#1: Why Does Bad Sh*t Keep Happening? The 4 Core Wounds From Your Childhood

Ever wonder why we keep running back to things that causes us so much pain? In this episode, I discuss why people cycle over the same toxic relationships, work situation , other areas of life- And how Inner Child Healing can set you free!

NEXT STEPS:

1. 💜 Download the FREE Guide To Healing Core Wounds.  Downloaded over 1000+ times, get Gloria's exercises for Abandonment, Trust, Guilt & Neglect!
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Episode Highlights:

• Learn why you repeat patterns and what they have to do with our brain function and the concept of familiarity
• I share my own experience with my father and how my relationship with him affected how I chose partners and relationships
• Hear how the 4 Core Wounds affects your behavior and life choices
• Learn how to identify your wounds and examine your relationships with people, as well as your relationship with yourself
• Listen 'til the end of the episode and get a FREE access to my Inner Child Starter Kit!

Hey bestie! My mission is to help High-Achievers and people-pleasers heal their Inner Child and find healthy love, especially those who desire an extraordinary connection but often struggle in their relationships. 

Got An "Aha!" Moment? Take a screenshot this episode, share it with the world, tag me @bygloriazhang on Instagram, and let me know your thoughts!

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Transcript

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Why do we keep running back to things that cause us so much pain even when we're fully aware that it's causing us pain? So this episode is going to be a bit of a light bulb moment for you. So stay tuned after this intro. Hi, I'm Gloria Zhang and after 10 years of struggling in toxic relationships, I attracted the love of my life by healing my inner child. This podcast is your weekly dose of my expertise as a therapist and dating relationship coach for high achievers. Learn tips to overcome low self-worth, emotional baggage and childhood trauma so that you too can step into your power and attract the love you desire. Welcome to the Inner Child podcast. Welcome to the first official episode of the Inner Child podcast. I'm your host, Gloria Zhang and I'm a psychotherapist and I help you overcome people pleasing and low self-worth. We're good. So if you've ever felt like your life is just a broken record player, cycling over the same toxic relationships, the same problems showing up at work, the same problems over and over again, keeping you stuck and keeping you in self-sabotage mode. And this episode is definitely for you. This is you then you probably have what's called a core wound. There are four main core wounds and they are called guilt, abandonment, trust and neglect. Oh, the famous for. And what a core wound is is a very deep old ancient hurt that happened to you when you were a kid. And it was never really resolved. You didn't get to close the door on that chapter completely. And what's happening is that that wound has manifested into a deep insecurity that remains inside your wounded inner child and continues to express itself through your adult relationships, through your job, through your choices, through the way that you interact with people. Pretty scary I know, but I can promise you this does not have to be how the rest of your life plays out. Certainly has not for myself and for so many of my clients who have learned to get in touch with and heal their inner child. So today I'm going to talk about these four core wounds to help you figure out which one or if it's more than one of them, that you are repeating in your life and how I'm going to structure these episodes is that I'm always going to leave you with a specific call to action at the very end. So this can either be a question, a journal prompt, something to actually do or a resource to check out to actually take the information that you've been learning and implement it into your life so that you can create real lasting change. I get questions all the time from new clients, from old clients, from people on Instagram or Facebook, people ask me,"Hey Gloria, I already know this stuff that you're telling me. Even though I know this, I still can't change my behavior." And there's a few reasons for it. The first most obvious reason is that you have all the information collected in your brain but you haven't actually implemented it into your life. Now I don't mean that you try the technique here or there or you tried something three times that didn't work and you gave up. In everybody's healing journey, there's always a certain point where you undeniably make a choice, a conscious decision that you are going to commit to your healing no matter what, try as many times as you need to until you get it. And that's what I mean by implementing something. For example, if you read a book about planes that does not make you a pilot. If you learn all this information without actually applying it wholeheartedly into your life, then all that's really happening is you just have a lot of knowledge. It's just like you've got a bookshelf full of books that you never really touch. Now I say this with absolute love because I've been there too. And when you look at the cycle of change, people go through many faces until they get to a point where they actually make a change. So if you're in a state where you're still listening and trying to adjust to different ideas, then that's okay as well. That you're not at that stage yet where you're actually ready to make changes and that is valid on its own. There are two other reasons why you may know things but still continue to repeat patterns. So I'm going to throw a statistic out here and it's that 95% well approximately 95% of your brain function is unconscious. What does that mean? You're probably asking how is this possible. Well to make you feel a bit better, a big chunk of that number is actually related to things like breathing or blinking. Okay, and your heart beating. So this is actually a good thing because can you imagine if you had to consciously choose to blink and breathe and beat your heart? I mean, we wouldn't be able to function. So this includes bodily functions that your brain also controls. Heartbeat, all sorts of regulatory functions within your body, hormones, neurotranspators, all that fun nerdy stuff. But this also applies to our cognition. These are our thoughts. Now when it comes to thoughts, they estimate we have around 60,000 thoughts a day. I think that depends on who you are. But once again more than 90% of the thoughts you had today are exactly the same as you had yesterday. So as humans, we are not very creative with our thinking. And so if so many things are happening unconsciously, then you're not even aware of some of the things that you are repeating. Now if you're aware of some of the things that you're repeating, I can guarantee you that that's only the tip of the iceberg for the entire range of things that are happening unconsciously. And the reason we have inner child healing is so that you can start bringing those things out of your unconsciousness and into your awareness so that you can be fully aware of what's going on. I'm willing to bet that you've only got a snapshot of the true picture. And so the third reason is that naturally we tend to gravitate towards what is familiar, even though it's not good for us. And what I mean by that is if you grew up feeling neglected by your family, then that's what you know. And you only know what you know. And so in the future as you're now older and choosing a partner, you might choose someone that also makes you feel neglected because then at least you know what to expect. Right? Maybe you haven't had a lot of safe relationships and that that's actually more scary than actually being in a toxic relationship. The brain does very funny things like this. Now the other thing that can be happening is that we may be unconsciously choosing the same situations that we are hurting from in our childhood because part of us is hoping for a different outcome. I have a perfect example from my own life. Now I've always been very vocal on Instagram about how my father and I have had a very up and down relationship forever. We're good now, but it took a lot of work to get there. And for the longest time, I was always choosing partners that honestly reminded me of my dad. You know, I was choosing partners that they already had these non-committal tendencies or they would tell me straight off the bat that they weren't looking for a relationship. I was just attracted to that statement almost. And I was trying to prove to myself that if I could win this guy over by pleasing him, bending over backwards and being the quote, I'm going to go best girlfriend ever, whatever that means. I would be able to prove myself that he would choose me and that I would be good enough for him. And therefore it would mean that I was good enough for my father. And so you see how this has a ripple effect across our entire life. So let's go to the famous for core wounds. In my case, I had all of these. You may have one or two or three or four, but understanding what these are will help you really identify what the heck is actually going on in your life. The first one is guilt. Oh my goodness. Guilt. So if you have a guilt wound, then you're somebody who just always feels bad about things, always feels sorry about things. Not only that, you also have trouble asking for things and you have trouble actually stating what your needs are. But to be honest, most of the time you may not even know what your needs really are. I remember growing up and I used to feel guilty about everything. I would actually avoid using plates to eat food because I would feel so bad about the thought of my mom having to wash the plate. And I would really, really get into my head about this. Okay. And so in adult life, this translates into over apologizing. It translates into you taking on way too much at work because you feel bad about other co-workers doing the work. This translates into relationships where you feel bad when your partner does something for you. Fundamentally, what is happening is that somehow growing up, I'm going to bet that one of your parents tried to discipline you by making you feel guilty. For example, oh, Sarah, you made a mess. Now mommy's going to break her back trying to clean up your mess. Sound familiar? Well, as a kid, what you learn to believe is that by meeting your own needs, that you're taking something away from someone else or even hurting someone that you care about. It's very painful to think this, right? But these are the wounds that are inner child carries with you. So you might learn to become attracted to or choose partners or friends or workplaces that naturally make you feel guilty already as a result. And I'm going to add on this final point, which is that because of the role modeling you grew up with, you may have also learned to use guilt on other people. You may have used guilt as a way to influence or kind of manipulate others. Now, I don't say this to criticize you. Please, some take what I say with complete love because I want you to understand that it's not your fault you learned these strategies. This is just what you grew up with, okay? And so when we become more aware of these things, that's when we're able to change. The next one is the abandonment wound, da, da, da, da. The abandonment wound is if you always feel left out. You just always sort of feel like you're not part of the group. You feel like an outsider. You fear becoming alone or being abandoned. So you might be someone where no matter how comfortable a group makes you feel or if you arrive at a party or even at work that somehow, no matter how long you've really been there, you just always sort of feel like the odd one out. You always feel like you're on the outside looking in. Now, this may be actually what's happening or it could be something that you project onto your experience. You may also threaten to leave as a way to mask what your wound is. And so this would be your inner protector using anger or even hostility as a way to protect itself. And not only that, but now this sort of goes into codependency. Now, that's a whole other thing we'll talk about next time, but because you have this wound, you may feel attracted to people who are emotionally unavailable. I've experienced this. So many of my clients have experienced this. Hey, bestie, just a quick message before we get back to the show. Are you a high achiever or entrepreneur who's thriving in your career but really struggling in your love life? You sound just like I was. I help high achievers just like you break the pattern of toxic relationships through inner child healing so that you can attract and create the secure life partnership of your dreams. Message me the words high achiever to learn about joining soulmate at by glory is saying on Instagram or applied directly on my website by glory is saying dot com now back to this episode. And I've heard it said that even with friends that as soon as you pick up that somebody is a loof or that they seem emotionally cut off or they don't like you, that that somehow makes you even more attracted to them. Like it feels like an addictive feeling. That's the abandonment wound and as you probably guessed, it comes from feeling abandoned in your childhood. Now in my case, I was actually separate from my family many times growing up due to certain situations, but for some people it may have been more subtle abandonment may have just been apparent never showing up to your concerts. Apparent perhaps just always being late or you know always sending someone else to pick you up after school and they didn't quite say it or verbalize it but you just never felt completely seen. The third one is a trust wound. This one is a little bit more complicated, but in a general sense it's the fear of being hurt again and not trusting the people around you to make you feel safe. There's so many reasons why you may have learned to become this way depending on how you grew up and because that's children we internalize everyone around us. If you couldn't trust your parents or your caregivers, then by default you also learn not to trust yourself. Make sense, right? Because if you can't depend on other people who are supposed to be the ones in charge of your life, then what is that say about people in general? And if you're a person what does that say about you? So not only will you become attracted to people who make you feel unsafe, this is a heavy one, but you will also find reason to distrust people even in safe situations unless you've done the inner work on yourself. So by that first part, by being attracted to people that make you feel unsafe, this can mean trauma bonding, which is when someone hurts you that makes you love them even more. I think we'll talk about that next time. That's a big topic on its own. And the second one is even when you're around people who are very secure, loving people, you still don't have it in you to open your heart up and you might start looking for ways to nitpick at them or to distrust or to discredit them. So people with trust wounds tend to have insecure attachment styles, which means that they really really need validation from other people like you really need people to make you feel good, but that's not always the case. But yeah, that's the trust wound. Okay, last one is the neglect wound. The neglect wound is from the inner child who didn't feel seen or appreciated or didn't get their needs met, didn't get the attention they needed as a kid. And now growing up, you've repressed this into anger and resentment in your someone who really struggles to let things go. If somebody wrongs you once, you carry that to heart for a very long time because it's a reminder of what happened to you growing up. Now, if you have neglect wound, you tend to be more of the avoidant attachment style, which means you may put up a barrier between you and other people to prevent yourself from getting close to them in the first place. But on the flip side, you also have a hard time saying no to things as well. So there's a mix of different ways that you've learned to deal with the neglect wound. And of course, just like all the other wounds with the neglect wound, you may also gravitate towards people who just don't appreciate you or may have commitment issues. Or even if you're way the safe partner, you will be very sensitive to feeling unappreciated or feeling unseen, even if that's not actually what's happening. So how are you feeling now as you're listening to this? For some of you, this might be the very first time that you've actually learned the language to describe these experiences that you've had for a long time. So this is a very special moment, if that's the case. And if you heard this before, then I'm going to move on to the call to action part of today, which is on how to actually use this information. It's just like we said before, it's good to know things, but until we actually put it into practice, it's just books with information collecting dust on your shelf. So the first call to action, of course, is to identify your wounds. Listen to how I described guilt, abandonment, trust in neglect and see which ones, one or many, seem to apply to your life. Not only that, I invite you to honestly examine your relationships with people, as well as your relationships with yourself and get really, really honest with yourself on why you're making these choices. And what sort of wounds are you either avoiding or trying to recreate in different situations? And I know that sometimes it's very painful to take a magnifying glass to our own lives. But the thing with taking responsibility for your life is that it's not that you have to take responsibility. It's that you get to take responsibility. You're an adult now and you have different choices and resources available to you now that you just didn't have when you were a kid. So when we take responsibility like asking these questions, this is not to excuse abusers. This is not to excuse things that happen to you growing up or the way that your parents treated you. This is nothing about forgiveness. But this is about you reclaiming your life and taking back what was always supposed to be in your power in the first place. But you've forgotten that. When we allow these core wounds to deepen and fester and remain untouched over time, we forget our birthright, which is that we are in control of our own lives. And that includes you and no matter who you are, where you're listening from, how old you are, what gender you are, it's never too late. It is never too late. And if you have a narrative for playing in your head about all these reasons why you can't move on, you can't heal. You don't have enough money, you don't have enough support, you don't have enough time. Well guess what? You're listening to this podcast? This is free. I'm your support right now and I'm telling you that as long as you're still alive right now you're breathing, you have time. And the time is now. And so the second question is a perspective shift that I would like to invite you to consider. Now if you're not ready to believe this, then just sort of take it in and leave what doesn't feel right. Oftentimes we tend to ask the question, why is that person hurting me? Why is that person ignoring me? Why isn't that person appreciating me? We're always trying to psychoanalyze other people and try to read into other people's behavior and we read cosmos. So we go on Google and ask, what's this person doing? What do they mean by this? What do they mean by that? What do they mean when they said, I'm not sure or what did they mean when they said, I'm not ready for a relationship? But I don't think that's necessarily the question you want to be asking. I want to invite you to ask a different question instead and that is to ask yourself, why are you allowing that person to treat you this way? Why are you choosing to stay in this relationship? What is the part of you? What is that part of you that is still allowing yourself to be treated in this manner? But not only that, how can you give love to yourself and give love to that part of you so that you can actually heal it instead of opening and reopening that wound over and over again? And I know this is a really hard question to ask. I know for myself that for so long, I was really stuck in the narrative that I believed life happened to me. Right? I was just, you know, lying on the floor. Life was just throwing all these things at me and it was happening to me. And I forgot my own power. I forgot that I can still use my words and make different choices. I can start choosing to make different choices. And again, this is not to condone abuse of behavior from other people. This is not to excuse or justify their behavior. Please do not miss quote me on that. But this is about what is the part of you that is still wounded that is still gravitating towards those experiences and what is that part actually trying to tell you like really listen to yourself. Maybe your intuition is telling you that it's time to take a break. Maybe you do have to block and delete that person. Maybe you really do have to make a big drastic move like moving somewhere else or maybe you don't have the means to and it's just about reaching out for help. Any sort of help, a free hotline, a therapist you pay for reaching out to a friend and just telling someone about it. There is always a third option that we're not seeing at this very moment, but I can promise you that no matter what your situation is, there is always something you can do that may take some thinking outside of the box to actually realize what your options are. And I want to leave you with that little bit of hope as we end our episode today. Dang, I just finished recording my full podcast episode. This was pretty difficult. I am not to re record this a couple of times. And if you have any questions, please please message me on Instagram @bygloryazang, be bygloryazang. And also I want to quickly mention that I will actually send you access to my inner child starter kit. Just something I personally created and put together that has beautiful affirmations that you can set as your wallpaper on your phone or computer. It's got printables and handouts to help you on this journey. If you write a five star review for this podcast, so actually give me a five star review and write something. And then screenshot that and tag me or send it to me on Instagram @bygloryazang. And I will send you access to that kit. You know, any sort of help really means the world to me as we're getting this started for the first time. But I also want to hear from you on what you want to hear about next on the show because as always, I made this for you. And I want to give you what you really need. So thank you so much for tuning in. Hit subscribe, download a couple more and make sure to send me your screenshot if you did leave a review to get access to that kit. Of course, if you did this call to action and you want to share your results, let me know on Instagram or on Facebook. And I will be happy to respond to you. I will see you in the next episode. If you love this episode, please hit subscribe and give us a five star review. It really helps me a lot. So thank you. To join the community and get your daily dose of inner child tips, follow me on Instagram and social media @bygloryazang or visit bygloryazang.com. If you are a high achiever or entrepreneur who wants to work with me, message me the words "high achiever" and I'll get in touch. Thanks besties, see you in the next one. Bye.(upbeat music)[music]