Episode #119

The Inner Child & CBT

Pioneered by Dr John Bradshaw, the concept of the inner child is a therapy modality that has helped many.

When is this therapy modality helpful?

How can you use it?

How does the inner child work alongside CBT?

Join me, Dr Julie Osborn, as I discuss this fascinating therapy modality. Click to listen now!

Reference Guides:

Full Episode Transcript

Hi, and welcome to My CBT Podcast. This is Dr. Julie. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a licensed clinical social worker specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I am here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life.

So thanks for being here with me. I'm going to start off with the email I received from a listener. Her name is K.T., and she gave me permission to share what her question was and what she's struggling with.

So it says,

“Dear Dr. Osborn, I came across your podcast and I'm grateful to have found it. I'm going through a major life transition. I was hoping to post a question where to start when basically starting life all over. I'm German and my husband is Canadian. We lived in Hong Kong for 20 years and had three children there. Due to the pandemic rules in Hong Kong, I went to Canada for a few months with the kids, which has now become permanent. I used to enjoy a flexible lifestyle in Hong Kong with friends and a support network. However, here in Canada, my husband's mom is chronically ill, his father is caring for her, and my husband's sister has addiction problems to the point of psychosis.

“My husband travels a lot for work, which is good release for him, and I'm glad he still has that sense of freedom. I'm trying my best to learn CBT and apply tools, but often when I'm alone on the weekend, I try so hard not to get depressed, but I feel alone doing a good job keeping my kids happy, but on the inside, I struggle so very hard. As a former expat who now lives in suburbs, I have no idea how to start building completely new friends from scratch while juggling three kids, two teenagers, and one second grader. I'm now 45 years old, and I know that I can reintegrate and form a new life, but it's very hard at the moment. I work with my husband, so I'm working from home and not exposed to different people very much. I joined the gym, which has been a blessing. Other than that, I know I need to take more steps to flourish in life again. Any advice would be incredible. Many thanks.”

I thought it was a really good email to share because I think a lot of us, after COVID, during COVID, had to make a lot of different life transitions, had to make new friends.

A lot of people did move out of state because they were working from home and they wanted to live somewhere else or closer to family or whatever the circumstances are. So I think a lot of us can really relate to this. I'm just going to read you my email I sent back to her to get started with maybe making some notes and some thoughts for yourself. So I said, Hi, Katie. Thanks for reaching out and being a listener. You've been through a lot of changes within your environment. I understand how challenging it can be. The gym is a great start. I would also suggest getting involved in your younger child's school and meeting parents and play dates is usually an easy way to connect. Also joining any groups you have interest in is a good way to be with like-minded people. All this takes time, but it's worth creating a supportive community for yourself. Also, maintain healthy boundaries, especially with your sister-in-law. Your self-care is important and making yourself a priority is important. I know we can get lost in all of our daily roles. I wish I had an easy answer, but does take time, and using the CBT tools you're learning can help along the way.

I would pick one thing each day you can do for yourself to connect others. I hope this is helpful, you're strong and resilient, and that's important to remember. All my best, Dr. Julie. I just wanted to again, share that I think there's a lot of general information that a lot of us can relate to, obviously using the tools and getting used to a new environment. And it's a lot. It's a lot starting over anywhere at any age, under any circumstances. So I hope that was helpful. Again, as always, I love you guys reaching out, giving me your questions, your suggestions. It's all good. We're community together. So it really does make a difference for me to hear what you want to share. So today, I wanted to share what I think is really cool type of therapy, where you can also use your CBT tools, something I've used for years and years and years. I'll give you a little bit of background on that. But I want to talk about what they call the inner child. So that's just a term. And there was a man who has now passed away. His name is John Bradshaw, and he was an American educator, a motivational speaker, and an author who popularized the inner child healing work.

And he passed away in 2016. I, fortunately, say that very strongly, as well as my husband, had met him in person and got to see him speak. And he was just one of my favorite people in this field. He was just so loving and caring and really showed him real self to all of us, very authentic. I always remember when I had him sign one of my books, he was happy because he could see that I read the book. He's like, I like these books versus then these new ones. I can see you're reading and you're using it. He was just really special. I just think his concept of inner child is still really important for all of us today. I will talk a little bit about some of his books I recommend for you guys to check out if you're interested in this and just exploring it if you have in at all or a little more, but just defining what inner child work is, is going off of Bradshaw's definition. He defined it as the inner child is a wounded, vulnerable, and often neglected or abandoned part of ourselves that carries the emotional experiences and memories from our early years.

So that's what it is, that inner child. All of us have an inner child. I'm an adult Julie, but I definitely have my child, Julie, within that has carried any of my wounds and makes me feel vulnerable. And the part where I felt abandoned as a child, that all came from that inner child within myself. And part of my healing was going to that painful place and working through those issues, and then committing to my own inner child that I'm always going to protect the little Julie, as I call her. And that's by having healthy relationships, healthy boundaries, good communication skills so that I wouldn't allow myself to be neglected, wounded, or abandoned on anything that I do have control over my life today. I can't control those things happening. People can hurt me. People can abandon me, yes, but I'm going to always be there and take care. Where as children, we don't have that emotional intelligence to know how to handle things. We tend to personalize stuff. We don't know what to do when we're wounded. We don't know what to do when we're abandoned, and who do we go to. And a lot of times, the adults in our lives didn't know how to get us the help that we needed, no fault of their own.

But so we grow up with all of these things that we went through as a child, and they still play out in our lives. And that's why we want to learn what are my core issues. My last podcast, if you guys listen to, is on abandonment and many different forms of abandonment. Another one I recently do is on getting triggered. Many different ways we get triggered. Why are we even being triggered because of past issues that we haven't resolved yet. So that's really a broad way of showing how the inner child is affecting lots of things in your life, and especially, I think, when you don't understand why things are bothering you to really do some in-depth work on understanding your own inner child and what parts of you are still hurt. So John Bratzer also believed that the unresolved childhood wounds, including experiences of abuse, neglect, or emotional trauma, could lead to a range of emotional and psychological issues in adulthood, such as low self-esteem, codependency, and difficulty in forming healthy relationships, which I completely relate to and completely support how he saw the impact of the childhood wounds and how it plays out in our lives as we get older.

So he really emphasized the importance of acknowledging and healing these wounds, and he believed that reconnecting with the inner child and providing love, care, and validating what we were lacking in childhood that as individuals, we can experience significant emotional healing and personal growth by doing this, right? So just moving on with your life really isn't the answer, because whether you like it or not, your inner child issues, your wounds, your banister, neglect, abuse is going to completely affect your perception of the world, your relationships, the way you make decisions. So one of the other things he talks about, and introduced the concept of re-parenting, so this involves providing, nurturing and support that the inner child may not have received in childhood. So what does that look like? It could be like self-care practices, having self-compassion, self-soothing techniques. I talk all the time to my clients about how do you practice self-care, that you need to give yourself some self-compassion, some grace in different situations and things you're going through. And self-soothing. How do you help calm yourself down? How do you take care of yourself? He also explored, which is super important, is the concept of toxic shame.

And Bradshaw believed that often originated from early childhood experience of being criticized, rejected, or invalidated. And he also emphasized the need to work through and release toxic shame in order to heal and integrate the inner child. So shame is an emotion that people really don't identify or talk about much. I think guilt comes up much easier. I feel guilty. I'm guilty for this, guilty for that. Shame is, as I've talked about also in other podcasts, is really the lie someone told you about yourself. Shame means that I think I'm a bad person, right? And it can be toxic, right? Because that's where I think a lot of addictions come in, whatever that looks like for you or putting up with bad behaviors or allowing yourself to be abused again as an adult, right? Because if we were criticized as a child, if we were rejected, or our beliefs, or our feelings, or our thoughts were invalidated, then we just think that we're bad. There's something wrong with us. And if we don't learn tools and deal with that toxic shame, obviously it's going to come out in all aspects of our lives. So there's something, not something, I should say, a different therapy called family systems theory.

And Bradshaw also influenced this a lot because he examined how the family dynamics and the patterns of behavior that impact your emotional wellbeing as a child, how it goes into your adulthood. And he also believed that understanding your family of origin and the dynamics within it are crucial for inner child healing. And I swear to that because I talked about, I believe in my podcast on forgiveness that to really heal from my mom's abandonment is I needed to forgive her. And to forgive her, I needed to understand her family of origin and who she was as a person versus my mother and understanding her wounds and how that caused her to abandon me. And when I could see that, it was much easier to forgive her and to help myself heal from my issues of abandonment. So understand your family. I tell people all the time, You know what? If you can, ask your parents questions. Ask your aunts and uncles about your parents, or if you got grandparents. Try to understand what happened to them in their childhoods that created the people they are today, which explains how they parent you, why they parent you that way, how they are today.

And then you're like, Oh, I'm telling you, when you can understand, the same I've learned about my dad, too, things he went through. It's like, Oh, no wonder he's so focused on this, or No wonder he's always this way. It makes sense when you understand, and then you don't get as annoyed or frustrated because their behavior is affecting you, just like your behavior is affecting other people. When you understand your parents' family of origin and why are they the way they are, you don't personalize it and you can find ways to manage it, and then find ways to maybe let go and do things differently if it doesn't work for you. So that's really important. That again comes up in what they call family systems theory, which is a really important type of therapy as well. Another thing John Bradshaw did that was excellent was he incorporated spiritual elements into his approach. So he viewed like inner child work as a means of connecting with deeper aspects of yourself and achieving a sense of wholeness and spiritual growth. So I really believe that mind, body, soul, as we're healing and we're making ourselves connect to our inner child, our world, our relationships, spirituality is very broad.

And when I'm saying this to you guys, so we're not talking about religions, but feeling connected to something greater than yourself, whatever that might look like, and really having that connection can be really important also. So he talked about that. He's written a bunch of books. So if you look up John Bradshaw, and he also conducted lots of workshops, which again, I was able to participate in, in seminars, where he really taught us how to engage in that inner child healing exercise and different techniques. They were so popular and they really contributed to the spread of inner child work, which is so important today. So let me first start talking about how I use my CBT tools to help always be connected to my inner child and working with other clients. So first is obviously identifying the negative thought patterns, right? So since we know CBT focus is identifying and challenging those negative thought patterns and your beliefs, it's really relevant when working with the inner child because many of your negative beliefs and thought patterns, as I was saying earlier, we carry into adulthood, but they're rooted in our childhood experiences. So inner child work can help uncover and understand the origins of those thought patterns, right?

Why do I even think that way? Why do I struggle in this way? So I've met a lot of clients that when they start off therapy, they'll be like, I don't want to talk about my past. I don't want to talk about childhood. And I'm like, Okay, we can get started with learning tools to help you today. But you cannot avoid really talking about the past and at least identifying the patterns so that you can understand and start changing them. When we understand our core beliefs and where they come from and the dysfunction they're playing in our lives, it's going to really help you get better and quicker, which is the goal, right? We want to get better quicker, we don't want to be well soon. And when we are open to looking at that and seeing that we're not here blaming our parents, we're just stating the facts. This is the environment I grew up in, and this is how it affected me. So being able to identify our negative thoughts is what CBT is all about, and being able to challenge them. Also, healing your emotional wounds, is that although inner child is primarily focused on healing the emotional wounds from childhood, CBT can really help and complement the inner child work by giving you the tools and the strategies that I talk to you guys about all the time for managing and changing your negative emotions and thought patterns that are going on in your present life.

Restructuring, how you're thinking, helping reframe your negative thoughts, all of these are part of our CBT tools that we want to learn, and they can focus on being able to change that inner child. Another tool that is part of CBT and part of inner child work is reparenting and cognitive restructuring, we call it. So reparenting and inner child work involves providing the care, the love, and support that maybe you lacked in childhood. And the CBT tools can help support this by helping you develop healthier, more adaptive ways of thinking and behaving, which in turn can contribute to the process of reparenting. So reparenting is what that sounds like. It's like you're going to give yourself the things that you lacked from your parents and be able to give yourself that love, that attention, that support, whatever it is that you need. That just because you didn't get it doesn't mean you can't give it to yourself now. As always, which I talk about a lot, is practicing mindfulness and self-awareness, both inner child work and cognitive behavioral therapy. We both focus on self-awareness. And mindfulness practices can really be useful in connecting with the inner child and understanding the emotions and beliefs that arise from your childhood experiences, and then how to process those and how to use your tools to be able to balance that out and make better decisions.

I talk a lot about doing behavioral experiments, and testing and challenging your negative, your maladaptive beliefs. So using some inner child work can also inform you of the choice of one of the experiments that are going to help you reveal the underlying emotional triggers and patterns. So what are some good things I can do for myself so I can get in touch with, What is that pain I'm still carrying around? How has that created these negative core beliefs in my life, and what can I do to make a difference? The core beliefs are always so important, and both of these types of therapies, inter-child, CBT, really address these deep, seated core beliefs, the fundamental beliefs you have about yourself, others in the world. And they both can help uncover and understand, again, the origins of these beliefs, and why they're getting triggered, and why they're still challenging for you. So I know when I identified my core belief that I was bound to be abandoned, it made sense to me why I had the people in my life that I was choosing, even though I didn't know I was doing that, and what I needed to do to change that, to be able to change that core belief.

And that was a lot of inner child work and reparenting and using CBT tools to really help myself heal as an individual and not allow other people's past behaviors affect me anymore. So I am not perfect by any means, you guys. I get triggered still, but I'm much more aware of it, and I jump on it and not let it get a hold of me so that I'm making poor choices, right? So although CBT is focused on providing practical tools for managing your current issues, and inner child work can be looked at as more focused on deeper, long-term healing, together, they can provide a really great approach that addresses both your immediate concerns and then the underlying emotional wounds, right? So that's why I'm saying a lot of people come in and say, Oh, I just want to deal with my immediate issues. I'm like, Let's go for it. Let's work on that. But eventually, if you stay in therapy long enough to really heal your whole self, we can start looking at more of the underlying emotional wounds that are also still affecting you today. So you all know I'm all about tools, right?

Tools, tools, tools. Let's get better. I want to just talk about some other tools you can use that are CBT-oriented and can help with the inner child, because the exercises for the inner child are techniques, and they're designed to help you connect and heal the inner child, right? So one of them is visualization and guided imagery. So this is where you visualize yourself as a child in a safe space and just feel that safety that you're feeling. I recommend what I've done, and it's really powerful, is go find a picture of yourself as a child, especially I think if you can find a picture and identify when you were wounded is really powerful, because I know what it did for me was... So I was eight, almost nine when my mom left. So I found a picture, I was in fourth grade, and what was really significant for me, my experience was that throughout my life, a way of coping was just telling everybody and myself, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, because my life went on. I didn't really deal with my abandonment to later years, right? So I was like, Oh, I'm fine.

And people would be like, What? Your mom left? How could you be fine? Wow, you've really done well, and et cetera, et cetera. And then I looked at that picture of myself and I was like, Wow, how vulnerable was I? I can't believe I coped as well as I did. It allowed me to understand how vulnerable and how that little Julie was still running my life until I got better, running my life. All of those fears and the fear of abandament and mistrust and just trying to be the perfect kid or girlfriend or whatever I was doing was all coming from the little girl that was nine years old when my trauma happened. So looking at a picture, it really is humbling. As a child and see like, wow, that little person is still inside of me. That's a little... Having that inner child is what allows you to still play and find joy. And when I do things that I push myself or I'm feeling that freedom and being really present, that's not the adult, Julie, that's my little Julie, that's just playing again. As children, right? When you watch kids play, they're so present.

They're just playing, they're having fun, they're not worrying about the bills and relationships and taking care of this or that or sick parents. I mean, all the worries that we have as adults, right? They're just at the core. That's the joy you can see when you watch little kids play. So that's still in you. And to realize that when you're out there and you're really connected to your joy, that's really that inner child, that childlike part of you that still comes out, and you want to really create a safe space for that if you were wounded as a child. So finding a picture and leaving it, putting it somewhere, carrying it in your wallet, putting it on your fridge, in your bathroom, like to just have that self, I think that's where that self-compassion can really play a huge role of like, Wow. Yeah, you know what? I am struggling right now, and there's that little kid that was hurt so many years ago, and I've just never really healed any of those wounds. No wonder I'm struggling. No wonder I'm scared. No wonder I'm sad. No wonder I'm anxious, having panic attacks, whatever you're going through.

So it's really powerful. So that would be a first step I would really encourage you guys to do. Also, another tool is just doing some letter writing, like journaling, right? So if you write a letter from your adult self to your inner child, and you offer words of encouragement and love and reassurance, and you acknowledge the pain and the difficulties that your inner child experienced, and you let them know that you're there for them now, and you're going to provide that safety they didn't have. The reparenting, just to review that because I know I mentioned it already, but that's where you can engage in activities that provide the care and nurturing that maybe misses a child. So this could be the self-soothing activities like taking a warm bath or wrapping yourself up in a cozy blanket or engaging in comforting hobbies, things that just relax you and make you feel good. That's part of re-parenting. Art and creativity is a great way to express yourself in a creative way and connect with your inner child. So if you like to draw, or paint or sculpt, this can represent your inner child's feelings and experiences and allow your inner child to express themselves through art.

I mean, when I worked in some psych hospitals or some art therapists, I was blown away by what people drew because you're like, Oh, I know what I'm going to put on paper. And they came and shared it to me in therapy, and I was like, Wow. And you could just see things just play themselves out. Really powerful stuff. You can also do a dialog and the journaling. You could write a dialog between your adult self and your inner child, ask your inner child how they feel and what they need, and then you can respond with love and support. The journaling about your childhood experiences, your feelings, your memories, that can really be a powerful way to connect with your inner child also. If you look for the photo, which I really hope you do, just looking through photo albums and keepsakes, looking through old photo albums from your childhood and take the time to reminisce and reflect on your experiences, and you allow those emotions to rise, to be acknowledged and validated. So it's funny. Recently, me and my sister were going through a whole bunch of photo albums that were my mom's. She had some old pictures.

We laughed, and then we sent messages to certain people and our family and friends that were close, and it just brings so much joy. It was a lot of the happy times before the wounds happened, and just remembering how loved we all were and how we all loved being together that it was a really happy time. For me, it didn't bring up probably because I've worked through some stuff, but I wasn't sad that I didn't have that. I was grateful that there were so many happy times I did have before my mom left. So just going through four albums and is just really fun. Doing a role reversal is another tool. So you can imagine switching roles with your inner child, let your inner child be the caretaker or guide or offering you the support and love that you need at that time. I think you'll really come up with the right answers. It's like my mantra when I say make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel. And I think everyone knows what's best for them. And if you go to that place with that inner child, like what do I need right now?

I think you'll have the answer pretty quickly. You just have to be willing to allow yourself that love and support. Doing affirmations positive self-talk can be a good tool as well, especially when they address any of the pain with your inner child. So for example, saying, I love and accept my inner child, and I'm here to protect and nurture you. So just saying that to yourself, I think it can make you really feel more powerful and empowered to be able to be more connected to that soft side. Doing any inner child meditations, because practicing meditation is such an important part in our lives, whatever that looks like for you. And it's a way to connect and heal your inner child. There's guided meditations you can find that focus specifically on inner child healing. So you guys can look that up as well. And then, as always, have fun and engage in playful activities that bring out that sense of joy and spontaneity. It could be dancing, playing with toys, engaging in any activities that you like, any activities that you like that you used to like maybe that brings back good memories or something new that you want to try.

So I think play is so important. And we want to remember whatever tools you pick, it's important to approach any of these exercise with compassion and patience. If you're working through some really deep emotional issues, I really suggest that you get a qualified therapist who can really help you work through this because it can be pretty painful, especially if this is the first time you're addressing it, and it can be overwhelming. And I don't want you guys to just uncover all this and then be like, Okay, now what? And just have a meltdown? I want you to have somebody you can really rely on and really knows how to walk you through all of this so that you can heal. It's not just identifying all of this stuff, but then what do I do with it? And how can I incorporate my cognitive behavioral therapy tools? You need to know, what am I thinking when I'm identifying with this inner child? And it's so important to have that self-compassion because a lot of people just get angry with themselves. But you need somebody to walk you through that so you can get to that place of healing and loving all of yourself.

So healing as an adult is really important, and the goal of the inner child work as well as CBT is to heal the wounds of the past and integrate the experiences of your inner child with your adult self. So if you're able to do this and get through that process, it can really lead to greater self-awareness, self-acceptance, and that emotional wellbeing that we're all working towards. And be open to looking at your past because the significant influence of your parents or your caregivers on your development is really huge, which includes both positive and negative experiences with your parents because it shapes your inner child's perceptions, your beliefs, and your emotional responses. So it's really important that you're open to at least looking at that. A lot of people that focus on inner child work use it with other therapy modalities. So that is obviously CBT, mindfulness, which we talk about a lot, and then the trauma-focused therapy. So you can always find people that specialize, and these are questions that you can ask somebody if you're seeking out professional help. So I did want to share that although John Bradshaw's work has had a profound impact on the field of psychology and self-help, and his work continues to influence therapists, myself, and others alike, and individuals seeking help and healing from their childhood wounds.

But it's important to note that it's just one approach to therapy and personal growth, just like CBT is one approach. It might not be suitable for everyone. You have to be ready. Sometimes you want to maybe just focus on your CBT tools to just have daily coping tools. Sometimes if you're like, I'm just trying to get through my day, then you want to focus on that and use your tools like, What are my thoughts? And balance those out. Doing some behavioral techniques of just better careing enough exercise, getting enough sleep. A lot of things that I've talked about in the past, looking at your relationship. So even though this might sound like, Oh, yeah, this is what I need to do, be sure that you're ready and that you have some good coping mechanisms in place and that you have your CBT tools and you're using those, and then to start working and diving deeper, and again, having a professional work with you and asking, if you already have a therapist, say, hey, I heard about the center child work. Are you familiar with that? Is that something you could help me with? And talk to, again, if you have a therapist already, bring this up and explore that a little bit.

So I wanted to talk to, as I mentioned before, some of Bradshaw's books, all of them are good, but especially his one called Homecoming, Reclaiming and Champion your inner child, it's from 1990, and it was just instrumental in bringing the attention to the importance of healing the childhood wounds and integrating your inner child into your own adult self. So what I've shared today are just a lot of key aspects of John Bradshaw and others with the inner child. I'm sure you could probably google him. I'm just thinking of this now and maybe see him doing some talks, but he was funny and smart, and he just got to you. I can tell you guys, every time I worked with him, the tears would just start flowing. Me and my husband just loved him. I brought my sister along one time to get to see him. I feel so fortunate. I was just in the field a long time now that he was part of my training, and I really wanted to share this with you guys because it's meant a lot to me. I still use it today, and I'm really grateful that it's part of the tools that I use and being able to connect with my inner child and looking at those pictures, I can really have a lot of self-compassion for what my little Julie went through, and how I've been able to bring her out more as an adult and have more fun and more play because I turned into a pretty serious person just to cope and try to control my environment.

And I'm just really grateful I can get more to that playful part and enjoy my life more today. So as always, thanks for being with me. I really hope you found this helpful. Please share this with anyone else that you think they may get some insight from it.

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And as always, make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel.