Stop Letting Anxiety and Negative Thoughts Ruin Your Life Pt. 5

Sometimes, our anxiety and negative thoughts result from not addressing our Shadow self or doing our Inner Child work.

00:00 Intro

For the last two weeks, I’ve been talking about prioritizing ourselves and making sure that we love ourselves well.

Click above to watch any of the previous videos, including the last two about self. First, when I talked about self, I talked about boundaries and how important it is that we keep our boundaries where they need to be in our lives, in a place that will give us success but not keep us too tied in. Next, I talked about how we need to focus on knowing what our strengths are and utilizing our strengths in our day-to-day lives to feel that fulfillment and have that decrease in our anxiety and negative thinking.

01:14 This Week’s Topic

This week, I’m talking about something a little bit tougher, which is shadow work. Some people like to call this your inner child as well. I remember the first time I heard about my inner child and shadow work, and I felt like, “I’m not sure that applies to me. I mean, my life has been pretty easy. I haven’t gone through that much stuff, and I think I’m fine. I don’t think I have a lot of dark sides. I’m pretty, just nice and bubbly and happy.” Right? I was wrong. I was so, so wrong. Oh, was I wrong.

01:46 Shadow/Inner Child Work

We all have a shadow side, and we all have an inner child.

All of us were a child at one point, right?

And all of us have suffered traumas of some sort or another.

It could be neglect or abuse trauma, or it could have been something less “sinister.” There are many types of traumas that might’ve happened to you and that have happened to me.

As adults, we can look back on those traumas and unpleasant events with new eyes, new understanding, and a new ability to process them.

When things happen to us as children, we process them as a child would, and children are very focused on themselves.

The long-term result of that is a lack of love for self. We blame ourselves for the trauma we go through as children, and then as we grow older, we’re still blaming ourselves, even if it’s subconscious all along.

The solution is to dig into your shadow self and do some inner child work. I’m going to give you a quick little tool that I use, and that has been helpful to me to begin this process. As always, I recommend that therapy is super beneficial for this process and is an excellent container for you to dig up and walk through some of the things you experienced as a child.

03:16 How to Start

When I’m working with a client, and I see there’s inner child work to be done, I typically recommend this simple activity to start.

Find a photo of yourself at an age where you felt very innocent, beautiful, and wonderful, whatever age that was.
Keep the photo in front of yourself as much as possible for at least three days. Make it your screensaver, put it on your steering wheel or up on your desk. Somewhere you will see it many times.
As you look at this photo of yourself as a child, start talking to little you. Ask yourself, “How are you doing?” Tell yourself about what little you has to look forward to and assure yourself of what you are, who you are, and how wonderful and phenomenal you are. You’ll have your own thoughts and words when you look at the photo of yourself.
Continue this conversation for the rest of your life.

04:24 Why Does it Work?

At the root of this activity is an opportunity to take out that inner child, address the traumas that baby girl or baby boy went through, and re-parent the child within you with love, compassion, acceptance, and communication. Anything that might have been missing when you were going through it the first time.

Embrace your shadow self, embrace your inner child, embrace, ultimately, the traumas that you’ve gone through.

They were terrible. That’s true.

You were hurt as a result, and you didn’t deserve to be hurt AT ALL.

That was probably a result of someone else’s wrong actions, but you were hurt, and you had the strength to survive. You came through it, you survived it, hopefully even thrived despite that trauma, and now you’re a *successful* grown-up.

Now, you have the opportunity to encourage young you (inside of you) to have the security that you have now created for them.

It sounds a little wild, I know.

I get it, but it does work.

So do your shadow work. Get to know the traumas, open up your eyes to them, flip on the lights, talk about it, work it out, get a therapist, do all the things, so you can re-parent that inner child and get to a fuller place in the here and now.

As always, I am honored you’re here with me, and I hope this tool is helpful for you. Remember, it’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey. Enjoy it. I love you,videovideoI’ll be back next week.

Disclaimer –

This video is NOT sponsored. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Your clicks help support the channel and allow me to continue to make videos like this one. But don’t worry, It does not affect the price you pay. 😉 Thank you for your support.