How an unsupportive family impacts adult life

[Intro] Oh, happy day, oh, happy day. It's another episode on Empowered to Thrive, and I'm so glad you've joined me. It may not be a happy day for many other reasons, but you and I are here together. We have a few moments to enjoy this time to create a sense of safety within us so that we can breathe from whatever's going on around us and just take a pause, let our guard down and feel what it is to be safe in our body and in that way we get to feel safe in whatever it is that's going around us. 

Corinne Powell: Because remember, it's our internal world that's impacting our external world. It's not, well, once I feel safe around me, I'll feel safe within me. It's actually the wonderful fact that we can learn how to feel safe within us, and then no matter what's happening around us, we can actually feel safe. And if we hadn't met yet, I'm your host, Corinne Powell, and I'm so excited that you've decided to spend this time with me. It is absolutely my pleasure to have you here. 

I put up a post about some personal things, and real and authentic is my vibe. But sometimes there's a hesitancy when I do something like that because there will be people who respond as if I am speaking from a place of fresh wounding or if I'm looking for validation or pity. And in the past, something that was so painful for me was to be misunderstood. So I didn't want to say these things because I knew it's easy to get misunderstood when you're being super vulnerable and transparent. Hey, it's easy to get misunderstood anyway.

Anyhow, it's so exciting to heal and to recognize certain things that bothered us in the past don't have to always bother us. Like the idea of being misunderstood, I'm a lot more comfortable with it. And also, when I put up a post, there is always numerous ways to interpret, right? What we read. So the point I'm coming at is that what we presently feel is often rooted in earlier, very early experiences we had. So I talk about a pain point that I had today that's rooted in my childhood. 

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I hope I've got you wondering, what is this post all about? And if you are curious, wait no longer, I'm going to read the post for you. It goes:

“Recently, I found childcare that seemed to be working out super well for us. Finally, within a month, I was told it would be ending. One extremely painful element to my life has been feeling unsupported. It started early on in childhood with parents who didn't know how to emotionally attune to me and continued into adulthood as my husband and I found ourselves with three children under three and very little help. Going out on a date has always been a challenge for us because finding a sitter who can happily manage a lot of littles if they don't all comply is complicated. We'd be out and so relieved to be getting a break, to have it abruptly end because we needed to head home as quickly as we could because the sitter couldn't handle what was happening. 

We have very little family support, which might be the most painful of it all. It's been tough. We long for community and seek to find it, putting out what we hope to receive in return. But sometimes it doesn't happen like you hope and perhaps for good reason. Yesterday, I was so excited thinking about today and how much time I would have to get through some Change Radically tasks that have been on the to-do list for a while. Then I awoke to a text that informed me my sitter wasn't able to make it because she wasn't feeling well. We all get sick. Of course, I can logically understand, but emotionally, it was like being punched in my gut. My dreams for the day dashed. The familiar that I know so well of putting my desires aside needed to happen once again. 

There's a little girl inside of me who is aching. She knows the pain of getting excited, looking forward to something, only to have it changed or removed shortly after. She knows so well what it feels like to give up on something because someone else has a need that gets met instead of hers. In this moment, I see myself opening my arms to her so that she can come close for a long, warm hug. I hear myself say - I'm sorry, sweetie. It's not your fault. What you ask for isn't too much. Your needs matter as much as everyone else's. You deserve to receive what everyone else is getting, and I'm going to help you get it.” 

I was deeply touched by how powerful it is that the present situations can actually help me to give attention and love and care to the past parts of myself that are still hurting. In this particular situation, definitely my very young inner child who learned that the needs of her parents, the needs of other people were more important than her own. The truth is they weren't more important, but they were given more attention and more time. So the message that she learned was that they were more important. 

One reason that some of us hate being misunderstood and why it hurts so deeply is when our earliest experiences, that with our caregivers and our parenteral figures, when those people don't speak to understand us, we learn the pain of not ever really being known. Not having somebody say, tell me more. Wait, am I hearing you say? And actually going back and forth with us, finding us interesting and getting to learn and know more about us. That's the design of parents and caregivers. That's what they're there to do. When that doesn't happen, there's a void, a deficit. And until we do that for ourselves, it hurts. This is the beauty and what is so profound about self-parenting. We start doing for ourselves what we always deserved, what our parents and caregivers perhaps didn't know how to give us. And we start to heal those younger parts of ourself.

Now, certainly having people around us, being in friendships, in a romantic relationship, having just in general, having a community or people around us that do this also organically is going to help. But those people should never take the place of what we can do for ourself. Because if they take that place, we will always need them. Like we'll lean on them. It can become codependent, which isn't the goal. We need those people to be able to be removed and we still can be okay. When we start to offer ourselves what we've always needed, we always have us. 

So for those of you that believe in God or hear me say, all we need is us. And you're like, I don't know about that, Corinne. Okay. I feel you because I also believe in a divine source that offers me so very much. And I hold space for that as I'm saying, we can offer us these things that if everyone else is removed, we still have what we need because we have it within us. So I want to give some perspective to that. When I felt like I was a small child, even though I was a grown up, because I was living from the wounds of my inner child. I actually perceived light through her eyes, through her small stature. Same body, right? When I related to my divine source, I related from that. Super dependent, feeling very incapable, feeling very powerless. Now, I relate very dependent in a powerful way. 

I know what I'm capable of and I also recognize what has been done for me. So I can feel myself passionate and fired up because what I'm talking about here today is literally like it's my life's work. There's so many facets to it. But this, what we're talking about here, like the echo of the past impacting our present, but how we can heal that and how all of it changes the way we function. I'm so passionate about it. 

[Outro] Thank you for sharing in my passion. I really appreciate the time we get to have together, your willingness to open your heart and to consider what I'm talking about. To look within and to allow yourself personal reflection. Because that's where it really happens. You can hear my thoughts. You can listen to my story. But the whole point of all of this is you. To consider yourself. To take care of yourself. Because you matter. 

And I have a free resource I want to offer you as another way that you can take care of yourself. Keys for Change is a downloadable workbook with a video lesson included, and it'll give you the tools you need to get started on your healing journey. And if you're already on the healing journey, it's just going to be another way to support you on that path. I hope that you will link through the show notes, pick up that workbook. It's a very easy way of clicking one button and accessing it. And it is my gift to you.

Much love, my friends. I will see you again next week.