S5E21: Reconnecting with our Inner Child

Margaux: Are we recording? Is this the real deal? Hey. Oh, you want me to mute so you can say something?

Harjit: No, I want you to look at me in the camera.

Margaux: Okay. I'm looking.

Harjit: If you look over there, then I get confused.

Margaux: Fair. Okay. Fair.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to "Bundle of Hers." We have Harjit and Margaux here on this recording. And we're just enjoying our Friday fries. Oh, but it's not Friday.

Harjit: It's Monday fries. We've just got to do what we've got to do to get some fries in our system.

Margaux: It's my vacation, so basically every day is going to be Friday for me this week.

Harjit: How's Jordy doing?

Margaux: Jordy's so good. He's sleeping right now. So we're going to try to get through this recording before he wakes up and then we'll have snuggle time.

Harjit: I love snuggling Jordy too.

Margaux: So speaking of Jordy, who is my baby, for those of you who don't know, today's episode, we're going to be talking about inner child work or healing our inner child. And that's something I've been thinking a lot about now that I do have a child, is the way that I raise him and influence him, and then reflecting back on my own childhood and how my experiences have carried with me through now to the way I interact with patients.

So just a little intro on inner child work and inner child healing. It's basically a therapy model or a way of thinking about a way to address our needs that haven't been met as children and that come out in the way we have interpersonal reactions or interactions as adults. Essentially, it's trying to heal the wounds that we've developed through our experiences.

And it has what they call an attachment lens. These two psychiatrists and psychologists in the '50s defined attachment styles based on how you were raised, and that sort of set the path for how you would interact with people in your relationships and attach to them.

And there are four types. One is secure, the "positive" one, where you have a healthy relationship to other people, but also yourself. Then there's also anxious attachment type, avoidant attachment type, and fearful, which is more rare, which is a combination of anxious and avoidant.

Lots of theory on that. We could do a whole podcast episode just on attachment styles. But for the background, the inner child work focuses on your attachment style.

And basically, the intention of it is to speak to our inner child through language of a child that is emotionally based and embodied rather than expressed in the way that we're trained to talk intellectually as doctors and thoughts, and words, and writing all these notes, and things that.

It's a part of us that's very innate and connected to our personalities and our identities, our natural propensity to be curious and creative, like most children are. So it's kind of a fun thing to think about, reaching into our inner child and (a) evaluating it, but also (b) healing those parts of us knowing that we have an opportunity in adulthood to go back and heal maybe those parts of us that didn't get attention.

So I just wanted to ask you, Harjit, have you ever heard of this work before? And what are your thoughts?

Harjit: I don't think I've gotten formal education on this work, but it comes across in our didactic. So, as you all know, me and Margaux are training in psychiatry. So we also have to be inept in our psychological training. And for that reason, I've heard of these thoughts of healing the inner child, and also attachment theories and styles.

I actually am really interested in this on a personal level. So not only am I learning about it in work, but also it's something that I've been thinking a lot about. What attachment styles do I fit under? How can I do the healing work within myself now that I'm in a position where I can see my stories in bigger lenses?

I remember even watching the time clock in elementary school and seeing that even an hour going by felt a whole day. I would see the tick, tick, tick.

Margaux: So true.

Harjit: We are very focused when we're younger or we're feeling these things and forming these attachment styles. And when you're older, these things do come out. You don't realize it, but it comes out at some point.

And I think the stresses of medical school and also residency really brings stuff up to the forefront when you're in high-stress situations because you can't handle them maybe the ways that you could when you were younger.

And so I've been thinking a lot about healing my inner child for myself, but also in the perspective of my patients. We've also started doing therapy. So I have a patient that I do therapy with. A lot of the work that I do with them is also on these themes. And it's been interesting to think about.

I just started reading this book. It's an audiobook called "Attached," and it talks about all the other theories, like the attachment theories. So far, I haven't gotten into the book a lot, but there were some really interesting concepts that came up before we even talked about attachment theories. And one was about dependency and being dependent. I just thought that was really interesting.

Margaux: Now being a resident and having a lot of interaction with patients has also had me reflecting a lot on how my attachment styles are and my experiences as a child are reflected in the way that I interact with patients, or even colleagues, and think about medicine. And I definitely want to read that book too, because I think it has a lot of good points for reflection and thinking about attachment styles.

And I think it's important to recognize that although you may have a subconscious attachment style that was developed through your interactions and experiences as a child, you can change. And that's the beauty of healing your inner child. You have an opportunity if you maybe don't have a very positive attachment style, you can always change and grow from that, which I think is a really cool perspective. And like you said, in therapy, that you're working with your patient, it's cool to also help guide others through that as well.

And that was a nice segue too, Harjit, into the theme of this. We could have so many different episodes on healing our inner child and inner child work. But I wanted to focus this episode on specifically how our attachment styles and inner child come out in the way that we interact with patients and in our careers in medicine.

So one question I just wanted to ask is did you know you wanted to be a doctor when you were younger? And/or how happy was your inner child when you got accepted to medical school? I always wanted to be a doctor since I was little and I think my inner child was just super, super excited when I got accepted. So what about you?

Harjit: I think I had a similar experience. I was ecstatic when I got into med school, and I wanted to be a doctor since I think the age of 5 years old. We've mentioned this in other "Bundle of Hers" episodes. I've always wanted to be a doctor. So, yeah, my inner child was super-duper excited and it felt so good and long-waited for all the work that was done.

Margaux: It's kind of just that imagery of you sitting in elementary school, watching the clock go really, really slow. And it's kind of what it felt like to get into medical school, that whole process. And then when you get to medical school, it's kind of like recess where it's a celebration. Maybe. I don't know.

I've been doing a lot of reflection on how . . . especially because I'm in pediatrics, and so I see a lot of sick kids and it makes me reflect back on my own experience or how I experienced illness as a child.

So I remember having the chickenpox, because it was before there was a vaccine, and my mom would make a fun game out of putting all the chamomile anti-itch stuff on all my spots. It had a very nurturing perspective.

But on the other hand, my dad is a doctor and I think there was also the mentality of, "Oh, you're fine," whenever I had little bumps and bruises or headaches or stomachaches. It was always more dismissed.

And I think now that am in residency, I see it as you see the worst of the worst in the hospital. So when your kid is complaining of a little tummy ache, you're probably like, "You're fine."

So those are kind of my two big experiences that I think back on that shaped maybe a little bit of a confidence in, "Okay, I have a stomachache, but it's not that bad and I can handle it," as well as having an element of a nurturing person who took care of me when I was sick and having at least fond memories of that.

And I think I was fortunate that I didn't have a lot of death in my family or severe illness in other family members. But I know my dad's father died. My grandfather was pretty sick and when I was younger and I didn't really understand what was going on, only that he was in the hospital for a lot of it, and then eventually passed. Maybe I was more sheltered or just not as aware of what was going on, but it also didn't feel a negative thing to me.

So hospitals and doctors have always been more of a positive experience, and I think that shapes and shaped my desire to go into medicine. But also, the way that I think about when I interact with patients . . . and this coming from a place of the hospital is familiar to me and I want to be there and I want to help people heal in the same way that I had positive experiences with illness. If that makes sense. That's kind of my basic reflection so far. What about you?

Harjit: With my personal experience with illness, a lot of it started when I was really young. I used to have a lot of abdominal pain, which I still carry to this day. I wonder if it has a functional component, if it was a way for me to kind of let out my emotions, and it's kind of just developed over the years. I probably have irritable bowel syndrome. We've talked about chamomile tea here.

Margaux: Oh, yes.

Harjit: But what I'm saying is I think that was my experience and I just never could find questions. When I was younger, my mom would be, "Okay. Let me take care of you." But after a while, I think she couldn't understand either because they're both immigrants, my parents. I don't even remember my dad doing much when I was ill. I think he was not very present around that. But with my mom in the beginning, she'd feel bad. But after a while she'd be like, "Why are you complaining about the same thing over and over again?"

But fortunately, I didn't have to go to the doctor's that often when I was younger. I did go to the doctor's office with my parents. So my dad has a chronic disease. So does my mom, diabetes and hypertension. That's kind of what got me into medicine as well, is going on those appointments with them.

But I always felt good about the hospital and what it represented in my head of what healing and helping people get better, the basic stuff. We all are doctors because we want to help others. I actually believed that when I was younger, right? And I think now my perception is a little bit more complicated because I have experience in medicine for so many years and clinical experience as well. But yeah, that's always how I viewed illness.

As far as death and dying goes, I think a lot of my beliefs on that is rooted in my faith of Sikhism. I was also fortunate not to see death directly until I was much older. My two grandparents, my dad's side, they died before I was born or when I was really young. And on my mom's side, they just passed away. And my aunts and uncles on my dad's side are passing away, but when I was much older.

I just remember my cousin who was, I think, 6 or 7 had passed away in India, but she was far removed, not even here. So I too kind of always had this similar to your view on illness.

I guess I also want to add that I had a lot of anxiety with illness, and I think a lot of that might be because I do have a propensity of anxiety my entire life. That, I think, was something that I noticed. I'd always be scared something was wrong with me.

But going in medicine has . . . in ways, I was scared it was going to make it worse, but I think it made it better because now I actually talk myself out and I'm actually like, "There's nothing wrong with me."

Margaux: You're really good at that, talking yourself out of it. When I come back to what you were saying about the somatic stuff, I think all children experience a level of somatic display of their emotions, especially because I think the way that we're raised is more in a colonial mindset of the view of the child, right? Which is you're supposed to be obedient and seen and not heard and sort of not a full human being capable of thought or emotions.

I think inner child work is never necessarily meant to blame our parents, but rather the generational trauma or the systems that we were raised in or that socialized our parents and the way they parented us.

And I think for a lot of our generation, we were raised in this way of, "Oh, you have a stomachache, stop complaining about it," or, "It's not that bad." But I think the root of that is that our emotions . . . we were never really taught to be emotionally intelligent, and so it came out in these somatic symptoms.

So I think that now that I've done a lot more digging into this, many indigenous cultures have been practicing what is now being coined in the movement for gentle parenting or conscious parenting. But in reality, has been a parenting model for a long time, which is seeing the child as a full human being with their full emotions and autonomy. And basically, that had been colonized and squashed with Western colonization and practices.

So one of the things I think that is a big step in healing is thinking back to how I can talk to myself or in my inner child as a full being with emotions. And if I can think back to experiences when I was a child and imagine the emotions that I was having and be able to name them or understand them, it kind of helps me navigate now as an adult.

Especially when I'm working with pediatric patients who are really sick and maybe not "being obedient" in the way that I've been socialized to think. The other day there was a 3-year-old who literally was not sitting in his hospital bed and just, for lack of a better word, so disobedient. His mom was telling him to sit in the bed and he wouldn't.

But if I take a step back and reflect on it, I was like, "This kid has a lot of energy. And sitting in a hospital bed is not fun. I need to step back and honor that rather than carry this mindset of, 'Why can't he just do what I expect of him?"'

Harjit: Yeah. Margaux, I think that this conversation is super complex and I'm not sure if this episode is enough to talk about it, because I also think about things.

Questions I have is often when I was on my child and adolescent psychiatry rotation, I remember there were some patients with a million different medications that were sedatives, right? And I was like, "Wait, why is this patient getting so many sedatives? Is it because they're reacting or acting in a way that's not 'normal behavior?'"

And this is where I think it's so important to understand the colonial roots/white supremacist roots that have taken hold of medicine, right? A person might be, "Oh, this child has so much energy. This isn't normal." Are they using the medication so it's easier for them to work with the child, or is it something that is necessary and needed?

And I do think that, in general, a lot of the ways that we parent as a society . . . and I'm not blaming one single individual. I think it's systemic factors, right? It's passed on generation to generation, maybe because it was required to pass on generation to generation for survival. But we really should be thinking as future providers and also residents and med students, really, what is the behavior that's normalized in society and what is actually "normal"?

We're supposed to have a variety of people with a variety of complaints and a variety of emotions. And when you suppress those emotions for so long, they do come out somatically, because that energy needs to express itself somehow or some way.

Margaux: Exactly. And then you can take it even a step further. When we see patients with somatic symptoms it's oftentimes one of the most frustrating diagnoses or patient population for many doctors or providers to take care of. I think we all have not done our own inner child healing because this is the way we were raised. It's really hard to conceptualize that someone could be having somatic symptoms because of the way that they're feeling and haven't had the opportunity to navigate their emotions through appropriate avenues. And then we ourselves have not had that healing experience.

And so your interpersonal connection with that patient has so many levels that make it complicated. And I think it ends up having a lot of counter transference, and most of the time ends up dismissing the patient or sedating the patient and making them more easy to work with.

Harjit: Yeah. Because no matter how much we realize or don't realize in the situation of a provider-patient relationship, it's really hard to make it equal. Very, very hard. We have the power and oftentimes patients trust us. Even the patients that don't trust us, we get used to the feeling of we have the power and we know what's best for the patient.

I understand, because even I have these thoughts sometimes. I learned all this, I have so much experience, I have so much education. Validating that I know this better than anybody else. And the truth is, yes, I do understand theories or physiology or specific treatments maybe better than the patient, but I'm not the patient and I don't feel their pain.

So I think it's really us being critical, again, of that whole connection and how we can actually work with people as good as we can to make it as equal as possible, even though I don't know if that ever really can be achieved in modern medicine style.

Margaux: I think that's a fair point too, because I think that this idea and model of obedience that is sort of pervasive in our current society through the colonized lens is also persistent in medicine.

As medical students, I think we're supposed to be obedient, right? You're supposed to learn the things that you're supposed to learn. You go on your clinical rotations and you are in the hierarchy of med student, resident, attending, fellow attending, whoever, and there's this obedience of what you will do and what you will learn and how you will practice medicine. And then I think we project that obedience onto our patients of exactly what you're talking about, like, "I learned all this and I have the power. You should listen to me and be obedient."

That's where, for me, I think a lot of the healing has to come from, is giving everyone the autonomy to express their emotions, to express the pain that they're in, to express how they are navigating the illness that we only learned about in a textbook, to understand that there are so many different intersections that one person can experience with one illness, even on a spectrum. You can have three different patients with the same illness and they will all experience it differently.

Even then, when we are taught to learn about diseases as this constellation of symptoms, oftentimes a patient may only have one or two. And so even the things that we're diagnosing are not "being obedient" in the way that we are sort of socialized to think everything should work to make the system go smoothly.

So for me, that's where a lot of the inner child is, letting go of that fear-based obedience to say, "Okay, let's see what we can do. Let's be playful with this. Let's be creative. And how can I apply that to my interactions with my patients so they can feel more maybe nurtured and encouraged to build that patient-doctor relationship or feel valued in the way that they're experiencing their illness?" So that's kind of where I'm doing a lot of work, is letting go of the obedience part.

Harjit: Yeah, I think that's something that I've been trying to work on as well. I have been in those roles of power and it's hard. Even I fall into the trap. It's really difficult.

Margaux: We just barely touched on healing your inner child work, but I think it's a big topic. And my hope was to introduce the idea so that we could all start to think and meet or reintroduce ourselves to our inner child.

And I hope that maybe one time, if you're really struggling on your rotation or in a clinical setting, just to take a moment and revisit your inner child and maybe come back with a playful moment. Or try to reframe something in a more fun lighthearted way, or even in a simplistic way in the way that you might explain something to a child.

So often, I think we're so critical to ourselves, and the fun thing of working in pediatrics and also having a child now is seeing how much they love to explore the world and learn, and just their capability of having such a positive outlook that I think we definitely lose a lot of in adulthood.

So I hope that through listening to this, it just reminds you to take a look at your inner child, meet your inner child, and have fun with them.

Harjit: Yeah, and I think doing that work of really understanding who you were as a child and doing things that maybe you didn't get to do when you were a kid is really rewarding. And even in medicine, kids are hella smart.

Margaux: Oh, yeah. They are so smart.

Harjit: So smart.

Margaux: And then also reconnecting with our inner child and healing is an active decolonizing and resistance. So just take that with you too.

Harjit: Yeah. I'm going to be thinking about this now a lot.

Margaux: So thank you all for listening to this episode. I hope you had fun with it and . . . Oh, my God, I haven't closed an episode in so long.

Harjit: It's okay.

Margaux: Okay. So, yes. thank you for listening to "Bundle of Hers." If you'd to share your stories of healing your inner child, or meeting your inner child for the first time or any time, check us out @bundleofhers on Instagram or Facebook. I think we still have a Facebook. Maybe not. Just do Instagram. That's where we're at. And tune in next time for other episodes. You can get all of our episodes wherever you get episodes of podcasts. I'm just rambling now.

Harjit: You are, and I love it. Welcome back, Margaux, as a mother.

Margaux: Spotify? Click the banner to download. I don't know.

Harjit: We are a mess.

Margaux: Yes. Anyway, until next time.

Harjit: It was a mess. The end.