Healing The Inner Child

• What if your perfectionism, people-pleasing, or tendency to shut down under stress isn’t a flaw—but a survival skill you learned long ago? We start with a school strike and end up somewhere far more personal: the quiet ways childhood blame, anxiety, and mixed signals script our adult reactions. Through honest stories and clear examples, I unpack how a wounded inner child can drive overthinking, take everything personally, and push us into procrastination when the pressure spikes.

• Together we trace the arc from early chaos to adult coping, showing how the body remembers what the mind tries to outrun. You’ll hear how a household ruled by urgency and hot-cold moods can teach a kid to scan for danger, shoulder blame, and chase impossible standards. Then we flip the script with practical tools: naming feelings without shame, comforting yourself the way you would a small child, and building tiny, repeatable wins that retrain your nervous system toward safety. We talk somatic resets—longer exhales, grounding through your feet, five-sense check-ins—and pair them with steady language that keeps you present instead of spiraling.

• We also look at relationships as laboratories for growth. If feedback feels like rejection or conflict flips you into flight mode, you’ll learn how to slow the moment, ask for what you need, and swap mind-reading for clear bids for connection. I share why my love languages matter, how to repair with kids at any age, and what it means to reparent yourself in real time: not by erasing the past, but by meeting it with new choices. By the end, you’ll have a simple framework to catch old patterns early, soften the inner critic, and let the adult you lead.

If this resonated, tap follow, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a quick review—what old script are you ready to rewrite?

Transcript

Welcome And Show Format

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Chicka wow wow. What's up, party people? Thank you for tuning in to another episode of L Kivate Your Life. I am your hostess with the most S. L is in the letter L and key as in the key to your heart. So if you're a first time listener, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for deciding to partake in Elkie Bait Your Life. Generally on Mondays, it is Mindful Monday, and Wednesdays are wisdom wellness Wednesdays. And I'm Mama Elkie, your hostess with the most s. And just a little background about me if it's your first time. I work at uh a school in Dublin and as a special education aide. I've been doing that for the past four years. I came from a background of customer service and sales, and just always was the ear that listened without judgment. And that's how I got here. Whether I was driving Uber or Lyft or a friend to lean on. So that's how I evolved into Mama Elkie. Uh so I was coming on here and was going to talk about the strike that's happening and ask you, have you ever been in a strike? This is a first-time thing for me, and I'm still learning how to navigate it. Our teachers are striking for smaller classrooms and better benefits and more money and just various different things that we have been fighting for. But then I realized or I stumbled across something, and something once again happened as it always does, to make me come back to our inner child of the past. And what is that exactly? Our inner child of the past is well how do I explain it simply? Simply. Great question. There is no simple way to explain it. So let me start with this. Do you think do you take things personally? Do you isolate when you're stressed out? Do you have perfectionist attitudes? But at the same time, you also procrastinate. These could be symptoms of having an injured inner child of the past. What I mean by that is you have a wounded inner child. And what is a wounded inner child? It's unresolved trauma. Basically, what happens is our wounded inner child sort of dictates how we feel, how we process our emotions. And the reason that happens is because of the things that happened in our childhood. Maybe our parents didn't show up for us in the way that we needed. Maybe we were blamed for things that weren't our fault. Wow, I could give you some great examples. So let me start with this. Mom, I love you. Rest in peace. I know you're in heaven. Peacefully with your dad and our other family members. So my mom used to totally freak out when we had to go somewhere and be somewhere. And it was all about we have to be perfect and we have to be on time. And my mom, I know now in hindsight, my mom had some mental health issues, but obviously growing up, you don't know these things. She had a very bad temper that the family would blame on the Irish temper. And she could be very hot or cold. And my brother and I would be ready at that time. And but because she was so anxious and had such anxiety, she would start yelling at us, what do you mean you're not ready? Where is the dish that we're bringing to grandma's house? Or why are you dressed like that? All of a sudden, the shift, the blame would be put on us, even though we were standing there like, okay, we're ready to go, mom. She would be yelling at us because of things she didn't think of and she wasn't prepared for, but the blame shifted to us. I don't know if any of you can relate to these, this uh experience that I'm sharing with you. I'm sure we all had different households, different experiences, different kinds of parents, different parenting styles. Like I said, hindsight is 2020, and now I realize there was a diagnosis there, my famous line. And I can speak on that honestly, truthfully, and confidently because of where I work. I work in a school with special education kids, I've done so for several years now. I also read patterns, I'm a pattern person. And so what all of this has revealed to me and taught me, and speaking on this podcast, which has helped me to be, it's proved to be cathartic, is that I realize myself, my friends, my husband, we have not fully healed our inner child of the past. Because we probably had parents or role models that didn't love us in the way that we would have wanted to be loved, didn't show us that we were worthy of love. Um, they may have blamed us for the problems that were going on, like the example I just gave you. And so what we end up doing as an adult that has these inner child traumas is we end up blaming ourselves, taking everything personally, not trusting our instincts, questioning our instincts, because we didn't have role models that knew how to give us the emotional support we at that time wanted, needed. And so we're spending all this time trying to be perfect, taking everything personally, and what does that do to you? It takes up so much space in your head that you feel like you can't get anything done, and so you end up procrastinating because it all seems too overwhelming, and why? Because we didn't nurture those feelings and learn how to heal our inner child of the past. So I want to encourage a lot of you out there to do so. How do we do that? I'm here to tell you some of the steps you can take how to do that. One of the things I want to recommend is to listen to your feelings, but don't shame yourself for them. Hold them as if you were to hold a child, maybe your child, right? As an example. Think of holding your inner child of the past or hold them like you would a small child. But do not shame yourself for having those feelings because those are your feelings, and you are entitled to those feelings. Also comfort, comfort yourself the way you would a small child, or your own child, or your inner child of the past. If we learn to start doing things, we can heal that inner child of the past and move to a healthier, stronger, more confident adult. Give yourself grace, love, compassion, because that's what a healthy adult would do. I hope all of these things resonated with you, maybe made you think of, if not yourself, maybe someone you know that could benefit from this information. I find myself in these situations when I'm talking to people, it constantly reminds me of the book I read, Your Inner Child of the Past. And just when I think I'm fully healed, something comes up between me and my husband, or me and a friend, or coworker, or colleague, or a family member, and it reminds me, why did I or this person handle this situation this way? Oh yeah, probably because of this. And if you think about it and you go back to how you were raised, who your role models were, what that looked like for you, it might help you to uncover some things that you haven't thought about, you haven't dealt with, and it will give you a new way of looking at things, treating things, and healing that inner child of the past. There's something very freeing about doing this as an adult, and I'm 57 years old and I'm still learning these new practices. I'm still learning how to reprogram my brain. The last week I talked about the fight or flight mode and how my body just goes into a somatic way of doing things, and it has a lot to do with the way I was raised. So think about that if you're ever punishing yourself for something that you shouldn't be punishing yourself for, or taking something seriously and asking yourself, why did I take that so personally? And why did it upset me so? Or why am I such a perfectionist? Why do I put myself in that category? Why do I put such expectations on me? Think back to those moments of who your role model was and what they did for you and how they raised you, and what kind of person you were then and now. And maybe you can comfort that person and offer that inner child of the past the love, the compassion, the comfort, all of the things that you were missing back then. It's never too late for us to be better, be better, love ourselves, be in a healthy space, learn to be a healthy communicator and person and partner and mom, dad, brother, sister, cousin, niece, nephew. All of the things I share with you on this pod are to help you to get to a better, stronger place. So I hope this resonated with you today. I hope that it helped you to have some realistic moments with yourself. And I have to say, it's very humbling to talk about it because it's making me think not only of my own inner child of the past or even my husband's, but it's making me reflect on, gosh, I hope I was a good parent and I hope I provided those things. And if I didn't provide those things, I can start being a better parent right now and providing those things. Because I don't want them to feel empty or sad or like I didn't validate them, or it's funny, my love language is words of affirmation and physical touch. And why? Because I definitely didn't get enough of that growing up. I felt like I really had to work for those things, and even when I did, it still felt short. It still felt lackluster and empty and half-assed. So thank you for tuning in today. Thank you for listening. I hope that it helped you in thinking about how you handle things and go through life and communicate with others and with your partner. If it did, I would like to invite you to give a thumbs up, give a like, share your feedback, share your comments. I would love to hear your experiences and what kind of adult you are, and if this was helpful or not, if this resonated with you, or maybe you know of somebody that it would resonate with, so you want to pass it on to that person. That would mean the world to me. Thank you to all my loyal monthly subscribers, Jeff Potter, Creative Cara, Mike Kaufman, Lisa Roberts Corbello, Roger Havens, Kyle Few. Thank you all for being loyal subscribers. And thank you to all my loyal listeners who religiously like and comment. And I really appreciate you. Remember, when you like and comment and share, it helps the algorithm to go to the next level. So thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Until Wisdom Wellness Wednesday. Ciao for now.