Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / Emotional decontamination

Transcript

Emotional decontamination · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee from the Children's Consultancy, and this is episode one of a three-part series on the subject of decontamination.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: In a sense, it's a companion series that was concerned with emotional contamination.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: But in this series, what I want to try and do is to go that bit further, because it seems to me that talking about how we carry things and the the means by which that occurs and the effect becomes more helpful if we can move on to the next stage, which is well, how do we how do we free ourselves?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: How do we recognize what's happened and what do we do so that we're not carrying those things which have contaminated us?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Back in January, I started podcasting again.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think I started originally in 2021, and due to other commitments and increasing demands on my time, I paused.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: But back in January, I I restarted and I did a whole number of new things, which I'd been planning to do for a long time, but which just wasn't possible because I was too caught up in other things.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And what I realized was that actually those other things were had had contaminated me in the sense that I was carrying a lot of really unnecessary and quite disabling responsibility.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I made the decision oddly on January the first, and it wasn't a New Year's resolution, I don't do those.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: But on January the 1st I thought enough it is time for me to return to myself and to what it was that I had really let go of writing music, creating, and really communicating things that mattered, because I I think I'd spent quite a lot of time being involved in things that actually I thought mattered at the time, but in retrospect clearly didn't.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And in a way, by doing that, this was a kind of decontamination exercise, and it's worked wonderfully well.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it what strikes me about it is that it is not a single act that creates decontamination, it is a persistent and continuing commitment to focus on that which is healthy and to keep as safe a distance as possible from those things or people that really aren't.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So with this in mind, I want to start the series really by just revisiting some elements of what we've or what I've talked about previously.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: This three-part series really does focus on what lies at the heart of so much emotional suffering, but it's rarely spoken about in these terms.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is people who talk about recovering and healing and you know all all sorts of all sorts of words.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And of course they they're meaningful, but I am talking about something specific, and that is the decontaminating, the removal of things that have contaminated you, thoughts and experiences, and that which has gotten into you that you really don't deserve to be carrying.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: But before we can understand how to become that kind of emotionally free, we have to understand how we got so burdened in the first place.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as a child and adolescent psychotherapist, I've spent many, many years listening to children, young people, and adults who have come to believe things about themselves that simply just are not true.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: In an earlier series, I talked about the belief triangle and how that's formed, and when small people develop beliefs, they're very often, in fact, almost always based on misinterpretations or at least the beliefs that don't work for them.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Beliefs like I am difficult, I'm not good enough, I always get things wrong, I ruin everything.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And when people say these things, they often speak with complete conviction, as if they're describing objective facts.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, as we begin to explore their lives, another possibility inevitably and gradually emerges.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that it's that these beliefs were never truly theirs.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: They were learned, absorbed, carried, passed from one generation to the next, often without anybody realizing it.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what I mean by emotional contamination.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's the gradual process by which another person's fears, shame, anger, disappointment, or self-hatred become woven into our own understanding of who we are.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the tragedy is that it happens so quietly that we rarely notice it.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine yourself standing by a bonfire, let's say bonfire night.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you didn't start the fire, you didn't light whatever it was that was being used to get the thing blazing.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: You were just there.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: But afterwards, you and your clothes will be carrying the smoke, the wood smoke, and whatever other toxic smells or toxic activity will have been emitted into the atmosphere.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll carry it, it will find its way into you.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is inevitable.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: But emotional contamination often works in much the same way because very often we are in environments, relationships, situations in which there is a kind of toxicity which is penetrating.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And children in particular don't have an emotional filter, they can't stand back and think, Mum is overwhelmed today, or dad is carrying unresolved pain from his own childhood.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, they arrive at a much simpler conclusion.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: This must be about me.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And children are remarkably loyal.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: They instinctively protect the adults they depend upon.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: If a parent is critical, the child rarely concludes that the parent is struggling or wrong.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, the child concludes that they must somehow deserve it.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: They must deserve the criticism.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: If affection is inconsistent, they assume that they are difficult to love.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: If anger fills the home, then they believe they must be causing it.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: These conclusions aren't logical, of course they're not, but they are what we call adaptive.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: They help children preserve their attachment to the people they rely upon for safety.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the difficulty is that these adaptations often remain long after childhood has ended.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So years later, we find ourselves apologizing for things that require no apology, feeling guilty for saying no, taking responsibility for the happiness of others, feeling anxious when whenever someone seems disappointed, you know, working endlessly to prove our worth.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And many people assume these are personality traits, and they're not, they're survival strategies.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is: who first taught me to see myself this way?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not an accusation, not an attempt to assign blame, but an invitation to become curious and think differently.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because curiosity opens the doors that judgment keeps firmly shut.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the great misconceptions about emotional health is that painful feelings always tell us the truth.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they don't, not always.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Feelings are real, but they're not always accurate.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: You may genuinely feel inadequate, but that doesn't necessarily mean you are inadequate.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: You may feel responsible, but it doesn't mean that the responsibility belongs to you.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes our emotions are like well, less like photographs and more like old maps.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: They were drawn many years ago to help us to navigate a world that no longer exists.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're not that was then, this is now.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: But yet we continue to follow them long after the landscape has changed.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: One of the first signs that emotional contamination may be present is when your emotional reactions consistently exceed the situation in front of you.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: A small criticism feels devastating.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: A minor disagreement feels like rejection.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Someone else's disappointment feels like your failure.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: These moments are worth paying attention to, not because they mean that something is wrong with you, but because they may be pointing towards something much older.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And another clue is the voice inside your own mind.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: If your inner dialogue sounds relentlessly critical, if it speaks with contempt, if it offers no compassion, it's worth asking a gentle question.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Whose voice does this sound like?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Very often, what be what we believe to be our inner voice is an echo of voices we've heard many years before.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: The remarkable thing is that once we begin to recognize these echoes, something starts to change.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: We begin to separate history from identity.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: We begin to realize that carrying someone else's emotional burden doesn't mean it belongs to us.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: We've all done it, and I'm no different.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And in a sense, you know, hearing and imagining the voice of the other is something which it happens in many contexts.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: That could be, I imagine, they would say, or we even hear, whether it's criticism or demand or or or uh something.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the fact is the person doesn't even need to be with you, you can do it for yourself.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: But this isn't about blaming, it's certainly not about blaming parents.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Most parents love their children deeply and they do the very best they can.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And many were themselves emotionally contaminated by experiences they neither chose nor understood.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Pain has a way of traveling through families unless someone becomes aware enough to interrupt its journey.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps that person will be you.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you will become the generation that says this stops here.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is not an act of criticism, it is an act of courage.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in many ways, it's an act of love.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because emotional decontamination is never about deciding who was good and who was bad.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's about deciding what you no longer need to carry.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that may mean that you decide to no longer carry something which is bad and bad for you.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Over the next two episodes, we're going to explore how we begin separating other people's emotions from our own identity and how we gradually rediscover the person who's been there all along beneath the layers of fear and shame and responsibility.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to leave you with a simple reflection.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Over the coming days, see if you can notice the moments when you criticize yourself, when you give yourself a hard time.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the moments when guilt or fear or inadequacy appear.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the moments when you instinctively assume that everything is your fault.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of accepting those thoughts as facts, simply ask one gentle question.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Does this truly belong to me?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to answer it, certainly not immediately, but we're beginning a conversation.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because every every journey towards emotional freedom begins with a single moment of awareness.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to offering you episode two shortly.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.