grown man.

Why is it important that I even need to think about this child chair?

What impact does this have on me as a grown up?

So the child chair is the part of us that is anywhere from zero to about six to seven years old.

And this is the part of us that is the container for our true feelings.

And what I mean by true feeling is sadness,

Loneliness,

Happiness,

Joy,

Our true need.

And a true need would be food,

Shelter,

I need a hug,

I need someone to say I love you,

I need to feel protected.

So it's true feelings,

True needs.

And the other aspects of our child are this is where we learn to trust,

This is where our creativity comes from,

Spontaneity,

This is our passion,

And this is where our vulnerability sits and is born.

So from the age of zero to seven,

These are when all of these traits are born and we see them in the child.

And what happens is around the age of seven,

We then become the adolescent part.

And that is when the ego comes in and we realize,

Hold on a second,

You know,

I'm not this child,

I've got to take care of myself.

So the child becomes what we now call the inner child.

So even though we're adults,

You know,

Forties,

Fifties,

Twenties,

However old we are,

We still very much have this part of us called the inner child.

The reason that the inner child is so important or the child,

The seed of the child I call is so important,

Is that if during childhood,

Zero to seven,

If we did not learn,

Like I said,

Trust,

If we were not creative or if we were and our parents squished it and we weren't allowed to be,

If we weren't allowed to speak up for ourselves or be spontaneous,

It literally takes that child part of who we are and it could fade away,

It could be lost,

It could be abandoned.

We tuck it away so we just think it's bad.

I have clients that come in and they say,

I hate my child and it's awful because this part of us is,

Like I said,

The container for some amazing parts of who we are.

So I'll have a client that might come in and say,

You know,

I'm not passionate.

I don't know what happened.

I just don't love life anymore.

And that's an indicator for me,

Hey,

Their child part must not be present,

Must be gone.

Or the same thing,

Anything that I just said.

If people say,

You know,

I lost my creativity,

That is an indicator the child part's gone.

So what we want to do then is if we are having any of these issues of not feeling like we can trust anybody in the world,

Not feeling,

You know,

Another thing,

People will come in that are in a relationship and say,

I don't know what's going on.

I lost my intimacy with my partner.

Well,

We can't be intimate if we're not vulnerable.

That's another part of the chair.

So many of our adult issues are born in this child part.

They're all in this container called the child.

Yeah,

It's powerful.

And so as an adult,

Coming into to work on these issues,

One of the things you mentioned last week,

There's there is this journey to find or to rediscover your inner child.

Yes.

What does it look like to actually practically discover your inner child and to to embark on this work?

I mean,

I hear when I often hear people talking about their inner child and in the context of work like this,

That they worry that they'll never be able to find their inner child,

That they were,

As you said,

They were in a dysfunctional family and they have grown up and now they're adults and they feel like their inner child is calcified.

Like they can't find trust or intimacy because because of this emotional calcification,

They just don't know how to break it up and and don't want to or and and that manifests itself in ridicule like,

Oh,

You got to search your inner child.

It always comes out of the side of their mouths.

You know,

How do you how do you break through some of that calcification?

One of the things that I'll do is maybe a creative meditation.

You know,

I walk them through a meditation,

Help them find that child,

Which I plan to put on the site.

But also one of the things that brings our child part out is just starting to ask ourselves,

What am I feeling?

What am I feeling?

And every time I ask myself,

What am I feeling?

It's not only activating the child part,

But it's also activating the adult part.

It's amazing because the adult is the only part of us that would ever ask,

What am I feeling?

And when then I sink into that feeling,

Which,

By the way,

I can't tell you how many people that sit with me and have no idea what they're feeling.

I imagine,

Yeah.

Yeah,

But I have them sit and we take time and I'll say,

Well,

You know,

When,

You know,

Your friend stopped wanting to be friends with you,

How did that feel?

And oftentimes people will say,

Well,

You know,

I felt like slapping her or I felt like running away.

And those are mental interpretations of a feeling.

That's still not a feeling.

So the feeling would be,

Gosh,

I felt so unloved.

There's the feeling.

And that's always what I'm going for.

And when we can hit those core feelings,

That part of us,

That child part is starting to come back.

So that is one way that I help people bring the child back.

And that's great.

I like this because people can take this idea of how to bring the child back and do it at home.

You don't need me with you.

Well,

Let me clarify that.

So how do you know you're speaking of an emotion?

How do you know,

Or not an emotion,

But how do you know you're speaking strictly about what you're feeling and not a symptom,

As you say?

Is it that if you're speaking of a symptom,

You're describing an action or a result?

I felt like running away.

I felt like slapping.

That was an action.

That is coming from the mind.

So the mind is telling us,

Well,

I felt like I was going to run away,

Or I felt like I wanted to punch him in the face,

Or I felt like that isn't exactly the feeling.

That's the mind interpreting what the feeling is.

That's actually the adolescent part of us trying to figure out what the heck it is that the feeling is.

So I don't want the adolescent to come in.

I want that child part of who we are to come on in and be present with us.

We need that part of us to come back.

And what I love about this whole adult chair process,

This model,

Is that it's a very spiritual model,

Meaning it's not a linear model.

So linear to me means I have a headache,

So I take an Advil,

And then 20 minutes later it's better.

Spiritual is I start asking myself how I feel,

And by doing that,

I'm suddenly bringing up this part of me that has been abandoned,

Missing,

Lost,

Whatever you want to call it,

But this child part.

And by doing that,

Just asking myself how do I feel will start bringing in more trust,

More creativity,

More passion in my life.

So just doing one aspect of the child brings the whole child back.

It takes time,

Of course,

And the more I practice,

The faster it will happen.

Now,

What does that practice look like?

Can you offer one or two particular strategies that folks might try that they can start sort of diving in and reaching their inner child on a daily basis?

Yep.

So one of the first things that I would say is,

Again,

Just start asking yourself what do I feel?

And again,

We are so not good at feeling our emotions.

Our parents don't typically help us with that when we're growing up,

So we don't know what we're feeling.

So even if you can just slow down and tune into where do I feel that in my body.

So if my child yells at me,

I may not know that,

Wow,

I feel like they're going to abandon me.

And you know,

Whether they are or not,

It's just a feeling that is coming up and we have to honor that feeling.

But I may not know that that's the actual feeling word or,

But I know that my stomach is in knots.

So honor that,

That's the first step.

So we may feel a physical sensation in the body,

That's the child part.

And that's a restriction,

Right?

It's something we sort of break through.

Yes.

Yeah.

I liken this to,

You know,

When you first,

When you learn to meditate and you're,

It's when you realize that it's no longer,

You shouldn't be looking at it as a struggle to clear your mind,

But acceptance of what your mind is doing.

Exactly.

Just being aware that your body is saying,

Hey,

This is hard.

I'm telling you this is hard.

You know,

You recognize you need to move through it.

And you know,

In this work,

The adolescent part,

Which I'm not going to get into that all too much right now,

But it is from,

You know,

Around the age of 17 to let's say 18,

Or excuse me,

7 to about 18-ish or 20.

It's an average somewhere around there.

But that part of us,

That's the mind.

So it's the ego,

It's the mind,

That part of us doesn't have time to be feeling feelings.

It's trying to run our whole life and keep us alive.

So it likes to push the feelings down.

That's the part of us that just goes,

Okay,

We don't have time for feelings,

Go away.

And it takes that child's share and pushes it away.

So that's why we have that resistance to,

Gosh,

You know,

What is my true feeling?

So we need the mind to just quiet down and let that feeling start to rise up.

And that takes a little bit of time in the beginning.

But with practice,

We get really,

Really good at it.

It just becomes an automatic thing.

And again,

I'm speaking from experience on this,

Because I was one of the people in the beginning,

I didn't know what I was feeling.

I was mad or I was happy,

And that was it.

So as we bring this child part back,

That's one way to do it.

It's to sit and allow the feeling or the sensation in the body to just come up.

And then we notice that without judgment.

We just say,

Wow,

I can't believe it.

I really,

I feel abandoned.

Okay,

So that's okay.

It doesn't mean anything.

But in our society,

Unfortunately,

We are always trying to stop the negative emotions.

I don't encourage that at all.

Yeah,

Because every time we're stopping a negative emotion,

It's pushing the child away again.

So I want to validate that emotion within myself and say,

Wow,

I feel like abandoned and it's okay.

Just having this conversation is making me so uncomfortable because I'm trying to envision myself doing what you're saying I need to be doing.

I can sit and be present and ask myself,

What am I feeling?

And my initial response is,

My goodness,

I want to pick up my cell phone and do something.

It's that avoidance of the work.

And that I,

Gosh,

I hope I'm not alone,

But that's terrifying.

You're not alone,

I promise.

I promise you you're not alone.

It's typical,

Actually.

I can't tell you how many clients I have that sit in front of me and I'll say,

Well,

How does that make you feel?

They go,

What do you mean?

Exactly.

How does it give me a feeling?

And then they'll respond with,

I felt like running him over with my car.

I was,

Oh,

I was so,

Ugh,

And I'll say,

What's the feeling?

Right.

But once you practice putting words to those feelings,

That's where you start to break through?

Yes.

So we start there and then we honor that feeling.

When I'm honoring and validating that feeling and not making it go away,

Because people say,

Well,

I don't want to feel that.

That's bad.

No,

It's not.

It's just a feeling.

And the mind tells us it's bad.

So the mind will say,

Oh,

No,

You don't want to feel that.

If you feel that,

You'll die.

So just don't feel it.

So people come in and say to me that they're afraid that if they allow all those feelings to come up,

That it will overwhelm them and they'll never come out of it.

And that's not,

It's just not true.

It's not true.

So that is one way,

Of course,

Just to stop and ask,

Stop,

Slow down.

What am I feeling?

And then validate it,

Validate,

Validate,

Validate,

And allow that part of us to become present again.

The other thing that I love doing is I literally will pop,

Well,

Not literally,

But pop my child part out.

So I see myself as anywhere from zero to six.

Pick it,

You know,

I always say to people,

What number most resonates with you?

And they'll say,

Oh,

I'm two.

Okay.

Well,

Every time you're talking to your child,

Then pop your two-year-old out.

And I pop my five-year-old out and I'll see myself as five.

And I'll look at her and I'll say,

Okay,

And you can do this with your eyes open or closed.

And I imagine myself standing next to me and I'll ask,

How do you feel?

What's going on?

I do a lot of this in the car,

Actually,

When I'm driving.

I'll see my child sitting next to me or behind me.

And what we're doing with this is reparenting ourselves.

I'm giving that part of me what I didn't get when I was growing up.

And the coolest thing,

Pete,

Is that the mind doesn't know if it's happening or if it's in the imagination,

If it's real or if it's in the mind.

It doesn't know.

It all feels like reality.

So when we do this work,

It's been recorded in the mind as its reality.

So we really do reparent ourselves.

That's amazing.

It's so cool.

Yes,

It really is.

I remember dropping my son off at school when he would be in grammar school,

And I would imagine little Michelle in the backseat with her backpack and her pigtails,

And I'd say,

Bye,

You know,

I love you.

And he'd get out of the car,

And then I would imagine her getting out of the car behind him.

And your relationship with your five-year-old,

The five-year-old inside of you who is now running off to school,

The act of doing this work then integrates back into the way you work with your own life,

Your own children,

Finding your own vulnerability and creativity and passion.

My parenting has changed since learning all this work.

You know,

Again,

We in society,

We are not comfortable with negative emotions.

So what happens when a child is upset about whatever?

We try and talk them out of it.

In fact,

What happens when a friend of ours is upset about something?

We try to talk them,

Oh,

Your life isn't so bad,

It's okay.

Look at all the good things you have going for you.

Exactly.

Isn't that just another way of hiding from what's really what you're feeling?

Right.

It is.

And the thing is,

This fascinates me because when a friend comes up and starts saying that they're really depressed or they're sad or they want to leave their husband,

Whatever the heck it is,

If I have an issue around it,

I'm going to feel triggered.

So I don't want to go there.

So I try to talk them out of that feeling.

That's really what's going on here.

So then I will try and talk that person out of,

Oh,

Like you said,

Your life isn't so bad,

La,

La,

La,

You know,

Oh,

Think of the positives,

Just be happy because as their friend,

If I have an unhealed wound there,

I don't want to go there either.

So I'm not validating their feelings.

I'm pushing their child away even further.

It's just,

It's not healthy.

So when we're working with a friend or our own children,

The healthiest thing we can do when they're feeling an emotion is to validate that emotion.

So now with my children,

If they're upset about something and they go,

I'm so sad about blah,

Blah,

Blah,

You know,

I'll say,

Wow,

You know,

I get it.

Me too.

I can feel that.

I get it.

What else?

Permission to feel the way you're feeling.

Yes,

Permission.

Permission to keep their own child present.

And then the next question is,

And then what do you need from me?

And this is where they might say,

Even though I have teens,

You know,

Teenage boys,

They might say,

Well,

You know,

I just need,

You know,

And you just,

Can I just have a hug?

Yeah,

Sure.

You know,

Just give them a hug.

And then we're done.

I think if I had girls,

It would be a different story.

But you know,

My kids are able to tell me what they need.

And it's wonderful.

As a result,

Largely of the way you're able to tell yourself what you need.

Exactly.

And I can do that.

This is again with my husband.

I'll say to my husband,

If I feel emotions coming up and I feel like I want to yell or I need to cry.

In fact,

I did this a couple of weeks ago.

I looked at him.

I said,

All right,

Listen,

He said,

Because he said,

You're off.

And I said,

I know I am.

I said,

This is what I need from you.

I want you to sit with me and I need you to just to put your hand on my knee.

And I'm going to tell you what's going on with me.

I don't want you to fix it.

In fact,

I don't want you to say anything.

I just need you to be present with me and hear me with your hand on my knee.

That's all I need.

And I did.

And I cried.

I had my 20,

30 minutes and then boom,

I was done.

I felt like completely 100% fine.

And he said,

Well,

You didn't want a hug or anything?

I said,

No,

Maybe he would have wanted that.

But I didn't.

So and that's again,

That's,

I'm actually speaking from my adult as well,

Because the adult part of us is able to let then that other person know,

What do I need?

So my child wanted to have that emotion.

I was present from the adult,

Allowing her to have that emotion.

I was able from my adult chair to set up what I needed to have that experience.

You know,

Oftentimes people will come in and say,

Oh,

Let me give you a hug.

You know what?

I don't want a hug when I'm crying though.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's their agenda.

That's not mine.

It would make me feel less comfortable if I was able to show you support by doing what I need.

Give you a hug.

Yes,

Because your tears or your frustration or your anger makes me uncomfortable.

Yes.

And this is my way of taking ownership of your emotional state.

Yes.

Oh my gosh.

That's not cool.

That is so cool.

And what a terrific example.

I you know,

I think what we're seeing is,

You know,

How difficult it is to have a conversation about the child,

The journey toward the child,

The inner child and the child chair without talking about these other chairs and just how interrelated they are and how interrelated this journey really becomes.

So next week we're going to be talking about the adolescent chair.

You've already teased that a little bit.

What do we have to look forward to and how we transition from the child to the adolescent?

Well,

This blows people's minds,

But I've read this many times,

But I'm going to say the majority of us,

And I've read stats that say something like 97% of us in the world live from this place,

Which is the seat of the ego.

It's the part of us that cannot live in the present moment.

So every time we live in the past and the future,

We're in our adolescent space,

Our adolescent chair.

It's kind of crazy.

So we really want to know a lot more about this so we can learn how to move away from it.

But it is the part of us that is the controller,

The perfectionist,

The part of us that is the codependent,

The victim,

The drama queen.

And it's not a bad part of us.

It's just we get stuck here.

So to understand why we live here and why we're stuck in this chair and then how do we get out of this chair is incredibly empowering.

This is the love addict,

The sex addict,

The love avoidant.

All of these parts of us live here,

The rescuer,

The sabotager of our lives.

This is where we get stuck.

And it's about an average age of a 13-year-old,

Which is crazy.

So again,

Even though we're adults,

We're making choices,

We're marrying people,

We're having children from this very adolescent mindset.

And we need to learn how to get out of it.

And that is the power of this adult chair.

So yes,

Next week we're going to delve into the adolescent chair.

I can't wait.

This is fascinating.

This is illuminating.

I hope it's illuminating for those of you listening.

To find out more about the show,

Head over to michellechalfont.

Com.

You can subscribe to the podcast for free in your podcatcher of choice.

Once again,

We sure appreciate kind reviews and comments and sharing the show with friends and family who you think might find a connection with some of the messages that we are sharing each week.

Thank you so much for listening.

Michelle,

Thank you so much for your wisdom as always.

And on behalf of Michelle Chalfont,

I'm Pete Wright.

We'll catch you next week on the adult chair,

Living authentically with Michelle Chalfont.

Reviews

Loved it! Can't wait to listen to all the others.

I love this model! Thank you so much Michelle for enlightening me and I will continue to listen to every last one of the Adult Chair podcast! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Brilliant! Great insights into when our feelings are not given room to be as children, we can become disconnected from our inner child and thereby from our emotions. Thank you Michelle for this great series.

Really interesting, thank you. Resonates strongly with me at the moment. Thank you

Excellent and illuminating in the manner in which she expresses herself on a well worn topic. Thank you.

Very great information alot of stuff i havnt thought about before thank you for allowing me to look at myself in a different light

Some wonderfully insightful tools for connecting with the inner child and validating feelings. Thank you 🙏🏽

Really enjoying this series ❤️

Had a proper lightbulb moment listening to that so thanks!! Look forward to more

I’m so pleased to listen to this today. I love how you talked about the child being able to be aware of its feelings and ask for what it wants. Beautiful. As a therapist, and as a human being, I applaud this work 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼✨💛✨

Michelle it’s sounds like empathy to me.

I love the way this go's back to the child's mind chair. 🙏🏽

Insightful and helpful. Thank you. 🌞💐🌝

Thanku so much, Michelle for validating the child within. I can truly relate. I shall look deeper into all of what you teach. Namasté. xo

Very insightful 🙏🏽🦋🕉

Very helpful & inspirational!

So great and very timely information for me as I have just come up against my inner child in a big decision I need to make :p

Great podcast, want to hear more...

Very interesting to hear.