A lot of us didn’t get what we needed as kids, so we adapted—squeezed ourselves into shapes that kept us safe. As adults, our nervous systems still remember those shapes. This episode is about our inner child: the part that wants to play and create, but also freaks out when life feels unsafe.
Carrie shares how ACA and parts work (IFS) helped her begin reparenting herself; Emily talks survival mode, productivity, and why singing felt like safety. We get into grief-in-autumn vibes, the self-soothing we never learned, and—because it’s us—a strangely perfect detour into inner ears and earwax: inner child, inner ear—chef’s kiss.
References:
ACA - Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families - 12-Step Support & Recovery Group - for anyone who, because of people or circumstances in their childhoods, had to adapt in painful, unhelpful, or unhealthy ways to survive—whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually
IFS - Internal Family Systems - also known as “parts work” - a psychotherapy tool developed by Richard C. Schwartz that views that the mind as a collection of relatively separate subpersonalities or parts, each with its own unique viewpoint and qualities
“Ball of Wax” - english idiom meaning “everything” or “all of it”
TIMECODES:
0:00 - Intro
0:49 - Grief
3:24 - Inner Child work
10:39 - Often, our parents didn’t have enough tools to give us what we needed
12:35 - Hiding from healing in the church
18:54 - We were trained that if we were okay, we were doing something wrong
21:59 - We weren’t taught how to self-soothe
24:32 - When the Inner Child calls bullshit/earning back our Inner Child’s trust
27:14 - Getting healing for US is the best gift we could give our kids
28:48 - Our Inner Child is the seat of our creativity
34:39 - Trauma lands hard as a child
35:28 - The Earwax Discussion