The Little Child Inside

Believe it or not, there's a little you inside of you. And if that little guy or gal never had a chance to be a kid, to be creative, or to just grow up in a normal household, then it's time for you to take the reigns. Discover how to re-parent that adorable, passionate, little child who has amazing potential and so much life to live with joy. You can even get started today.

Transcript

Okay, I guess there's really no good way to start this. And I get kind of like the heges when I even think about it, because it just sounds so I don't know, New Age weird out of there, when you talk about an inner child, and you'll hear a lot about it in psychological circles, and I don't know, maybe not so much as a Catholic. And yet, being Catholic is so much about being childlike and a little child before God, how Jesus, he told the apostles and the disciples and they, when they try to stop the children from coming to him, he said, Don't stop them, because it is to these that the kingdom of heaven belongs so it seems to me to make sense, to understand this idea of an inner child and for and if you are a person who grew up in a dysfunctional family, you probably didn't have a childhood, you probably don't even know what it's like to be a child or child like and and maybe while You have so much frustration in your life and so much you know sadness, because basically, when you're growing up, your own parents probably didn't even know how to raise you. Didn't know how to speak to you, comfort you, help you, and they didn't speak a language to you that made you felt loved and appreciated, and they just did the best they could yet. The same time, you may have come away from your childhood and even today, no matter how old you are right now, whether you're still in your family of origin, and you're still a young person, whether you've left them, you've left the you know, you've left the nest, or if you're even older, you have a family of your own, there's still a part of you inside that just wants to know that it's loved and appreciated and it's looking for encouragement and guidance. Because chances are, you didn't get that when you were a kid. You didn't get that when you're you know from the day you were born, how for a parent to look at that baby and say, You know what? I love you. I'm so glad you're in the world. I'm glad you're a boy. I'm glad you're a girl. I'm here to take care of you. I'm here to mentor you. I'm here to guide you in this very scary place called the world. I'm guessing you probably didn't hear that. You know if and if you did great, fantastic. God bless you. But I think there's so many people who get to a point in their life where they're just like, what? What's wrong with me? Why am I so mean to myself? Why am I in this, this cloud of like darkness, almost okay? And then you go to Mass, and you're like, Oh man, I don't know. Just you know, okay, I hear the words, but it's not, it's not touching your heart, and you may just be wondering, if you know, does God even love me? Is Is he as a father? Does he love me? So let's unpack all that for a second. Go back to this idea of an inner child. There's this child inside of you that is just screaming to get out maybe, and you spent your life more more than likely, pushing that little kid away, pushing him or her out of your life, and saying, You know what? I you know, I'm not going to listen to this. This is crazy talk. And yet, there's a child inside of you who's like, you know what? Let me out. And I've done a lot of journaling. I've done a lot of, you know, introspection. I'm I'm a melancholic personality by nature. I tend to do that. I go down rabbit holes. But to go back into your past and think about the times when you just remember your parents telling you how much they love you, hugging you, embracing you. And when you came to them and you were crying, they said, Hey, it's okay to cry. What's going on when you were mad? It's like, it's okay to be angry, right? There were, there are boundaries, obviously, but we're, we're, they were okay with all of your emotions. You didn't hear things like, you know, stop your crying. I'll give you something to cry about. Or Okay, enough laughing already. It's time to quit having fun. Let's stop fooling around. Okay? And again, I'll say it again. It's not to blame your parents. Your parents were raised a certain way, and this may have been going on for generations. So there's this little kid inside of you who never had a chance to be creative, to be the person that they they knew they were. There may be a there may have been a time in your life where you are very happy, joyful little kid. I remember my sister, an older sister, told me, you know, a few years back, she was, you know, I don't have you. You're, you're always so, you know, joyful and happy as a kid. Let me respond back and say, Yeah, that's before I got crushed out of me and beaten out of me where. And again, it's particularly if you're a lost child, where you felt that your role was just go hide in the corner and not be heard, and, you know, be quiet and just make sure you didn't tick off your parents or or other people. And you were never encouraged just be yourself to come out and say, wow, you know, that's a great drawing. Or, hey, that's, that's wonderful you did this. Or, hey, why don't you try to explore this? So think about an inner child in in Catholic terms. Think about it as the the person, the child that God created you to be, that never had a chance to even come out and do anything, or to be, or to be that person. And again, if you go back to the writings of John Bradshaw, there is, I think she's passed away, so I guess she can't be too upset. Lucia capacioni, a lot of her child work,

Melody, Beattie, a lot of the CO dependent folks talk about this little child that needs to be parented, for lack of a better word. And I gotta tell you, I struggle with that, because all of this psychology is telling us like you need to, you need to be, you need to re parent that child so that the child feels safe coming up. The child feels safe being itself. You know, we talk about, you know, Saint Francis of sales always, always said, you know, be who you are and be that well. But if you spent your childhood being who you were and you got beaten left and right, physically, psychologically and verbally, however, to talk about if you got beat up for being who you are, it is so hard then to come out and say, Well, this is who I am. I, you know, Doug, God, I'm I'm me, and I'm going to be me, right? And that all sounds good, but you may be at a point in your life where it's like I don't even know who I am. I'm trying to be a good person. I'm trying to please the world. I'm trying to please my boss. I'm trying to please my parents. If you're still living at home, I'm trying to please my spouse. My friends. You are so busy being what you think everyone wants you to be and need you to be that you don't have you have no idea who you are. And pardon me for going deep psychologically. But I think it's important that if if you feel weird about an inner child thing, look at it in real practical terms. Look at it as a person who needs to be heard, who needs to be nurtured, who needs to be told that, hey, I'm I'm okay, and

you may never get that from your family. You may never get that from your spouse. So guess what? Guess who's left? Yeah, that's that person in the mirror. That's the person who's going to give you that positive reinforcement, who's going to help you get along on this journey. Because if you're if you're an adult, right, if you're 18 or older, or even if you're not, you are the person who can help you and guide you and say nice things to you. You may never, you may have never heard anything nice from anywhere about you growing up. I have no doubt those those people exist. And so guess what? If you're not going to hear it from anybody else, if you can't get it from anybody else, it's gotta come from you. You gotta go to that little kid inside and say, You know what? For me, it's Mark, right? Hey, little mark, I really like you. I think you're a great person. I'm here to help you. And another beautiful meditation is to look in the mirror as your adult self and say that little kid. It's like, look, I survived. I You Are you older. So as bad as things seem right now in your life as a small, you know, as a child, as a young person, as a teenager, as a young adult, no matter what, we made it. I, I'm living proof. I am here we made it.

I, you know,

our it was as a kid growing up. I remember this time I was working on an electronic project. I don't know why I was even doing this, but for some reason I was probably, I don't know, 1011, 12, ish, I had interesting electronics and electronic projects. So I would go down in the basement on my father's work bench, and I had a little little cabinet full of, you know, resistors and diodes and all these little pieces. And I would sit there with a satin arm, and I would, you know, try to make these projects. And I remember very clearly that my my father, never once that I remember, said, Gosh, Mark, what are you working on? Hey, Mark, can I help you? Hey, Mark, this looks really exciting. Hey, keep up the good work. Keep at it. In fact, I remember quite the opposite. I remember sitting there working on this stuff, and literally, he would come from behind me, reach into, you know, one of his hardware box and pull out a screw or a nut or whatever, and just kind of walk away and show absolutely no interest in what I was doing zero. And I bring that story up, because now, as an adult, I look if I want to start something, and I wonder, why do I procrastinate? Why do I put stuff off? Why do not? Why do I not even attempt, you know, X, Y or Z? Because when I get started, I think, well, nobody cares. There's no There's no one cheering anyone. There's no one saying, hey, hey, keep up that. Keep, keep up at it. Keep, keep doing that. You know, you've got to persevere. You've got to stick with things. I can't tell you the number of projects I've given up or just stopped doing because that guy inside just kept saying, what's the use? What's the point? This isn't going to be successful. This isn't going to work. You know, I think Eeyore was patterned after me. There was, there were a cartoon growing up. I think it was Gulliver's travel, or Gulliver's Travels, and one of the cartoon characters was the negative guy. I will never make it. It'll never work. So I just identify with people like that. I remember, too, in the pants cartoon for the for the longest time I wanted so bad to be Snoopy Joe, cool. And then finally it dawned on me, just very recently. It's like, Dude, you're Charlie Brown. Man you you are Charlie Brown to a T. So I get back to that idea of this child inside who is never encouraged, who is never given mentorship, who was never guided, who was never cheered on, who's never encouraged to share his emotions. So now you get to a point in your life where you wonder why you're maybe sad all the time, or why you're angry all the time, or why you're afraid all the time. So I highly encourage you to go to some of these authors I've talked about, and look into a 12 step program. There's adult children of alcoholics, which is what's they amended that say adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families, because there's so many of the same dynamics with that. There's co dependence. Anonymous COVID that will help you with that. And here's a big secret, and I want you to hold on to this with all of your strength. If you're going to pursue a 12 step program, if you're going to pursue therapy, don't tell anybody, unless you can trust them with your life and with your heart, especially, you don't need to tell anybody I related to that, that story once where I was, I told my brother that I had, you know, been to therapy. I has been, you know, learning things. I was way growing and boy, you could just see his whole face turn sour, right? Because he had a business partner, oh, he had been going through therapy that didn't, didn't do him any good. He'd been doing it for 20 years. Okay? What I've found is that people who don't even try to work on themselves, who who they look in the mirror, and they see issues and problems, and they bury them deep. They want nothing to do with them, because the work is hard. I'm not, I'm not even gonna, you know, sugar coat it, the work is hard. But think about what you've been through. Think about how you are. You're at a place in your life where maybe you feel sad all the time, maybe you're afraid all the time, maybe you procrastinate all the time. Maybe you just get up and you don't even know why you're in a bad mood or why you feel bad. And

here's part of the key is to to know you're not alone on this journey. There are so many adults out there who are just crying for help, and we all go to work, and we're all looking at each other, we're all trying to put on a good face. We're all trying to prove that we're normal and natural and everything just wonderful. We had a wonderful family, and I've said this before. I said, don't I don't ever want to work for a company where they tell me that I can come join their family, right? I don't. I don't want to be part of your family. I've already been a part of a family, and I know it's a good intention. It's what's from that warm, fuzzy feeling. And again, if you've grown up in a great family, and you're very you know, you're all psychologically wonderful, and you you can express your emotions and everything, and that brings warm fuzzies, you know, God bless you. But for those of us I'm talking to you who have grown up in a family where it was dysfunctional, you

You owe it to yourself to stop and take a look. Look at that little kid inside. Go back. You know what? Go back. If you have photos of yourself as a as a kid growing up, look at that. Little kid. Look at that little child when he or she was smiling or laughing. Or maybe, if you're you're born a time where everyone's taking videos of everything. Go back to videos of where you're laughing and smiling, and find that little kid again. Say, I want that to be that little kid. I want to be that laughing, happy, smiling little kid as an adult, I want to figure out what what he or she was so happy about, and go back and go and, you know, and foster that relationship with yourself, so that when that small child in you is sad or press say, Okay, what's going on? Why are you sad? And you talk to yourself like you're a good friend. You know, you would never bash your best friend if they came up here and said, Oh my gosh, I'm so sad today. I just, oh, I can't you'd like, Oh my gosh. What's going on? Or how? You know, how can I help or what? How can I help you? I don't bet if you stop, if you listen to yourself for even a couple seconds when you're having a you know, a bad time. Well, you should be smiling. You should be happy. You have everything to be thankful for. Okay, watch the sky. Feel the scalp in your in your forehead go and I'll bet you dollars and donuts you are just absolutely berating yourself. You would never be that way with any other human being on the planet, but you may very well be that way with yourself. Okay, so find some pictures of yourself, and maybe, sadly, maybe you can go back to your pictures and you can find a picture or a video of you smiling and laughing. So again, there's no shame in going to you know, a therapist, I highly recommend a Catholic therapist, please, because they'll keep you grounded in your faith, and you will hopefully be introduced to the greatest family you could ever be part of, which you are a part of, right? God, the Father Jesus, your Savior, but your friend. He says he had the scripture I said. He says, I don't call you servants anymore. I call you friends. I struggle with friendship. What? What is a friend? What is that like Jesus? Show me how to be a friend. Show show me how to accept friendship and

how to be the best friend to yourself. So again, if you feel a little Woo. Woo about little child. Call it. Call it just taking care of yourself. Call it looking back in the mirror and say, You know what, I like you. I like this person in here. I'm really excited about today. I'm really excited about some things we're doing. I'm excited. I've got some passions about this, and that's a great thing too, about looking back at yourself and giving permission to be that child, and maybe uncovering, for the first time in a long time, things you're passionate about, things you've always wanted to do, things that maybe as a kid. You know, it's so funny, the cliche, well, you know, they little kids say things like, oh, I want to be a fireman. I want to be a nurse, I want to be a doctor, you know? Yada yada yada. But but maybe go back in time, and if you've lost that, that spark, that creative joy of of youth, oh well, you are of youth, maybe go back and find out what are the ones that you're really excited about. And if that's hard to do, there's great exercises where you you ask questions or write questions with your right hand. That's your I'm sorry. You're with your dominant hand, left or right, and then write questions, and you're writing them to your little child, and then have your child, you write back in your non dominant hand. And again. Don't, don't take my word for it. Just Just try it. Just again. Don't tell anybody. Go off in your room somewhere, get a piece of paper and say, Hey, little mark, little Johnny, Little Susie, how are you feeling today? And that little kid may very well tell you. So

even if this sounds silly, even if it sounds ridiculous, try it if you're struggling in life, if you are find yourself sad a lot, if you find yourself angry a lot, if you find yourself depressed a lot, you have nothing to lose, nothing. And I know you want more joy. I know you want peace in your heart. I know you want happiness in your life. So take some time. Check out some of those authors. John Bradshaw, Melody, B, B, E, A, T, T, I, E, Lucia Keone, who

does a lot of work, lot of inner child work, lot of creativity type work with therapeutic art, with these conversations and dialogs with drawing and creating with your non dominant hand, you would be amazed at just the power of working with your non dominant hand. So play with it. Have some fun with it. Check out the resources. And like I said, that there's nothing to lose if you you know you may have been you may have been prescribed antidepressant drugs. You may have been given, I don't know, whatever mainstream media says you should try. But go back to Scripture. How do you recommend reading the New Testament, where you learn about the compassion of Christ, you learn about the compassion of God, and look into your Catholic faith about the compassion of Mary as a mother. So if you're struggling with you know either parent, mother, father, okay, mine has always been the father. I've had a hard time seeing God as a loving type father. For my entire life, I've seen God is just this very distant, cold person, and I better be nice, and I better make sure he's pleased, and I better make sure I don't upset him, okay, but that's for another time about, you know, just understanding who God really is and what our faith does for for us, it's amazing. But for now, try some of those exercises. Be open to the idea that your your little child, your little kid, didn't get what he or she needed growing up, and it's up to you to provide that, because even if the whole world is mean to you, even you know, if you have parents alive today, if you have brothers and sisters doing the same thing, if you have brothers and sisters doing the same thing. People need you at work, you owe it to yourself to be kind to yourself, to be gentle with yourself and to be compassionate with yourself. One of my favorite saints. My two favorite saints are Saint Francis sales and Saint Therese and with Sioux. Saint Francis of sales is known as the gentle saints. So I highly encourage you to look into his writings. Go there for encouragement, but I guess mostly I'm encouraging you to take care of yourself, be kind to yourself, and to get on your knees and ask God for help, because you can't do without him. And I know that's going to be really hard if you have, if you're one of those people, has a hard time knowing God's love for you, knowing God's compassion for you, and his gentleness for you, as well as a heart. It's a struggle, but you're going to need to get on your knees and just say, Lord, I can't do this. I can't it's been a long, hard struggle. I'm in tears many days. I need to let go. Okay, it's a control thing. Check out Co-Dependents Anonymous on this. You learn about control. Okay, so I've rambled on long enough. Please know that I'm here. I'm encouraging you, and I'm not saying any of this is easy. I'm not saying any of this is going to change overnight, but just getting on the road of of recovery, of really nurturing yourself on the inside, you're going to feel great, or at least a lot better. You're going to find hope. You're going to find a new, I don't know, maybe a new passion, maybe a new desire to just work harder at it. Because I guarantee you this, the people around you aren't going to change. They probably have no desire to change. They probably have their own fears. It you can't you can't spend your life waiting for other people to change, to be the person that you need them to be or want them to be, okay, because they're just as broken as you are, as I am. So make the time, even if it's a few minutes a day to get started, I highly encourage you to look for a great 12 step group. I highly encourage you to find a Catholic therapist if you need to. But invest the time, invest the money, whatever you can, to take care of you, because again, you're with yourself. 24/7 365, days a year, you might as well get to like that person. You might as well get to be your best friend. Best friend. You might as well fall in love with yourself, and there's no greater way to do that than to start by reparenting yourself. Be the parent you May you never had that. You always wanted be that person for yourself. So take a look in the mirror, and, you know, do the work. Jesus carried us cross. We can carry our cross, He gave it to us for a reason. And this journey is going to be amazing. I guarantee it. So, God bless you. And again, I'm here for you. We'll talk soon. Take care.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai