0:00:00 - Briar
Oh we are live now. Yeah, hello everyone. I am Briar Harvey. This is the Neurodiversity Media Network. It is Wednesday and I am having internet problems, so we'll see how this goes. We are here today with the fabulous Samantha Fischer and we are talking about storytelling and our inner children, and I'm gonna let Sam explain this to you. But I feel like the upshot here is that we are always in conversation with our past selves our future selves too. This is not. It's a timing, why, me thing. We are always in conversations with these other versions of ourselves, and how we have those conversations matter, so let's dive into it. I want you to talk about talking to your inner child, to your inner selves, and what that looks like.
0:01:23 - Sam
I love the way you talked about inner selves, because it feels, like there's like and this is like from family systems work where you have like an inner child and an inner teenager and like an inner young adult, but and they all work in like Congress, together with you as the parent, as the chance to reparent all of these people. And but the one thing that stood out the most to me when I was doing this for myself was that if the inner child ain't happy, nobody's happy Because, like the inner teenager guards the comes up with this abrasive personality. If the inner child feels harmed or is not getting what it needs, and then the inner young adult will respond to the inner teenager. And I'm at one point I'm very activated like inner teenager when I was raising my own teenagers. That's not strange at all, cause I was relating to them on such a like inner personal level and so. But what also I've learned just through my own experience and through lots and lots of counseling Thanks parents, but also parents was that in your inner, your inner child, is like all the sensation in your body, like when you get that gut feeling, you get like oh no, because what are our little kids? There's balls of sensation, right, you know, they just experience the role like let me lick that, I'm gonna hug this or no, get away from me Like they're just pure energy.
And so many times, and living in America cause I can't speak or really living anywhere else, I've been to other places but I've not experienced it as someone who lives there. We tend to shut down sensation. You know, we just give me a photo for that. No, I don't want to do that. Oh, let me just binge watch this. And so, like we think of, oh, I'm feeling this, which is really attaching a story to a sensation, and this was actually on my end, but it feels like really the place to lead and start. So like emotional language, which is feeling language, is different from sensational language, and I had to learn this, like through years of practice, cause I was a dancer, I'm a dancer, I'm a dancer, I just don't because, like you, tend to like push your body, everything out.
And so like really feeling what is what? Like that rumbling in your belly? Oh, that's hunger, or oh, that's fear. Oh, that's something, but it's what is it actually? Rather than going? Oh, that's an emotion. What's the sensation? Oh, it's. I feel like I've got like prickles on the back of my neck, cause I'm a little bit nervous right now. Nervous is a emotion state, but the prickles on my neck are a sensation state which are different but they kind of work hand in hand and that's what the little kids little kids just know. My body feels like this because that's, they're still learning the language of the adult world.
And so, in my experience, listening to the sensations of your body, which is our natural state, like you'll wear on nature too, that's our animal body telling us stuff, that's the first key in really getting into a relationship with your inner child and it's kind of fun. You don't have to make a big deal out of it. I mean just like washing your hands with like, oh, the water is warm, oh, the soap smells good, oh, I kind of like this. This towel feels like this, like really starting to just front I'm funny using hand washing. But that was a very, very different story before the pandemic. But my own inner child story started when I was a little kid and I was a parentified kid. I'm not alone in that, I'm a Gen Xer. So we've got a big, big group of us. I think that the only we went home we had to do then like that's, that's a generation, I think a very parentified, but I wasn't too much of the class percent. Let me slow down here.
My father came from Pennsylvania to deep East Texas and so he was the kind of the what's the word I want to use here? Not so much the damn Yankee, but yeah, the damn Yankee who spoke funny, had totally different sense of humor, but I got him and also my mother's family and I'm saying this out of the kindness just to tell the story was like very enmeshed. You know, like my grandmother lived in our backyard, like we had uncles that lived all down the street and like my mother was far more concerned. She'd been protecting my uncle like she's adopted her whole life, so like her point was never really go ask my dad something. It was to ask my grandmother or my uncle. So I was like who protects daddy Me? Because you know I was the first baby, so like my job's to protect dad, and so I had like my mother busy with the emotional needs of my small town and dad's just trying to figure out how things work, and so I just total along with him and did everything, and then we lived down the street from what my grandmother or my mother and nobody ever thought of knocking, like they just walked in their house and did whatever, which part of that is maybe our life.
But also, as an adult, I now know like that's also rude For people that purport to be nice so they're the courtly folks. That's rude. And so there's all this like now. When I look back on it, there was never like for the fact my mother never made decisions like with my father, or maybe she did, but this is a childhoods recollection. My father would go and do things to surprise her, just without telling her, because we didn't have cell phones all the time. He would just get in the car, drive to go buy her a gift and then come back and then, oh my God, where's he going? He's been in the car wreck. And so you know histrionic type personalities all around me, this big stoic man who just wants to take care of his wife. And then I'm trying to hold the balance in between everything. And then, of course, of all this, I develop migraines, I develop who knows what else, but I, just I become this very sickly high-wired kind of child and all I knew was I couldn't have needs because I had to take care of everyone else's needs, which is the ultimate parent-fied child and it always laugh and tell people that they're like what was your childhood? Like Samantha and I was like a Foggler novel directed by Mel Brooks.
And so you know, the migraines started. They noticed them at five. I think they started before, but that's when, like all the nightmarish kind of testing that they do for migraines, back in the 70s, and finally I remember in eight, they took me to this pediatric neurologist at Baylor in Dallas and it was the first day I remember as he looked at me like I was the patient I think I was told you this story before he would roll across on his desk. This guy was totally, totally on the spectrum. He would look at me and he'd do all this stuff and he'd roll back and take notes on the hair and he'd scatter across the floor and he looked me in the eye and my parents were just there and he would tell me okay, this is what you have, this is this, this is how you'll have a procedure Like you're. Life will be normal, but you have to deal with these things and not eat these things.
And this is like 1978, but like this sort of migraine, you know, if you take these medications you'll never be able to take birth control, because migraine and I was like tell you an eight year old about birth control that's pretty cutting edge for a dog, but still it's like it was another layer of like this is stuff I have to take on myself, like the layer of stuff I already had on my little shoulders and I liked the guy for it, but I didn't realize that I didn't have whatever integrity in my structure or nuance. I just have to take care of myself so I'm not a bother to anyone else. Also, when migraines comes you know diversity and when migraines started getting worse because I thought I've got to prevent them because this is my thing now because the doctor told me and by the time I was 11, I was having like the hemoplegic ones where, like they're like little mini strokes.
So my parents to their, to their you know credit. My mom calls up a therapist that she heard about and he goes. Hmm, you got a kid, I'll get migraines, so bad he was from Mississippi, don't hold that against him that she's missing this much school he goes. Hmm, I don't need to see an 11 year old migraines mom, I need to see you and dad. And they took like like two weeks off, two weeks and maybe 10 days, came like to Bernie, texas, out in the middle, which was the middle of nowhere in 1981. And like did some sort of family counseling camp. I mean, when they came back, my brother and I to this day still like there's like AC, bc or BCAC because they were so different. They'd learned boundaries. They'd learned like they'd done like a bunch of Gestalt works. They'd seen like how their families have affected the way they acted. This was especially huge for my mom, but I think my dad learned like what it was like to live with a dad that it had gone through the depression and then to live in a family full of oil money, like all this sort of weird money stuff, and it was like, oh, they are very different now. It was not fixed, but they at least they at least had a language to talk to each other instead of at each other, and I did not have to be that person for them anymore, which left me a little bit like lost. But then finally I got to finally go talk to somebody. That was like age appropriate to go. Oh see, this has been going on in your life and that's what I got language for. Having an inner child.
Now, granted, I'm like 12 years old, so I'm starting to be. I'm still quite a child at that point, but there's that I think it gave me an idea that I was still talking to my parents and her children a lot of times, because my dad has totally one of the things that's great about him, like a Peter Pan quality and he's still he's like 80 years old and one of the most fun humans on the planet because he is not childish but he's childlike. That makes sense. And so when I started to get them language that your, which at 12, was probably a little bit new I was still too close. I'm still a child myself and you're telling me about this thing, but I think it helped me to have the same, to be a mother, the same page, to speak the kind of language about boundaries, and that my parents were speaking.
So in our house we were like this little bitty pod inside this huge family that was like trying to rest us apart. We at least had the ability to go oh okay, it's okay to not wanna do what they're doing, even though everybody's always done it this way. And I see this in our culture at large, like boundaries are such a huge, huge thing right now, because I don't think anyone's ever taught inner boundaries Like this boundaries against you and I want this boundaries. What about the boundaries within ourselves? And the reason we teach outer boundaries first is because inner boundaries are the hardest ones, like the boundaries I have I work too much, or the boundaries I have with I don't get enough sleep, or the boundaries I have with self, like actual self care, I'm gonna go get in the bathtub, or I don't know how to play. Like these are actual things. It was like what do you desire? I was like I don't know. I never allowed myself to actually play. I allowed myself to go where I was assigned to go because it made that's.
It kind of felt like children were assignments when I was a kid and so, like, just even saying that out loud sounds really strange, but if you grew up in the tail end of the 60s and the 70s when you know, it's like yep, you fit the assignment, you had the two kids good job. So it was like because that was still coming out of that whole many eyes and how are everybody looks like that and so, but it gave them like balance and structure, like they finally had a way to structure their lives where mom wasn't always running to the answer, or my uncle or my grandmother or my aunt. It's like she knew how to no, thank you for asking. That was something she never knew how to say. I mean like to this, until she her dementia got really bad. She still was like running across the country to do something for someone and like my dad didn't tell Like, and I was like, wow, and I think I was the other way, like I'm moving to the other side of the country because I don't want to have to deal with that, and like I saw much of it saying that, nope, we're moving away because her tug is strong.
And I see here, and I think it's really crucial to have like balance and structure in place internally so that we have a healing space for ourselves, because then it allows us to really and, like I said, it doesn't have to be complicated, like some days when I just like I've done on the computer a long time where I've been sitting and coming up with some sort of playlist or something and I'll be like I'm just gonna walk into this. I used to just walk right out my front door, which like few steps away, but now it's 104 outsides, so it feels like the service of the sun. But like last night I just went and still in the front and I was looked at the moon, like wow, the moon's great, the moon's doing a full moon next week. Just to sit outside and be like, oh you know, it's not 104 outside. Or just to look out the window or sitting in much more goofy cats play, like it doesn't have to be. I'm here, I must set aside a time and let a candle. I mean, like the wellness industry has taught us, like lassoed us into thinking that we are only doing wellness practices if we have on spandex and if we're, you know like standing on our head. It's like no, like these sort of practices are so accessible at any time and any day.
Like before I walk into my house or walk out of my house, I'm like, okay, we've got this Sometimes for me, because getting out of my house used to be really hard. I would do it when I got in my car, like I made it Because for a very long time getting out of my house was a challenge, you know, long before the pandemic and it's surely right after it. So it's like when I got in my car I would like turn on the music, roll the windows down, go out of my drive. I'm like, ah, I did it. That is something that affirms your inner child, like, woohoo, you get to pick the radio station, today you don't get to drive. But I mean, it can be that simple and it's very individual. Like that might be something that I'll do. That Well then, good, that's a sensational message that that is not your inner child's thing but it definitely is mine, because music is a big piece of my healing.
And so I know also like if I'm caught in like an apathy freeze, like for days, I'm just like ugh, and it's like one afternoon of that, couple days of that. But if I find myself in that for a week, I went okay, what's going on? There's like a freeze thing. It's not hard enough to be like freeze, freeze, but it's. I'll go run up and down my stairs a couple of times to get my heart rate. I'm like, okay, now what's that? Because I had the thing too, like when y'all were talking about the shower thing. That's so real and I know a lot of people for him that's a very real thing. It's like, all right, when was the last time you got in the shower? Like I actually washed your because my hair I hate washing my hair. Like that's a sensory bed and but also it's a childhood memory. Like people would yank on my hair. So like there's so much time to that.
But just like how do I make this at least the least amount of traumatic that I can and we get to decide that now we're the parent? It's like recognizing that yeah, this is real, this is a very real thing, like acknowledging it to the little kid. Like I know you don't like to do this and I know people hurt you when they did this to you and it sucks. And like how can we make this playful, like what can you put in your tub? That's fun, where you know, like I have a little, because I get some of my best ideas in the shower, I have those little crayons where I can write it down. So I don't forget, because I'll have a great idea and then I'll get in the shower and then when I'm out of the shower the great idea is gone. So I got this, like Randy Buck is like she was like they have waterproof, you know like things you can put in there. But no, that's way too complicated.
So one of my other friends, like, just get those like blue crayons, you could write it in the front of the shower where it doesn't come off. I like, oh, that little kid loves that one. And so then I at least have the idea of what it was, and then I have paper in my bathroom so I can finish the idea I want to get out. And so then it was like okay, the portal did not take that idea away, and so there are ways to kind of take back some of the things that might have been less than pleasant or just downright traumatic, and you know, in the, because the shower is a huge thing for a lot of people. So, like, how do we take that back, at least not make it less than traumatic, a little bit playful, because thinking about some of us who were parentified, we didn't get to play, or if we did, it was like very structured or was only a short amount of time or somebody else's idea of fun.
So, you know, create a little toy bag for yourself and like again, it doesn't have to be for a lot of time, just like enough to shift a thought process, like oh it sucks. So can I go inside my jump rope for 30 seconds? I mean, like that's how fast it can take to shift your mindset from one of to I think you need just a little bit of play. Or just like those rubber bouncy balls. And also these are things that are not like hideously expensive. Like I have so many cat toys around the house I have fallen to the side of it. I need a bag For like little Samantha, because if the cats can have this many toys, I can have just a few like, even like very sensory toys, like ooh, just for my very like that's another thing I didn't get enough like sensory stimulation when I was a kid, cause like all right.
Here's some crayons. Well, crayons are fun, but I typically ended up eating them, which was just another sign that something was very different about me and I'm like, oh no, this does not taste like blue. Oh my God, blue should taste very different. I'm so mad at this. I'm glad you got that, cause not everybody does. This is so wrong. You see, goodbye.
Now that I've gone through the childhood and what it is to be a kid is far and to find, and everybody has a different flavor of this. Like that was my very you know, and there's so much more to it. That's just kind of a scam, because it's my story and other peoples will look very different because we've all experienced different things. But, as I said, it's a practice and because we house emotions in our body, like we have foshes, that's like beady, beady, beady, beady. Here's some more emotion in and when we take these and it's interesting to say, like taking the time to sit quietly with our emotions and just like, oh yeah, I feel that, or I feel that sensation in my body, it's exactly the total different way that when I was training to deal with it, like nine years ago, I was like put on loud honking music and just move across the dance floor and like, just push it out really hard, which is also very effective, but I think in a lot of ways it slows the progress.
I mean, if you're having like a, really if you're having a day and it's stuck in there, it's very helpful, like you go through a down, some some dub stabbing out of there, but I found for me tends to get some of it, kind of some residue in there, but then you're kind of stuck in that weird you've thrown in some extra energy in your body that the actual emotion is Like what do I do with this? Or the actual whatever the experience is, this is kind of like hmm, now I've got angry music in there too and I'm confused. So I found that just learning to like have the sensation arise without having a story, like oh, do you think this was about Uncle Bob wanting to kiss me? And I said no, just don't add a story, just let the sensation be there. And learn to sit with sensation in our little they're made for that Like they're. They're little, just kind of like the rabbits out or the squirrels are sitting outside with their tail, like come here.
Art of bodies are made. We've just set them in, we've just taken them and kind of divorced them from nature and if we allow them to feel like they naturally are supposed to feel, they tell the stories all their own. And so we learned to just let our bodies tell the story. Like, if you sit outside and you start to sweat, there's a story of, oh, I'm hot. Or I have that story sometimes in the middle of the night when I just wake up sweating because I'm over 50. The menopausal story, which is finally being told in this little side shoot by women who are going through perimenopause, which was not told to any of us. Little side side bar, that'll one day that's a whole different podcast.
And I think if you just practice validating like oh, oh, yeah, like, once you get comfortable with what, or when you get familiar with the sensations, like oh, yeah, like, yeah, you do get to have those, you do get to have those feelings yeah, I hear you, I can, because sometimes tears will start to rise when you have that sensation. Enough, but oh, because it'll register with what your adult sensations are. Like, oh, yeah, you didn't get to be heard when you were sad. Or oh, you weren't allowed to be angry. I'm really sorry about that. That was not fair. It does really suck, you know. But no, that was then and you don't live with them anymore, can't you let them hear with you? So that's why we can draw a different path forward and you get to. It doesn't take, it's a long time. Also, there are things I like to write letters to my past self, my current self, future self. To the parents that raised them, to, like my caregivers, who were there for me and allowed me to have beautiful space and become the person I am. To the people who were difficult and things I wish they would have done. To my future self, who I, you know things that I didn't get to do then. But I'm unapathetive.
Now I'm like, oh, our timeframe was just different. And so there are. It's like, where could the story go from here? You know, like you know, not so much journal entries per se, but letters Like letters are incredibly empowering. You like, look throughout our history, like when it was a time when, like, these are the letters from someone. So I don't know why I put a southern accent on that, but it feels like somebody like the founding. So like, hello, sir, mr Beauregard, and let's see what else do I have here. That's exciting. And then what can I do right now? Like to feel better, because sometimes it feels like oh, I can sit down this afternoon and write that letter. But what's sometimes right?
In the morning you're hit with something like oh, I did not see that in her child moment coming and it's like, and sometimes I have to try out new things, like because you're like okay, this always worked for me as my adult self. I'm gonna go get in the bathtub. I don't know about you.
When I'm angry, getting in the bathtub is not where I wanna go. I do not wanna take an angry bath. I get angrier just thinking about pouring a bath. When I am angry, it's like it's hot in there. It's kind of makes a weird noises. Again I go back to the rude shower moment. It's like being in the water. I'm angry. Now maybe, when I'm sad, I'm gonna get in there and sob some more. So I'm already surrounded by water. That feels better.
But like, maybe you take a walk, maybe you go rip up some, specifically with phone booths, phone books that's really what things do, but something destructive, you know, like, but finding something that matches the energy so that little kid can do, like little kid, you know. Don't think of what your adult self would do, cause they went. Little kid's got stuck in baths a lot, so bath is sometimes probably where you don't wanna go. This is where your adult self wants what's your little kid wants, cause they got stuck in the bathtub, so that's probably not bubbles bubbles are a great one. I keep bubbles around. I keep like big newspaper crayons those red crayon on like newsprint makes them very nice rips and dance. This is where dancing is good and we're going with feeling and like you can put on, like whatever weird music is fun and it moves fast Cause it's a feeling, not a sensation you're sitting with and so and this is where play kind of intersects with that sort of thing Like where would play also be fun with this?
And also sometimes rest, if you've been, or sometimes like gee, what time is it? Have I eaten? I find this one is right. Like I get busy. Oh my God, it's three o'clock, I have not had lunch yet. This goes with a lot of the crosses over a lot of neurodiversity.
I was like, oh, I have forgotten to eat and it is almost dinner time. Well, it's like, and my typical response used to be oh well, dinner time is just a few hours away. No, that is not. I would not do that to a child. I would give the child a snack and so learning and this has been like just so healing for my overall mental health journey over in the big picture of my life. Oh, I can just, I'll just go have, like I'll just go have some tea, that'll be fine. No, I wouldn't give the child tea and just say, oh, you can lump it till dinner, kiddo. So it is also nice to having this inner child healing piece to be like oh, oh yeah, I wouldn't treat a child like this. Why would I treat myself this way?
And and I was like getting under my covers and like does just for a few minutes and just letting like the weight of them I just needed to hug from something other than me, which is a really. Or having my cats just come lay on me for a little bit, because cats, I'm new to being like a cat lady and it's just it's life changing. And yes, and I think too, yeah, it's just recently that this whole like two cat things come into my life and it's absolutely a shift of being in the world. But I think even too, when you see that you watch the patterns show up and you realize, oh, the words that I'm hearing or the sensations, these aren't mine. Like I see these in my mother and father, which means they aren't my words, I can choose new ones.
So, moving forward generationally and even moving back epigenetically, I'm healing my line both ways. And so it's like I don't want my grandchildren to be hearing the same thing that we're told, like to my great grandmother's parents, like that might have been fine when we were in wagons, but who knows what's coming next. The world is moving on to whole new brave things and I don't want them to be carrying stuff from we believe, ridiculous things into the future. And so sometimes, like it's sitting in some grief, like, oh, they only did what they were taught because they didn't know better. But we now know better and we get to do better. And it means looking at the abandonment that you felt as a kid because people couldn't meet your emotional needs. That also means that you don't get to abandon yourself anymore.
Because once you get it you keep going.
0:29:58 - Briar
You mentioned the co-modification of self-care and I always come back to this. When people are talking about bubble baths and massages, we're missing the actual elements of care.
0:30:16 - Sam
Mm-hmm, yeah, and we're missing the fact that we were talking about the former hair model and community care, like we're missing communities and Like if you don't heal this wound of I deserve care, actual care, then you just keep abandoning yourself. I need this next Chinese thing, I need this next. And then you create all new issues in your life because You're, you're going, you're looking back to the answer instead of looking forward. You're using old solutions for problems that need new answers and that's why this little one's inside like hey, hey, it's not outside you, it's in you. You are the answer, you're not the problem, and that's what that sweet little voice is inside you. And hey, you've been taught you're the problem. That's not right. And that's that little wisdom piece that they don't want you to know, because then you won't be out buying your bubble baths and they're this and they're that. You know colors, crayons and paper are cheap Compared all the other stuff. They're selling crayons, paper and you know letter paper. You know you get nice stationery and you send it to yourself. Or like I'm a huge, huge fan. Oh, like the ritual to end things like oh, it's a full moon on Monday, I'm dropping some sitting, some letters, dropping them in the fire. You know I'm dropping all that in the fire. I'm a huge, huge fan you know it's like someone say pyromaniac, but I just say fan of letting things go with fire is your assistant, but, yeah, I think that you have ritual as a means of releasing and restoring and then reminding us that something else is coming in its place, so that we don't race to fill it with something that's not supposed to be there. So if we stick something in the hole, then there's no room for something else that the universe is bringing to us. And so, yeah, I'm very, very touched on, like the play and this, but let's see what else we have here.
So, once we have our adult in the place to reparent and do these beautiful things, I like to think of like, what story now we released this, am I moving forward and whose story is it? And then, do I want to move the story forward? Does it serve anyone? Does it serve my ancestors? Are they aided and embedded by my life story but by the story that it's been like, propelled on through my other people? Like, and if they're not, let's see if. If the answer is anything like, how do we lay the story down? Like, where do we get the story a good death so that it goes back to the earth and it gets, you know, transmuted and then we get to move the new story forward and the new story comes.
Like, stories are everywhere and I think we've talked about this, but it's like, oh, sometimes being without a story for a while helps you figure your own. Like when you take the, the yolk off a horse, and the horse kind of runs early, terrible horse noise. But sometimes being without a, like a saddle or a yoker, anything on your back and you just kind of like live in the freedom for a while. Like, oh, I had a dance teacher to see a hurrah and she's like you dance that old story off and the new story comes up. But sometimes you need to dance a freedom for a while Because we're so quick to want the. I need the saddle of a story on my back for a while. I know sometimes you just need to just dance in the liberation for a little bit and Not be told oh, you're this.
So because the story's got like a label, oh, this is your thing, this is your narrative. Now what is? It's just kind of be like I want to dance just in the, the Story of just no, no story for a little while, and that's because one will find you. That's where storytelling people, I have a story telling animals, the idea of not having a story, like and being able to stay that way. I think I think what I've said about there, but it's like because and Going back to art, you know, art is kind of in that place when there are no words for the story.
I think about movements this way, or even like in Judaism, we seem the nagoon, which are just wordless Music that has. It's a story, but it's a story too big for words. And sometimes our story is that and I do it sit in that space where you hold space for the next enormous thing that is too big to be spoken but it's still. It's a prayer, a prayer without words, like your story can be that, and Wait, like holding space for the next thing to come that is not imprinted from the people behind you, but knowing that you're safe and held by something sacred which is your own, your own story.
And I think that's a tricky place for humanity right now, like I need to have a label and I need to know where I'm going next and you know map, because everything is labeled and you know dotted here's this, it's on Google now, so it exists. It's like we don't exist unless we have a label, a story and a location, and that's like a new phase of humanity, like there. You just go back 50 years and people could just wander to the middle of nowhere and not be found and Waiting for that next story.
0:36:17 - Briar
What are we supposed to be doing? Because it's that waiting piece that's really hard for people, especially our people. We do not like to wait.
0:36:26 - Sam
We do not like to wait. We do not like to wait I think this is where it's going to be back to my parents and they had when they found like structure and Like you, just find a structure for your day, find a structure for your heart, like what you know, just in curiosity and structure.
You know, like find, find community, find curiosity, find structure for your life. See, you're not just like okay, got another day with absolutely nothing to do, but so, like you know, for me it's like it was routine. That was what I did. That saved me back when I was like head, like alright, I'm no story, my kids are all gone. So I was a country song. I was like my husband left, my dog died and my kids left me.
So I was like, if I didn't have, okay, I get up, I go to this place, I dance, I come home, I have clients, I do this, and then I go and do this in the afternoon. Otherwise I would have just moved in down to the bottom of the corner and sat around, sketched and written stories and submitted them. That would have also been a routine, but it would not have been a very good one. So, you know, I found a way and then I had to schedule and I'm like go visit my kids here. But despite the structure, that was loose enough that I could go do the weird stuff that inevitably came up because neurodiversity, but enough that it held me to where I still had it demanded. I had demands on my time and I knew that this was going to come in at this point. Okay, good, okay, this is going to come out, okay, I've got that there, okay.
And then I had the flexibility enough that I didn't feel like I was tied down and I didn't, and I had enough creativity in there that I didn't make up that my brain was being used, that I didn't make up stories about myself because I was using it to kind of push that out into the world about I think creativity is a huge part like structure and creativity, because they were using that brain power to use it out in the world. You don't tend to turn it in on yourself, but I think too and that's into like curiosity about oh, isn't that interesting. So it doesn't make everything true, like when people try to put a story on you like, oh, you're this, oh, how did you come to that conclusion, rather than agreeing right away?
0:38:50 - Briar
I think it's especially important, as so Mercury retrograde starts, I think, end of August, but this next one is through Virgo, which is significant because Virgo is where our routines live. I was born during that.
0:39:15 - Sam
I was born during a Virgo Mercury, retrograde Fun fact. And so yeah, it's like this will be a little homemade for me, but yeah it's. I think that's why it's like, that's why the first thing I said I'm a Virgo stellium, so like that's why routine is the first thing I say, because it is. It is literally what. And that's why I say routine and flexibility, because you can get too rigid in a routine and it becomes, you know, a straight jacket, and I've met people that can live without structure.
I don't know that I trust them necessarily. No, I mean, it's like you know I'm in shape, but all my Virgo is in cancer's house. So it's like I want stability, I want routine, I want you to give me this. So I have a lot of cancer energy in my, in my Virgo. This You're like you have no cancer placements. I'm like, no, all my cancer, all my cancer is like all my Virgos in cancer's house have a lot of cancer energy in my Virgo. So let me send cancers to, because cancer energy feels very similar to Virgo. And it's like I want structure in order and but if you do it wrong, I'm going to trot away and not let you touch. That's correct. That's correct. Just don't knock me over, because I will very, because then I will be helpless, but I will cut it. I will cut you. I will definitely. I'm going to shut you. Yeah, I have a friend of mine. She says cancer is Scorpio in a house dress.
0:40:59 - Briar
Fair. I accept that as cancer. I accept that.
0:41:09 - Sam
And so yeah, but I love, yeah, I love. One of my grandfathers was a cancer and he was a cool cat and I was like I can see both of them being in their energetics of how they I didn't know, I didn't know the one, but he felt very anti. So I have to know his other placements because he did not feel very much like a Leo. But my cancer granddad definitely felt like a cancer. Very off topic.
0:41:37 - Briar
Yes, yes, sure. When we're building these things, how do we workshop that with our inner child?
0:41:52 - Sam
Structure. Well, I think about this like what do we do when we have kids? We give them a schedule, you know, like purely like babies, like if you don't have it like I never met Like baby, baby on a schedule was wrong with you. That's what they did back in the orphan home so that the nurses could take care of them. And I'm like this is what I do in my home so that I can get some sleep, otherwise nobody is going to go anywhere. Nothing about attachment, parenting. Good for you, you're stronger person than I am, but to try that our whole house would have just sank. But you know. But it's thing about like you have a schedule, you get up in the morning, you eat breakfast, you have playtime, you do whatever, but like you have some sort of thing that you know. Kids like predictability. They're like it's like they like to know okay, in the morning, predictably, I'm going to be fed In the morning. I know that I'm going to get to do this thing. That is fun. There is.
My pediatrician used to say it's not unlike small vet, small animal veterinary practice. You know when they're preverbal. You have to kind of figure out. You know by all right that look good. So, when you're working with your inner child and it's sensation, dread, like okay, and emotion led, like oh, okay, and then your word choices matter, like your body hears, your mind hears the way you talk to yourself, or these words, mine Do, I, you know, instead of like you should do this or why did you do it, like you know, hmm, how can you compassionately speak to yourself by creating a schedule that is motivating to yourself as an adult and then also to a small child, which can be challenging for people who are led by authoritarian parents, like if your language is, you ought to, you know, you should, I can do this, you should get up every day and like, no, if you're a should have to, must. Don't make a schedule like that for a child.
Children do not you know, wouldn't it be nice if we got up and made breakfast. What do we know? And language, in a way that is driven by compassion and curiosity. I think wonder is a great word play. My kids went to Montessori. Like, what would Montessori school do? How would that look? Where it's very much driven by the child's idea of okay, I want to do this next.
You know, if you could take yourself back and go, what would I? What did I need from my childhood that I didn't get Like? Who was you know like what? If, like, when I was raising my own children, it was because my youngest was so much, so much like, like what? What did I need from my mom that I didn't get from her? And not my mom felt she didn't get the right instructions. Well, I was pretty close to this kid, so I was like I know what I needed in situation and I was a little bit off, but I was closer to the closer to it because I didn't have the skills, because I didn't get them, but I was, you know, kind of had a co parenting.
Is what you're doing very similar, your co parenting with the leadership of your inner child. So listen when they're like oh, I'm really, I'm really hungry right now or I could really have a nap right now. You know what sounds funny to me. I mean this kind of guidance is in there but it takes it takes the practice of learning to listen. That's why, like, okay, we're eating breakfast. You know, I really wish I could eat eggs for breakfast, but someone's you know someone's telling me that I shouldn't have eggs. So it's not your inner guide. You know your soul came into this body to tell you what to do. In her child is a big voice of what your soul there and getting tuned into. Oh, I really wish I had that. That's a child voice. Start tuning into that. I mean, don't get ridiculous with like I wish I'd have had to go up all the gin and tonics. That's your inner adult and probably don't need to be having those for breakfast, because sometimes the inner adult has been this and trauma and that. That's the voice.
That's not as clear when it comes to your desires. But your straight up desire is an inner child thing and they rarely steer you in a way and if some probably get some counseling around this, maybe talk to a friend, go, hey, man, but it's really purely a clear desire. That is. How do I say, as well, it is innocent. Like, oh, you know I want to go have. You know I'm a watermelon, I want to go outside and play, you know, chase that kitten around.
Like that's an inner child desire and it's not something that's going to be like a heinously bad for you things. You, that's a desire to follow and because I think it's many times, because I did a lot of like intuitive eating training when I was going through nutrition school and they're like well, what if it tells me that I need to have 14. I was like no, your body will, because it's not good for you. Your body won't tell you that a wounded, traumatic part, which is something to talk about well, might say those kind of things. But that's when you start dressing that, oh, I hear that you're really wanting some comfort and then you really need something that you feel you missed out on.
Like there's the dialogue you have. You don't give the inner child 14 chocolate. You know, hot pledge Sundays. You hear that it missed out on having some things that were tasty, and that's where the conversation goes in. And maybe you have, you have, you have one, but you hear that, oh, it missed out on something and it needs something. And this is nothing about structure, but it's something about give a neurodiverse person.
0:47:54 - Briar
Absolutely, is about structure, because it's the structure of experience, it is the way I view the world and in turn internalize that conversation.
0:48:16 - Sam
You cut out. I missed part of that.
0:48:22 - Briar
This is going to be delightful, this recording, let me tell you All, right now you're back. The way I view the world and internalize this conversation is what I heard and internalize this conversation is how I know whether or not I'm being an integrity with that structure. How do I, how do I, how do I identify what is child and what is adult?
0:48:56 - Sam
Um you okay, Just like adult me, or okay?
0:49:02 - Briar
Inter-adult versus inner child.
0:49:05 - Sam
Okay, okay, like the adult, like 21 year old that's can you have like, because it's the basic car that most people for the families, okay Versus, like versus, yeah, cause there's, there's you, the actual adult, inner adult is like they're like 21 and I know very few people that have hit 21, that haven't had some kind of trauma.
There are probably some, but, speaking for myself, I'm not one of them that have like hit 21 without having traumatic experiences, that I carry some stuff around that they'd be like sitting and giving me side eye, going, hey, let's go in, let's go do something very unhealthy for ourselves, and um, or that they're reacting to the teenager or the child being unhappy. So, like, usually I look at her and go, oh, okay, we'll have a conversation about that later. Uh, cause I can hear that something's you know activated in you from one of the other people in the car or something we just read, something we just encountered, something we just saw on TV, Like something has got you hot and bothered and um, if I don't have time to deal with it at that moment, um, I know that, but that the inner adult, uh, usually is taking the temperature of the rest of the car Like, cause the teenager will be upset and like comes at you. Like, like a teenager, I must hear this song louder Um, versus the child, which is the one like my needs aren't met. And when her needs aren't met, it usually just ripple effects for the rest of the car, like the child's.
And I'm and I am not it, my only expertise in this is having lots of therapy around it when I was a kid and also just experiencing for myself is like you take care of the kids needs and go. Okay, I hear that you want 14 Sundays, but let's try just one, or maybe just have a few bites, and if that doesn't give you a tummy ache, we'll have more. Um and like. Then the teenager goes oh, you're taking care of the kid. Okay, well, I feel safe to be taken care of by you.
I will calm down and when the teenager comes down, the adult will go oh, so you actually do know what you're doing. Cool, you can keep driving the car and I've shut up. Does that make sense? But a lot of times either they're taking the temperature of the whole car or there something is going on in your world that you're doing and it's kind of like the car alarm or like the, like an alarm in your car dash going, something's up, something's up, or it could be something that's triggered from an experience and, and, like your youth, that is um, activated because, oh, I like to watch scary movies that remind me of a trauma, because, uh, at the end of it it gets resolved every single time. And I finally learned to stop doing that because, like, why am I re traumatizing myself?
0:51:51 - Briar
because it feels familiar which is exactly what we're going to talk about next week, which is changing the story, and I was like, yes, yeah, um, because it's that whole re traumatizing ourselves, because it feels familiar.
0:52:07 - Sam
I mean, the first time I saw it, I'm like an opening salvo of a show and I hold bodies and I was like I don't have to do this one. And my whole body went and it was like, wow, I don't have to do those stupid things I've done for however many years. Yeah, um, yep, it's nice.
0:52:32 - Briar
And there's a lot of there's a lot of really important stuff there in the ways that we do not listen to our bodies and the ways that we ignore our own signals, and I am very excited to dive into that with you next time, because I think that the more that we tune in, the more that we recognize that there may be a problem, but don't have the tools or the skills to have that dialogue.
0:53:03 - Sam
Yeah, it is, it is um it, I don't know for me because I tuned out for, like, because it started on us little and I tuned out early and I don't think I'm alone in this, and because there's so much other noise to tune into, like my own frequency was when I was not taught that was important. You know, I was a female child raised in the Southern us and I fundamentalist church. So Eve, daughter of Eve, like you're the cause of all sins, or just your body is your body is the creator of this men's problems. Okay, I guess I will just chat over here and hide my body from the world and learn to hate it and um, so then learning as an adult, like, oh wait, I get to actually. Then I moved to California as, like, wait a minute, I get to actually light my body. You mean like it's something I should be like proud of.
You know these is this, is this heresy, am I? Am I? I guess I will be a happy heretic. Then I mean it was a long, long walk out. I mean I mean, if that walk out sounds short, that was like 20 something years of undoing stories that were told in my childhood. That stuck. I didn't go into the religious stuff of my childhood because that would have been ours. But, um, yeah, it's like somebody's like you don't want shiny, happy people. I mean, I lived a version of it, thank you, um, I didn't need to watch. Thank you, I lived.
0:54:26 - Briar
I lived in the black mirror version, um yes, so so we'll talk about changing the story, and I am I'm looking forward to it. All right, sam, anything here you want to leave us with about having that conversation with your inner child? I'm?
0:54:54 - Sam
having a conversation. I just you know, I think the best is like um be compassionate and be ready to like just be really in, in awe of this sweet little being that lives inside you and has held so many stories for you and like continues to walk beside you every day. And, like I said, you know I'll, I'm gonna walk in, I'll make a little like hand squeeze cake, thanks for being there, I'm gonna walk in the door before I walk out of it. And um, just gratitude and know that, regardless of how far along you're at life, you can always start reparenting yourself. Like it's never too late to start on the journey of reparenting, and I think it's very, very important as we move forward in this brave new world of change.
It's, you know, the only thing that's certain is change. As we change our new world, we can change our relationship with ourself and with each other as community and learn to like step out of this age of isolation that we're in and be less, um afraid of each other as we become closer, like better in relationship with ourselves. And I think it starts really with our relationship with our little wee ones that I think I felt, you know, a sense of like isolation and it goes back to the atomic age and the age before that. So change that relationship inside. We change our relationship with the world around us.
0:56:20 - Briar
Very excited to talk about how we're gonna do that. So we will see y'all in two weeks for changing the story and we would love it if you subscribed to get updates on this and all of our other shows. You can find us at the neurodiversitymediannetworkcom and we will see you all again next time. Thank you so much for being here, sam, and we'll see you all again.
0:56:47 - Sam
Thanks, Briar.
0:56:47 - Briar
Thank you.
Share this post