How Healing Your Inner Child Can Transform Your Relationships | Gloria Zhang | TEDxGrandviewHeights
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WIsU6ANC1I Video ID: -WIsU6ANC1I ============================================================ [Music] [Applause] were you happy as a child why don't we let that question sink in for a moment for some of you this question may Inspire memories of nostalgia and for others maybe a darker time of your lives and the rest of you are probably thinking is this therapy no but bear with me for a sec because did you know that all of us have an inner child right here but some of us as we got older we lost touch with that younger part of ourselves that's still in here somewhere I didn't know that I had a wounded inner child until I grew up and I started to see these strangely familiar ups and downs in my relationships and I started to realize that the answers to my current struggles in relationships were intricately woven into the tapestry of my childhood experiences today I'm here to share more than just my personal journey I want to shed light on a fundamental truth that affects all of us that our relationships with the people who raised us have a profound impact on our adult life on our relationships and how we perceive love and connection and with it the pathway to nurturing better and more wholesome relationships as grown-ups so let me take you back to when I was 26 hopeless romantic when the man I thought I'd spend the rest of my life with suddenly broke up with me over a text message I thought we were together for over a year but according to him we were just friends and within days he announced he was in a real relationship with someone else when I read that message something even deeper was triggered inside me I suddenly regressed from being confident successful grownup Gloria to now this sobbing six-year-old version of myself I was begging and pleading for him to come back something felt really wrong about the situation the intensity of that heartbreak it didn't feel normal in fact it kind of felt like I was reliving something from the past you ever get that something from the past and I thought why did I stay so long with someone who clearly didn't love me and this pattern wasn't even you in fact all of my Intimate Relationships up until that point had ended the same way with me being abandoned and it turns out that pattern of Abandonment wasn't just a string of bad luck it was actually a mirror it was a mirror that was reflecting my deepest fears and unhealed wounds and then things started to click and I started to see there was a connection between the stuff happening now and the stuff that happened to me a long time ago because when I asked myself was I happy as a child I thought yes I was but why did I have all all these memories of feeling so alone and then I remembered my parents they were newcomers right and they worked so hard to create a better life for my family and they're my heroes but at the same time it also meant I just didn't get all the undivided time that I needed and that unacknowledged longing for attention and connection it didn't just disappear as I got older no it stayed with me and it kind of turned into this subconscious template for what I thought relationships were supposed to feel like and for me love has always been wrapped in pain and so I went deeper into my experiences and I began to unravel this concept that was very fascinating to me and it was called inner child healing though I admit when I first heard the words inner child I thought it was ridiculous I thought no way it kind of sounds like a new age scam but it wasn't it's a metaph for right inner child healing actually means understanding how our early childhood experiences especially with the people who raised us shape our emotional blueprint for all future relationships and I talk about what I call the four core wounds from childhood which are basically like emotional wounds that resurface later on on and they're called abandonment neglect guilt and trust issues for example if you felt abandoned in your childhood this can manifest later on as a constant fear of being left alone as an adult driving behaviors like people pleasing or dependency if you had feelings of neglect then you might become someone who struggles with self-worth or Independence leading to these relationships where you try to overcompensate for it by giving too much of yourself then there's guilt guilt shows up as adults who are constantly apologizing or people who feel way too responsible for other people's emotions I think we all know someone like that and they may even and stay inside toxic relationships because they're so used to being treated badly and they feel too guilty to put themselves first and finally trust trust is a tricky one because trust issues only begin when trust has been broken and for children this can happen if you had parents who were inconsistent or who had betrayed you in some way and adults with trust issues have a really hard time letting their walls down and they'll do anything to protect their heart so as a relationship therapist obviously my personal Journey had a huge impact on my work and from then I started to see these very interesting underlying commonalities with the people I worked with this one particular person comes to mind for me growing up she was made to feel responsible for her family's happiness if her parents argued she thought it was her job to intervene and keep the peace which is it's an enormous burden for a little girl and it's not a child's job to take care of the adult and what happened is this ingrained a deep sense of guilt and obligation inside her which she then carried into her adult years so what do you think happened well in her romantic relationships she found herself playing the exact same role acting like the caregiver bending over backwards to please the men in her life and just losing herself in these relationships but through the inner child healing we were able to understand and heal the root of that core wound and she was able to set boundaries and to identify that she had her own needs and by healing her guilt wound she saw changes not just in her love life but also how she spoke up at work choosing friends who didn't take advantage of her kindness and overall valuing herself for the first time as a grown woman so I love this story with my client because it's just such a perfect example of the trend that I see over and over in my work that all these wonderful human beings who just happened to struggle with relationships they all seem to share one thing in common they did not feel worthy of love as a child so now I invite you guys to try this simple but powerful exercise with me together ready so just take a moment and lift your right hand and just gently place that over your heart like this and as you're doing that you just want to imagine what you looked like as a small child picture your face picture your innocence and notice how small and Tiny you really were at that age and with that clear image in mind I invite you to say out loud to yourself I am here for you now I am here for you now I am here for you I see you I hear you and you have always been enough this connection you've just made is only the beginning of a lifelong relationship between you and your inner child never forget this my personal Journey with inner child work sparked a transformation beyond my wildest dreams and today I am happily engaged to the love of my life someone who makes me feel seen and special and this process has been life-changing not just for me but my clients my podcast audience even my friends leading to these beautiful relationships with themselves and other people and I'll leave you with just this one thing research shows that the number one key to our happiness Health and Longevity is positive relationships positive relationships surpassing even the benefits of exercise diet and wealth let's think about that for a second but keep your gym membership healing our inner child is more than just mending past wounds it's also about reclaiming our innocence from the younger years and seeing the world through a child's eyes no matter what age because that child is still you and that child has always always been worthy of love and as we journey through inner child healing we begin to open our hearts to relationships that that are beautiful and meaningful and to a life filled with love understanding and magic thank you