healing from childhood trauma

And here's the thing.

I don't think that my goal in this episode is for us to all, by the end of this hour, be fully delivered from our childhood trauma.

I don't think that that's possible.

[laughs] I don't think that that's, uh, what the expectation should be.

But I think that the expectations going into this episode and what I really would hope by the end of it is that it brings more clarity to our minds.

Maybe it makes us even feel a little less crazy for why we act the way that we do.

And most importantly, I think, for us to extend so much grace to ourselves, because I think the truth is, at least for myself, I can be so hard on myself about why I act the way I do or why I react the way that I do, and I don't even know if a lot of times I've had the language for it or the awareness.

And so something that has been so helpful for me the last few months of my life has been regularly and, like, consistently going to therapy, no matter how badly I don't wanna go, 'cause it's very similar to the gym, where I just-- I really-- You know, the day comes, and I'm like, "How could I say that I'm sick today?" [laughs] But you know, the, the deposit's already been paid, and you're already paying for it, and it's not refundable.

So, you know, it's the-- That accountability is good, for sure, um, because it's just so easy to want to bail on something like therapy.

It's so easy to not wanna commit to something like therapy because it's work, and it's confronting, and it's a little ouchy, and sometimes it's a lot of ouchy.

But I will say that that has been helping me immensely, and my therapist is also a Christian too.

I think that's worth mentioning.

So I think it's really been helpful for me that the person I've been going to has, you know, the knowledge and the wisdom and the language for just how we operate, um, as just, like, human behavior and how our minds work and how trauma and experiences, even from a young age, like, genuinely affect us into our ad-adulthood.

And I think for myself, like, I have always seen versions of Allie as separate to the Allie that I am today, and I think that when I think about little Allie, I'm like, "She was so cute." But also in my mind, she's kinda like, not to sound morbid, but just dead.

Like, she doesn't exist anymore.

I'm like, little Allie is no longer little Allie.

Like, that's who she was, and now I'm an adult.

And I think one thing that I've realized in therapy is that the little child in all of us is actually not gone.

The little child in all of us is the blueprint of who we are today.

Like, the little child of who we were, all of her quirks or his, like, all, all of what made him or her so special is actually exactly who you still are today.

But for some reason in my mind, I, I separate the two, where I'm like, little Allie, you know, teenage Allie, preteen Allie, and then adult Allie.

Like, she's not all the same person, you know? And, and especially little Allie, like, I never saw her as, like, the blueprint, kinda like the bones, like the struc- like the structure of who I am today, right? Like, at the core of who God created us to be from the beginning is, is also still who we are today, and then there's things like life and trauma and just, you know.

And here's the thing.

This is my-- This is another thing I'd like to debunk before we get into today's episode, is we are not playing the blame game Okay? So when we're talking about childhood trauma, we are not talking about blaming our parents and just critiquing the ways that they probably, I would imagine in a lot of our cases, of people who are listening, they tried their best, okay? And so it's like this is just the result of flawed humans raising little humans who then grow up to be their own kind of version of flawed humans, and it goes on and on and on.

And so this is also a really great opportunity for not only extending grace to ourselves, but also learning, and that might be a whole nother episode, learning how to extend grace, compassion, and forgiveness towards our parents who really were probably just trying their best.