Who’s Driving the Car? Understanding Inner Child Work with Julia Satterlee

What if the reactions you can’t explain… aren’t coming from your present at all?

In this episode of Therapist Unplugged, Laurie Poole sits down with guest Julia Satterlee to explore a question that quietly shapes so many of our lives: who’s really driving the car?

Together, they unpack the impact of inner child work and how early emotional experiences continue to influence the way we think, react, and show up in our relationships today. From childhood conditioning to unconscious beliefs about worth, safety, and love, this conversation offers a deeper look at why certain patterns feel so hard to break.

Julia shares how triggers in adulthood often point back to unresolved wounds, and how learning to meet your own emotional needs can shift the way you relate to yourself and others. They also explore how relationships act as mirrors, why conflict can be an opportunity for healing, and what it really means to come back to yourself.

This is a conversation about awareness, compassion, and the kind of work that doesn’t always look easy but changes everything.

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Julia Satterlee is a life and relationship coach, speaker, and intuitive who specializes in inner child healing and personal transformation. She facilitates inner child healing workshops, retreats, and coaching sessions designed to help people reconnect with themselves and create more aligned, authentic lives.

Connect with Julia:
Instagram & TikTok: @juliasatterleecoaching
Booking + offerings: Available via her Paperbell: https://paperbell.me/julia-satterlee

🎙️ Therapist Unplugged is produced by The Montfort Group, a boutique therapy practice based in Plano, Texas, helping individuals, couples, and families build emotionally intelligent, connected lives.

Subscribe for real conversations with real therapists, because healing doesn’t happen in perfect soundbites.

To learn more about our team or schedule a session, visit: www.themontfortgroup.com

Follow us on Instagram: @themontfortgroup

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Julia

Laurie Poole 0:28

Welcome everybody to Therapist Unplug. This is Laurie Poole, your host. And today I am so excited to introduce my special guest, Julia Satterlee from Atlanta, Georgia, but originally from California, right, Julia?

Julia Satterlee 0:42

That's right. Yeah. Cali Girl.

Laurie Poole 0:45

Yes, a Cali Girl. And today's episode is called Who's Driving the Car? And we are going to talk about inner child work, which I'm sure everyone has heard sort of, you know, en passant, but maybe doesn't really know what it is. And this is this is an area of passion and expertise that Julia brings to the conversation. So Julia, I'm just going to introduce you and then I want to hear even more about you. So Julia brings all the hard-earned wisdom of her decades of varied and diverse experiences and her current life as a business owner, spiritual seeker, mom and grandmother into her work as a life and relationship coach, speaker, teacher, and intuitive. She facilitates sacred healing breath work, inner child healing workshops. She facilitates inner growth retreats. She conducts cacao. Did I pronounce that properly? And connection ceremonies and is a certified Akashic Records reader. Julia, welcome.

Julia Satterlee 1:48

Wow. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, Laurie. As you know, we have connected on so many levels, and I'm just super excited about this conversation.

Coaching Versus Therapy

Laurie Poole 1:57

Yeah, me too. Me too. Because, you know, I think this inner child work is something actually, as you and I engage in this conversation, people will go, oh yeah, that resonates. It certainly has with me in, you know, in the conversations that we've had. Um so Julia, in addition to all of this, you started your career as an attorney, and it sounds as though your career has gone in, you know, different taken different roads, traveled, et cetera. I'm really curious about uh in your practice, if you could help our readers understand maybe the difference between being a life and relationship coach versus a therapist.

Julia Satterlee 2:35

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's an important distinction, although there's so much overlap.

Laurie Poole 2:40

Yeah.

Julia Satterlee 2:40

Um, really, a coach is um less on the clinical side of things. Um, there's also a lot less rules that bind us in terms of things we can and cannot do in our sessions. Um, but really I think of a coach as somebody as a guide. So somebody who you know takes your hand and walks you through certain experiences that you're having or uh challenges that you're bumping up against, maybe working with mindset. Um and in my practice, and I think you know many coaches incorporate different modalities, but I use a lot of visualization, breath work, meditation, um, sometimes even kundalini yoga practices that are really good for certain energetic shifts. So I can bring in a whole variety of different modalities, as well as what one of the things that's important to me is that I really only teach what I need to learn. And by that I mean I can bring in my own life experiences, not as a way to talk about myself, but as a way to say, I've been there. I know exactly what you're going through. And this is what helped me, you know, take it or leave it. But yeah, it's a it's a way of really bonding, uh, creating some vulnerability and rapport so that the other person knows this is not just somebody who's been sitting up on a you know princess pillow for her whole life, but has really been in it.

Laurie Poole 4:05

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's part of building that alliance with your clients. Right. And creating that. I do understand. I've been there, and maybe your experience is a little bit different than mine, but I get what you're saying.

Julia Satterlee 4:18

Exactly. Exactly. I think there's a sense of safety there. Not that there isn't with a therapist for sure, but just like that camaraderie and safety.

Why Inner Child Work Clicks

Laurie Poole 4:27

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think from what you're describing, I think that there is an overlap for sure, because I think there, I think as therapists, sometimes we will certainly bring ourselves into the room. Although traditionally it's like we never talk about ourselves, but I think a lot of therapists think that's bullshit because it's a way of connecting with the client. Yes, you know, for and and not to make it about yourself, but just to say, hey, I understand. I really do. I have a therapeutic experience and I have a lived experience. Right, right. I think it humanizes absolutely, absolutely. So, how did you get into inner child work?

Julia Satterlee 5:02

Well, like I just said, I teach what I most need to learn, and I did some deep inner child work myself. Actually, I have been ongoingly for 10 to 12 years. Uh, but when I had what I consider my spiritual awakening, one of the foundational um things that I learned about was how so much of what we are is really a program. It's conditioning that's been laid on us, or we've downloaded as children. And then if we don't think through it, we live our lives based on other people's values, based on other people's beliefs, or on the beliefs that we uh created about ourselves based on the way other people behaved with us, our parents, our teachers, our pastors, our whoever, our caregivers. And so understanding that there's that layer of conditioning that we're not even aware of, and going back and looking at okay, what even if you don't think you've had capital T trauma in your childhood, you definitely had conditioning. Uh, you know, mom thinks money is the root of all evil, or your pastor thinks sexuality is a sin, or your teacher said you're not living up to your potential. And until we're seven, we just absorb those things like a download. That's right. So being able to go back and sort through who am I really? And what do I believe that isn't probably even the truth about me is so powerful.

Laurie Poole 6:38

And also what belongs to me and what belongs to other people. Well, you know, where did I absorb this from the people around me? Did I hear conversations between the adults that made me think, oh, you know, I guess we don't have much money, or oh gosh, maybe we're are are they gonna get divorced? Like there's there's all kinds of things. And you're right, between the ages of zero and seven. I even wonder about the inner child work of being a fetus.

Julia Satterlee 7:06

Oh, a hundred percent. I think it's very powerful. I think that we get so much um energetically through our mothers when we're in utero, that um often, in fact, I have a friend who's a functional medicine practitioner, and she says that when a child is very sensitive to loud noises as a as a child, because you know, like some babies will sleep through anything, right? Yes. Some babies will wake at the slightest thing. She says that there's really good research to indicate that that child who's very uh sensitive to loud noises probably experienced severe stress, or mother experienced severe stress during pregnancy. So, like there's science coming out telling us how important that is, but also just energetically. I think that there's there's you know, if the mother's concerned about money during the pregnancy, I feel like that can be energetically absorbed by the fetus, all kinds of things like that.

Conditioning Starts Very Early

Laurie Poole 8:03

Exactly, because those kinds of stresses also physiologically have an impact on both the mother and the fetus. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, you know. So uh it made that that really makes sense to me, just in terms of what it creates in utero environment. Right. If a mom is pregnant and she can't feed herself, or she has three other children to feed, or she doesn't want this baby. Right, right, exactly, exactly, yeah. Yeah. All right, so let's talk about who's driving the car, Julia.

Julia Satterlee 8:33

Okay. I love that.

Turning Triggers Into Healing

Laurie Poole 8:35

Um, okay. I I think that, you know, this isn't about, as you've said, it's not about being childish. It's really about understanding, as you say, those emotional imprints and downloads. Right. Um, and you know, I think sometimes we can find ourselves in a situation where we think, where did that come from? Yeah. Like, why did I hear that? Why did I have a like how why did I hear something a certain way? Or how did I have that visceral reaction to an environment, to something I've said, to somebody's facial expression, and so on. So I'm wondering if maybe we could start by describing what inner child work really is. Where do we start with that?

Julia Satterlee 9:18

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, there are lots of different ways you can go about it. But for me, and in my practice and at my retreats and in my sessions, the most powerful way is to do a visualization where I take the client back to a very significant moment, you know, in their early life. And actually, before we even do that, we identify a certain feeling or a certain experience that they've had recently in their adult life that really upset them or made them very uncomfortable or made them angry. Those are all really good indications that you're looking at trigger. And when you're looking at a trigger, you're looking at wounds. So what we need to do is go back and look where that wound started. So let's say I've got somebody in front of me who's recently had an experience with a co-worker where she felt, you know, severely criticized or uh even uh disrespected is a really so what we'll do is we'll go, we'll identify what that feeling is and we'll get really granular about it because sometimes disappointment is masquerading as rage, sometimes abandonment is masquerading as sadness, right? So we have to get really granular about what the feeling is, right? And then then we go back, and I I really encourage people to just trust their intuition. So the first experience that comes to your mind, say you're five years old, you know, you were playing with a friend, and their parent said, you know, you're you're being rude, right? You can't act that way, you know, whatever it might be. So we go back to that moment and and feel all the feelings that we felt as that five-year-old. I take them back to what could you hear, what could you see, what could you smell, what could you taste, so that they're really, really present in that moment as that five-year-old.

Laurie Poole 11:15

Wow.

Learning To Meet Your Needs

Julia Satterlee 11:15

And then we go through the experience, like really remember and imagine what was said, what was done, you know, for people who've experienced physical abuse. This can be very, very difficult, but it's very important to really feel those feelings. Um, and then what we do is we ask ourselves, like, was that was that true? Like, was I being disrespectful? Well, likely not because you were five, right? So usually the answer is no, that wasn't true. But what happens in that moment is we make what what uh Tony Robbins calls a critical decision about ourselves. We decide I must be bad. Oh, I'm bad. And then we carry that on through the rest of our lives in other experiences, right? So that's why this is coming up in a work experience with a 40-year-old because she has this wound from five that never got healed and that she never looked at with a compassionate lens. And that's really key here. Compassion is such a big part of this work, and then really compassion for those around you, and I'll kind of get to why that's important in a minute. But mostly what we want to do is and what I actually do is have my clients as their 40-year-old self self, let's say, go back to that moment with five-year-old self and give her or him what they didn't get. Right. So if a parent didn't stick up for you when your brother hit you, or if uh, you know, a pastor said something that was very damaging and your parent didn't, you know, sort of correct them, or uh if a parent didn't protect you from another parent's abuse, those kinds of things, we go back as the adult us and we be what that child needed in that moment. She needed you to stand up for her. So I want you to actually visualize you standing up for her. No, that's not okay to the person who's who's doing the abuse. Or she's just a child. She can't be acting, you know, she can't be doing what you're saying. She's that kind of thing. Or did you just need to be helped? Okay, so adult you go, old five-year-old you, tell her you love her, tell her how beautiful she is, tell her how special she is, all of those kinds of things. So we give to our younger self what we needed in that moment and didn't get. That sounds very powerful. It is powerful, it's beautiful, and the emotions that come out as a result of that. But I'll tell you what I feel like the most powerful piece of that small piece is you learn that you can meet your own needs. Yes. That is so empowering. When you know that you can meet your own needs, you are unstoppable because you don't need somebody else to validate you. You don't need somebody else to reassure you that you're valuable, that you're beautiful. You know, it's lovely to have those things. We all want that. But in the end, it comes down to you and you. And if you know that you can give that to yourself, man, that is such a gift and a superpower, really.

Laurie Poole 14:33

It is a superpower. I mean, I'm just I'm I'm absorbing, I'm taking in what you've just said, which resonates so strongly because in in the couples' work I do, for example, uh, ultimately the piece of it is exactly what you've just described. It's relationship with self. It's those unhealed experiences from childhood that laid down a blueprint of how you view yourself, what you believe others think of you or see you as, it creates a lot of distortion, honestly, in terms of your own value, the limitations, and and the kind of work that you've just described about really being your own source of comfort and reassurance is huge. Because if you can do that, if you can do that, then Julia, you're not looking externally for the things that you need. You go within and you go, it's like Dorothy clicking her heels together three times and going, oh my God, I had the way to go home the entire time.

Julia Satterlee 15:40

Glinda was right, you know. Exactly. I'm so glad you brought that up because I do feel like all of my work is around helping people come home to themselves, helping people um understand their magnificence, helping people clean off the lens that they've been seeing themselves through and see it through the lens of either their higher self or source energy or God or the universe, whatever you want to call that. But I believe we come in whole, perfect, and complete, and we have all this muck laid on us that we have to go through the process of cleaning the windshield, if you will, so that we can see clearly who we really are. I I love what Ram Das always said, which is we're just walking each other home. And that is a perfect description of really what I feel about my work. And it really is the process of teaching people self-love. Because people say, people talk about self-love all the time, but how do you do that? This is how you do it. You you learn to trust yourself by giving yourself what you need, that kind of thing.

Laurie Poole 16:49

Yeah, that's such a that's such a great point because I think people don't really know what self-love means. And and I mean, it it truly is not a bubble bath and a candle, it's it's much it's much more than that. It's it's having the courage also to walk towards yourself and the things that you're the most terrified of, yes, or the most uncomfortable with. Yes.

Julia Satterlee 17:13

Uh that compassion piece too. Uh sorry to interrupt, but I just remembered something I I wanted to say because it was really important, is when you learn that compassion piece, you learn that um as you go through your life, you can see the things. So, so when we've had these traumas, when we had these wounds, we learn to adapt to them.

Laurie Poole 17:37

Right.

Julia Satterlee 17:37

So we learn, we learn to shrink, let's say, or uh for me in my in my life, I learned to be overly accommodating at the risk of my own needs to other people because that made me valuable, because I felt unvaluable, invaluable or without value. And and so we have these adaptive things that we do. And a lot of people talk about that when we talk about shadow work. And the important thing to understand about our shadow or even about our triggers is that they served a purpose, they were protecting us, and so we can't be mad at them or angry or hate them. The important piece is to have compassion to that piece of ourselves and say, thank you. Thank you for getting me this far because I needed protection. Thank you for helping me, but I don't need you anymore because I get that I'm not those things they told me I was.

Laurie Poole 18:35

Exactly, exactly. I will say to clients, how brilliant were you as a kid? Right? You stop and think about how brilliant was it that you found a way to navigate what didn't feel safe. There were things that you told yourself, there were ways you showed up, there were ways you you found a way to feel protected in some in some measure. Yes, but that no longer serves you and maybe gets in the way of an intimate relationship with yourself and with others. Absolutely.

Julia Satterlee 19:10

Yeah.

Laurie Poole 19:11

So I think we're saying the same thing.

Who’s Really In The Relationship

Julia Satterlee 19:13

We are totally saying, yeah. And on the subject of relationships, one of the ways that this really plays itself out in a big way is in especially romantic relationships. And I work with couples a lot. And one of the first things I do is take them through this inner child healing work because what they discover is well, what I like to say is there's never just the two of you in your relationship. There's always at least four. There's you and her, or you and him, and then there's your mother and his pastor, or her father and your brother, right? You bet. But you have these arguments or because you get triggered, and it's not even you two fighting with each other. It's your mother and his pastor, right? Like, so why won't we get to the bottom of who's driving the car so that you can be in charge and have conversations that are really about you guys and not all this other stuff? It's so powerful.

Laurie Poole 20:10

That's wild. I love that. And I love the way you frame that. Like, it's really not about you folks, it's it's this person and that person who apparently have some space in your head. Exactly. You know, and uh man, um so on that on that note, um, I wonder if we could talk a little bit about how our childhood emotional experiences wire our patterns in our adult relationships. And I think, you know, you've touched on it's romantic relationships. Yeah, that's where a lot of this stuff seems to come up because I think we feel especially vulnerable. Yeah, we really want to be loved, we want things to work out, or maybe, you know, what is it? Gabor Mate says, you can be sure that you will choose a partner who will trigger the trauma in you. And therein lies the opportunity for healing. Because healing, when you have someone witness and sit with you and hold space for you in that work as a couple, man, I'll tell you, it's it feels really sacred to me. When I when I look at or when I'm in the presence of a partner who says, Oh my God, I had no idea that that was how you were feeling or what you experienced. Maybe they start to cry, they like the emotion in the room is huge, but it's like this magical breakthrough in the relationship. It's like, oh my God, I see you in a way I never saw you before.

Julia Satterlee 21:42

Yeah, yeah. And similarly to how we were talking about sharing ourselves in our sessions with our clients, I think it it is so important in a romantic relationship because again, it humanizes. And the other it gives the other person permission to say, Oh my God, I have something like that too. Like I I I behave that way because of my conditioning and I never saw it before. Like it can offer these opportunities. Um, I think you know, you said that in into in romantic relationships, that's you know, one of the best places to do this work. I think that's the purpose of them, honestly, because I believe relationships are mirrors, all relationships. And whenever there's any kind of uh tension or uh irritation it's really showing us something about ourselves oh yeah and uh i one of the things i share with people a lot is you know we talked about this before the four agreements was foundational in my sort of spiritual education and he says could could could you say could you tell people what the four agreements are just so folks know good idea good idea four agreements is a foundational spiritual text written by uh Don Miguel Ruiz from the perspective of Toltec wisdom but it's so applicable to modern life it's it's really incredible one of the four agreements is don't take anything personally yes people always say that's impossible well the thing is it's impossible until you go back and do inner child work because when you understand that the checker at the grocery store wasn't giving you side eye she was having a bad day but you felt slighted that comes from when your brother gave you side eye or you know whatever it is so in our personal relationships we have these mirrors that give us the opportunity to say oh what am I not looking at in me yes I think the people that we that we really rub up against the hardest the people that we have the most contentious relationships are just trying to show us something in ourselves yeah and if we understand that the other person is almost always coming from their wounding without understanding that they're coming from their wounding then we can also have compassion for them and say oh I'm so sorry who told you you were not worthy right because that's that's how it comes up yeah how did you learn that you were not you know that you were inferior whatever it is yeah it's such a beautiful opportunity to meet each other in that moment it is and I love the way you framed it in terms of how people will mirror one another it's like I reflect back to you and you reflect back to me.

Laurie Poole 24:33

Oh yeah and yes sometimes that's really really hard I um I I you know it's so interesting uh just to share a real quick story this week I was working with a couple and uh they've been going through a really rough time and now but but they've done some beautiful work and now they're coming for couples there because they're really ready to take the elevator down a level and do the the much deeper work. And at the end of the first session I said oh my goodness look at the parallel experiences of isolation you've both had and you didn't know that the other one was isolating and you never talked about it and it was it was scary to give words and you were afraid of hurting the other person. You wanted to protect the relationship so there was avoidance and silence and yet here you both are having had a very similar experience of isolation and loneliness and fear of judgment and oh my goodness uh you know to your point is this this sort of mirroring um and and how people will come into your lives to help you learn about yourself this this this school called uh the human experience has one hell of a curriculum Julia I think some chapters are pretty fucking hard almighty geez Louise oh my gosh absolutely do you think that there is a difference between uh you know how sometimes people's behavior will be attributed to being immature and I don't know if that's if if that's a fair description as a or descriptor as opposed to saying somebody got activated I don't even like the word trigger because it it just it it it just I don't know but activated something within us gets yeah yeah and and I think you know on the subject of immaturity some of us take a little bit longer to get places than others.

Julia Satterlee 26:33

I know for myself I was a very late bloomer. If that was immature fine but I was a late bloomer I came part I came late to the party in some respects right yeah um and I I learned things about myself that were decades in the making that I wish I had learned you know a whole lot earlier in my life but I truly believe that we're all on our own path and we're on the right path. I love Peter Cron always says whatever happened to you couldn't have happened another way because it didn't. How do you know you're where you're supposed to be because you're there. Because you're there. Same thing. And and so accepting that everybody's at a different pace I think is really important.

Laurie Poole 27:16

But I do agree that sometimes immaturity can definitely be more like along the lines that you were saying an activation because when we see immature behavior it sure looks like a child doesn't it oh I have seen in myself you know and listen I'm I'm I'm I'm in at least my fourth or fifth act you know but I've I have I have seen in myself where I cross my hands I look away I'm like okay forget you know and that kid shows up and it's like eh I'm gonna take my ball and go home. I'm just gonna go home now I don't want to play with you anymore.

Julia Satterlee 27:53

Right right exactly oh yeah yeah oh yeah she can show when they when they call somebody names or they you know or they or they just act stupid what they're they're really usually protecting themselves. It's always usually about protection. And when we can see it for that instead of getting activated ourselves we can say oh even in our head I'm really sorry you're having this moment where you're feeling like five year old you again and that you're and that you have believed what it is that was said or done to you that makes you think you're that person because you're not right.

Laurie Poole 28:33

And some sometimes it's just it's an emotion that comes up like I'm thinking about an encounter where you know the kid in me showed up and I thought what came up for me was I'm not being heard. It doesn't matter if I try to explain it's not going to matter. Right. And that's and that's a childhood thing. Stay mute. Don't show distress.

Julia Satterlee 28:56

And the key there I think is to take it one step further and to say when I wasn't being heard as a child what did I make that mean about me yes I'm not worthy of being heard. I have nothing to say I should just be quiet. Right? So that that piece to me and and we didn't get there when I was talking about the exercise that I do but that is the next important step in that exercise is when somebody said something, did something to me what did I make that mean about me? Ah yes yeah yeah I grew up in a home where emotions were not allowed like not allowed stoic old school father two brothers a very masculine mom who was in her masculine energy a lot but who also died young. So here I am in all of this masculine energy the only girl and my emotions were absolutely not okay. No you're too sensitive you're too emotional you you're too much so I learned to shrink I learned I wanted to be as small as possible in every possible way all the time and I wanted to be very accommodating of people so that they would I would feel like they felt like I had some value right right until I was able to to see that it wasn't just the experiences but what it was that I made that mean about me. Yes that broke it all open because then I can ask is that true am I invaluable? Am I unworthy is the word I'm looking for yeah I was created in the image of the divine I that's not true and I'd only believed that because of the experiences that I had yeah so I think that's key when we look at what did I mean about me.

Laurie Poole 30:47

That leads me to my next question or or comment which is how we will recreate family patterns relationship patterns because of those uh beliefs that we have about ourselves. And we find it oh my God I'm dancing the same dance my partner might be different. You know when you think about relationships over time why is it the patterns get repeated well it's because it's it's familiar it's what we know but it's also based on what we believe for some those experiences we had in childhood.

Julia Satterlee 31:23

Yeah yeah for sure yeah and then so continuing on with the example I just gave about my own life because emotions were not allowed I grew relationships a marriage an engagement relationship other relationships into my life that did not require me to be emotional because that was terrifying for me. But when you can't be emotional in a relationship you don't really know each other. I didn't really have any intimacy you know emotional intimacy with these partners because I was not bringing my full self I couldn't and it wasn't until I understood how shut down I was emotionally and how powerful it was to be vulnerable with somebody that I could have healthy relationships. And look that took 50 years so it's never too late is what I'm saying.

Fear Of Opening Pandora’s Box

Laurie Poole 32:13

It's never too late and and it's also Julia a testimony to the fact that we continue to evolve grow expanded man and and you know honestly relationships are a huge conduit for all of that there might be other experiences like a terminal illness a chronic illness but relationships feel to me like the uh the school of life in so many ways because it's the great frontier it is absolutely the great frontier I would like to hear a little bit more about what happens when you are working with someone doing this inner child work and all of these emotions erupt like I I don't know I just have this image of a lot of stuff coming up unexpectedly or that people are afraid if they open Pandora's box something terrible is going to come out and they'll never be able to put it back in the box. Yep. I wonder if there's some resistance and fear sometimes associated with this kind of work.

Julia Satterlee 33:23

Absolutely no question about it. And some people get halfway down that road and they're like no not ready for it. And I totally respect that. You need to do what's safe for you in the moment. But when people have stuck with it and they've gotten to the end of the process they generally have felt an incredible release and also an incredible understanding of their own power and their own, you know, and and and how uh how much agency they have over their emotions and their life. So it can be while it's incredibly draining and and painful sometimes it's also so uh illuminating and I think that that illumination really gives people the the strength to to be with the work. And and the other piece of it too I think there's three follow-up things that are really important in this work. So the first is sharing so we generally only do these exercises either in groups or you know one-on-one with somebody and they're gonna be able to share their experience with me and we're gonna be able to process it together. You can do this work on your own by yourself, but I always caution like it's really helpful to have somebody to bounce it off of maybe if you've done it a few times with other people then you can continue the work by yourself. Because because there are so many pieces to bring up like you could do that exercise I described earlier a hundred times in your life and you'd still find new things. So sharing is really important. A second really important follow-up piece are things like journaling. I think it's really important to get your thoughts out on paper if you can and and really have a record of what what you saw, what you felt what you heard I think that's really important. And third is the other half or the other side of the coin I call it of in this inner child work, which is release and reclaim. And what we do is we look at um who we were without all the conditioning who our inner child was did she like to dance? Did she like to pick flowers? Did she like to go swimming? Like really get into what that child's joys were because they're all different for all of us and then figure out how to express it. Sometimes we'll make a collage that expresses our inner child. Sometimes we'll have an outdoor experience that allows us to express that inner child. And I one thing I want to say about this that I think is really powerful is people talk about your purpose. I think your purpose lies in what your inner child loved. When you figure out what your inner child loved, what lift them up and you can do that in your adult life that's your purpose because that's I feel like how you came into this experience and what you came to express. But anyway back to the exercise. So there are several follow-up exercises that I think are really important not only to process the emotions out of your body that you just brought up we know how important you know nervous system regulation is but also to give expression to it energetically to get it out of your body and out into the world I think is a really important way to kind of diffuse it and dissolve it and and let it go.

Laurie Poole 36:41

That's um one of my favorite mantras is better out than in yeah I don't care what it is better out than in right you were talking about um nervous like our nervous system and so on. When people come to see you I'm wondering if they will talk about oh I've had episodes of depression I seem to have all this anxiety I I just don't feel myself does some of this work help relieve anxiety or some of that like that that sort of nervous system kind of activation yeah um when when they can you know pull this stuff up and and and work through it?

EMDR Breathwork And Other Paths

Julia Satterlee 37:25

I think so you know I do think so and let me just say I am certainly not saying that there isn't any kind of um hormonal or chemical or uh physical components to things like you know uh anxiety and depression not saying that at all and I'm also certainly super supportive of getting the kind of help you offer in terms of a clinical psychologist. I think it's critical. But I do believe that there are some pieces of some people's depression and anxiety that are rooted in this inner child wounding and therefore are candidates for this kind of healing. Yeah that makes sense. Yeah and I think you know what EMDR is also very similar to inner child work as I'm sure you know and I know a lot of clients who've gotten a lot of relief from a combination of this kind of coaching and EMDR work. The other a couple other things that I've found to be incredibly helpful are plant medicine. So we're talking about uh ketamine places where maybe psychedelics are legal that kind of thing and then also breath work because both of those things allow you to get underneath your thinking mind and at these very deep subconscious issues without so much like conscious pain and and emotion. Do you know what I'm trying to say? I do absolutely yeah absolutely allows you to get to the root of things without needing to re-experience so much of the pain.

Laurie Poole 38:59

That's right. That's right. Yeah absolutely I have not I have personally not done anything that's plant based but I have done EMDR and it really is it's very um you can't get right to the source. I mean it's it's a it's a very powerful modality of um psychotherapy for sure. Yeah Julia any last words or like I I would I'd like to hear just if there's anything any anything you would like to leave our listeners with before we close our our our uh episode today uh let me think about that for a second um yeah we didn't get super far into the woo uh we are both you know I am very yes yes and and I really like to think that my practice is a combination of very practical this kind of like um uh work around shadows and child you know child work and all of that um and if people are comfortable we can also do a little bit more on the woo-woo side maybe a past life reading or you know regression therapy or and things like that.

Spiritual Tools And Women’s Healing

How To Work With Julia

Julia Satterlee 40:04

So there's definitely I think room for all of that. And I think that's really important to to acknowledge that we're all uh you know spiritual beings having a human experience human experience that's right allowing ourselves to experience some some more on the spiritual side can be really important but it's not for everybody and I totally uh I have lots of clients I work with who are not interested in that side of things at all but I did want to mention that. And I also really believe that we're in a time right now where sisterhood is really important. And so a lot of stuff that I do is around bringing women together to share their experiences. And that is certainly not to say that the guys are not important. I don't mean that at all but y'all have had a little bit of time I think we're all you know we gals are allowed to now have a little bit of a little bit of the limelight if you will yes for sure. And so things that I do like that are you mentioned my cacao and connection ceremonies that's an opportunity where we come together as 10 or 15 women we drink heart opening cacao um together which is an ancient you know plant medicine not psychedelic but it's beautiful and and do breath work and then just share our experiences. Or I lead retreats and those are usually all women and we get together for three or four days and we do some of this work together and we support each other and we also do fun activities together and maybe we cook together and by the end of the weekend you feel like you have this whole new friend group and these people that you've shared these just powerful experiences with. I think that energy that we send out into the world when we come together as women is really important in our world right now. We need more divine feminine love and compassion and kindness and openness and receptivity. We just need more of that energy in the world right now I couldn't agree with you more.

Laurie Poole 42:00

I couldn't agree with you more um Julia if our listeners want to get in touch with you or talk to you about this kind of work how can they reach you we we will include by the way your your website and email address um as we promote this episode but how how can people get in touch with you?

Julia Satterlee 42:21

Well my paper bell link will be in your description that's where all of my packages all of my sessions all of my retreats that's where all of that lives um but I'm also on Instagram at Julia SatterlyCoing at on TikTok at the same Julia Satterly Coaching. I also have um a brand new YouTube uh channel that I'm really excited about called Julia Saturly Coaching but it's also tea talks with Julia so yes okay so listen you know what and I'm telling like my my my cup here says Cafe à l'amour which is the love cafe so there you go cheers yeah I always have my ubiquitous cup of coffee cup of tea in a yellow mug which is my my favorite color and what I like to say is the color of my soul um and and we do it's just talking like it there's no real um there's no real structure I just share what's on my mind and maybe something that came up in a session or something that I'm working on in my own life and hope people will interact you know in the comments on the on that YouTube channel.

Laurie Poole 43:29

So those are the ways that you can find me um and I would love to connect with any of your listeners and I do have a retreat coming up in June so if somebody wants to work me uh that would be an awesome opportunity but yeah lots of things all the things all the things Julia this has been so much fun oh I've enjoyed I that this really has been a lot of fun thank you so much for joining us today and for all of our listeners um Julia's contact information and more about what she offers and where you can find her will be listed on our on our website. Julia thank you so much I look forward to another conversation.

Final Takeaways And Goodbye

Julia Satterlee 44:07

What a joy Lori you're just such a spark of light and I'm so grateful for the work that you do in the world it's so important.

Laurie Poole 44:14

Thank you. Yeah until the next time