Emotional Insecurity: Behind Every Fight, Or Flight Rests a Scared and Misunderstood Inner Child

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This is the light inside. I'm Jeffrey Besecker. Today we look at a story of an unsung hero. Manuj Aggarwal was an exceptionally brilliant and vibrant child. Sensitive and intelligent, he was a compassionate young man who had an affinity for the written word, envisioning him to one day rise to great career aspirations and heights.

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His parents, especially his father, held high hopes and expectations for Manuj. Expectations that perhaps bordered on an unhealthy obsession. For such a young and impressionable child. This left minute feeling bewildered, unnoticed and unappreciated, when all that he really wanted was to simply feel loved and accepted. To add insult to injury, Manuj watched as his parents were constantly at odds, feeling as though he had to linger as an intermediary in his parents relationship.

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The agonizing consuming emotional upheaval and turmoil, at times unbearable. And as a result, Manuj often found himself searching for a world of fantasy as his only means of escape. His curiosity filled the gnawing void he often felt throughout his life. You see, Manuj never found himself good enough or worthy. One fateful evening, Manuj, now in his early 30s, finds himself drowning in a pool of depression, feeling nihilistic and empty.

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And at his lowest, Manuj saw his emotional levels plummet to unbearable lows. And in his deepest despair, he even questions his will to survive. He discovers himself at his wits end, deeply in need of help. Find out how uncovering the source of his None childhood wounds led Manuj to a new lease on life, empowering him to thrive and prosper when we return to The Light Inside. Childhood. it's a time of innocence, exploration and discovery. Yet, unfortunately for some, it can also be a time of emotional insecurity and trauma.

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This trauma can manifest itself later in life as an None wounded child, an emotional entity which can heavily influence an individual's behavior, mental health, and our outlook on life. In this episode, we'll discuss the various symptoms of an None wounded child and how it can shape one's life. We will also examine the impact of emotional insecurity on the development of an None wounded child and the potential methods of healing and restoring bounce throughout our lives. By understanding the wounded child and its roots, we can gain insights into the emotional landscape guiding us all. We can also learn to move past the None psychological pain that, when left unchecked, can endure for an entire lifetime.

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Manuj, you've had a unique experience of None child wounding yourself, growing up under an impoverished and challenging lifestyle in India, and coming from a broken home, you faced such hardship and adversity as a child. Could you share with our listeners a little bit more about your journey and how that led to your core None child wounds? Yeah, well, as you said, I grew up in India in a very small town, and it was a broken home. My mom had some challenges with mental health, with a lot of trauma that she had experienced. And of course, as a child, you don't realize what is going on, you just want to be loved and held and understood.

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And my dad was pretty much a workaholic and I don't know, maybe how the dynamic played between my mom and dad, I'm pretty sure one sort of fed the other. So my trauma began trying to understand why this was happening to me. I was a bright child, I was always sort of in the top ranks in my class. So as a child I was always confused like what else can I do to get noticed or get appreciated? And the only thing I had was I was not good at sports, I was not good at a lot of extracurricular activities.

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And because of the way that the home environment was, I was extremely introverted, so I was not able to make a lot of friends. The only thing I had going for me was my intellect, my ability to read books and sort of do well in exams. So I put my heart soul into that and still it didn't really make a difference in my life as in getting noticed or appreciated. So that is where the trauma started, like trying to figure out the meaning of life, trying to figure out why am I not good enough, why am I not loved and what do I need to do to be whole, to be complete. And I think that trauma is what pushes you to extreme boundaries in your life, in your profession, in your later life and other relationships.

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So that is sort of the basis of where that seed was planted. So Minouch, as a child, when your parents were going through some of these challenges and traumas in their own relationship, how did their behavior make you feel? Yeah, it was mostly typical yelling matches and sort of silent treatments and just like an environment of isolation for everyone because when one person is angry, another person sort of goes quiet and then you have to find your own boundary so that you don't mess up and create another problem. So generally it used to be like isolation for each person in the household and that's why I spent numerous hours in my room by myself, like just reading books and things like that. And so that was sort of the environment that I grew up in.

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So as I sit with you in those emotions, I feel that pain and challenge in my heart. For me, it's such a poignant space. I can relate to that from my own childhood experiences. I went through a little phase, I say a little phase that might be a little diminishing, a phase of bullying and hazing through my junior high years, struggling to feel like I fit in. So that sense of isolation is very poignant for me and I can feel that pain.

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Yeah, exactly. Thank you for sharing that vulnerability with us today. So from my experience, dealing with that isolation is very difficult. How did you personally manage that? Yeah, so as I started growing up, as you said, try to find the meaning as a little child about life.

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And as you are growing up, your parents start to become less important, and your friend circles start to become more important. You start to relate to them more. But now, as that desire to relate is not reciprocated, then you again start to reinvent yourself. So in my case, I was like, oh, all these guys love sports, so let me try to get into sports. And I did miserably in sports and got laughed at.

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I was like, okay, this didn't work. Then I tried going to drama school, music and all that. I was no good at that, so it didn't work. And then there were a couple of times where I was first in the class in studies, and then all of a sudden I had people coming to me and saying, hey, can you share your notes with me? Can you tell me how did you do this in this exam?

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So I was like, oh, okay. Now I get it. So if I am able to study well, then I will get more friends. So let me just focus on that. And during that time also, I remember one incident.

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I was a teenager, like, I think 14 or so, and one of my friends started bodybuilding, and he developed some big muscles, and everybody was sort of circling around him, hey, how did you do it? Tell us about your routine. And I was like, okay, studies and bodybuilding seems to be the right way to go. And I joined the gym, and I worked for two, three months on developing some muscle. And obviously I was not as consistent as my friend.

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And then all of a sudden, I was hospitalized for one month because of some problem that I had. So I lost all the muscle that I built up. So it was like playing a game of Amaze, figuring out, okay, which way should I go? And then whatever feedback I got from my friends, from the environment around me, I started pursuing that path. But in many cases, the path was itself blocked by disease or whatever it is.

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The universe comes together and says, no, this is not the right way to go. It steers you, if you start to take notice of that feedback that the universe is sending you through events, through people around you, through places you visit and things like that. So as you're going through this sense of isolation, as you're moving through this kind of emotional struggle to say landmine, field of landmines because that in and of itself starts to interject somewhat of a subjective view, are you able to relate back as a child and kind of pinpoint some of the core emotions and feelings that you were feeling aside from that isolation. Of course. Yeah.

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So anxiety was definitely one where I was always thinking, hey, what if I'm not able to fit into this world? What if nobody likes me? Another one was just fantasies. Like, I used to create so many fantasies in my mind to just ignore the anxiety and just live. Imagine the life I wanted to live back home.

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I used to hear stories my landlord, where I used to live in the apartment, the landlord, that lady used to her whole family was in UK and she used to visit every year or so, and she used to tell the stories about how things are in UK and how they are compared to in India. And I used to fantasize about, oh, I'd love to visit UK one day and experience that life. And then the other aspect I really adopted was curiosity and adventure and courage, because I found that in a way, the isolation was also a blessing because nobody cared what I was doing, nobody gave interfered with my life so much. So I started to develop this curiosity and getting into all kinds of troubles. Let me try this, let me go to this place and try this.

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Let me try to play with electricity, let me try to play with fire. And then let me try to build like, I used to collect cardboard, like cardboard boxes that people throw away. So I used to go and collect them and make how can I call it like FPGs or things that you can just like sort of they represent human beings or whatever. I started doing that and then I remember putting firecrackers in them and then burning it off. A lot of these experiences were interesting and it taught me that life can be very interesting if you don't have any fear, if you don't have any inhibition around what people think about you.

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And if you get curious about stuff, you can really have a lot of fun even if you're alone. As children, we experience that None child as that endless sense of curiosity. As you mentioned, I'm relating to these stories in particular, especially with getting involved with maybe male children more than anything. I've watched the female children as grandkids go through that too. Male and female, both kind of that curiosity of testing that healthy, unhealthy boundary of fire.

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What is that fascination with fire? It's really curious to see how one other previous conversation that's coming into this episode I shared with another coach centered around my kind of unhealthy fascination with fire and testing those unhealthy boundaries. Yeah, that's interesting to see from my perspective how we find some of these unhealthy coping mechanisms to test to test, inform our framework of what's safe, what's unsafe. Sometimes when that unsafe is familiar, there's an unconscious element unwinding in that where we seek that kind of dangerous, unsafe, unhealthy environment unwittingly, because that's our sense of familiar. So it's an interesting area to see how that correlates?

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A lot of times. Absolutely. Yet throughout that journey, we're sometimes again overstepping those healthy boundaries. And that curiosity can either become unhealthy or stifled. We'll come back to that a little bit.

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On the surface, Manuj Aggarwal's story might not seem all that different from the rest of us. Our childhoods can be a challenging place, a place where we often struggle to cut our teeth and fit in both mentally and emotionally. In this way, Manuj's story is not unlike that of any adolescent. As a child, he struggles with the same problems and questions that most of us do. Only his are burdened by a family history of mental illness.

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And while the future may seem dark and hopeless, it doesn't have to be. Each one of us has the power. Seeing life through the eyes of a child is the only way to truly understand and acknowledge your None child. Just what is our None child and how do we know it when we see it, feel it, or recognize it? One description who we are when we feel most authentic, genuine or spirited, no matter how distant, evasive, and even alien it may seem to be, we each have a child within the part of us that is ultimately alive, energetic, creative and fulfilled.

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This is our real self as we truly are. The healing of childhood emotional traumas is consequently of great importance. This is an essential and necessary step to achieving a harmonious bounce of psychological comfort. And when that is achieved, we're able to embrace our truest sense of worth and value in a more vulnerable and authentic manner. Leah Marshall Marmulla is an author and personal transformation coach.

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Her calling - guiding others to reclaim their personal authority. Healing our None child is often a crucial step in this process. Leah, what role does reconnecting with past traumas and reclaiming our None authority play as we begin to heal our None child? So with that, working with the None child, that's the premise of a lot of the core work. And going back to the different ages where the trauma happens or the interpretation of a situation that was painful and then saying to that child, at that age, you are loved, you are perfect.

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The other people, other players in that incident were going through their own traumas in their own instances at that time. It wasn't about you. And that is the part that I found very useful and part of that reframing that it's not me. It wasn't always about me. Yes, sometimes I was misbehaving.

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So, yes, the parent has the right to discipline and say, that's not appropriate in this setting. There is always appropriate times where things need to be said. You can't just let a child done wild. I don't agree with that either. But it's like, okay, how was that message given?

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Was it done in a healthy way? Was a parent over stating the fact? Or was it really painful? Was the shame and embarrassment attached to it, the way it was said or done and so helping that little one. Okay, my mum or my dad said that, but they're also in pain, they're embarrassed at the time, or they were just doing what their parents did for them.

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So it's onward projection that isn't about me. I was just being curious. And you're allowed to be curious as a child. I was just being adventurous. I was just being loving.

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I just wanted this or that. And that was a normal state to be at that age. That's why I'm very proactive about saying age appropriate bad behavior because a child at the developmental stage has to test the boundaries. Healthy curiosity is important, and I'll frame that in a little bit. Yeah, it is meant to be curious about the world.

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We're meant to be adventurous. We're meant to flex our physical muscles as well as our emotional and mental. It's normal and healthy to be curious. How we do that might need to be guided because it's on the coding like programming. By witnessing our parents interaction and also very much around the messages that are implied, specific, ingrained, the words that we hear, the actions that we see, and then the reinforcement that goes with all of that as we develop those different stages of our life and just becomes habit.

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It's that knee jerk reaction and we don't even know it's in there. It's like, where the fuck did that come from? As a child, I feel I may have lacked some of those more healthily aligned fear genes. We resorted to some things of healthy exploration of gasoline and fire that may not be a healthy frame of reference of curiosity and allow it to put. That curiosity was done with an adult and taught, okay, this is what happened in the like a science experiment, not left your own devices to experiment.

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That's where I'm talking about. Children need to be exploring the world that they're in. But a parent, I think, needs to be aware where their child's interests are and then use that as the stepping ground and go, you want to know about it? Let's learn about that. Be interactive in a guiding way and not an oppressional way.

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And that's the balance. And we don't get it right. We screw up our kids. Every child's fucked up. Let's be honest about that.

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We all grow up with levels of crazy thinking and inappropriate reactions. Everyone is screwed up to an extent. And it's up to us as adults to unscrew ourselves and to find out healthier ways of being adults.

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The None child, it's the voice of your personal core. It represents your deepest feelings, desires and aspirations. This is the voice of your personal authority. The child is the seat of the adult. Therefore it needs care and attention.

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That child is also our None child, a mirror image of what we were as children. And this None child also needs care and attention. When we return, we hear more from Manuj and discover how he was able to begin listening to that None calling transforming the journey of his None child in the process.

00:19:31

Traveling throughout life we're all on that mission to discover our best selves to find that thing that is light yet along the pathway there we lose our way intellectually bypassing all of the good stuff, the real and genuine emotions inside that we often try to hide. I know this is something I myself often encounter minus looking back to that distant past of childhood do you feel we might at times over intellectualize our experiences as a means to avoid what we truly feel? I think it is partially both. It is partially testing the boundaries. But also, I think I had a little bit of a sort of a scientific mind at that point.

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I didn't realize it, but now I realize I was also trying to find what happens when you mix oil and fire, when you mix different kind of flowers and you dry them off and then you burn them. What happens? Do they smell? So I was trying to experiment with all these different elements and you put them together what happens, what the outcome is. So that was a little bit of a scientific curiosity that I had and sort of it developed into my profession which was also related to science and technology.

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That's an interesting point for me to interject here from my own experience again. As I've kind of went back on my journey of None child healing, None child wound exploration I went through a series of child regressions with the noted hypnotist Marissa Pierre going back and uncovering these layers of None child trying to reconnect with those feelings and foreign that new story. One of the interesting asides that come to light for me was that I was seeking some of those behaviors unbeknownst to them, unconscious to me now that I know as attention seeking behavior of trying to find recognition. Underlying the fear was that overriding fear of I might be caught I might be caught doing these things that I know are unsafe and that I'm not supposed to do that condition belief, what's safe, what's unsafe. It took going through that regression to reconnect with those things to go back and I actually had a moment of clarity where things kind of opened up to me and I said yeah, I can remember in that moment thinking but if I'm in trouble, they're seeing me.

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Yeah, I didn't felt completely seen in a lot of ways in my sibling relationship in comparison some of that become a construct some of that become an identity issue. I didn't feel seen specifically by my peers, even back to that young of an age, probably around the age of I have to be honest, around five or six started to kind of form in first grade of school. Starting to find my way through social interactions was an extension of how I was relating with my parents, first and foremost, and how I was relating with my siblings as peers. That extended on in my relations and how I formed bonds and connections. It still does to this day, I have to be honest.

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But it continued on through my school years. Yeah.

00:23:06

Underlying need to feel seen and recognized that at its core roots lies perhaps in the hands of insecurity. Yeah, absolutely. So sometimes we tip that scale the other way and rather than hiding, we're unconsciously seeking these unhealthy means to gain that attention. That was like a lightning bolt of revelation to me as I kind of worked back and then the end result for me was not feeling enough. I had some other emotional traumas that stem from an None child wounding of being raised in an environment where unhealthy anger was an expression coming from a generational pattern, where several generations back that pattern started with grandparents, great grandparents, where unhealthy anger was a normal mode or a normalized mode of operation.

00:24:05

Yeah. So working back, there's this kind of odd dance of fear of being noticed and then also seeking healthy forms of attention. Yet in that seeking healthy forms of attention, you develop the unhealthy habit of doing adverse unhealthy behaviors because you are certain you're going to get attention. If I create trouble and chaos, I know I can't be ignored, I can't be under recognized. So that was an interesting kind of dance of duality for me to work.

00:24:42

I totally relate to that for sure. It's interesting. It's an interesting aside to kind of compare and contrast how on one hand, some people when they experience their trauma, want to go into that complete withdrawal and hide. Others, whether with their wits about it at the moment or not, seek the global opposite where their method of getting that attention there again becomes those unhealthy ways of lashing out. Yeah.

00:25:10

Our subconscious mind is a very powerful force, right. Our whole life is controlled by it and we don't even know it. We try to rationalize it. Unless and until you do deep work like the one that we are talking about here, to really understand what is actually happening in our mind and then it all makes sense. It all makes sense why certain things happened the way they did and what actions we were taking.

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Because it's always the motivation is very deep rooted, it's very much hidden in the moment. But then when you are able to look back and not only look back because a lot of people don't have the courage to face themselves, because it's easier to blame somebody else and say not my fault, it was somebody else's fault. But if you can gain the courage to actually look back and say oh, okay, that's what's happening and now you are able to articulate it. Okay, we were seeking attention. We were trying to see how we can be seen.

00:26:09

And that's not an easy thing to say to yourself to face that right. Most people are not able to do that. That level of conscientiousness is a definable personality and characteristic trait. Within the five factor model of personality we can develop those characteristics and traits subjectively complex to judge or discern. Discern.

00:26:34

Hopefully we're not judging and we move into discernment how that takes place for each individual. Just looking at our patterns on thought, are our thoughts hidden from us or are we just simply not fully aware of them? There's a fine dance there that starts to play out in our psyche. An interesting conversation I had with a fellow coach who focuses on emotional intelligence just yesterday. That idea of an interaction or a behavior change being a vicious cycle.

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Is the cycle vicious or is this a concept, a construct that we create based on our emotional experience? And then the really kind of slippery slope for me is looking at the idea or the concept that where does that line blur? Where we start to invalidate the experience of another? Where do we start to slip in our own empathy, as we say, but was it really how do we maintain that balance? Becomes kind of a crucial question to me because the helpful side sometimes which is in and of itself tool.

00:27:51

Am I trying to help you or am I trying to cope with my own? But from a certain objective standpoint, do we start to create the idea that the cycle is vicious and start to bring that to light? Or are we able to kind of step back and take a healthy framing of our psychological perspective and say, but if I look at this and reframe this, I'm starting to create some of that idea that it is, I'm starting to carry that over. I start to look for the patterns that validate that rather than experiencing some of the patterns that say yes. And it can also just be a cycle.

00:28:31

We can also have that healthy balance where we're free of denial, we're free of the resistance. But yes, it can be both and I'm able to move with that. Yeah, absolutely. Beautiful. That's an interesting aside that I'm going to kind of interject here today.

00:28:50

No. So what happened was I told you my dad was a workaholic and basically he said, okay, you need to figure your life out. And I basically started working in his factory at 15. So he raised me like a factory worker. And one day I was so frustrated with life that I think I was like 1415 and my friend was supposed to come from us and I wanted to go see him and I got in big trouble for that and I was like, this life is not worth living.

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So I attempted suicide. I actually locked myself up and luckily I survived. But I didn't know, I was confused. I was like, Why am I still alive? What is going on?

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And then that sort of struck me as, well, I didn't die. Maybe there's a bigger purpose. Maybe I have to do something else, like something's going on. So those experiences sort of planted some seeds about what I can do with my life. It's just like I tried to look for the universal sign.

00:30:07

As I said earlier, when I went for bodybuilding, I fell sick for about a month. So when I tried to commit suicide and I didn't die, I concluded that there is a little bit more left for me to do. And what that was, was my role to figure out. That was my task to figure out. So as I was going through this living this life of a factory worker, which was terrible, like 12 hours a day, six days a week, and I was getting like $2 a day for that, I wanted to figure out, okay, what can I do?

00:30:40

And then one day I was going through some business magazines, and I was reading these stories of these tycoons who have made empires worth millions, billions. And I started comparing myself to them and say, hey, what have they got that I don't have? And started to figure out, what can I do? What resources I have. And that led me down the path of finding computers, programming the world of technology.

00:31:07

So that is sort of the transition I went through my childhood to find my love for technology. First and foremost, my heart feels and breaks for you, my friends. That space where you feel, you question whether it's worthy to be here is such a crushing blow. So again, I am so grateful for you sharing that vulnerability because that is such a difficult space to be in no matter where we are in our journey. Yeah, absolutely.

00:31:43

So I want to reel back a little bit as your father is starting to push you a little bit at the age of 15, perhaps a little prematurely to kind of step into that role of adulthood, to kind of, okay, I'm done with you. I'm done with rearing you. Here's the world, young man. Have at it. What were some of the thoughts and feelings that started the surface for you?

00:32:10

So the first thing is that I thought the world is so much bigger than the limited point of view that was being presented to me, something that was taught to me, this is the only way, and you have to take it, and there is no other way. And I was like, no, the world is bigger. The world is more beautiful. The world has got so many more experiences that I can bring into my life. But I just didn't know how to do it.

00:32:40

I just didn't know who to talk to to help me get there. The only thing again that kept coming to my mind. You are smart, use your mind to figure out things, what you want to experience. And in that conflict, half of my time and energy used to be working in the factory and half my mental sort of energy used to be trying to figure out how the hell to get out of there. The other thing that was happening is the mind was picking up all the patterns that I was noticing in the factory, like how this life works.

00:33:22

This life is very complex in the sense that we look at life as one unit, but there are so many smaller systems within our life that are put together to make our life. Like, food is one system, our hygiene is another system that we develop for our own. All of these routines and systems that we put in place. It sort of dawned on me as I was working in the factory where you have multiple machines, multiple sort of departments working together to build these widgets. So these are some of the things that were going on in my mind, observing the world around me and then imagining the world that I want to be in.

00:34:02

And so that was the struggle. That struggle. It seems to me, Minouch, that you were spending the majority of your childhood trying to figure out how to already be an adult. Did you ever get to the point, it's obvious to me where you said, wait a minute, what happened to my childhood? Wait a minute, what happened to the parents that are just supposed to love and support me?

00:34:27

As a young child.

00:34:32

What happened was there was a big void that was left, right? And that void got filled with things like alcohol, things with getting in trouble, things with rebellion, things with seeking adventure. Because even today I'm that child who wants to seek adventure. Like I want to just leave everything and just go and play. And that void never gets filled.

00:35:01

That void never gets filled. But what ended up happening was now I'm coming to a little bit of a present day as life throws more curveballs at you. After I was around 30, 35, I had another sort of a big shock and I can describe that, what that was. And I became suicidal once again. But this time around I had the resources, I had the context, I had my mind, which was conscious enough to say you have the solutions in you.

00:35:33

And so I went down the route of meditation and spirituality and finding these answers. I've done regressions with Marissa Pear myself and so I found that we are living a generational trauma. It's not even our trauma, it is a generational trauma that has been passed on from generation to generation. And then it is me who is supposed to wake up and say, hey, I'm not going to pass this on to the next generation. How do I cut this cycle off?

00:36:06

So that is sort of the journey I took. And I think that's where we are now today talking about this. Because at some point we realize this cannot go on for generation after generation after generation. Right.

00:36:23

Going through all that experience was horrible. It was painful. But once you realize the purpose of all that, I feel it was a gift because now I can say, hey, I was the one who woke up and then put a stop to this. And of course, you have differences with your children.

00:36:45

You cannot be the perfect parent. But I know for a fact that I'm not going to pass on these traumatic experiences to the next generation. That's an interesting scenario there alone with now I'm starting to venture into that grandparent phase. I'm watching my children. Parent children are all grown adults.

00:37:07

So we've had conversations around identity, childhood, going back and relating, tried to develop kind of that openness and interaction with my children throughout life, knowing full and well that there were times where my child wounding, where my own traumas did create a dean, so to speak, in that perception, but still being cognizant enough to say, from your perspective, how did you relate? I'm seeing that evolution and now I'm watching my youngest son, my youngest child with their first child and how conscientious they're trying to approach it and saying, let's be mindful of our traumas. We knew this before we conceived a child. Now, as we raise this child, the interesting aspect as a grandparent is how then do you just enough distance approach that you aren't also interjecting your own forms of maybe struggle, your own forms of control, your own forms of interjecting, your own condition, beliefs and traumas, yet still being that open and available guide. I'm here if you want to measure feedback, if you want positive support, but still trying to take somewhat of that hands off.

00:38:34

You have an awareness and that's part of where those patterns perpetuate. Yeah, absolutely.

00:38:41

So I'm going to take a pause here just for a quick second and we've kind of went off on a real expansive trail. Let's reel back in, if we might. Sure. With that knowledge of your interaction with Marissa Pierre, that's kind of a neat parallel we've traveled today because we can both kind of relate to that. So let's reel that back.

00:39:03

And now one aspect I know of my own None child journey is still remaining even though I have this knowledge in touch with that None child, still recognizing the value and that curiosity from that childlike perspective and still recognizing that child need for play bounced with healthy responsibility.

00:39:29

That's one big area I relate to is when is that a fine line that I am experiencing that in a healthy, beneficial manner? And when might I resort to that again, as emotional avoidant coping mechanism is a big one for me. I know. It's like I've got this in hand, starts to become emotional stuffing starts to become an avoidant behavior even though you're aware of it sometimes because you're aware of it, you're also unaware of some of the unconscious ways that that surfaces, if that makes any sense.

00:40:06

Am I craving play because there's a part of me that's still experiencing that trauma bond? Or am I keeping that healthy balance that keeps those active levels of curiosity there, that keeps me creatively stimulated, that keeps me moving forward toward new ideas? Or am I being subtly reverted back? That act of intellectualizing is a big one for me here lately because I've always been conditioned the belief toward intellectualizing. You might relate to that somewhat because it seems that from your perspective, your parents somewhat tried to push you forward into that mature intellectualization.

00:40:51

I can't spit that word out today. Intellectualization, intellectualization. I'm missing a syllable in there. I'm overthinking it. I'm ruminating on it and think, well, I'm missing this word.

00:41:04

That cycle of bypassing comes to mind to me. Do we now still try to say I'm going to marginalize that None child because I have an understanding, I'm going to distance myself from it? That in and of itself for me, I know creates some potentially adverse, unhealthy disconnects sometimes, especially when I'm looking at developing emotional competency and empathy, especially towards others because A, I'm going back to a pattern, condition, belief. We had a mantra and I'll say a mantra that was kind of a yes and situation when we were younger. My mother said I don't know is not an answer with a very healthy intention, with also not being directly demoralizing about it.

00:41:55

But still there's an undertone that says, but I have to answer and validate for what I know. That's been a duality for me personally throughout life. So as an aspect of I don't know is not an answer. We were guided toward the way to simply question in a healthy manner and find not the answer but the potential in the exploration of answers. We were guided toward the resources.

00:42:23

It wasn't kind of that admonishment leave it up in the air, figure it out. But those answers can be found in books. Those answers can be found when you go to the library. We had like three sets of encyclopedias in our home anytime we would come to our mother with I don't understand this, I'm frustrated. I don't know the answer, she says, but I don't know.

00:42:46

My child is not the answer. The answer is found in the knowing. The answer is found in the journey. The answer is found in the unraveling, in the finding and asking of the questions. That's the healthy bounce.

00:42:59

Now I know for me, through my childhood regression again going through Marissa Pierre, there was a part of me unconsciously that says I've always got to have an answer. I've always got to question things. I also have somewhat marginalizing even and doing it spiritual bypassing maybe in some way marginalizing and saying that questioning somehow is signifying that I'm not worthy, I'm not valuable. I'm invalid in what I do understand or what I do feel more than anything else. Yeah, I can relate to that.

00:43:39

For me, what happened was obviously coming into this as a person linked to science and technology. I always was intellectualizing it. I was always looking for a logical answer. But later on, life, especially after I started meditating, I found that tapping into your heart is much more powerful. So trying to focus on what feels good, what truly feels good, and if you go with that, I find that that is the sort of the moral compass or the GPS that you have built in.

00:44:15

And you can rationalize it, you can find logical reasons, but whatever makes you feel happy is the path. And so my focus have always now shifted towards how do I feel about it? If I want to do something, if I want to meet somebody, if I want to go somewhere, how do I feel about it? Whatever the logic is, whatever the rationale is, I don't pay too much attention to that as long as it feels good. Because it has always shown me over and over that that's the right path to take.

00:44:49

Relating that and my propensity to intellectualize I've always said from a very young age, well, what role does the heart actually play? Looking at that connection, we're looking at heart rate variable or heart rate variance plays that key role in emotional self regulation absolutely stimulates a lot of processes throughout our body. Things like hormone release, our elevated and lowered breathing states or interacting with the heart simplify without trying to over intellectualize it something I'm challenging myself or setting as an intention for myself maybe to now start doing is how do we start to surrender some of that need to over intellectualize it and simply acknowledge that, well, that is the process. It is the heart. Yet when we zoom back out on that lens, we can say it is the heart because it is helping regulate that variable.

00:45:54

It is stimulating our vagus nerve. Big proponent of that. For me, when I do go back in and dive deep on the intellectual, intellectualization I need to dive deep today and being harsh on myself, I'm wanting to say, okay, dummy, you're messing the spelling up. When we zoom back into that level of complexity, the vagus nerve runs in conjunction with the heart. Most of our core nerves interact out of our spine, right through our chest thoraxic area.

00:46:32

Yeah, all centered around our heart. So it does then when I get out of my own way and stop beating it up, make sense when we do intellectualize it and say that's what it means to be heart centered. Because all of those key nerves, our autonomic nervous system, are focused in that area. So now, rather than beat it up, I'm able to say yeah, well, it makes sense then and I'm all right with that. Absolutely.

00:47:02

So zeroing back out again from your perspective, manoosh, just what is the None child to you? And how do we know when we see it, feel it, or recognize it within ourselves? The None child is, I believe it's so much tied to the heart, our heart desires, in my belief. I don't think we ever grow up, actually. We grow up in our physical dimensions and things like that.

00:47:33

We learn a lot about the world, we gain a lot of knowledge. But at the end of the day, we are always going back to our early childhood and trying to reintroduce those same feelings that we missed out on. I think our whole life is a pursuit towards filling those gaps that we found in our childhood and so tying it back. When I say that I focus on what my heart desires now and what makes it feel good, I can always find a thread which ties that feeling back to an event or a place when I was a child. So in my perspective, I am that child still and you are that child still.

00:48:17

And we are just trying to serve that child and love that child and fulfill its desires by taking actions as an adult and doing the things that we do. That makes an excellent segue to me toward this question. Do None child wounds play an important role in developing a healthy self concept? To which I personally say yes and yes, they do. And in what ways, asking you that key question do None child wounds play an important role, from your perspective in developing a healthy self concept?

00:48:56

Absolutely. I mean, there is no question about it. As I said, my belief is that we are all basically children living in adult bodies after we cross an age threshold. But at the end of the day, we are just children and inside. And the caveat to that is you need courage in life to face yourself.

00:49:20

Everybody has a story. Everybody, even people who have been brought up in amazing households, they have experienced some trauma somewhere. And it's about the tolerance of looking at that trauma and saying, hey, how do I grow from there? Rather than using it as a means to become bitter and become pessimistic or have these negative emotions. And you see a lot of those kind of people around.

00:49:50

You know, I certainly see it in my vicinity at workplace and things like that. So it depends on how you process that trauma, how much courage you have to face the facts, how much courage you have to say I take responsibility for what I have become and what was given to me in my childhood and how do I interpret those in my adulthood and all that. And that kind of self awareness, that kind of courage very few people have, unfortunately. And that's the reason why we are in the state of the world that we are in because most people are just living their childhood trauma and exerting themselves on others to justify whatever negative emotions they are feeling. That goes back to that adage that children who do not receive emotional and physical support growing up tend to grow up to be hurt adults that core wounded emotional None child if we're not sure which wound is causing your emotional distress and pain there are key categories of these wounds.

00:51:03

Looking at the harm wound manipulation wounds rejection wounds deficiency wounds we've explored a lot of the ways that these can surface and interact. Attack judgment, shame, validation looking at domination, exploration, betrayal, guilt as examples of manipulation wounds where we struggle with the concepts. To me and this is an area I'm really hinging on lately of power, control and competition can often be again a state of duality. We can dance between a yes and state. Am I empowered?

00:51:48

Yes, empowered. Being more compassionate to me from my perspective in regard versus kind of an insecure power that is seeking that dominance, that is seeking that control, that is expressing some of those core wounds of betrayal, guilt and shame can be a very unconscious layer and level. We're talking about levels of growth moving to a next level concept that myself admittedly, I struggle with sometimes just because I'm intellectualizing it.

00:52:24

Yeah. Nevertheless, what is our core motivating factor or factors behind that drive to seek power of any sort? Are we looking to control and manipulate? Are we looking to dominate? Which inherently at an unconscious level is insecurity, is fear, is the guilt and shame.

00:52:46

So my response is to lash out in power. I will enforce my will on this, I will overcome can become an innate energetic relationship of how we reflect and view it. Just the way we label that for me lately has been an area of fascination. How are we interacting with our emotions? Are we trying to overcome to them?

00:53:11

Are we looking to smash out of an emotion? Are we looking to neutralize? Was one I come across that like well, why are you neutralizing? Means you're taking all of the power out of something. You're looking to dominate something.

00:53:25

You're looking to judge guilt and shame it in some regards on an unconscious or sometimes sub or conscious level throughout three different levels of awareness that interaction can take shape and we can be consciously in one place, subconsciously in another place and at another level at its deepest root unconsciously in three different fractured states of being. One phase of our childhood development wants that curiosity. One phase is seeking that acknowledgment at another phase and all within the same moment and instant of an interaction at the deepest level what is that unconscious child truly seeking? What is the value and meaning driving this? To me, when we look at moving to a next level sometimes that step is bringing those pieces or what's known in parts therapy, these kind of fractured senses of a core self back together.

00:54:23

Yeah. I can tend to be at odds with this idea of is it a different version of us, or are they just various ways we categorize and identify with them at our core? I'd like to try to form a concept where I am me. I am me in this situation, although experiencing different circumstances and situations and interactions, I am still the core None child. Me.

00:54:49

When I am being disingenuous, even maybe a little of a branch and a more expansive idea than what we are often conditioned to believe simply with questioning and curiosity, saying yes, and what if what if we're only one person? What if we are that core child? Absolutely. I believe strongly we are. I believe it plays a huge role in our lives.

00:55:19

We start to understand a few things much better. We start to understand the environment, the people around us much better. But at the end of the day, our actions and things, how we show up in the world, is very much controlled by that None child to a large extent.

00:55:42

And is it controlled, or are we vulnerably allowing it and accepting it there again, even in the way we express it sometimes might signal a different level of awareness. Yeah, absolutely. Another one I like to try to form an intellectual view of is that level of vibrational frequency and the concept of raising and lowering your vibration. Which vibration becomes a key question to me. Your emotions vibrate on one thing.

00:56:15

The wave that you speak on is a vibrational wave of energy. How you express yourself through nonverbal communication and movement is another wave of vibration. Your interaction with everything around your being has multiple touch points of vibration. So can we, in theory, just raise it all and lower it all? Or do we become aware of, well, this has its implications, this has its influence, this creates its impact.

00:56:49

Can we rest at peace with all of that, with our core None child saying, I am safe and secure and rest at peace with it, which is our ultimate state, optimized state of ventral vagal self regulation. In that state, we're open and available. We're not shutting it out. We're not saying I have ultimate control and power. We're just saying, in some regards, it is what it is.

00:57:13

Can carry its own implication depending on how we even emotionally connect with that statement. It is what it is. Is that avoidant? It is what it is? Or is it just an open and acceptance?

00:57:24

Yeah, it is what it is.

00:57:29

Exactly. It's an interesting question. I think that's the part of introspection that we need to dive in and find our own answers. Right. It's another aspect, is we all are on our individual journey.

00:57:43

So whatever conclusion we draw from one experience may be a different conclusion for you. And maybe a different conclusion for me and maybe a different conclusion for another person. But that's the beauty of life and the beauty of these conversation is to share those experiences and share those conclusions. Because every conversation leads to another insight, another thought pattern triggered. And it's almost like another conversation is another piece of the puzzle in your own story, right?

00:58:14

I see a lot of me in your story. I think you see a lot of you in my story. And sort of it starts to create that form, that complete puzzle in our own lives. When we were children, we had no choice but to rely on our caregivers. We were taught how to operate in the world and made to feel safe and protected.

00:58:36

As adults, however, we are meant to be our own protectors. Yet, if that caregiver is emotionally unavailable or abusive, they will also likely develop trust issues and become emotionally dependent on others. As adults, the None child that lives in the human psyche directly influences all that we do. Adults are controlled by their unconscious None child in a way that leaves this wounded child in control of their lives. Their maltreatment therefore leaves them feeling angry, ashamed, and sometimes raged when they've been wounded.

00:59:09

None children are the lens through which injured adults make all of their decisions. For instance, an adult with an None child who is neglected may struggle to form healthy relationships with others and may have difficulty trusting people. Can you imagine your children or a child you see playing on the street trying to make sense of adult relationships or make career decisions? Predictably, such attempts can only end in disaster. This is what happens every day in the lives of people who have a wounded None child.

00:59:40

These small, lost and lonely parts of ourselves are afraid, anxious and insecure, and that can make our lives miserable. However, there is hope. None child work, including self parenting, can ease the pain and heal the wounds left behind by caregivers who are abusive or toxic. The None family systems model is an integrative approach to individual psychotherapy developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s.

01:00:09

It combines systems thinking with the view that our mind is made up of relatively discrete subpersonalities, each with its own unique viewpoint and qualities. Traveling through life, our core traumas in None child wounds can tend to add up, and as a result, we begin to see ourselves through the filtered perspective or lens of the fractured pieces that we have become. Pieces that we each develop that allow us to cope both with the perceptions of the emotions of our None worlds or how we feel the outside world is treating us. Therefore, we frequently find ourselves struggling to reunite and unify these parts as an authentic, genuine and effective whole what we label as the real us inside. James J.

01:00:59

Stomatellis is an internal family systems practitioner who graduated from the Decayne University coaching program in May of 2013. Since that time, he has helped countless individuals, especially men, replace chronic insecurity and shame with a sense of internal peace and grounded confidence. Jay specializes in helping people break out of what he calls anxious insecurity or the chronic feeling of not being enough. Regardless of how much success or achievement we reach in life, this was his battle as well. Plagued by intense self loathing, this issue nearly cost him his life.

01:01:37

James is here to explain the role the None child wounding plays in parts therapy through the process known as reblending. Jay, share with us how None child wounding can play a significant role in parts therapy through the process of reblending. In that by bringing together our conflicting parts, we can find a way for them to work together in harmony. Yeah, great question and absolutely so. The people I work with, generally the way they're going to be very aware of at least two parts within themselves or two energies or two voices, and the one will be this harsh, harsh critic that tells them they're crap, they're not enough, they're whatever, and then some part that's holding on to deep pain and shame.

01:02:19

And this is a relationship the critic pokes. That an ifs we call it the exile, but it pokes this pain, makes that pain feel awful and it just kind of can get you stuck. Now, this dynamic can play out in different ways. That critic can do this in order to make you engage in behavior like I was describing before, you're not enough now, but if you do this, then you will be. But it can also make it into that hiding and collapsing behavior.

01:02:44

You shouldn't even try. What do you think other people want to hear what you have to say? You think that other people care how you feel? Shut up. Sit down.

01:02:53

And so if we look at it from that way on the outside we'd say, oh my God, this is self sabotage. Why do I always tear up myself apart? But if you go into the system, if you meet this part of you, this critic, and you engage with it and you find out its story, well, why are you saying these things to this person? How are you trying to help? They will often say, well, I watched in their life that every time they did this, they experienced such pain and I can't let that pain happen to them anymore.

01:03:22

I have to be harsh on them because if I'm not, they're going to put themselves in another situation that's going to hurt even more. I hate doing this job. I don't want to do this job, but it's the only way I know how to keep them safe. And so we can look at that critic and say, oh, so you're not actually the enemy here, you're just trying to help in a way that makes sense to you. And the beautiful thing is that critic doesn't have to stay in that role.

01:03:43

It can transform. And I've seen these parts transform into cheerleaders that help pick that person up and keep them motivated because they know how to motivate them. Or maybe they just relax and enjoy just existing. That role does not define that part of a person. It's just how it's acting in this moment to try to keep them safe.

01:04:02

So if I'm following as a result as individuals we can then find healing and integration from past trauma and emotional pain. Is this correct? In my assumption. So I frame it as if we have five external senses. Our emotions are internal senses.

01:04:19

They're giving us information about the world. So for what I'm calling anxious insecurity, for me that is an alarm going off saying oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. You do not have healthy belonging which you need in order to stay alive. I need you to find this. And so I think some people look at this and say but you can't point to a problem.

01:04:39

Therefore this is dysfunctional. But that would be the same as if you imagine being dropped in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you're freaking out. Well of course you're freaking out because you have no water. You can't point to something. It's the lack of a thing that's driving you.

01:04:53

So you need those emotions because we need to know what is going on. What do we need? What do we as a system, what do we need to attend to so that we can have this healthier and calmer and more self actualized life? In the context of None child wounding, reblending may involve bringing together the wounded None child part with other parts that are more mature and have more resources. For example, a person may have an None child part that feels scared and vulnerable due to past experiences of neglect or abuse.

01:05:26

This part may be in conflict with a more productive or critical part that tries to keep the person safe by being overly controlling or judgmental. Through reblending we can help these parts communicate and find a way to work together that is more supporting and healing for us all. The action of reblending allows us to heal the unresolved emotional and psychological pain from past experiences that occurred during our childhood. These experiences can leave a lasting impact on a person's psyche and can create parts or subpersonalities that are stuck in the past still holding on to the pain and trauma that we experienced. Reuniting the past and present allows us to move through our uncomfortable emotional experiences and as a result we can then form a new, more comfortable ease and flow as we discover how to vulnerably accept and welcome our natural emotional cycles.

01:06:19

It is through this process, this journey, we begin to see a new, clearer picture of who we once were, who we presently are and who we will always be moving forward. The one light shining bright inside. If you found value and meaning in today's show, please share it with a friend or loved one. And as always, we are grateful for you, our valued listening community. This has been the light inside.

01:06:48

I'm Jeffrey Besecker