Anxiety And Inner Child Work - A Conversation With My Therapist

In the final part of our conversation, Lisa and I discussed how to connect with our emotions and understand what they are trying to tell us. As well as how to connect with our inner child for emotional healing. 

When was the last time you truly listened to what your anxiety or depression was trying to tell you? As I sit down with my therapist, Lisa, we peel back the layers of emotion to reveal the hidden messages within. 

This episode offers an enlightening perspective that invites you to shift the way you view these feelings, seeing them not as adversaries but as allies, signaling the need for self-care. 

Together, we navigate the uncomfortable but necessary process of completing emotional cycles that trauma may have interrupted, charting a course toward genuine healing and personal growth.

Growing up, we crafted survival strategies and carried self-blame into adulthood, often without realizing their origins in our childhood experiences. 

At the heart of our discussion lies the impact of these early traumas and their ongoing influence on how we perceive the world. Lisa guides us through understanding the crucial link between our adult selves and our inner child, shedding light on negative beliefs that may be holding us back. 

Embracing the practice of nurturing our inner child, we embark on a path to authenticity, self-awareness, and freedom from the shackles of the past.

I am grateful you are here,
Jerry

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Transcript

Jerry Henderson: 0:00

Well, I am so, so grateful that you took your time to be a part of this episode today, and I am so excited to be launching a group coaching program in the month of February. You know, traditionally I only do one-on-one private coaching with individuals, but due to the increasing demand of people wanting to learn how to love themselves, I decided to launch a group program. You can find out more information and get on the wait list by going to gerryhendersonorg forward slash coaching and, for the listeners of this podcast and for those who follow me on Instagram, if you sign up for the wait list this month and make your first payment, you get 50% off of your first month. So don't wait, get signed up, because the spots are going to be limited. And finally, I am super excited to be releasing a book in the month of March. The book is a collection of thoughts and poetry on self love and healing. So if you haven't done so yet, sign up for my newsletter because that'll notify you the day that the book gets released.

Jerry Henderson: 1:04

This episode is a continuation of a conversation with my therapist, lisa. We discuss such topics as trauma, shame and, most importantly, how do we return to ourselves? How do we return to the parts of ourselves that we've abandoned, that we've exiled. And in returning to the parts of ourselves, we discover we are returning to the source of our healing, which is our own love.

Lisa Kemppainen: 1:33

And people think anxiety is you know this horrible thing, or depression, and in fact, anxiety is just a way of letting you know that you're not paying attention to yourself, just the way a stomach ache would let you know You're not paying attention to yourself. There's something that you need, right, and so I think curiosity allows us to just examine that. Like, what is this trying to tell me, as opposed to no, no, no, I don't want to have that, I can't have that. It's just a way that your psyche is signaling that you need something.

Jerry Henderson: 2:09

And so then, when we resist that, so we got a signal that's coming, and when we resist it, we try to stop that. Fundamentally, are we resisting ourselves at that point?

Lisa Kemppainen: 2:21

Absolutely resisting yourself. Yeah, absolutely resisting yourself. And the beauty of the way that we're wired is that you won't get away from that very long because you'll resist, resist, resist, and then you'll wind up either with panic attacks or depression, so intense right, that it'll, you know, paralyze you.

Jerry Henderson: 2:43

Yeah.

Lisa Kemppainen: 2:44

So the psyche keeps giving us reminders of wanting us to move back towards ourself, to complete emotional cycles that, in trauma, can't get completed. So it's all so intertwined.

Jerry Henderson: 2:57

Yeah, it is yeah. And that resistance right, the phrase like what you resist persists. But sometimes at least I know I did before going on this journey I thought I was resisting the anxiety, and so then I would meet that with more anxious energy or try to shove it down or distract or whatever. But it wasn't until you know, I think, maybe a year into the journey of understanding that I'm not resisting anxiety, I'm resisting myself. I'm resisting the signals that my body is lovingly even though anxiety doesn't feel loving is lovingly trying to communicate to me, and so that self-resistance, I think, can change the energy at how we look at things.

Jerry Henderson: 3:44

I think energy is such an important part of how we heal, in the way that we give energy right. We don't meet the voice of an inner critic with the voice of another inner critic. We need to meet it with a different energy, a kindness, and so I'm resisting myself. And so if you're in that place and you find that you're just constantly fighting against all this stuff, you're fighting against yourself, trying to tell yourself that there's something that needs to be paid attention to. That, to me, was very life-giving because I said I no longer saw it as a problem that I had. I saw it as a signal to address something lovingly that was being brought to my attention.

Lisa Kemppainen: 4:23

Right and signals are not going to happen in a loving way because we're not going to pay attention to them.

Jerry Henderson: 4:29

Wow, that's good.

Lisa Kemppainen: 4:31

We're not. I mean, you know, we don't pay attention to being thirsty until we're our tongues dry, right, yeah? So if it's lovingly like hey, jerry, I love you so much, why don't you pay attention to yourself? Oh, forget it, I'm busy. I got to go be perfect. Yeah, wow, yeah so it makes us really uncomfortable. I mean, that's the beauty of the physical body and the psyche is that discomfort is actually wanting us to pay attention to our self.

Jerry Henderson: 4:58

Yeah, I encourage people go listen to that part again until it sticks right. You get that moment where it's showing up in an uncomfortable way out of love, but the loving way that it's coming out isn't, you know, what we would equate to loving energy. It is being done so in a way where it is almost not demanding our attention, but in some ways demanding the attention but really doing what needs to be done to get our attention. And so in all of that you can still see that as a part of kindness, even that super uncomfortable. You know, I know for me panic attacks, depression, life is meaningless. I mean all of that stuff to go. Hey, henderson, I'm going to make you feel so uncomfortable lovingly until you address it or you try to escape it, and the escape route is not a fun route at all, and so no, and I firmly believe that it starts at a very low volume.

Lisa Kemppainen: 5:57

I mean, first it's kind of like a you know touch on the head, like hey, lisa, you know you might want to pay attention to that, and then, if we don't listen, right then it becomes a little bit louder. And a little bit louder because it is. It is a built in mechanism to get us to survive.

Jerry Henderson: 6:16

Yeah, and we wind up judging all those things about ourselves and they're the very things that are trying to love us and trying to help us heal.

Lisa Kemppainen: 6:26

And, yeah, changing that energy is such a key part, so wow, yeah, starting to be starting to see that as a as a part of yourself that just wants to help you as opposed to make you miserable.

Jerry Henderson: 6:40

Yeah, right, exactly Once is inviting you into a better life, even though you see it as a worse part of your life, you see it as, like, the terrible part of your life. But it is an invitation, it's a doorway. I think the universe, god, whatever person, wants to call, or not anything, you know, maybe just your own body, but whatever it is, there is a there's enough love that's, you know, vibrating, harmonizing, coming towards us in this world that will love us enough to wake us up and to bring us to the end of ourselves and to let us see that, yeah, there's some things that, if we'll address our doorways towards a more beautiful life that we can live.

Lisa Kemppainen: 7:21

Yeah, it's about rerouting us back to us. It's asking us to be in relationship with ourselves by saying, hey, I get it, you know what? What is it that you need?

Jerry Henderson: 7:31

Yeah.

Lisa Kemppainen: 7:32

What is it that you don't have in this moment that you need and usually what you need is to be able to listen to yourself without judgment, because that's what you needed by your parent.

Jerry Henderson: 7:43

Wow, now that takes me a very good transition here of, because you know part of that is is becoming your own safe space in some way. Right, like, how do I become a safe space? I remember at one point I told you on the phone that I would do meditation as a healing practice and continue to do meditation as a healing practice, because one of the things that it does for me is it helps me sit with myself and then investigate what's going on underneath the uncomfortable feelings and just to be with them. But there was a point where I was I shared this with you that I get this sense that like I'm afraid of me, and it didn't make sense, but it was almost like this feeling of guy, I mean, I'm uncomfortable, I feel uncomfortable sitting with me and I feel afraid of me and being with me and not in a self-harm way, but just the like fear, dread, energy that would come up and it felt like something about me. But one of the things and it was about me learning to be my own safe place and love myself and heal myself, because there's no wonder I would be afraid of myself if I continued to beat myself up and treat myself the way that I always had.

Jerry Henderson: 8:58

But part of that because you're just mentioned about how the way that we wished a parent would have done that with us. We talked a little bit about that and then I want to talk about the moment that we shared where I finally opened up to somebody in my first time in my life about my trauma and my trauma experience and without holding back any of the details and so and you helped me get some of that out, obviously and so, but yeah, how to that with the, with the parent, and wishing that they would have been that way with us, talk to me because, sorry, I just I never really made the connection to adult Jerry with a little Jerry, and you really helped me do that. And so, sitting with yourself in the way that you wish your parents would. That may be foreign to people who are listening to this.

Lisa Kemppainen: 9:46

Right, and so you want to know how to do that, the importance of doing that, why a person should do that.

Jerry Henderson: 9:53

All of that Like what is that about? Because as an adult male, I'm like, yeah, I had some stuff that happened to me as a kid, or yeah, life was real rough growing up, whatever, or I would jokingly dismiss it, and so I was minimizing my trauma. But when you started making the connection to adult Jerry with little Jerry, I didn't have any idea that that's what I still wanted from my parents. And so there's some people that would be a real aha moment because they're thinking I'm just trying to figure out how to do life. I have no idea that there's a connection to little Brenda or little Tommy, and so why is that so important and what does that actually manifest in our lives?

Lisa Kemppainen: 10:37

It's important because if you ate crap for your entire life and you wanted to change that right and eat healthy, you'd have to pay attention to the fact that your body had lived on crap your whole life, right? So it sets the stage for you don't ever really get rid of that little part of yourself. It's a developmental phase where you're learning about who you are and, again, if the world's a safe place, right?

Jerry Henderson: 11:05

Yeah, that's that whole thought of freeing ourselves from the thought that there's something wrong with us. And it was a real aha moment for me to realize that little Jerry experienced some very painful, traumatic things and shame was handed to him and the connection with little Jerry having shame handed to him and decisions being made about himself, about the world. You know, talk about how trauma causes us to make certain decisions right Decisions about people, decisions about life and, most importantly, decisions about ourselves. And when I can't find any place else to put like blame or badness on, sometimes I'm going to put that on myself. And when I'm in an environment not intentionally but as survival mechanisms right, Because you helped me understand that it's a much safer decision for me to say there's something wrong with me than to say the person who's responsible for caring for me has no freaking idea how to do it and is actually terrible at it and harmful, and if that's the world that I'm going to have to survive in, I'm not going to survive.

Jerry Henderson: 12:10

So maybe there's something that's wrong with me and now I can manage me, I can start to change me, I can start to be nice and apologize and people please and character build or whatever the heck I need to do in order to be safe. I have no control over their. You know responses and so that little person who made all of those decisions, who didn't have a healthy parent, understanding that connection. Just for me it was freedom and powerful because it took away the I was just born this way, I was just born screwed up. Does that make sense?

Lisa Kemppainen: 12:49

Yep, no, it's a it. You were not born screwed up. You, you, your parents gave you information about who you were and who you are, and Whether you could trust yourself or not, and what your feelings were about and if the world was a safe place, and they were responsible for doing that. And it's a rare parent who gets that perfectly right, and some of them get it really wrong.

Jerry Henderson: 13:17

Yeah, get it really wrong.

Lisa Kemppainen: 13:20

Really wrong.

Jerry Henderson: 13:21

Yeah, and I talked with so many people about. They're like why do I gotta do this inner child work? Why do I gotta talk about this? Look at, why do I have to deal with the? I'm beyond that. That sounds strange, I don't know, but I'm gonna tell you that'll change your life. That'll transform so much Because, yeah, you're meeting the part. Tell me why. Tell me why. Well, instead of me trying to explain it, they want to hear from you, not me.

Lisa Kemppainen: 13:49

Well, it's kind of what I was saying about the food thing, right, because I hear that a lot like I don't want to talk about myself as a kid, and it's like, well, if you wanted to change your diet, your dieticians should probably know that you've eaten McDonald's for 30 years, right? So it's the same type of thing it's. You know, we don't get rid of that part. That part is fundamentally who we are and it's still needing things and wanting things and it, it, it. It Unconsciously makes decisions for us as an adult because it's trying to get those needs met. So once we can turn back towards it and actually really start to hear it, and I think, but fundamentally, the most important thing we can do for that Part inside of us is provide safe, not safety and a lack of judgment, because that's just what we want as a kid, right Is.

Lisa Kemppainen: 14:42

We just want to know that, whatever happening, whether it's our hamster dying or our dad drinking or you know some kid being mad at us at school or mean to us we just want to know that we're okay and we want somebody to just help us navigate that situation Emotionally, help us talk it through, help us feel it and know that. None of that. That, yeah, how to navigate that in life? And we don't get that, and so we get you know, you, you've been crying and I'm gonna hit you. Or you're crying and don't be a fag, or you're crying and you know I'll buy you a toy. And so we grow up not knowing, just literally not knowing what to do with our Emotional self. We just have no idea.

Jerry Henderson: 15:31

That's so true, and one of the things that you said was turning back to that part of ourselves, right and for me, and Language of internal family systems, right, I had Exiled that part of myself because I saw that part of myself as weak. I saw that part of myself as shameful Because of the abuse, because of the powerlessness, because I was told I was an f up, a screw up at this or that, and so that Became the representation of me at five, ten, whatever years old. You know, that whole period of jet, you know, and on this stuff that I can't even remember. That happened beforehand. But all of that, that pain and that trauma was a part of me that I wanted to bucket away because it conflicted with the Personality I was trying to build. It was conflicting with the image that I was trying to build.

Jerry Henderson: 16:22

And so part of, I think, my defense mechanisms with two things Exiling and dismissing the work of intertiled work because crap that means I got to go hang out with that little dude that I don't like, who represents all that crap that I'm now trying to fix. And then, second, the strategy was minimizing it and going oh yeah, some stuff happened and if I can keep it in the some stuff happened category. I don't have to look at it, and so there is. There's no softness in doing intertiled work. It requires a tremendous amount of bravery, and I'm not even sure if that's the right terminology for it. But healing that relationship that we have with our little selves, that little person who experienced those pains and that trauma is, is powerful. And so that leads me to a question why? Why do we, in your experience, beyond what I just said, that that exile work that you know where have you found the power in not minimizing and not exiling that part of ourselves?

Lisa Kemppainen: 17:29

Well, you're giving that part of yourself a voice that it never, it never got to have, right, You're giving it what it needed at that time. You're going back and being able to say you, you matter. I mean, that's really what you're saying. If you want to get down to it, because that's really what you're saying is that you matter then and you matter now, and I want to hear what you have to say and I want to hear about your pain and I want to hear about what's going on for you. And you know we all want to be seen, and so it's about going back and being able to see this little person who is navigating life with no compass, trying to figure out what the hell is going on with these people and what the hell is going on with this place. And you're finally turning around and sitting down and saying you know what you matter and I want to hear about it. It's in the vein of tell me what happened to you, which is why that's such a powerful question.

Jerry Henderson: 18:31

Yeah, it's such a powerful question and it does finally give voice and it transforms the entire energy like of this piece of me that I just want to get away from, to really loving. You know I love the book no Bad Parts. Once again, dr Richard Swartz, that you know we have these parts of us that we don't like, and how can I fully love the totality of me? And as long as I have an exiled part of me, I'm not fully embracing the love that I could be offering myself, because as long as there's one part of me that I'm defining as unlovable, it's not good. I'm blocking myself. What do you think about that in terms of that blocking of ourselves towards ourselves?

Lisa Kemppainen: 19:19

Yeah, it's more shame stuff right.

Jerry Henderson: 19:22

Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa Kemppainen: 19:25

And it's. I mean, why would you dismiss yourself again, right? Like why would you do that again? And always as a therapist, the interesting thing to go for is what is the resistance to that? Well, I hate that part of myself, well, how come? Well, because he was a loser, right. So you kind of just follow that track down and see what the resistance is, so that you can finally get to a place where you can start to acknowledge that that kid was just what happened to him or her. That kid is not actually that experience.

Jerry Henderson: 20:03

Yeah absolutely.

Jerry Henderson: 20:06

Well, one of those key pieces when we were working together is I was in a hotel room somewhere on my little nomadic journey. I can remember the room and I remember us talking and me beginning to share some of my story about the trauma and it was this interesting phrase that you use was like tell me more about that. Right, I started and just told a little bit. You're like, can you tell me more about that? And it's like the worst question or the most feared question of a patient with a therapist, sometimes like, can you tell me more about that? It's like, oh crap, I told you what I wanted to tell you to keep you satisfied in that bay. Now you want me to dig in even more. Okay, I'll dig in even more. And so I remember this moment where you're like, well, on a scale of one to 10, I'd put you at like an eight in terms of trauma, can you tell me some more? So, begin to tell more. And I'm sure, if you remember that moment, I do yeah.

Jerry Henderson: 21:03

And something broke in me in that moment. I just began to cry, bawl on the phone and what was happening for me in that moment was I was doing what you just said. I was finally giving voice to the kid who'd experienced that, without trying to minimize it, without trying to laugh it off, without trying to cope with and just raw tell. And I still think that even in that I was still having some protection mode and holding some things, as much as I could be vulnerable in that space, but it gave voice to it and so I want to say thank you for that gift of being a safe place for me to give voice to that pain.

Jerry Henderson: 21:42

And if people who are watching this or listening to this are really struggling with trying to figure out how to give voice to that or to return to themselves because that was returning for me, it was returning to the exile of the childhood experience, so much pain that I just couldn't stand being even having that part of me in my mind what would you give some practical ways, you'd say, in the work of returning to oneself and of connecting with that part of us that we've exiled? Just some real practical tips. We always try to give some practical tips on the podcast that people can maybe try to apply.

Lisa Kemppainen: 22:21

Well, I'd certainly start with the questions such as you know what would happen if I allowed myself to talk to that kid?

Jerry Henderson: 22:30

Yeah right.

Lisa Kemppainen: 22:31

Right, that's those are. Yeah, what would happen if? Or what? What am I so afraid that that kid's going to tell me?

Jerry Henderson: 22:41

Say that again.

Lisa Kemppainen: 22:42

Or what am I so afraid that that kid is going to tell me?

Jerry Henderson: 22:46

Wow, yeah, yeah.

Lisa Kemppainen: 22:50

What? Am I so afraid that that kid's going to tell me yeah? Or how do I feel towards this kid, right, right. How do I feel towards kids in general?

Jerry Henderson: 23:05

Yeah, wow, that's a profound question.

Lisa Kemppainen: 23:11

Yeah, what did what? What did I really need and want in that moment or in at that time in my life? What? What are the three things I wanted someone to say to me?

Jerry Henderson: 23:22

Hmm, yeah, those are beautiful questions and I, even as you were asking them, I noticed different responses in my body Right, and that's one of the things that you've helped me since, kind of like where do I feel it? How does it make me feel? Man, I couldn't back in 2020, I couldn't have 2020, whenever I couldn't have articulated how I feel. I don't feel so good, I feel bad, I don't know. I'm hungover, yeah, I'm like oh crap. But to then dig below that and notice how your body is telling you how you feel Right and the resistance spots and the why of the resistance and what is all that, that, that that is trying to lovingly tell you so that you can do a returning to self as a beautiful, beautiful way to look at it and to heal on that space.

Lisa Kemppainen: 24:10

Wow.

Jerry Henderson: 24:11

Lisa, people watching this and listening to this and maybe their experience with therapists haven't been like mine and hasn't been as profound, maybe, or whatever their journey has been, but they're looking for somebody to work with. It'll take approach that is very mindful, that is curious, that honors them and their journey and gets to know them and gets inside of them, as you described. And they're really looking for somebody to work with like that. And so, if they're interested in working with you, how could they get a hold of you, because I know you do both therapy and coaching. What would be the best way if they were just curious about connecting with you?

Lisa Kemppainen: 24:50

Yeah, totally. I would love that they could email me at green, like the color Lisa L-I-S-A, 5164 at mecom and just reach out and say that you, you know, witness the conversation Jerry and I had and you think you might be a good fit and I'd be happy to talk to you and see if you'd like to move forward.

Jerry Henderson: 25:13

So if you're interested in working with Lisa, you can just go down into the show notes of this episode. You'll find a link there to her email and you can get in touch with her right away or at your own convenience. So, lisa, thank you. Thank you so much for taking your time to be on this episode. I look forward to doing some more with you. You've been such a gift to me I know the listeners of this podcast as well that this episode will be a tremendous gift for them. So, thank you, thank you for being here and showing up, as you always do, with 100% of who you are. Thank you for that.

Lisa Kemppainen: 25:51

Thanks, Jerry, I don't. I don't know any other way to show up at this point in my life than who I am the all the other, all the other versions didn't work out so well.

Jerry Henderson: 26:01

That's a great way to say it when all my other versions don't work out.

Lisa Kemppainen: 26:05

I just show up as me.

Jerry Henderson: 26:06

I just show up as me, fantastic, wonderful Well. Thank you everybody for joining the Permission to Love podcast. So grateful that you're here and that you took your time to listen. If you haven't had a chance yet, please follow and subscribe and, more importantly than that, please share this episode with somebody that you know could benefit from hearing it. And remember, as always, you are worthy of your own love.