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Today we talk about the often misunderstood tool of re-parenting. This is the show up and stay podcast.
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I'm your host Deann Knighton, let's start with a quick evolution of the term re-parenting. It has its roots in the 50s with the work of Sigmund Freud, Eric Bern took that work a step further created something known as transactional analysis. In the 70s, we saw the emergence of total regression therapy, which is a controversial form of psychotherapy involving the therapist actually taking on the role of a parent in a situation where the patient was living either at an institution with that therapist in that role, or with the therapist themselves.
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In the late 70s, Dr. Muriel James is attributed with the development of the self re parenting process. Re-parenting has a direct relationship to inner child healing, and can oftentimes be thought of in a very spiritual context. But this work doesn't have to be spiritual, it can also be of therapeutic process. There's different ways that I relate to this, I relate to it in the sense of becoming familiar with younger versions of myself. In particular, for me, I spend some time with 5 and and 15 and 16 year old DeAnnn, when I'm faced with some pretty nasty emotional dysregulation, I sometimes have to open that door and figure out what is it about the situation that is causing this particular reaction that is really out of whack with what the actual experiences, I have to dig into that stuff? It's part of my work. And part of that means going back to those versions of myself and figuring out, why are they afraid? Why do they feel like somehow I'm not going to take care of them through this.
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I wanted to start this conversation today and bring in somebody who's much more of an expert on this. This is a person that I actually have a very interesting connection to because if you recall, the first episode of this season, I talked about attending a she recovers event in which I had a great deal of social anxiety. In the event, we had something called shearing circles. And these are the places that we could go and process. These are the only places that I actually felt any comfort during this event as I was sort of wrestling with myself and where I was at, and some of the frustrating feelings I was dealing with. And Cybele rang ran the first sharing circle at a time when I was really heightened. And she is someone that values this process of inner child work so much so that she is a coach and works with people in this area in addition to the work that she does with She Recovers. So we scratch two itches. Today, I get the chance to talk to Cybele about what was going on with me during the She Recovers events.
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And to give us a little bit more information about re parenting slash inner child work, which I'm using a bit interchangeably here. I'll be back later to walk you through a little bit of my own re parenting experience that I had this you don't know me, but I do know you I remember your face very well. From the She Recovers event in Miami. I led the
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sharing circle the first night. And I'm so glad that you were there.
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This is about Cybele Botran as she recovers and holistic coach with a master's degree in education.
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And over 40 years of teaching experience. She works with sober and sober curious women who want to overcome issues with codependency and measurement, perfectionism. people pleasing boundaries, to name a few. I had a very interesting experiences, she recovers because I'd had a lot of personal transition. I was working through some things.
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And when I got to the event, my social anxiety was so triggered.
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I
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love that you're bringing that up. And absolutely, it's so normal, right? It's so human. I would say the first like five years of my sobriety, I've been sober for 11 and a half years at this point, I would get excited about and make myself go to retreat and events and feel socially awkward through the entire event and know that by the end I would be leaving on such a high because it was kind of like a hard thing to get through. And at the time just feeling a little left out and then noticing that by Sunday night or Monday morning after the event.
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I was feeling great. And I just I started noticing that about myself and I definitely thought of myself as a social butterfly as an extrovert is somebody who loves to socialize when I was drinking. So of course removing the alcohol the social lubricant is part of this living bra, it's just really normal. And I would say from talking to a lot of different people, a lot of people experienced this at the she recovers events. In fact, that's why some people do their retreats or they do smaller events because huge events and be a lot for some people, I would say the first one I went to in New York, I experienced that in LA, it was a little bit less in Miami, it wasn't at all but people will not share a room because they really need that decompression time. So navigating your energy and keeping yourself safe. It's definitely part of re parenting.
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But keeping yourself feeling safe is part of learning to live the way that we're living in recovery without whatever it is, if you remove it, it's like this, you get to go onto a different track. So it's like you're going along your whole life, a little bit of sleep and a little bit numbed out and zombie like at least that's how it was for me, like I felt like I was asleep. And then suddenly, I moved over onto a different track like it is a train track and I'm on my parallel and parallel to my other life. So it looks the same on the outside, I look the same, my life looks the same. But I'm on a whole different plane, I'm in a different existence, that is completely different to my old life. And that's why I named my company wide awake recovery because it's really like you're living wide awake. So because you're awake, you're noticing everything. And you're noticing how socially awkward you feel,
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that helps me feel a little bit better. With the recovery process of hurt a lot of people find they're introvert in the sense that they realize, Oh, I do need certain time to myself. And that's okay.
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And I don't necessarily need to be everything to everybody either. I just need to find out where it is that I want to be and focus on getting myself comfortable with that.
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I love that you said the introvert I want to talk about that too, because I thought I was a social butterfly. And then I realized that it was actually hard for me to be by myself. And that's why I kept so busy. And I think a lot of listeners will probably relate to that list of things to do and keeping busy all day and then being exhausted and numbing out with alcohol. And realizing that doing something like meditation or doing yoga never appealed to me before because that was too much alone time. Be gentle with yourself, if that sounds like a lot to be quiet in your own space. And then over time, the more that we're in recovery and the more re parenting I do, the more I like and actually love my alone time, because it means I get to be with myself, which feels really nurturing and wonderful now, but all of that is a process and take time I started drinking in high school, and I was a self proclaimed party girl. And I definitely enjoyed many years of partying.
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And I met my husband in Spain, we met in a bar. I mean, alcohol was definitely a part of our lives, it wasn't a really big deal. I don't remember it being a big deal. It was kind of easy for me to give up when I got pregnant and all of that. But at some point, we had moved to Miami and we were really part of a crowd of people would like to party. And it kind of started ramping back up in my 40s. And I would say it's directly linked for me when I felt as if makes me sad to say this, but I felt a little bit like my kids didn't need me as much. So my kids started getting a little bit older. And I now understand a habit forming if it didn't addictive substance and all that. But I was definitely the kind of five o'clock wine mom, for sure. Everybody I knew drank. And at 47 got to be too much. And so I tried to quit on my own. And I did that for about four months. And then I started to drink again. And I realized that it it definitely was so unhealthy for me. I stopped, they stopped in July of 2011. I had no idea I just thought it was like going to be like removing, I don't know, sugar from your life or something like that. And I did go into 12 steps. And that's not right away. I stopped on my own. But then eventually, I have an aunt who had been sober for a really long time. And she was like, so how are you enjoying the meetings? I was like, why don't really do those and she's like, No, you should go you should go to a women's meeting, I was part of a secret online Facebook group called the booze free brigade. And that was wonderful started to gain in real life friends and online friends that were in sober spaces, changed everything for me as far as learning how to live alcohol free. And in. In one of those groups. There was Dawn Nicole was in one of those groups and when she started she recovers and then started talking about a she recovers event in New York.
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I was like I'm gonna go to that and I flew to New York and I went to it and there was a little table that was set up that said become a shiver. I was approached and I thought, you know, I'm just gonna go on with my gut here and follow my instinct, my future self led me to that table and I signed up for that. And then becoming a coach led me to just more and more self care. In the midst of all that I started going to she recovers retreats on a retreat in Canada on Salt Spring Island, I was in a yoga class led by Taryn strong, who's one of the cofounders of she recovers, and my yoga mat, and this is like, post 2016. So the second wave of the me to movement had happened.
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And I was starting to get awareness around my own childhood, I basically was doing something called Breath of joy.
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And nine year old me suddenly appeared in front of me, like not like an operation, like I saw her. But just her energy was in front of me, and she was angry, so angry. And so after that experience, I got really curious, why was nine year old me popping out right now? And what is she trying to say to me.
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And so that really led me down the path of figuring out and learning more about inner child work, which led me to re parenting, and I've just, you know, fully embraced it. I've been doing that for close to five years. And now I consider myself a re parenting coach, like this is just a huge focus of my coaching practice.
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Sometimes people hear the word re parenting and it feels scary. You started talking about therapies are talking about going into your past, you start asking yourself questions about how you were raised and some of the tracks that you might have in your brain that you use to process the world around you. And it can feel almost like a betrayal in some ways to open those doors. I really want to stress that this work doesn't have to be about that. Yes, it can be going back and looking at childhood and how that has impacted how you think now. And I think that work is incredibly important. But it doesn't have to be done in a way that feels like an indictment of
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I'm actually being trained right now by Kelly anyone.
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McDaniel who wrote Mother Hunger, and she's often reminds us like, please don't use this work to a be downing yourself, if you are a parent yourself. So not to use this work to say, Oh, these are all the things that I did wrong parenting and then feel, you know, a lot of remorse and guilt and shame. And also, it's the point of the work is not really to be stuck in a place of blame. If you get to a place of anger around your childhood, that's totally normal. And I think that anger is actually really healthy. It's part of the grieving process of perhaps, you know, feeling sad about things you didn't get, or things that did happen or didn't happen, feelings of abandonment, and all that. It feels like a betrayal. If you unpack things that happened to you in childhood, because we have an innate response around not wanting to abandon our parents, we naturally want to protect our primary caregivers, because we don't want to sever that connection. Because that would be going against like, survival, right? We want to stay connected to our parents, because that's that that's how we survived. And so it feels weird, and it feels wrong, it to kind of put them down or say that they had flaws.
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But I think it's absolutely true that if we can take what you know, they call in the 12 step program, ACA, adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families calls it taking a blameless inventory of your entire family. And going back, you know, generations, you can see pattern, if you go back generation, if you can, if you have access to that information, you can kind of see patterns, and then also see that, you know, oftentimes our parents in in perhaps in, you know, raised us or engaged with us in ways that they experienced themselves, or they were trying to improve from their upbringing. So we would say that, you know, our parents are also adult children, and then their parents were also adult children. It's like, kind of this generational passing down.
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And that's where with the beautiful and very difficult and hard and brave work is to kind of, you know, stop that intergenerational trauma here and now. And I love how like Taryn strong often talks about how if we heal ourselves, we heal backwards and forwards in as far as the generational trauma. It's just it's very beautiful work. But I do think it's also kind of scary to think like, I don't know if I actually want to remember those things that happened or a lot of times people will say I have no memories of childhood are very, you know, there's big blank spots, totally normal again, and you don't even have to remember, it might you just might be you don't have to remember the things the events might be being remembered in your body in the way that you get activated or triggered to your body.
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remembering. And so the idea around poaching and re parenting ourselves is what's happening right now in my body in my life in my adult body right now, that's showing up for me right now. And how do I want to nurture kind of get in touch with my inner child right now, and make this the best life that I possibly can you know, a lot of the women I work with are still drinking. So they're sober curious, usually, and some of them have already quit, and they are living alcohol free. And I have really no judgment at all around that, like, if, wherever people at at you know, I want to connect with them. I will say that repairing Ting is kind of pairs very well with, with sobriety. Because the way I see it is like, once you get in touch with your inner child, and your Inner Inner teen is sick, you really want to protect them. And you, you know, I used to, I used to say years ago, I remember saying, like, you don't want to give alcohol to the baby, like gives, once you start loving yourself, like you would love a baby. And I used to say that even before I got really into inner child work, I just thought of myself as like, I don't love myself, like I would love a little baby.
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And I have had, you know, I have three children who are now adults, and I know what it's like to love them or, you know, nieces and nephews or small animals like that, that outpouring of love that, that kind of protective. Love that you have for something kind of gentle and smaller and vulnerable, like that, having that love for yourself, like you're not going to put alcohol into the baby, right? So it I do definitely see a link between protecting yourself and not engaging in self harming behaviors. And not, you know, even micro aggressions even like, even mean thoughts about yourself start start feeling like, oh, I don't want to think that way, you know about my body. This is, you know, this is also a little subcells body.
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This is teenage Isabel's body, I don't want to be mean to them.
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Because I love them.
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There was some confusion for me in the beginning when I would hear the word trauma. And my brain would jump to these big massive events that, you know, I'm like, Well, no, I didn't really have any of that. And, and I've heard that from people a lot where they're kind of like, No, I don't I don't really have stuff.
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Absolutely right.
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If people are familiar with the ACE scores, I think that's going to expand. So many of us come into recovery saying like, well, I don't have it that bad, or I didn't have it that bad. I mean, honestly, if you have heard me tell my story, back in like 2012 or 2013, around that I would have been like everything was fine. I do want to also add one more thing here of the that I'm doing right now with one of my sisters who is actively also doing inner child work. She has come up with this idea. And we're just it's been really meaningful for us around bereavement camp. And so we lost our, our dad when I was in second grade. And so eight years old, he died at 45 years old. So we were talking about how I'm the oldest of three girls, and my mom was very young, she was 10 years younger than my dad, when this happened, we have been talking about how like we didn't go to a bereavement camp or a counselor or, you know, somebody that would have helped us through that period of time. And that is kind of the beauty of free parenting is that you can kind of go back now as an adult and give your child things or say things or provide for them the safety, the love and the connection that they needed back then you can do that. Now a very powerful coaching question that I asked people is what did you need to hear when you were younger, that would have made a difference. And then whatever it is, people can kind of, you know, by thinking about that, or journaling about that. So for example for me is I'll protect you, and I believe you. So those are two that have come up for me. And so then that becomes my affirmation that I can tell my inner child like I will always protect you. And I believe you.
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I'll tell you something that happened to me recently and how I repented myself through it. So in October, I was at an international mental health conference in Orlando. Teenage me just loved it. She was like nerding out on all the things and there was one speaker, he was speaking and my inner child was like IU l no, no, my adult was like, Oh, come on.
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Everybody's going like this person's really popular.
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Everybody's going to this person and my inner kid was like ropes and So I totally listened to her and honored her. And I was like, Okay, we're not going. And I felt so good that I listened to my inner child. And I don't even have to know why this person is triggering for her. I don't know, I just could feel it in my body. And I trust her. And it doesn't mean that my inner child is running the show like this was a low stakes situation. But it meant so much to me that I honored her and I listened to her and I didn't override because I think so many times, we override a gut feeling, you know, we go along with the crowd, or we say yes, when we want to say no. So so much of re parenting is about really listening to yourself, and it being okay to just know inside of yourself, that you don't want to do something with no explanations. And following that,
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when I think about those voices, I definitely do compartmentalize my five year old self, and then I have about my 15 year old self that I look at and go, Oh, okay, this is five year old self. And those are usually really primal things right about like safety, just fear. I'm not sure what I'm afraid of here. But it doesn't feel safe. Those types of feelings for me, I'm often thinking are more tied to things from that nurturance and protection that I was looking for, as a child at that age. But then when it's more of those guidance issues, it's like, where do I want to go? Why do I want to go there? What am I rebelling against? And why am I rebelling against it? I'm usually like, I'm thinking this is probably my teenage Yeah,
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that's exactly what I do, too. I mean, so you know, you're familiar with internal family systems. This is like parts work. The way I do my re parenting work is I kind of see myself in four parts, but people can have as many parts as they want. So I have my inner child, my inner teen, my inner critic, and then my inner loving parent who's the Uber, overseer of everyone and is connected to total love and source energy, and all of those wonderful things and universal connectedness. So that inner loving parent can kind of take care of all the parts and nobody gets kicked out. Nobody gets ostracized, everybody gets hurt, and, and I recognize like the inner critic, she's just exhausted, and she's my protector, so she doesn't get pushed away or anything. So over time, my inner child is very clear to me, when it's my inner child, her voice sounds different to me, the things that she needs, the things that she says, it's clear when it's my inner child, if there's swearing involved, if there's like rebellion, then I know it's my inner teen, and she needs a different type of nurturance. As Kelly McDaniel said, our primary caregivers, our mothers, were really there to provide the nurturance the protection and the guidance and the way I look at this, like, no child needs the protection and nurturance.
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And then my inner teen needs the protection nurturance. And really the guidance, that's when the guiding comes in, because my inner teen wants to take risks.
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Over time, their personalities have more and more and more into focus.
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Part of this work is about putting all of it online in a way, but then being able to integrate it into who you are now. So I love how you just describe that
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the parts of ourselves that might be like our shadow selves, that part when we feel shame. So like we're overriding with perfectionism, because we're really deeply ashamed of a certain part of ourselves. So the way I see my inner critic is kind of like, she just doesn't have very well developed skills. And she's like a protective, really protective part of me, that only knows how to be really scared. I mean, definitely connected to ego, right? So what would I do with my inner critic, I'm like, Okay, you have worked so hard, thank you. I'm gonna put this weighted blanket on you get a pedicure, and you binge watch a little bit of Netflix, and just chill out.
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I do offer one on one coaching.
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I also offer classes and workshops, I have a class called inner child work for beginners.
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And it's a 90 minute class that includes a workbook and a recording of the content. So all of that is found on my website and I have created and developed a beautiful group coaching experience called reparent reparent. That is an acronym.
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And so the themes of reparent are reimagine, ease, protect, align, reconnect, embody nurture, and trust, kind of intention of it is in group coaching experiences. People have that collective me to experience where they hear other people share Are they you're me coaching other people. And we meet online on Zoom. There's a private Facebook group right now there's a waitlist, but it's it's very powerful. And the support that I'm trying to give is have people repair themselves.
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I love it. I think it's such a great thing.
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And I will definitely make sure that we have links to everything in the show notes for people to pursue on their own. Going back to where we started this that she recovers event, I didn't really get into specifics, but I do remember your energy in that room. It's so interesting for me to hear you talk about yourself being someone that at one point, was struggling to nurture yourself in the right way, because you put off this just beautiful nurturing energy. And it sounds like probably that's what was happening, right? You were giving it all away for a while, instead of keeping a little bit of it for yourself. I just want to compliment you on the work that you're doing and who you are. Thank you
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for that feedback. I really, really appreciate that a lot. Do you think for all of us, it is about learning how to nurture ourselves, we usually come into this kind of recovery space, you know, having been in survival mode and having been engaging in self harming behavior. So what does self care even mean? What does self love even mean? Like?
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These are just practices that take time, so I appreciate that feedback. Thank you.
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Okay, we'll be right back. A big thank you to my guests about. For more information on her program, please visit her website at wide awake recovery.com. Or you can follow her work on Instagram at wide awake recovery. Before we go one more story from me.
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Yesterday, I was driving. And I saw a random corner in my neighborhood that for some reason reminded me of this past fall when I was walking a lot.
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The first thought that came to my mind was, ah, I miss walking.
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I wish I could walk. I paused for a moment. And I caught the thought as it passed. I caught it because it created a negative feeling in my body, a longing of some kind. I try when I can to catch those. I'm not always in a healthy enough space to do that.
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But when I can I try to. I stayed with this particular thought for a moment. And because he did, I was able to work with it. My first reaction to myself was a bit on the snarky side. I thought, well, that is weird, because there's the corner right there. You've got your shoes in the backseat.
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You could pull your car over right now. And take a walk on that corner. See? Easy, no longing. Then I retreated notch.
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Self Compassion. Oh, okay. Let's try this again. I call it Another tool I have. I pretend it's one of the kids in my life saying to me, Oh, I remember walking there last summer. I wish we could do that. What would I say? Well, if I was being a smartass, I would say there's a corner right there.
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Let's pull over the car and we can walk on it. Huh? They might say back, no, it's too cold. So if we're being technical, what you're sad about is not that you can't go for a walk, because you can go for a walk. It's that you don't want to go for a walk in the cold. I would say something along the lines of well, we could go home right now and get some layers and some gloves and had to go for a walk. If that sounds fun. If you dress right, you don't even have to feel the cold. We all know how this goes.
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Nobody wants to hear that.
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They'd likely pass on that we quickly move on to some other sort of train of thought.
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There's no need to dig further on this one. In these cases, sometimes just a simple validation of the feeling will do. I don't need to prove any sort of point or try to talk them out of the feeling. They don't need that for me.
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Sometimes that's true when I'm talking to myself too. Sometimes I simply need to just say to myself, you missed that time last summer when you were walking a lot. That time felt good. And leave it at that. But sometimes, if thoughts are disruptive enough, I may have to get even deeper, especially when I'm in a state of self exploration or I'm trying to work through some things. The reason is that these feelings can be information and they can be information that is really important to my overall well being so it may require me to do a little bit of self coaching.
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Some might call it a little bit of a Have our analysis and take a deeper look at the situation.
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But I know myself and I know that this work is important to me. So I take the time to do it.
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Let's break this down for a minute. If you remember our emotions episodes in season one, we talked about the cycle of a craving. trigger occurs, the trigger creates a thought that thought generates a feeling. And the feeling is what turns into our craving or urge to drink, our desire to escape that feeling. The thought that made me get that bad feeling was triggered by a place that I saw.
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That reminded me of a time last year when I was walking a lot more, I felt a sense of loss related to that, that generated a feeling in my body. And it wasn't a good feeling. So I noticed it. I could go on a walk if I wanted to. So what is it that I really need to hear right now, too many negative feelings can have consequences for me. So it's important to understand where they're coming from. I don't like walking in the cold.
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The winters are a hard time for me, they always have been. I'm in a tricky time. Right now. I'm just a couple of days away from my four year sober anniversary.
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There's a reason why my rock bottom occurred in January and February. And there's a reason why my body feels a certain way around this time of year. And I just try to let that be true. My body associates this time of year with negative feelings, less activity, less ability to do the things that I want to do feeling restricted, all things that are scary feelings. So it might make sense that thought that I had telling me that, hey, remember when we used to walk there, it simply might be that I could just go take a walk there.
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But it's also something else.
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It's telling me that I'm longing for something, that there's a need that I'm not filling. And it may be a need that isn't fulfilled. By taking that walk.
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It's something else. If I even take it down a little bit further, I can uncover feelings that I have around fear of gaining weight because of not being as active as I should be.
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And that fear generates all kinds of negative feelings for me. I've built up alarm systems and shaming devices inside of my body that I thought were somehow protecting me from myself or from my own behaviors that oftentimes aren't very miscued.
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Because if I'm being honest, and I take a step back, I realized that I'm actually as active now, as I had been at that time last summer, if not more, so. I'm feeling better in my body than I was back then. So that's not it.
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I miss being outside. I missed that freedom of being able to walk unencumbered. Okay, that's something what, but that's all things that I have access to.
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Those are all things that I could do if I really wanted to, if I wanted to prioritize those things within the series of things that I need to do in a day, I could make that happen.
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How much do I want to do I want to make that happen. Where does that fit into my life right now.
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If I do all of that work, I may discover that there was nothing to that thought. There's no reason that that thought is creating a negative feeling for me, because there's nothing negative to feel. It's simply a representation of an old script that I have, as well as, you know, maybe a reminder of how much I love the spring and how much I have to look forward to because I'm going to be able to walk on that corner again. To donate please follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at show up and say.org you're interested in collaboration or being a guest on the show. Please send an email to info at show up and stay.org original music created and produced by the wickedly talented Katie Hare
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Today we talk about the often misunderstood tool of re-parenting. This is the show up and stay podcast.
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I'm your host Deann Knighton, let's start with a quick evolution of the term re-parenting. It has its roots in the 50s with the work of Sigmund Freud, Eric Bern took that work a step further created something known as transactional analysis. In the 70s, we saw the emergence of total regression therapy, which is a controversial form of psychotherapy involving the therapist actually taking on the role of a parent in a situation where the patient was living either at an institution with that therapist in that role, or with the therapist themselves.
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In the late 70s, Dr. Muriel James is attributed with the development of the self re parenting process. Re-parenting has a direct relationship to inner child healing, and can oftentimes be thought of in a very spiritual context. But this work doesn't have to be spiritual, it can also be of therapeutic process. There's different ways that I relate to this, I relate to it in the sense of becoming familiar with younger versions of myself. In particular, for me, I spend some time with 5 and and 15 and 16 year old DeAnnn, when I'm faced with some pretty nasty emotional dysregulation, I sometimes have to open that door and figure out what is it about the situation that is causing this particular reaction that is really out of whack with what the actual experiences, I have to dig into that stuff? It's part of my work. And part of that means going back to those versions of myself and figuring out, why are they afraid? Why do they feel like somehow I'm not going to take care of them through this.
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I wanted to start this conversation today and bring in somebody who's much more of an expert on this. This is a person that I actually have a very interesting connection to because if you recall, the first episode of this season, I talked about attending a she recovers event in which I had a great deal of social anxiety. In the event, we had something called shearing circles. And these are the places that we could go and process. These are the only places that I actually felt any comfort during this event as I was sort of wrestling with myself and where I was at, and some of the frustrating feelings I was dealing with. And Cybele rang ran the first sharing circle at a time when I was really heightened. And she is someone that values this process of inner child work so much so that she is a coach and works with people in this area in addition to the work that she does with She Recovers. So we scratch two itches. Today, I get the chance to talk to Cybele about what was going on with me during the She Recovers events.
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And to give us a little bit more information about re parenting slash inner child work, which I'm using a bit interchangeably here. I'll be back later to walk you through a little bit of my own re parenting experience that I had this you don't know me, but I do know you I remember your face very well. From the She Recovers event in Miami. I led the
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sharing circle the first night. And I'm so glad that you were there.
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This is about Cybele Botran as she recovers and holistic coach with a master's degree in education.
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And over 40 years of teaching experience. She works with sober and sober curious women who want to overcome issues with codependency and measurement, perfectionism. people pleasing boundaries, to name a few. I had a very interesting experiences, she recovers because I'd had a lot of personal transition. I was working through some things.
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And when I got to the event, my social anxiety was so triggered.
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I
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love that you're bringing that up. And absolutely, it's so normal, right? It's so human. I would say the first like five years of my sobriety, I've been sober for 11 and a half years at this point, I would get excited about and make myself go to retreat and events and feel socially awkward through the entire event and know that by the end I would be leaving on such a high because it was kind of like a hard thing to get through. And at the time just feeling a little left out and then noticing that by Sunday night or Monday morning after the event.
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I was feeling great. And I just I started noticing that about myself and I definitely thought of myself as a social butterfly as an extrovert is somebody who loves to socialize when I was drinking. So of course removing the alcohol the social lubricant is part of this living bra, it's just really normal. And I would say from talking to a lot of different people, a lot of people experienced this at the she recovers events. In fact, that's why some people do their retreats or they do smaller events because huge events and be a lot for some people, I would say the first one I went to in New York, I experienced that in LA, it was a little bit less in Miami, it wasn't at all but people will not share a room because they really need that decompression time. So navigating your energy and keeping yourself safe. It's definitely part of re parenting.
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But keeping yourself feeling safe is part of learning to live the way that we're living in recovery without whatever it is, if you remove it, it's like this, you get to go onto a different track. So it's like you're going along your whole life, a little bit of sleep and a little bit numbed out and zombie like at least that's how it was for me, like I felt like I was asleep. And then suddenly, I moved over onto a different track like it is a train track and I'm on my parallel and parallel to my other life. So it looks the same on the outside, I look the same, my life looks the same. But I'm on a whole different plane, I'm in a different existence, that is completely different to my old life. And that's why I named my company wide awake recovery because it's really like you're living wide awake. So because you're awake, you're noticing everything. And you're noticing how socially awkward you feel,
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that helps me feel a little bit better. With the recovery process of hurt a lot of people find they're introvert in the sense that they realize, Oh, I do need certain time to myself. And that's okay.
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And I don't necessarily need to be everything to everybody either. I just need to find out where it is that I want to be and focus on getting myself comfortable with that.
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I love that you said the introvert I want to talk about that too, because I thought I was a social butterfly. And then I realized that it was actually hard for me to be by myself. And that's why I kept so busy. And I think a lot of listeners will probably relate to that list of things to do and keeping busy all day and then being exhausted and numbing out with alcohol. And realizing that doing something like meditation or doing yoga never appealed to me before because that was too much alone time. Be gentle with yourself, if that sounds like a lot to be quiet in your own space. And then over time, the more that we're in recovery and the more re parenting I do, the more I like and actually love my alone time, because it means I get to be with myself, which feels really nurturing and wonderful now, but all of that is a process and take time I started drinking in high school, and I was a self proclaimed party girl. And I definitely enjoyed many years of partying.
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And I met my husband in Spain, we met in a bar. I mean, alcohol was definitely a part of our lives, it wasn't a really big deal. I don't remember it being a big deal. It was kind of easy for me to give up when I got pregnant and all of that. But at some point, we had moved to Miami and we were really part of a crowd of people would like to party. And it kind of started ramping back up in my 40s. And I would say it's directly linked for me when I felt as if makes me sad to say this, but I felt a little bit like my kids didn't need me as much. So my kids started getting a little bit older. And I now understand a habit forming if it didn't addictive substance and all that. But I was definitely the kind of five o'clock wine mom, for sure. Everybody I knew drank. And at 47 got to be too much. And so I tried to quit on my own. And I did that for about four months. And then I started to drink again. And I realized that it it definitely was so unhealthy for me. I stopped, they stopped in July of 2011. I had no idea I just thought it was like going to be like removing, I don't know, sugar from your life or something like that. And I did go into 12 steps. And that's not right away. I stopped on my own. But then eventually, I have an aunt who had been sober for a really long time. And she was like, so how are you enjoying the meetings? I was like, why don't really do those and she's like, No, you should go you should go to a women's meeting, I was part of a secret online Facebook group called the booze free brigade. And that was wonderful started to gain in real life friends and online friends that were in sober spaces, changed everything for me as far as learning how to live alcohol free. And in. In one of those groups. There was Dawn Nicole was in one of those groups and when she started she recovers and then started talking about a she recovers event in New York.
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I was like I'm gonna go to that and I flew to New York and I went to it and there was a little table that was set up that said become a shiver. I was approached and I thought, you know, I'm just gonna go on with my gut here and follow my instinct, my future self led me to that table and I signed up for that. And then becoming a coach led me to just more and more self care. In the midst of all that I started going to she recovers retreats on a retreat in Canada on Salt Spring Island, I was in a yoga class led by Taryn strong, who's one of the cofounders of she recovers, and my yoga mat, and this is like, post 2016. So the second wave of the me to movement had happened.
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And I was starting to get awareness around my own childhood, I basically was doing something called Breath of joy.
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And nine year old me suddenly appeared in front of me, like not like an operation, like I saw her. But just her energy was in front of me, and she was angry, so angry. And so after that experience, I got really curious, why was nine year old me popping out right now? And what is she trying to say to me.
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And so that really led me down the path of figuring out and learning more about inner child work, which led me to re parenting, and I've just, you know, fully embraced it. I've been doing that for close to five years. And now I consider myself a re parenting coach, like this is just a huge focus of my coaching practice.
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Sometimes people hear the word re parenting and it feels scary. You started talking about therapies are talking about going into your past, you start asking yourself questions about how you were raised and some of the tracks that you might have in your brain that you use to process the world around you. And it can feel almost like a betrayal in some ways to open those doors. I really want to stress that this work doesn't have to be about that. Yes, it can be going back and looking at childhood and how that has impacted how you think now. And I think that work is incredibly important. But it doesn't have to be done in a way that feels like an indictment of
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I'm actually being trained right now by Kelly anyone.
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McDaniel who wrote Mother Hunger, and she's often reminds us like, please don't use this work to a be downing yourself, if you are a parent yourself. So not to use this work to say, Oh, these are all the things that I did wrong parenting and then feel, you know, a lot of remorse and guilt and shame. And also, it's the point of the work is not really to be stuck in a place of blame. If you get to a place of anger around your childhood, that's totally normal. And I think that anger is actually really healthy. It's part of the grieving process of perhaps, you know, feeling sad about things you didn't get, or things that did happen or didn't happen, feelings of abandonment, and all that. It feels like a betrayal. If you unpack things that happened to you in childhood, because we have an innate response around not wanting to abandon our parents, we naturally want to protect our primary caregivers, because we don't want to sever that connection. Because that would be going against like, survival, right? We want to stay connected to our parents, because that's that that's how we survived. And so it feels weird, and it feels wrong, it to kind of put them down or say that they had flaws.
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But I think it's absolutely true that if we can take what you know, they call in the 12 step program, ACA, adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families calls it taking a blameless inventory of your entire family. And going back, you know, generations, you can see pattern, if you go back generation, if you can, if you have access to that information, you can kind of see patterns, and then also see that, you know, oftentimes our parents in in perhaps in, you know, raised us or engaged with us in ways that they experienced themselves, or they were trying to improve from their upbringing. So we would say that, you know, our parents are also adult children, and then their parents were also adult children. It's like, kind of this generational passing down.
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And that's where with the beautiful and very difficult and hard and brave work is to kind of, you know, stop that intergenerational trauma here and now. And I love how like Taryn strong often talks about how if we heal ourselves, we heal backwards and forwards in as far as the generational trauma. It's just it's very beautiful work. But I do think it's also kind of scary to think like, I don't know if I actually want to remember those things that happened or a lot of times people will say I have no memories of childhood are very, you know, there's big blank spots, totally normal again, and you don't even have to remember, it might you just might be you don't have to remember the things the events might be being remembered in your body in the way that you get activated or triggered to your body.
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remembering. And so the idea around poaching and re parenting ourselves is what's happening right now in my body in my life in my adult body right now, that's showing up for me right now. And how do I want to nurture kind of get in touch with my inner child right now, and make this the best life that I possibly can you know, a lot of the women I work with are still drinking. So they're sober curious, usually, and some of them have already quit, and they are living alcohol free. And I have really no judgment at all around that, like, if, wherever people at at you know, I want to connect with them. I will say that repairing Ting is kind of pairs very well with, with sobriety. Because the way I see it is like, once you get in touch with your inner child, and your Inner Inner teen is sick, you really want to protect them. And you, you know, I used to, I used to say years ago, I remember saying, like, you don't want to give alcohol to the baby, like gives, once you start loving yourself, like you would love a baby. And I used to say that even before I got really into inner child work, I just thought of myself as like, I don't love myself, like I would love a little baby.
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And I have had, you know, I have three children who are now adults, and I know what it's like to love them or, you know, nieces and nephews or small animals like that, that outpouring of love that, that kind of protective. Love that you have for something kind of gentle and smaller and vulnerable, like that, having that love for yourself, like you're not going to put alcohol into the baby, right? So it I do definitely see a link between protecting yourself and not engaging in self harming behaviors. And not, you know, even micro aggressions even like, even mean thoughts about yourself start start feeling like, oh, I don't want to think that way, you know about my body. This is, you know, this is also a little subcells body.
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This is teenage Isabel's body, I don't want to be mean to them.
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Because I love them.
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There was some confusion for me in the beginning when I would hear the word trauma. And my brain would jump to these big massive events that, you know, I'm like, Well, no, I didn't really have any of that. And, and I've heard that from people a lot where they're kind of like, No, I don't I don't really have stuff.
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Absolutely right.
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If people are familiar with the ACE scores, I think that's going to expand. So many of us come into recovery saying like, well, I don't have it that bad, or I didn't have it that bad. I mean, honestly, if you have heard me tell my story, back in like 2012 or 2013, around that I would have been like everything was fine. I do want to also add one more thing here of the that I'm doing right now with one of my sisters who is actively also doing inner child work. She has come up with this idea. And we're just it's been really meaningful for us around bereavement camp. And so we lost our, our dad when I was in second grade. And so eight years old, he died at 45 years old. So we were talking about how I'm the oldest of three girls, and my mom was very young, she was 10 years younger than my dad, when this happened, we have been talking about how like we didn't go to a bereavement camp or a counselor or, you know, somebody that would have helped us through that period of time. And that is kind of the beauty of free parenting is that you can kind of go back now as an adult and give your child things or say things or provide for them the safety, the love and the connection that they needed back then you can do that. Now a very powerful coaching question that I asked people is what did you need to hear when you were younger, that would have made a difference. And then whatever it is, people can kind of, you know, by thinking about that, or journaling about that. So for example for me is I'll protect you, and I believe you. So those are two that have come up for me. And so then that becomes my affirmation that I can tell my inner child like I will always protect you. And I believe you.
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I'll tell you something that happened to me recently and how I repented myself through it. So in October, I was at an international mental health conference in Orlando. Teenage me just loved it. She was like nerding out on all the things and there was one speaker, he was speaking and my inner child was like IU l no, no, my adult was like, Oh, come on.
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Everybody's going like this person's really popular.
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Everybody's going to this person and my inner kid was like ropes and So I totally listened to her and honored her. And I was like, Okay, we're not going. And I felt so good that I listened to my inner child. And I don't even have to know why this person is triggering for her. I don't know, I just could feel it in my body. And I trust her. And it doesn't mean that my inner child is running the show like this was a low stakes situation. But it meant so much to me that I honored her and I listened to her and I didn't override because I think so many times, we override a gut feeling, you know, we go along with the crowd, or we say yes, when we want to say no. So so much of re parenting is about really listening to yourself, and it being okay to just know inside of yourself, that you don't want to do something with no explanations. And following that,
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when I think about those voices, I definitely do compartmentalize my five year old self, and then I have about my 15 year old self that I look at and go, Oh, okay, this is five year old self. And those are usually really primal things right about like safety, just fear. I'm not sure what I'm afraid of here. But it doesn't feel safe. Those types of feelings for me, I'm often thinking are more tied to things from that nurturance and protection that I was looking for, as a child at that age. But then when it's more of those guidance issues, it's like, where do I want to go? Why do I want to go there? What am I rebelling against? And why am I rebelling against it? I'm usually like, I'm thinking this is probably my teenage Yeah,
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that's exactly what I do, too. I mean, so you know, you're familiar with internal family systems. This is like parts work. The way I do my re parenting work is I kind of see myself in four parts, but people can have as many parts as they want. So I have my inner child, my inner teen, my inner critic, and then my inner loving parent who's the Uber, overseer of everyone and is connected to total love and source energy, and all of those wonderful things and universal connectedness. So that inner loving parent can kind of take care of all the parts and nobody gets kicked out. Nobody gets ostracized, everybody gets hurt, and, and I recognize like the inner critic, she's just exhausted, and she's my protector, so she doesn't get pushed away or anything. So over time, my inner child is very clear to me, when it's my inner child, her voice sounds different to me, the things that she needs, the things that she says, it's clear when it's my inner child, if there's swearing involved, if there's like rebellion, then I know it's my inner teen, and she needs a different type of nurturance. As Kelly McDaniel said, our primary caregivers, our mothers, were really there to provide the nurturance the protection and the guidance and the way I look at this, like, no child needs the protection and nurturance.
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And then my inner teen needs the protection nurturance. And really the guidance, that's when the guiding comes in, because my inner teen wants to take risks.
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Over time, their personalities have more and more and more into focus.
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Part of this work is about putting all of it online in a way, but then being able to integrate it into who you are now. So I love how you just describe that
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the parts of ourselves that might be like our shadow selves, that part when we feel shame. So like we're overriding with perfectionism, because we're really deeply ashamed of a certain part of ourselves. So the way I see my inner critic is kind of like, she just doesn't have very well developed skills. And she's like a protective, really protective part of me, that only knows how to be really scared. I mean, definitely connected to ego, right? So what would I do with my inner critic, I'm like, Okay, you have worked so hard, thank you. I'm gonna put this weighted blanket on you get a pedicure, and you binge watch a little bit of Netflix, and just chill out.
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I do offer one on one coaching.
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I also offer classes and workshops, I have a class called inner child work for beginners.
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And it's a 90 minute class that includes a workbook and a recording of the content. So all of that is found on my website and I have created and developed a beautiful group coaching experience called reparent reparent. That is an acronym.
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And so the themes of reparent are reimagine, ease, protect, align, reconnect, embody nurture, and trust, kind of intention of it is in group coaching experiences. People have that collective me to experience where they hear other people share Are they you're me coaching other people. And we meet online on Zoom. There's a private Facebook group right now there's a waitlist, but it's it's very powerful. And the support that I'm trying to give is have people repair themselves.
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I love it. I think it's such a great thing.
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And I will definitely make sure that we have links to everything in the show notes for people to pursue on their own. Going back to where we started this that she recovers event, I didn't really get into specifics, but I do remember your energy in that room. It's so interesting for me to hear you talk about yourself being someone that at one point, was struggling to nurture yourself in the right way, because you put off this just beautiful nurturing energy. And it sounds like probably that's what was happening, right? You were giving it all away for a while, instead of keeping a little bit of it for yourself. I just want to compliment you on the work that you're doing and who you are. Thank you
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for that feedback. I really, really appreciate that a lot. Do you think for all of us, it is about learning how to nurture ourselves, we usually come into this kind of recovery space, you know, having been in survival mode and having been engaging in self harming behavior. So what does self care even mean? What does self love even mean? Like?
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These are just practices that take time, so I appreciate that feedback. Thank you.
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Okay, we'll be right back. A big thank you to my guests about. For more information on her program, please visit her website at wide awake recovery.com. Or you can follow her work on Instagram at wide awake recovery. Before we go one more story from me.
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Yesterday, I was driving. And I saw a random corner in my neighborhood that for some reason reminded me of this past fall when I was walking a lot.
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The first thought that came to my mind was, ah, I miss walking.
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I wish I could walk. I paused for a moment. And I caught the thought as it passed. I caught it because it created a negative feeling in my body, a longing of some kind. I try when I can to catch those. I'm not always in a healthy enough space to do that.
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But when I can I try to. I stayed with this particular thought for a moment. And because he did, I was able to work with it. My first reaction to myself was a bit on the snarky side. I thought, well, that is weird, because there's the corner right there. You've got your shoes in the backseat.
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You could pull your car over right now. And take a walk on that corner. See? Easy, no longing. Then I retreated notch.
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Self Compassion. Oh, okay. Let's try this again. I call it Another tool I have. I pretend it's one of the kids in my life saying to me, Oh, I remember walking there last summer. I wish we could do that. What would I say? Well, if I was being a smartass, I would say there's a corner right there.
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Let's pull over the car and we can walk on it. Huh? They might say back, no, it's too cold. So if we're being technical, what you're sad about is not that you can't go for a walk, because you can go for a walk. It's that you don't want to go for a walk in the cold. I would say something along the lines of well, we could go home right now and get some layers and some gloves and had to go for a walk. If that sounds fun. If you dress right, you don't even have to feel the cold. We all know how this goes.
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Nobody wants to hear that.
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They'd likely pass on that we quickly move on to some other sort of train of thought.
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There's no need to dig further on this one. In these cases, sometimes just a simple validation of the feeling will do. I don't need to prove any sort of point or try to talk them out of the feeling. They don't need that for me.
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Sometimes that's true when I'm talking to myself too. Sometimes I simply need to just say to myself, you missed that time last summer when you were walking a lot. That time felt good. And leave it at that. But sometimes, if thoughts are disruptive enough, I may have to get even deeper, especially when I'm in a state of self exploration or I'm trying to work through some things. The reason is that these feelings can be information and they can be information that is really important to my overall well being so it may require me to do a little bit of self coaching.
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Some might call it a little bit of a Have our analysis and take a deeper look at the situation.
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But I know myself and I know that this work is important to me. So I take the time to do it.
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Let's break this down for a minute. If you remember our emotions episodes in season one, we talked about the cycle of a craving. trigger occurs, the trigger creates a thought that thought generates a feeling. And the feeling is what turns into our craving or urge to drink, our desire to escape that feeling. The thought that made me get that bad feeling was triggered by a place that I saw.
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That reminded me of a time last year when I was walking a lot more, I felt a sense of loss related to that, that generated a feeling in my body. And it wasn't a good feeling. So I noticed it. I could go on a walk if I wanted to. So what is it that I really need to hear right now, too many negative feelings can have consequences for me. So it's important to understand where they're coming from. I don't like walking in the cold.
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The winters are a hard time for me, they always have been. I'm in a tricky time. Right now. I'm just a couple of days away from my four year sober anniversary.
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There's a reason why my rock bottom occurred in January and February. And there's a reason why my body feels a certain way around this time of year. And I just try to let that be true. My body associates this time of year with negative feelings, less activity, less ability to do the things that I want to do feeling restricted, all things that are scary feelings. So it might make sense that thought that I had telling me that, hey, remember when we used to walk there, it simply might be that I could just go take a walk there.
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But it's also something else.
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It's telling me that I'm longing for something, that there's a need that I'm not filling. And it may be a need that isn't fulfilled. By taking that walk.
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It's something else. If I even take it down a little bit further, I can uncover feelings that I have around fear of gaining weight because of not being as active as I should be.
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And that fear generates all kinds of negative feelings for me. I've built up alarm systems and shaming devices inside of my body that I thought were somehow protecting me from myself or from my own behaviors that oftentimes aren't very miscued.
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Because if I'm being honest, and I take a step back, I realized that I'm actually as active now, as I had been at that time last summer, if not more, so. I'm feeling better in my body than I was back then. So that's not it.
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I miss being outside. I missed that freedom of being able to walk unencumbered. Okay, that's something what, but that's all things that I have access to.
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Those are all things that I could do if I really wanted to, if I wanted to prioritize those things within the series of things that I need to do in a day, I could make that happen.
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How much do I want to do I want to make that happen. Where does that fit into my life right now.
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If I do all of that work, I may discover that there was nothing to that thought. There's no reason that that thought is creating a negative feeling for me, because there's nothing negative to feel. It's simply a representation of an old script that I have, as well as, you know, maybe a reminder of how much I love the spring and how much I have to look forward to because I'm going to be able to walk on that corner again. To donate please follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at show up and say.org you're interested in collaboration or being a guest on the show. Please send an email to info at show up and stay.org original music created and produced by the wickedly talented Katie Hare
