Here are a few common ways many of us were modeled dysfunctional emotional expression and communication in childhood.
COMMON DYSFUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION STYLES
Emotional invalidation. An attempt to get someone to believe their emotions are the issue instead of the actual problem or conflict at hand. This can involve saying “You’re too dramatic,” “You’re too sensitive,” or “You just need to get over it or move on” whenever feelings are expressed.
Projection. A defense mechanism of attributing undesired traits or behaviors in oneself onto others. This can involve making accusations such as “You’re probably the one lying” in response to a stated concern.
Scorekeeping. A control dynamic in which two people avoid addressing conflict or underlying emotions by bringing up past wrongdoing to one-up the other. This can involve bringing up a past issue in response to a current concern.
Name calling/shaming. The use of insults as a way to control or modify others’ behavior. This can involve using derogatory language, character attacks, or mean-spirited comments or “jokes.”
Icing. The act of shutting down, withdrawing, or pretending a person isn’t present as a way of avoiding issues or displaying disapproval. This can involve completely ignoring others by not speaking to them or not responding when spoken to (“the silent treatment”).
Avoidance. The act of denying, ignoring, or sweeping issues under the rug. This can involve refusing to take ownership of one’s behaviors, often by refusing to admit to or lying about one’s actions, leaving out certain details, refusing to talk about problems or issues, or ignoring the reality of the problems or issues entirely.
Deflection. The habit of consistently changing the subject to redirect blame toward another (externalization) and avoid personal accountability. This can involve blaming others for being the cause of their verbal, emotional, or physical abuse by saying things like “If you hadn’t X, I wouldn’t have Y.”
Many of these communication styles occurred in my own family. No one in my family showed many feelings other than worry about our daily life and health-related issues. Consumed by anxiety, there was little opportunity for anyone in the family to feel at ease, joyful, or playful, at least not for long. That constant stress created an underlying, fear-based tension, which often manifested itself in outwardly controlling behaviors. My dad, locked in survival mode from his childhood, was regularly stressed by being the sole provider of our family’s financial security. He manifested that stress by micromanaging our home, obsessively organizing and monitoring the cabinets and pantry, and always saving old food and items, including those that were used, like wrapping paper and ribbons from holidays. If anything was moved or misplaced and was no longer where he had put it, my dad shifted into Eruptor mode, yelling, screaming, and releasing the pent-up rage caused by years of dysregulation and unmet needs while also hurting those around him, even the ones he loved most.
From my family, I received a consistent message that talking about or expressing emotions would either be ignored or only add more stress to an already-overwhelmed environment. Because no one in any of my earliest relationships modeled healthy emotional expression, I didn’t know what feelings really looked like. Emotionally under-supported, I started suppressing my inner world and true way of being, appearing outwardly cold or aloof, not in any way even needing the support of others. Though this characteristic wasn’t an inherent part of my personality, it was one of the ways I learned to keep myself emotionally safe in my childhood relationships.
I didn’t even tell anyone after I saw my best friend get beaten up by a group of older peers when I was in my early teens—something I can’t imagine keeping to myself now. Although I was scared and even got hurt myself while trying to run away to escape her attackers, I kept the whole experience secret, more fearful of how my mom and family would react if they found out. I lay alone in bed that night, shaking and crying myself to sleep without any emotional safety or support when I needed it most. That experience only continued to strengthen my growing belief that there must be something about me that prevented me from receiving emotional support.
Just as I avoided showing unpleasant or difficult feelings, I also suppressed pleasant emotions when growing up. It wasn’t until I was in my early twenties and my mom was about to undergo a high-risk heart surgery that I verbally told her I loved her. Because that sentiment was rarely expressed directly in my home, I can still remember how vulnerable I felt when I first began to say it aloud.
If you did happen to grow up in an emotionally expressive family, your inner child may have been wounded if you were criticized for having certain interests or hobbies, shamed for how you looked or acted, physically or emotionally abandoned as Mona and I were, inconsistently supported as Monique was, micromanaged or controlled as Dominik was, or expected to put the needs of your parent-figures or family before your own, as was the case for Diego.
Diego was raised by a single, nonnative, non-English-speaking mother. Because she struggled to communicate, she relied on her son to help navigate the family’s new life in an unfamiliar land. Regularly told how mature he was for his age for acting as the man of the house, Diego was often left to take care of his two younger siblings while his mom was at work. From a young age, he was depended on to care for the family and provide emotional support to his understandably stressed mother—her obvious need for support only made him feel guilty whenever he even thought about pursuing relationships outside his family.
Though Diego’s mother was doing the best she could navigating the family’s stressful circumstances, her behavior parentified him, reversing the traditional parent-child role. Relied on to care for his mother and younger brothers, Diego was never able to be a kid and play when he wanted to, get upset when he felt angry or sad, pursue the things that interested him, or given the attention and space to learn how to prioritize and meet his own needs. Instead, he regularly learned that his family benefited when he ignored his needs. As he grew up, he continued to be subconsciously attracted to individuals who appeared in need of some sort of help or support, even though he increasingly felt resentful of their neediness.
Today, Diego continues to play the role of the Yes Person, one of the seven conditioned selves that we’ll explore later in this chapter. Priding himself on his identity as a “nice, responsible, and family-oriented person,” he regularly bends over backward trying to keep others happy, ignoring his own needs in the process.
Witnessing his hurt inner child helped Diego become more aware of the different ways he still plays this role in his relationships as well as the growing feelings of discontent and dissatisfaction inside him. These feelings naturally arise whenever we are suppressing our true needs or desires. And by continuing to suppress parts of ourselves, we never give ourselves the opportunity to be accepted and loved fully and authentically.
Because Diego didn’t have the safety or security to pursue what he really needed, wanted, or was interested in as a child, he remained deeply disconnected from those aspects of himself as an adult. After spending years directing all his energy toward supporting, helping, and loving others, he understandably felt burnt out. Yet at the same time, he didn’t know how to stop playing that role and often felt too proud to ask for help or support from others. Most of the time, he was too distanced from himself and his own emotions to even know that he could benefit from some.
No matter how we were hurt as children, many of us learned that we needed to suppress our needs, overlook our true interests and curiosities, and modify our authentic Self-expression in order to fit in with those around us. And as adults, our hurt inner child still lives inside our subconscious mind, where it drives us to think, feel, and react in the same ways we did as children. When we encounter anyone or anything that appears similar to something that overwhelmed us in the past, we instinctively return to the well-worn neural pathways of our familiar stress responses and learned childhood coping strategies. Because we subconsciously prefer our familiar neurobiology, our brain’s reticular activating system (RAS), a network of brain cells that helps moderate our behavior, begins to filter out any evidence that the experience is dissimilar in any way, locking us into a self-confirming safety cycle that keeps us trapped in old, dysfunctional patterns.
Our wounded inner child lives inside our body as much as in our subconscious mind. When our core wounds are activated and we feel insecure, scared, or hurt in the same way we were as children, our heart rate rises, our breathing quickens, and our muscles tense up. This is our nervous system’s fight-or-flight response, trying to help us to cope with our perceived stress in familiar ways.
This issue is, these survival-driven reactions prevent us from thinking calmly or rationally. Believing that our safety is at risk, our brain will do anything and everything to protect us, including driving us to act in selfish, irrational, or hurtful ways and ultimately preventing us from being the love we seek.
After Diego learned about his hurt inner child and witnessed his habitual tendency to play the role of the Yes Person, he began his journey toward reconnecting with his authentic Self. Today he is on his way to rediscovering his true passions and purpose as well as connecting with others in ways that allow him to open himself up to the possibility of authentic love.
MEETING YOUR (WOUNDED) INNER CHILD
Even if you can’t consciously recall your specific childhood wounds, you can still witness and heal your hurt inner child and, as a result, your relationships, too.
Though I know it can feel silly or uncomfortable for many of us at first, we need to be able to acknowledge and accept that we all have a hurt inner child that drives our daily reactions. Doing so creates the space to develop a more compassionate understanding of our dysfunctional habits or other shame-inducing aspects of our conditioning. There isn’t actually anything wrong with us; we’re not flawed, broken, or unlovable, as many of us perceive ourselves to be. Instead, we’ve adapted in the ways we needed to do in order to keep ourselves as safe as possible in our lived experiences. Our hurt inner child isn’t trying to sabotage our life but exists to protect us from our painful past circumstances.
Though the dysfunctional relationship habits we developed as a result of our childhood trauma aren’t our fault, they are our responsibility as adults. We can empower ourselves to become conscious of the deep inner pain that drives us to hurt ourselves and others by beginning to make new choices about how we want to act in the current moment.
We can all begin to reconnect with our inner child when we allow pause and space to explore or notice, without judgment, all the different ways we attempt to get our emotional needs met in our adult relationships. On a universal level, we all yearn to feel safe and secure enough to be ourselves, freely sharing our thoughts and perspectives, pursuing our true passions and interests, and tapping into our ideas and creativity. It is only when we are able to fully express ourselves that we are able to share a “felt” presence with others, allowing us as individuals to feel supported and capable of dealing with life’s emotional ups and downs. Experiencing our emotions in the presence of another person allows us to communicate with all of us—body, mind, and soul—and to create the “embodied” emotional connection necessary for deep, authentic relationships.
Going through my dark night of the soul, I came to realize that I had never really shared my emotional world within my relationships, despite complaining I wasn’t emotionally connected with anyone. As in my childhood home, I created patterns of stress- or complaint-based communications and dynamics in my relationships, where I expressed only feelings of anxiety and worry about my latest crisis to my friends and partners. In a repetition of my earliest relationships, I didn’t allow for the creation of a deep and authentic connection with another person—although as an adult, I continued to hold the other person solely responsible. I continued to embody my Overachiever self at the expense of my authentic needs and desires, not because others didn’t let me be me but because I struggled to let me be me. I was too shut down and fearful to be fully vulnerable with others or admit that I even had feelings in the first place.
As I reconnected with my inner child, I started to see inside me pain that I had struggled my entire life to put into words. As I began to come to terms with my mom’s lifelong emotional absence, I also gave myself the time and space to begin to grieve for the relationship I hadn’t had with her, which helped me be more honest about the one I did have. I recognized the little emotional connection we’d had and gave myself permission to no longer hold myself responsible for that which had never been. Taking actual space away from my mom and the rest of my family allowed me to see that, as an adult, I am now safe enough to exist in the emotional distance that was always there, a distance that was once a threat to my survival. Letting myself finally become vulnerable to my own pain allowed me to develop a true capacity for empathy, to be truly present to the pain carried by others.
I continued to extend grace and compassion to myself as I began to see all the ways my suffering had grown out of a desperate desire and expectation to be seen and loved for a Self that I refused to let others see. It was a deep pain—and a growing resentment that at times erupted outward as I was subconsciously driven to perceive myself to be neglected, unconsidered, or uncared for.
As I developed more empathy for my own experience, I became better able to show my wounded inner child the compassion, care, and consideration she had always deserved. At first, the practice of extending myself empathy felt surprisingly vulnerable and uncomfortable, and it may be the same for you if, like me, you didn’t experience moments of true understanding or attunement as a child. Over time and with practice, my inner child was able to relax into a deeper sense of worthiness for being exactly who she is. Though I know no one can take away the pain that comes when you don’t bond with your Mom, I am now learning how to provide myself the mothering I always needed.
As you reconnect with your own inner child, you may encounter similar deep-rooted feelings of grief or loss that underlie your unmet needs and relationships that never were. To recognize and tend to our emotional needs within our relationships, we have to accept that we have emotions in the first place. This may sound obvious, but many of us are so disconnected from our body that we don’t realize that we experience the emotions that we do. Our emotions contain evolutionary messages (we’ll explore this idea more in the next chapter) and reconnecting with these sensory signals is foundationally important to both our survival and well-being as humans. We’re constantly gathering sensation-based information to signal to our brain and nervous system whether we’re safe or unsafe. And when we’re safe, we can relax and be authentically express ourselves, however it is we are feeling.
Take a moment now to think about your last week and the various emotional experiences you may have had. Were there moments when you felt sad, angry, scared, surprised, or joyful? When you felt those ways around another person, did you feel safe and secure enough to directly communicate to them how you were feeling? Or did you feel safe and secure enough to express your emotions in another way while in their presence (by non-aggressively yelling, crying, or laughing)?
Exploring the different ways in which you express your feelings with others can help you better understand your emotional habits in your current relationships. Ask yourself:
Are you able to remain calm and express your feelings in a way that’s safe for you and others are around?
Do you become activated and erupt, chase, detach from, dissociate from, or act out toward others?
Do you harm yourself in some way, by using substances, ignoring your personal work or hobbies, or sacrificing your sleep, nutrition, or other self-care needs?
Do you harm others in some way, by acting physically or emotionally explosive, abusive, or violent with your words or behaviors?
When we deal with our emotions in immature, unreasonable, or irrational ways, it’s a sign that a hurt part of us is lashing out. Start to pay attention to these moments: If you can more objectively witness the times when you’re reactive, it will help you reconnect with your deeper emotional wounds. In these moments, take some time to consider why you may be feeling insecure, scared, or hurt by asking yourself:
