Episode 46: Healing Childhood Scars for Better Relationships With Jen Youngquist

In this episode, we take a deep dive with Jen Youngquist into how early emotional wounds can silently impact our adult relationships. In this powerful conversation we explore how unhealed childhood patterns—like emotionally unavailable caregivers and “daddy wounds”—can shape the way we show up in love. Jen shares her journey of healing through physical transformation, spiritual awakening, and stepping into her voice. We unpack the idea that relationships are mirrors, and how manifesting, conscious choices, and self-reflection can help break toxic cycles. This episode is an invitation to courageously examine your past, shift your energy, and call in the love you truly deserve.

About Jen:
Jen is a spiritual dating coach that is committed to helping women to spiritually awaken, grow and shift their personal energy to become absolutely magnetic to their dream partner. She has been certified as a coach in several modalities including Robbins-Madanes, Strategic Intervention, and Sacred Depths. She lives in Cincinnati, with her husband and three cats. Road cycling and traveling are activities that she and her husband enjoy doing together and have combined the two as a way to bond and stay fit.

Find Jen:
https://www.facebook.com/JenYoungquistCoaching/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenyoungquist/
https://jenyoungquist.com
https://www.instagram.com/jenycoaching/
https://datingalchemywithjen.substack.com/

Chapters

• 0:03 Healing Through Personal Transformation
• 12:00 Healing Relationship Patterns Through Awareness

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the Heal Yourself Podcast, where we dive deep into all things healing. I'm Denise, a speech-language pathologist and a self-love coach for adults and teens.

Speaker 2: 0:15

And I'm Kira, a traditional naturopath and functional nutritionist, and we are here to guide you through the transformative process of healing your body, mind and soul.

Speaker 1: 0:25

From the latest in functional medicine to nurturing your relationship with yourself, healing trauma and even transforming your money story. We're here to empower you with the knowledge and tools to create lasting change.

Speaker 2: 0:39

So, whether you're looking to heal physically, emotionally or spiritually, join us as we explore the many paths to wholeness and wellness. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Heal Yourself Podcast. I am one of your hosts. Kira Denise is not with us today, but I do have a special guest for you, jen, and I'm gonna introduce her before I bring her on. So Jen is a spiritual dating coach that's committed to helping women spiritually awaken, grow and shift their personal energy to become absolutely magnetic to their dream partner. She's been certified as a coach in several modalities, including Robins Madenas. I told you I was going to butcher that I probably still did Strategic intervention in sacred depths. She lives in Cincinnati with her husband and three cats. Road cycling and traveling are activities that she and her husband enjoy doing together and have combined the two as a way to bond and stay fit. How fun. My husband's a road cyclist, so Cool. Well, welcome Jen.

Speaker 3: 1:46

Nice to have you here. Nice to be here. Kira, Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Yeah. So I always like to ask how did you get here, like what? What led you to become a dating coach?

Speaker 3: 2:14

Oh well, my own personal healing journey led me to be a dating coach. So I grew up with parents who were not really there for me emotionally, with wounding that made me feel less than with wounding that made me feel like I needed to prove myself to other people before I could accept love, which was a major hindrance when you're trying to find that, you know relationship, that you're trying to find that you know relationship, that you're trying to find a husband or a partner. And yet everyone that I was dating was, like my parents, emotionally unavailable. And you know, when you're used to that kind of energy, you tend to seek it out, unknowingly, out in the world.

Speaker 3: 3:13

So I had to well, I had to go on a personal healing journey and I was painfully shy. Painfully shy because it had been drilled in my head that people are dangerous, other people are dangerous. That people are dangerous, other people are dangerous. Opening yourself up to them in any way was going to be painful for me. So, you know, I would have rather have nulled my arm off than to, you know, be in front of a group of people or even to make friends, like I was one of those weird kids that never was able to really make friends in school and you know, I always walked around feeling like there was something wrong with me.

Speaker 3: 3:53

I was always an outsider. I never fit in anywhere, you know, and I know it was all my doing. You know, now, looking at it from this side, you know, I, yes, I got picked on, but I understand why. So I decided to get myself physically in shape, so heal my body. You know, when you're going through college and you haven't been taught how to eat right, you're eating nothing but junk and fast food. You have no time for anything else, right? No?

Speaker 2: 4:29

money.

Speaker 3: 4:30

And no money. Yeah, so I gained a bunch of weight and that was starting to kind of really weigh on me and depress me. And I had one of those kind of come to Jesus moments looking at myself in the mirror and basically I heard this thought in my head that said, well, you can't cry about it if you aren't doing anything about it. Yeah, I guess you're right, guess you're right. So I embarked on, you know, learning how to eat better and I fouled the exercise every day and I did, I stuck to those things and I lost the weight and I gained a bunch of muscle and, along with it, a bunch of confidence. So I started to see myself in a different way. Way, and when I did that, I noticed that I also, like other people, also started seeing me in a different way. Yeah, I thought it was because of the way I looked, but that was wrong. It was because I was different, my energy was different. I was interacting with people differently. I wasn't putting up with the same crap that I put up with when I thought I was fat and ugly. So I continued that journey. Those became habits. I've stuck with them ever since. Let's see, I was probably what 24, 23, 24 when I started that, and I'll be 50 next month. So I've managed to keep those habits and it served me well. You know I'm healthy and fit and you know I don't have any major health issues.

Speaker 3: 6:22

But then there was something nudging me to go deeper with it. Um, I started to tackle an even bigger chunk of my confidence by getting in front of people. So I really did like working out. I ended up really, you know, I guess I became one of those people that's like, once you do it and I'm like, oh, this is awesome, I actually like it, you know. So I ended up loving going to the gym and I decided I wanted to become a cycling instructor. So, because I was taking the classes and there were some instructors that just were not not that good, and then I'm like I think I can do better. So you know ego coming out there, like I can do better.

Speaker 3: 7:14

So I got certified and it took me a while to get to the point to do better. But you know it scared the shit out of me. I'm just gonna put that out there. I got more comfortable with it as I did it, more as as we do, and then I also decided I'm going to be a yoga instructor. So I did that too and I still am a yoga instructor.

Speaker 3: 7:42

So all of these little things that I did have just led me down the path of really figuring out who I am Right. Because of all of the stuff we have in our past, it just kind of weighs us down and as you start to like take off the backpack and, you know, take rocks out of it and put it down, we start to see who we really are and what we can actually do. But I've noticed especially a lot of the older generation have not been willing to do that, like my parents especially, and I have seen them go backwards, like literally revert and get worse. So you, you know, like Tony Robbins always said, if you're not growing, you're dying.

Speaker 2: 8:29

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 8:29

Like you literally are, which brings me to relationships. So that was like the last piece of my puzzle. All the people that I were dating, like I said, were, like my parents, emotionally unavailable, and I had no reason why. I didn't know why that was happening. Yeah, and at that point in time I didn't understand how energy worked.

Speaker 3: 8:56

I didn't understand how I thought I had healed. I thought I had healed from. You know the childhood wounding I thought I had healed from. You know the childhood wounding I thought I had healed from. You know the abuse that I had gone through. Turns out I only did a portion of that. Healing is not a straight line. It is cyclical. You do have to come back and revisit things here and there and you know you'll have to do that for the rest of your life. Like there is no destination with healing, it's an ongoing thing.

Speaker 2: 9:32

This is Denise and I preach this and it comes up in every episode. It's ongoing and people need to always hear that You're not done, You're not healed one day Right right, yeah.

Speaker 3: 9:44

And so it got to the point where I didn't know what to do, and I wasn't someone that would go seek out traditional therapy, because that version of me would have thought that was quitting or giving up or being weak. And you know, it's probably something I should have done, you know a heck of a lot earlier, but no one could tell me that, you know. So it was totally my own journey, like no one was going to be able to help me with this, or I wasn't going to let anyone help me with this. Let's put it help them, and that was a detriment to me finding a relationship, as it turns out. So I had to.

Speaker 3: 10:42

I had to come to terms with, with all of my past, but what I ended up doing is I went to see a psychic medium of all things I wasn't really spiritual at this time and she gave me the name of a book to go get, and it was a book about manifesting and how it works. So that was my first foray into, like the universal laws and principles and how they work, and taking responsibility for your own actions and energy, which, at that point in time, I was very much in victim mode, thinking that what's everybody else? Yep, it's all these unhealed people that keep being attracted to me like there's no good ones out there, right? So I was putting giving my power away to external circumstances. So, once I started to take responsibility for that, to look at how I was being, how I was showing up in the world, what I was choosing, like that's when everything started to change.

Speaker 3: 12:00

I did manifesting on purpose. You know, I literally I got clear with exactly what I wanted, what I was going to put up with, what I wasn't. I made a pact with myself to start to say yes to things I would normally say no to, because if you what's the old adage like do what you always do, get what you always got, right, yeah, so, in order to shake up your energy, you have to do something different, you have to make different choices, you have to put yourself in different situations, and so that's what I committed to doing, and within three months of starting that, I met the man who is now my husband, now my husband.

Speaker 3: 12:46

So we've been together for almost 14 years now and you know, looking back on it, probably the biggest turning point was I. It was our first date, actually, and he ended up like massaging my feet for a long time and I don't remember like why, but he did, and then I wasn't that attracted to him at first, but then I got to thinking like, okay, he literally checks all the boxes and you know what?

Speaker 3: 13:45

my selfish ex definitely would not have massaged my feet for half an hour. So why am I not choosing seeing him for who he was? I was only seeing what I was. I was not seeing what I was used to, you know, which was someone that always kept me, you know arms length and you know was not very supportive and, you know, didn't want to open up to me and made me work for love.

Speaker 3: 14:10

Like he's here, he is just offering this and I'm like, oh, this is weird, I don't have to work for it, I'm not attracted to it and literally, you know, like I said it come, it came down to a choice, yeah for me. And so, to answer your question, how I got into being a coach was because I remember how shitty it feels to not know what else to do, like to be, you know, to want this thing so bad, but it's been denied to you, making you feel like there's something wrong with you, to you, making you feel like there's something wrong with you and it just serves to like, really bring out what you see in the world.

Speaker 2: 15:03

So if you think that there's something wrong with you, you're going to put yourself in situations that will reflect that put yourself in situations that will reflect that yeah, and that's the thing, and no one likes to hear this your life is a reflection of you and so, even if you're listening to this and you're like, well, I don't need to manifest my dream partner Like I'm already married, look at your marriage. If you're constantly complaining about your spouse, that's a reflection. You got to work on you. You don't just focus on what that person is doing wrong.

Speaker 3: 15:34

Right, we get what we are an energetic match for.

Speaker 3: 15:39

So every relationship has its own energy. So, if you like, for example, if you tend to attract, say, a lot of people that cheat on you or are dishonest, even though you're an honest person, there might be areas where you aren't being honest with yourself, right, or you have the worldview that everyone is just out to get you and therefore that is going to be reflected back. So our relationships are always a mirror of what is happening in us too. So if you're just blaming your partner for all these things that he or she isn't doing or is doing that you don't like, like, there is an energy to that. Why is that happening? And the best way to smooth any of that out is to start with yourself. Like to really look inside and I'm going to you know, I'm just gonna say it like it all comes back to how we were raised and what happened in our childhood. Like I've not come across anyone that is having problems that it wasn't from something that happened in their childhood or how their first seven years.

Speaker 2: 17:07

I mean, everything is formed in those first seven years and yeah, there's more that happens up through 18, but yeah, it's, those become our unconscious beliefs and they take over everything and a lot of people don't realize that.

Speaker 3: 17:23

Yes, yeah, and especially for women. If we haven't had a father who was there for us, who was supportive, we will harbor those daddy wounds, father wounds. If you had a father that was absent in any way, like even if it wasn't his fault, like maybe you know you were on the poor side and your parents had to work all the time and they just weren't able to be there Like that still leaves a mark, even though you understand that you don't hold that against them. You're going to have some level of abandonment wound. You know, if your parents or your dad had any kind of substance abuse issues and wasn't able to be there for you or, you know, literally just couldn't connect with you in some way, you know, like that was my dad. He can't connect to humans. Like he just can't. He can't even connect to animals. Like I think that he has undiagnosed CPTSD and it is only getting worse now that he's in his 70s. It's sad, it really is sad to see, but because I never had that supportive father relationship and he never showed me how I should be treated by men, like our dads are our gateway to our future relationships. They're there to teach us how we should be treated. And if you have a father that is not going to support you or isn't there for you, you're going to seek that out unknowingly in your future relationships, trying to work that karma out. So I would highly suggest, like anyone that had a less than ideal father, even if he you never knew him, like still it will leave a mark, like you'll want to get some clarity around that and what kinds of issues that might be causing you in your current relationships.

Speaker 3: 19:52

And this is the kind of stuff that I help my clients through. I really help them to identify what is that pattern, what is that energy that is attracting to you the relationships you don't want, attracting to you the relationships you don't want, and then I help them shift it and then give them the confidence, help them get the confidence to get out of their comfort zone in order to get out into the world, to find it, to find what it is that they're looking for. And you know it doesn't matter how old you are. You could do this at any age. So you know if you're sitting there in your 50s or 60s or whatever and you're like, ah, if that ship has sailed? No, it hasn't, only if you want that to be the case. Yeah, like I'm a believer that whatever you want in this life you can have. There is no, I'm too old, I'm, I'm too this, I'm too that. It might take a little bit of work, but you can have it in the universe. We'll work with you, yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:59

Well, I'm curious because obviously this sounds like a process, right, it's like what I do. I'm like I don't have one magic thing for you to go out and do and heal your physical body and you're not going to have that either. But I'm curious for those listening that are like, oh crap, like I definitely have the father wound I didn't have one that was present. Is there anything they can start to do?

Speaker 3: 21:27

And what I like to tell people is our past holds a lot of keys to our healing, so especially your past relationships, and one of the first things that I do when I work with someone is we try to figure out what those lessons from the past relationships are or were supposed to be. So I'm not talking like cause. People usually come away with the wrong, the wrong lessons. So like if you were cheated on, you know, then you're you might walk away with well, I knew I shouldn't. You know I can't trust people. Or you know, if your lesson makes you feel bad, it's the wrong lesson. It's the wrong lesson. So if it has to do with you closing down and distancing yourself and being more careful, it's the wrong lesson. That wasn't it. Which is why working with someone is I would highly suggest it, because we get to have a dialogue about that Right, and I can you know me or whoever you work with can guide you to be like yeah, but I think there's something else here.

Speaker 3: 22:48

You know, and to see that energy play out. It's not an easy thing to see, it's really not, and I think that, literally, is my gift is I'm able to really find that really quickly, like what that energy is between you, know, the two people in the relationship.

Speaker 3: 23:13

Energy is between you, know, the two people in the relationship, and then we kind of trace it back to oh okay, yeah, my dad was this way or my mom was this way and I'm used to this kind of you know energy and then, once you've identified it and you see how it plays out, like awareness is like a huge, huge piece of it, huge piece of it, but it's not quite enough. I mean, yeah, if you have awareness, you could probably look out for it. Have to do to really shift it. Inner child work is something that I use, where we go back in time and kind of you know, talk to that piece of you that was going through that at the time and you offer comfort, you offer perspective, and basically that piece is kind of out here on the periphery and you work to kind of like bring it in and integrate it, and then you have to start to make different choices from then on, even though it's a little difficult.

Speaker 2: 24:31

Yeah scary because it's new.

Speaker 3: 24:34

It's new, yes, yeah, and your body is going to be conditioned to a certain feeling and emotion. So, you know, working somatically as well, you know I like to work with people to okay, well, what, how do you want to feel in a relationship? Bring that in, get used to those feelings, because I guarantee you you're not. Yeah, because when you find them, you usually push them away, which is why we push away. You know nice people, because they're just giving you that love and you're like what the heck is this? Yeah, yeah. So if you find you're doing that and you're pushing away the good ones, it's time to understand in your body those feelings that you really want to feel in a relationship, so that when they happen, they feel more comfortable, they feel more like home rather than, you know, the energy of the past.

Speaker 2: 25:38

Yeah, yeah. It's a hard one for people to understand, because the subconscious mind is always trying to keep you safe, or the ego, at least, is always trying to keep you safe, and so people think, well, that uncomfortableness is not good. It's like no, that's actually what you have to work through, because that is your norm. If you're constantly attracting people that berate you or cheat on you or whatever, that's what the ego is familiar with, so anything better is going to seem uncomfortable.

Speaker 3: 26:11

Yes, yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2: 26:16

Well, any other thoughts or things that you want to share before we wrap up?

Speaker 3: 26:26

I would say you know, if you're someone that has had relationships in the past that were less than ideal, I would say that your first thing you'll want to do is to start to realize that you have more power than you think you do in this situation. You're not powerless. It's just going to take a little bit of courage to step out of that comfort zone to really go on that personal, exploratory, healing journey, but it is worth it. It doesn't have to be super painful. I mean there might be, you know, some things that are not easy, but most I haven't seen it be really painful for anyone.

Speaker 3: 27:21

It's more like a release, yeah, than anything. You're releasing all of this energy that's just been stuck in your body for so long, all of this energy that's just been stuck in your body for so long, and you just start to feel lighter and lighter and your vibration gets higher and higher, and that means you start to attract to you better and better things. So just start doing something, yes, get out of that that rut, that energetic rut you're in, and you'll start to see things start to change for you.

Speaker 2: 27:55

Yeah, I can attest to that one. On so many levels. We can relate this to everything beyond relationships. Yeah, yeah, for sure, For sure, awesome. Well, I always put everything in the show notes, but I like to ask what's the best place for someone to come find you?

Speaker 3: 28:13

Probably my website, which is just my name, dot com. So it's JENYOUNGQUIST dot com.

Speaker 2: 28:24

Awesome. Well, thank you so much and, as always, you guys, we love reviews, we love feedback. Tell us if there's something you want to learn about and we will see you on the next episode.