Latest / Reclaiming Consciousness / Moving from the Wounded Self and into Your Power with Dr. Robyn McKay

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Moving from the Wounded Self and into Your Power with Dr. Robyn McKay · Reclaiming Consciousness

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Transactional analysis at its core is simply a communication style, how you communicate with yourself and how you communicate with other people.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: Transactional analysis was basically in direct response to psychoanalysis idea of the psyche.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: What Eric Byrne did was he started looking at how I can understand the psyche in a way that people can actually understand.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: So he came up with three different ego states.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: We have a parent ego state, we have an adult ego state, and we have a child ego state.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Reclaiming Consciousness.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm Elise Bassine, trauma and breath work expert and creator of the Metamorphosis Method, the only methodology bridging the gap between spiritual healing and clinical trauma work.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: For many years, our consciousness has been hijacked by societal and cultural programming, religion, the media, and familial and ancestral trauma.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: In this podcast, you'll discover my unique perspective on trauma healing and how it is the gateway to fully reclaiming your consciousness.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: You'll hear stories and teachings that expand your mind as you discover how every relationship challenge, business block, or limiting pattern is an invitation to reclaim the parts of your consciousness you unknowingly gave away.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: Get ready to go deep.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: Now let's dive in.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone, welcome back to the show.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: So this is the first episode of 2026.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Happy New Year.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: This episode I recorded with Robin a few weeks ago, and it was the result of us just having a conversation, a phone call, you know, as a lot of these episodes end up being the result of a conversation that Robin and I are having on the phone.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: But we will often get into these theoretical or psychological conversations.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: And Robin was telling me about this therapeutic modality called transactional analysis.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: And she thought it would be fun to do a podcast about it and then kind of like draw the parallels between the work that we do now and the roots of like modern psychology and how we've been able to take some of these concepts and develop them to be relevant now.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: And just kind of like our takes on this modality, which was developed earlier in the times when psychology was first being developed, which I think is really interesting because the whole field of psychology and studying the mind and the psyche is a relatively new concept.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: And I think that anyone who's in it now and developing their own way of doing it is really on the cutting edge of not only like the world of psychology and therapy, but also just like understanding the mind and how we operate as humans.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: And for me, I'm just always so interested in understanding what is the simplest, most efficient, and quickest way to create permanent change.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, because so many people come to me with wanting to change some sort of pattern or understand some sort of block that they continue to come up against and they don't understand why.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: And so many people are like, well, I just want this anxiety to go away, or I just want to be able to trust myself, or I just want to be able to feel safe to expand and grow my business, or, you know, I just want to feel comfortable sharing my value with the world and trusting in that.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people look at it through the lens of like this recurring fear that I have, I just want to make it go away.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: And the real work to shift it is actually the complete opposite.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: It's really about fully embracing, accepting, and relating to that fear differently.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: And that's what we do with the whole inner child healing process and in the metamorphosis is really learn how to relate to these patterns differently, understand exactly where they're coming from, and then be able to address them in each moment so that you are able to show up in each moment, in each area of your life in a powerful, healthy, present, and confident way.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: Having said that, the uh metamorphosis is going to begin again on January 20th, Tuesday, January 20th.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure if you've been listening to this podcast at this point, you know what the metamorphosis is.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: But this is the sixth year that the metamorphosis will be running.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, at this point, I can pretty much guarantee, or I will guarantee, that as long as you show up and do the work, you will get the result.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: I've walked so many women through this process.
4:51
SPEAKER_01: And everybody that shows up and does the work, which is pretty much almost everybody, gets a result.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: And it sometimes doesn't look exactly the way you thought, or it might be a little harder, it might take a little longer, but it always happens.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: So um, this works.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: And to me, it's it's pretty much the simplest and most efficient way that I have ever seen to create the changes that you're looking for, whether it's in your business, your career, your relationships with your uh with your partner, with your kids, with your parents, whatever it is.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: Usually whatever it is you come in wanting, that will shift.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: And then also all the other areas of your life will shift as a byproduct of that.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: Please reach out to me if you want to chat about joining.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: There are spaces available and availability to make payment arrangements that work for you.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: And please reach out to me and hop on a call and we can talk about if this is a good fit for you and how it could help you specifically.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: That is that.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: And without further ado, enjoy the episode with me and Robin.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: Hi, everyone.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the show.
6:05
SPEAKER_01: So once again, we have your your favorite duo, Elise and Robin here.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Phoebe and Elaine.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, I really have mixed feelings about being Elaine.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: I do love being Elaine.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: However, I've been told that I dance like Elaine and I don't want to dance like Elaine.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, Phoebe, but have you ever seen Phoebe run?
6:29
SPEAKER_00: No, not as a runners.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Oh, Google it, Phoebe running.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: It's so embarrassing.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: So okay, so we both have our things to be embarrassed about.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, so basically we were having a conversation yesterday.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: We like to consult about client things and just different things going on.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: And we were talking, Robin's like, well, do you know what transactional analysis is?
6:51
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, no.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: And she's like, Well, I'm gonna tell you, and we should just do it as a podcast episode.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Okay, so that's literally all I know about this conversation.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for trusting me with this.
7:07
SPEAKER_01: So, of course, yeah.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: So, like, Robin, take it away.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Take it away.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: Professor Robin is in the house.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: I actually spent some time last night after we decided to do this today brushing up on my histories and systems theories and how things rolled out in psychology back in the 50s and 60s.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: And so I kind of want to give a little bit of context to this and then I'll explain why.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: But just bear with me for a second because it is important.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: It's super interesting how this particular psychological theory came to be in the first place.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: And the reason I want to do this is because you and I both know in our fields, people cherry pick from different, you know, modalities and different theories and so on.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: And it just kind of throws spaghetti at the wall and see what works.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: And I think that from a like a just being in integrity, it's really important to know where stuff comes from if you're going to be using it.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: You have your metamorphosis methodology that you have developed.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: And if you were to trace back the roots of the metamorphosis method, you would see the roots in breath work.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: And you could trace it all the way back to the original fractal of breath work if you wanted to, along with some of your favorite psychological theories, probably as well, and the training that you did.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: So that's why I want to start here.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: And I will say personally, transactional analysis really changed my life when I was going through my own inner child healing, which is something that you are so focused on way back in the day.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: This was in the early 2000s, and I was in therapy with uh Dr.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: Mundy.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: He was this old guy.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: He was probably late 70s when I was working with him.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: He did his training at Menninger Clinic in Topeka, which is one of the premier mental health institutes in the nation at the time.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: So I came into him getting ready to get divorced.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: I was super skinny, subclinical eating disorder, and just really needed.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: I was like 29, I think 28 or 29, and I just needed to figure myself out.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: So he brought me return.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: I know.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: And here we are again.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: I found out my Saturn return isn't for the next couple of years, but still it's like you're approaching.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: I am, I am.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll go first.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: I always go first.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: So it changed my life, and that's why I wanted to bring it to you today because of the work that you do with the inner child, which has become kind of a focal point in your in your work right now.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: And this is just so valuable.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of the context that I want to bring forward.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: So transactional analysis at its core is simply a communication style, how you communicate with yourself and how you communicate with other people.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the cool thing about TA.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: So it's developed by Eric Byrne.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: He's a psychiatrist in the 1950s.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: And he actually, during psychiatric training, had to go through psychoanalysis because at the time that was a gold standard for helping people was through psychoanalysis.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: So he goes into psychoanalysis as a psychiatrist and finds that psychoanalysis is a little tedious, it takes too long.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: And as it turns out, he's really good at pattern recognition.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: And as any good scientist practitioner is going to do, they're going to look for patterns, they're going to look for ways of improving or shifting things and developing eventually kind of their own theory of how people change.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: So transactional analysis was basically in direct response to psychoanalysis idea of the psyche, you know, the in the ego and the superego.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: But the psyche is not really accessible to like normal people.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: It was really accessible to the psychotherapist, but not so much to the people that they were treating.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: What Eric Byrne did was he started looking at how can I understand the psyche in a way that people can actually understand.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: So he came up with three different ego states.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: So this is how it goes.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: We all have three different ego states.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: We have a parent ego state, we have an adult ego state, and we have a child ego state.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: And we toggle between these three ego states all day, every day.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: When we look at like the neuroscience now, we talk about ego state kind of in a concept, but then we can look at like what neural networks are activated when I'm in a particular state.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: So there's going to be a neural network that's activated when you are in your childlike state, or when you are in your parent-like state, or when you're in your adult-like state as well.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: So that kind of maps to the what we know about neuroscience at this point.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: I have a question.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe you'll get to this, but the parent state is that like when you are acting like your parent did to you?
11:40
SPEAKER_01: Because that's what I say too.
11:41
SPEAKER_01: I always say you treat yourself like your parents treated you.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: When we're looking at roles that people play in our lives, we're looking at mom and dad or our caregiver.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: And we're saying, okay, when I do this, mommy's going to respond this way.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to file that away.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: And then eventually, when I grow up, I'll know based on that script and that pattern of behavior that my mom exhibited, I'm going to do the same thing.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times it's critical, it could be neglectful.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: It depends on the situation.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: But that is the parent ego state, right?
12:14
SPEAKER_00: That you are going to respond to situations and circumstances in the same way that your parent did.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: That they responded to you.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: To you.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: It's so interesting because I was actually thinking about this yesterday as I, you know, go through my own process around.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: And so much of it is around my mom.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: And I've like healed so much of it.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: But I was really thinking about this state that I'm very aware of that I go into, which is around this like kind of hypervigilance slash like freeze state, and just how it relates to my mom.
12:49
SPEAKER_01: And then I was telling you yesterday I went to lunch with my dad.
12:52
SPEAKER_01: And my dad was telling me these stories about my mom recently that were objectively very funny.
12:59
SPEAKER_01: And he was telling them from a place of being funny, but they illustrated the exact reason why I have this response, which is like my mom will just out of nowhere go from like zero to a hundred, like where like my dad thinks they're having a normal conversation.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden my mom is yelling the F word and all like, and it's like he's like, it's out of nowhere.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: Like he's like, it's just, and we were laughing, but at the same time, I'm noting in my brain, I'm like, this is exactly why I have this response.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: And if you look at your mom has a parent, adult, and child ego state as well.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: And so if she has not done her work, if she has, because our moms don't do their work, they just don't.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Do you know a mom who's done their work?
13:45
SPEAKER_01: I know people who have moms who have like dabbled, but I don't know anyone who's who's like, oh, my mom did all this work, so now I'm like fine.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: No, I've not heard that.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: I think especially those who have parents who are born, your parents are a little bit older too, aren't they?
14:03
SPEAKER_01: They were born in They're 80.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: So you're so our moms, our moms are contemporaries, right?
14:08
SPEAKER_00: My mom was born in 1944.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: So that generation didn't do their fucking work.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: No.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: They didn't.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: And even now, there's no although I do have a 72-year-old client right now who But that's a different, that's a different generation.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: That is like that's the beginning of the boomers, and the boomers are the ones who started interestingly.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Started Eric Byrne is a boomer.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: So Eric Byrne was coming in in response to psycho psychodynamic psychoanalytics with humanistic human potential.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: Like he has roots all the way back in human potential.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: One of the problems with TA transactional analysis is it became so popular that everybody was using it, regardless of if they had training in psychotherapy or not, because it was so approachable.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: But it also got diluted for that same reason.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: So basically, he wasn't a gatekeeper in that community and he let the cat out of the bag, along with others who were doing the same thing, like Carl Rogers, one of my favorites in the humanistic psychology movement.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Virginia Satir was another one, the family systems theories.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: The boomers, the ones who are in their 70s, like Barb, Barb was literally doing this stuff in real time.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: She was either being studied by the psychologists who were changing, or she was actually learning how to practice this new type of psychology back in the 60s.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Right.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: And early 70s.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: So contextually, this makes sense.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: But the women before that, like the the what do they call the greatest generation or whatever, the ones who um is a little before a boomer.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a little before.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of just the context that those moms just don't do their work.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: That's why we're here.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: We've covered the parent ego state.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: So everybody on the planet has a parent ego state.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: That ego state, unchecked, unconsciously, is going to be running the patterns and scripts that you witnessed and experienced with your own parents during your childhood.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: You have a child ego state, which is going to do something similar.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: It's going to behave in the same way and react in the same way that you reacted when you were a little kid.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Nothing new.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: And then we have this adult ego state.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: And the adult ego state is the healthy, I would say that would be most akin to Freud's version of the ego, which is the healthy sort of mediator between these two other ego states that kind of get in the way and disrupt communication, relationships, and so on.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: You and I, right now, are both in our adult ego states.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: Right.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: We're having a normal human conversation, a normal human exchange.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: The thing that transactional analysis does is it explains when what happens when you go sideways.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: Both, so let's take yourself first.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: Let's just say I'm trying to think of an example of a self-reflection of this.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: If I'm stressed out, and nobody even has to be around, but if I'm stressed out or tired or just not at feeling my best, and then maybe I'm feeling a little bit lonely.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm feeling a little bit like nobody likes me.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: I want to go eat some worms.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna be the I want to go eat some worms.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: That was a song that I sang in Girl Scout Camp.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say that sounds like very like Gen X slash South Dakota.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: Yes, well, it was Girl Scout Camp.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: So yes, but the idea here is that that that inner child is gonna come out.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: If she's not healed, she's gonna come out and she's gonna be in this state of like, I kind of feel like a little kid even.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, I can have an interaction with my inner parent who will say, Oh, you know what?
17:43
SPEAKER_00: You don't have it so bad.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know what?
17:46
SPEAKER_00: You have food on the table, you have a roof over your head, like that kind of vibe, which is also totally Gen X, I am aware.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: But we can so we can have that internally, that kind of conflict internally.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: And then hopefully the adult is gonna step in and say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, time out.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: What's actually going on?
18:03
SPEAKER_00: Are you hungry?
18:04
SPEAKER_00: Are you hot?
18:05
SPEAKER_00: Are you getting your period, like whatever it is, and kind of sort through that so that you can feel better?
18:10
SPEAKER_02: Right.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: And I have always thought from the beginning when I started doing this work on myself, is that our greatest gift is to reparent ourselves, to be the parent to ourselves that you know wasn't available to us in our actual human relationships.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: How does that land with how you think about it?
18:30
SPEAKER_01: It's very aligned.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, I think that in my work, I kind of, because my work is like psychological, but also focused fully on like transformation and growth and expansion, I think like my version of the adult would be the highest self-avatar, which is kind of the same concept, but more expansive because it's like where, you know, being in your power and your gifts and your genius and stuff like that.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: But I think that goes along with it.
19:00
SPEAKER_01: And then when we move through the inner child healing process where you walk yourself through addressing the core wound, like pinpointing and addressing the core wound and feeling the feelings and walking yourself through that and seeing what your inner child needs, acknowledging her, like that's the parent, but in like a healthy way, I guess you could say, you know?
19:20
SPEAKER_01: And I the other thing I just wanted to say too is it is so often that women will come to me and say that they feel this way, right?
19:32
SPEAKER_01: Like they feel sad or guilty or wrong or afraid.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: And then they say, but I know I shouldn't feel that way because A, B, C, and D, or like I should be grateful for what I have, or I should, or whatever.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: And like to me, that's like the parent and the child kind of a thing.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: But that is so common.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: Like, and I find myself saying to people all the time, like, wait a second, you're allowed to feel how you feel.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: There's a reason that you feel that way, and like, don't make yourself wrong for it.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: But I see that inner conflict there between the parent and child.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: And so here, I drew it out for us so that we can see this.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: So, and I've got two here.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: I've got PAC in uh vertical row and then PAC.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna talk about the relationship between two people now because yes, this happens in ourselves, where we have this, you know, the wounded child, he, I think he could call it the wounded child, right?
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Who has responses, and then we have the critical parent internally that's gonna say things like, oh, you know what, you need you just need to be grateful.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: Or you're so ungrateful, or whatever version of that is.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, your adult ascended, self-actualized version of yourself, which is what he would say too, in the humanistic psychology movement, was all based on human potential and self-actualization.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Maslow came along at that time, right?
20:53
SPEAKER_00: As well with his hierarchy of needs.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: So there's all of this going on internally.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: But then here's the interesting thing.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: When you get into a conversation with somebody else who is in whatever process they're in, maybe they are doing their work.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, doing your work does not mean that you're not going to have these exchanges, by the way.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, Ram Das, the great psychologist, says, You think you're so evolved, go home and spend a weekend with your parents and then let me know.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: Oh, totally.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, also, like these interactions is how we do the work.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: Like, if we didn't have these interactions, how will we do the work?
21:29
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's why we're all just walking.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: He also says we're all just walking each other home.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: And that's the beautiful part of this.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: So to bring this into our conscious awareness and to say, okay, inside of me, I have a critical parent.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: Inside of me, I have a wounded child, inside of me, I have the potential for self actualization.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: I have the highest version of myself available to me as well.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's very helpful.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: And thank goodness for that.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: And that means that I'm actually capable of examining my myself, my process.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: It means That I'm capable of making the most of my life.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: And eventually one of his colleagues wrote this book called I'm Okay, you're okay.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: Which my therapist, Dr.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Mundy, back in the you know, late 90s was teaching me about I'm okay, you're okay.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: I like it was revolutionary to me.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, then I get into grad school and everybody's poo-pooing the human, the human psychology movement in favor of you know evidence-based practices.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: And it was just really a hard time.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: It was such a hard time.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: This is probably a whole other conversation, but I feel like the whole just psychology in general can be so convoluted or so black and white when it's not.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: Because I think there's value in all of these things, you know, it's just a matter of being able to extract what's going to work for you and also not evangelizing any of them to say this is the only way, right?
22:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: Like you have to be able to use what works for you.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: I think that the other thing I love to do, Elise, is go back to the original fractal because so much of this, you know, you've heard me say about Reiki.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: Like Reiki at this point is like the Commodore 64 of energy modalities.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: Excuse me very much.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: I know there's going to be a whole bunch of Reiki masters who don't like what I said, but I mean, I'm attuned at the master level.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: I know what I'm talking about when I say this.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: So if we go back to the original fractal of Reiki or of transactional analysis and we look at like what was the intention of it?
23:26
SPEAKER_00: And if we can, and we are capable because we're multidimensional of going back to that original fractal and saying, what's this nugget here that's not bastardized, that's not diluted, that's not the Commodore 64, just go back to the original.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: That's, I think, when we're headed into like being high in high integrity with our work.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the practices I think that we owe it to ourselves and our work and our clients to do as well, to just go back to the very beginning and yeah, that's what knowledge the intention was.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: Because also the other thing, too, I think to remember is like a lot of these things, like Reiki or any of these things.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: Even breath work is right.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: But it's like when these things were created, we were at a very different time on the planet.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: So I think we also have to allow for that evolution and be able to apply that seed or that fractal to the energetics of now.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, different.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: And when we it is a whole nother conversation because I found out I can do this with homeopathic remedies too.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: That is another conversation.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we'll we'll talk about that later, though.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's, but we digress because that's what we do here sometimes.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: All right.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: So, all right, so now we're gonna bring my little graphic back up.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: So I've got two people here: parent, adult, child.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: We each have these ego states.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: When we get in conflict, I want to give an example.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: I actually want to give an example of something from my own personal experience that came through as I was reading about this last night at 2 a.m.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's hear reminding myself what I was gonna talk about today.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure I can come up with examples too.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: But yes, yeah.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: So yesterday was a regular work day.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: Cooper was at daycare, Michael was in and out, I'm working, and he sends me a text message.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: Will you make the bed?
25:13
SPEAKER_00: It seems innocuous on the surface.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing about transactional analysis.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: When we look at that text message from transactional analysis, there is the overt question, will you make the bed?
25:27
SPEAKER_00: Neutral, really.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay, but you can already feel the underpin, can't you?
25:32
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I already got triggered by the by the text.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: What the bed?
25:42
SPEAKER_00: I make and the funny thing is that I make the bed nine days out of ten.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I mean I don't know when I ever don't make the bed.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: And Cooper's been sleeping with us, so it was a whole thing.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: Like Cooper has been in the by the way, if you guys don't know, Cooper is my 75-pound golden doodle.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: He's not human, but it's like having a third human in our king-size bed.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: So it's very difficult.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: So he Michael's tired because he doesn't get good sleep when Cooper sleeps in the bed.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: So there's just a lot to that.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: So he says, Will you make the bed?
26:13
SPEAKER_00: I initially feel this welling up of my inner child, like, fuck.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: So last night I was thinking about that, and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna run this through transactional analysis.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, okay, what part of me, what's that inner child part of me that's just pissed off about this and so agitated and rebellious about this?
26:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, I used to get when I was a teenager, I used to get in trouble for not making my bed.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, my mom and I went sideways about this day after day after day.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: And what I did in my mind's eye is I am like, okay, so I started there and I start peeling back the layers.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: And I see how, in that layer of just on that superficial level, my mom would say, Robin, make your bed.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to make my bed, I don't have time.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: And then she'd pull my dad into it, triangulating.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: And my dad would either be like neutral and say, She doesn't have to make her bed, or he would take mom's side and, you know, somehow twist my arm and get me to make my bed.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: So that was the first level.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: The second level was I went all the way back.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite things to do with my mom when I was a little girl was make our beds.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: She would make my bed with me.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: And it was so wonderful.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Like we'd smooth the sheets, we put a little baby powder in to make everything beautiful before I went to bed, like tuck me in, like that whole thing.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: It was such a lovely experience.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, when I'm a teenager, she's not doing that anymore for multiple reasons, probably.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: But I was just thinking about like how that rebellion that I had at 15, who doesn't rebel when they're 15, yeah, had a whole lot to do with missing the bond and connection that my mom and I shared over a simple task of making the bed.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: Right.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: And in that way, I actually was able to retrieve and and heal that little 15-year-old self of mine who really missed that connection and understood now, you know, my mom was in a bad place with her career.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: Like there's just so many layers to this.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: Right.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: So that would be an example of how that played out, that parent-child interaction at the core.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: It's not about Michael.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is, but that underpin came from my own childhood history of making a bed or not making a bed.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: Right.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: And you were responding as the child.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: So the way that, because I know you're interested in this too, making sure that we're talking about present in the here and now, like how does that shift things today, tomorrow, and in the future if Michael sends me a text and says, Will you make the bed?
28:40
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm not going to be as reactive to it.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll just be neutral about it.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: And I was able, by the way, yesterday to get back to neutral very quickly on this and move into my adult state and say, okay, he's tired.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: The comforter we had to have washed because whatever.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: There's a whole lot of things going into that.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: So I was able to move into my adult ego state and say, no, I get it.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: And then distracted myself enough so that just when I went back to the bedroom, I just put the bed together and it was done without a lot of any drama and without creating more drama in between me and my husband, who are, you know, 90% of the time are very, very peaceful in our marriage.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: So that's that would be an example of how that would work in my okay.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: I have an example that we can do because I honestly like this example, I feel like there's layers to it.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: And well, let's see what happens.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: Last night, Matt wasn't here and the kids are already asleep, and I'm actually trying to get to sleep, and Noah starts jumping on me.
29:41
SPEAKER_01: And Noah's not allowed on the bed because I mean the husky hair is just too much to contend with.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: I wish I could sleep with him, but it's just it can't happen.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: So he starts jumping on me and I'm like, dude, what are you doing?
29:54
SPEAKER_01: Like, get off.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: And then he he won't stop.
29:56
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, does he need to go out again?
29:59
SPEAKER_01: Like, what is going on?
30:00
SPEAKER_01: It's like nine o'clock at night.
30:02
SPEAKER_01: And uh he eventually he runs downstairs.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: So I come downstairs and the like one of the smoke alarms on the second floor is um is like chirping, you know, how like when the battery starts chirping, right?
30:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: And of course, it's the one.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: There's two.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: One is right above the kitchen table, which if it was that one, I could just stand on the table.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: But this one is just, you know, and we have high ceilings in our house.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: So there's no way I'm getting to the ceiling without a ladder, which was down in the basement.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: And also it's one of those extender ladders where you have to like put it to get like this is like a lot, Robin.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: And the other thing we have writing on this is like there is a whole fire PTSD situation in our house because our house burned down in the beginning.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: And there's like a it's a whole thing.
30:51
SPEAKER_01: So anytime there's a smoke alarm issue, it's heightened, right?
30:54
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: So I end up getting the ladder.
30:56
SPEAKER_01: I end up getting up there, which in itself is a whole like like through me into a state, right?
31:04
SPEAKER_01: And then um I end up getting up there and I have to go on the very, like not the last running of the ladder, but the second to last one where it's kind of scary up there.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: And the only way I could hold my balance is if I like hold on to the ceiling so I can get myself up there and I get the thing off and I take it off or whatever.
31:21
SPEAKER_01: And then this morning, Matt is fixing it or whatever, and he says to me, Next time, can you wash your hands before you go up there?
31:31
SPEAKER_01: Because you made a fingerprint on the ceiling.
31:35
SPEAKER_01: I was like, What?
31:40
SPEAKER_01: I was like, Yeah, next time I have a dog freaking out and I'm like trying to build a fucking ladder that I don't know how to do, I'll make sure I wash my hands.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: Like, what the fuck are you talking about?
31:52
SPEAKER_01: Like, wipe off the fucking fingerprint and call it a day.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't want to hear anything about it.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: So that I know that triggers me and like, and like you could tell, because like he knows stuff like that triggers me.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: So you could tell he was trying to say it in the nicest way possible.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: But I also feel like there was a way where it was like his inner child who feels totally like the way that his inner child copes is by needing to control this environment.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: And then my inner child is like super hypersensitive to like criticism or talent or like saying I'm doing something wrong.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: So it was like, you know, I could see those two colliding in that moment.
32:32
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't say anything, like I didn't react because I knew what the trigger was.
32:36
SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, it's like there's still a part of me that's like, I want to rally the troops to get everyone to say that he's wrong in this situation because he is Robin.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: Because he is.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of layers to that, as you said.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: And when I hear you, yeah, there's the inner child versus inner child definitely going on, these two.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: But then this thing happens too.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: You can move into your how your mom would have reacted, zero to a hundred, you know, how dare you, indignant, whatever.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: And that's that parent ego state that's not interacting with Matt's child ego state, right?
33:22
SPEAKER_00: And so we get this mismatch, and it's like this power over, and then we have to find a way to triangulate, to stabilize shit, because this is super volatile.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: So maybe you pull in a kid, maybe you pull in Noah, maybe you pull in somebody else in order to stabilize, and now you've got a full triangulation going on.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: And the it's funny because the triangulation, since I was an only child, grew up as an only child, I was constantly triangulated by whatever it is I would do.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: My mom would then complain to my dad.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: And then my dad would come to me and say, Mommy's really upset because A, B, C, and D.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: So you need to stop doing A, B, C, and D, you know, and then I immediately would feel ganged up on, made wrong, criticized.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: And it would be that feeling of like coming out of nowhere because I wouldn't be expecting it.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know what I did or whatever.
34:17
SPEAKER_01: And um, it would be that like uh like that like freeze kind of thing.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: So here's a part of TA that I didn't get to yet.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about the ego states, but there's he's got a whole formula of how this works, right?
34:32
SPEAKER_00: And so you start with the con.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: He calls it the con.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: The con is the opening, basically the opening gambit.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: Right.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: And the opening gambit in your situation is when you hear Matt say, Matt's opening gambit is next time this happens, can you be sure to wash your hands first?
34:49
SPEAKER_00: Because you left a fingerprint.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: So that's the opening gambit.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: Now you have a you have a gimmick that you're gonna roll into.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: You didn't, obviously, you kept it internally, but even internally, you had something that you responded to.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: The whole point of these transactions is at the end of the transaction, there is a payoff.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: And the payoff is what he calls a surprising emotion.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: We would say the payoff is a hit of dopamine, a hit of adrenaline.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: So we don't play these, according to Byrne.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: He would say we don't play these games for no good reason, and we rarely do it intentionally.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: It's largely unconscious, but there's always a payoff.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: It could be the payoff is I got you.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: Like waiting to like being asked a question.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: I know you felt this, like somebody asking you a question and then they ask it in a different way, and you can feel that they're trying to poke holes in how you're answering to see if they can get you.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, exactly.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: So you weren't being honest with me.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: See, and then another game is the kick me game, right?
35:52
SPEAKER_00: Where you would fall into the game of I'm paralyzed, I'm frozen, and now I'm just being kicked by the bully who's coming after me.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: So he's got all of these games that he has names for, but they're basically these interactions that take place between two people, largely again, unconscious in terms of the dynamic.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: When you become conscious of them, which is what we're talking about today, then you have other choices to make.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: You can move into your adult ego state and say, oof, I'm gonna go ahead and let that one slide, or I'm gonna go ahead and not respond in this way because I know where I want to respond is as a rebellious 15-year-old girl or as a, you know, scared little three-year-old girl or whatever.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: Right.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: And that's largely what I did.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: Cause I think for me now, I'm like so aware of this stuff that I'm able to watch it, you know, and let it go pretty quickly, you know, but you can still hear that there's like a charge there for me.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: One of Eric Burns' colleagues wrote this book called I'm okay, you're okay.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: And there's actually, he takes you through stages of your own personal development.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: The first stage is I'm not okay and everyone else is okay.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: Then you start doing your work, and then the another stage is I'm not okay and everyone else is fucked up too.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: The third stage is I'm okay and you're fucked up.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: And then the fourth and final stage, hopefully we get to is I'm okay, you're okay.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: Right.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: So when you're doing your inner work, and this happens with your clients, it happens with my clients, when we do our inner work and other people around us are not doing their inner work, we're gonna feel a whole lot more okay than the people around us.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: And that may be true.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: And hopefully we're inspiring people to also do their inner work and develop awareness around their own ego states and how they're responding as well.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't always happen, however.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: So if you land in a relationship where you can look at the other person and say, I'm okay, you're okay, that's a win.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of times we're not there yet.
37:53
SPEAKER_01: Right.
37:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: And it's funny because I feel like I've gotten there with my mom for the most part.
37:58
SPEAKER_01: Like I can watch her reactions to stuff and just kind of see it for what it is and not react.
38:05
SPEAKER_01: But with Matt, it's a different, it's a different yeah.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the closer in, the in the more intimate you are in a in a relationship, the harder it is to be able to stay in the adult ego state.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: And even if, okay, so here's another example this morning.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, we went to that Christmas show last night.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: It was amazing.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: Afterwards, it gets done at like nine o'clock and Michael says, I want Taco Bell.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: So we went to the Taco Bell and brought brought the Taco Bell home, sat at the counter, ate the Taco Bell.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: I throw the trash, the Taco Bell sack and everything into the trash.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: Get up this morning, and I'm over by the trash is kind of over by the oven and my water, my water fountain stuff.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: We have an automatic lid on the the trash bin, which opened when I walked by.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: Michael's got his back to me.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: He's in the kitchen.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: He says, Did you fart?
39:01
SPEAKER_01: Like, no, your taco bell farted from the trash can.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: I didn't say that though.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, why would you say that?
39:08
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm like, but so I was reviewing that from a TA perspective.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: That would have been my mom.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: My mom would be so embarrassed and insult, embarrassed and almost order lining on ashamed if she did fart.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: And then if somebody called it out, that was a very like, you don't do that right in my mom's house.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: You do not, you don't even say the F word, which is fart in my mom's house.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: So I immediately channel my my mom and you know, kind of get this kind of indignant, how dare you?
39:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile, Michael is being, you know, he's like, and then he he actually I watched him kind of move into the adult ego state.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, it's all right, you can be an asshole every once in a while.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: Because I was I'm like, okay, am I gonna get triggered by that too, or am I gonna let that go?
39:57
SPEAKER_00: Right.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: So these transactions happen all day, every day.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: And where I want to go next is I do want to bring in the Cartman triangle, because we've all heard of the victim persecutor rescuer, but we don't always know where that came from.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: But that kind of emerged out of this transactional analysis work and it does inform kind of how we're that's the the triangulation that we've been talking about.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: So I do want to talk about that.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: What a difference a day makes as we've come back.
40:23
SPEAKER_01: We've already each had like 10 more parent-child adult interactions.
40:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they never end.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: And just knowing about it, just you can't unsee it, right?
40:33
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, not at all.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: The last thing I wanted to talk about is something that has been kind of pervasive in the spiritual development community, which is the victim persecutor rescuer triad.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: And that's actually called the Carpman Triangle.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: Carpman, K-A-R-P-M-A-N, was one of the um the guys back in the 60s when Eric Byrne was doing this work with the transactional analysis.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: Carpman came with this triangle and saying that we all play these different roles in any kind of communication or any kind of relationship, really.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: You can be a victim, you can be the persecutor, or you can be the hero, the rescuer.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: And I bring this forward because when we get into the like the transactional dynamic, the conversations or the exchanges that we have with other people in our ego states of being a parent, a critical parent, or being the wounded child, then that automatically places us in this triangle of the Bermuda triangle of relationships, really.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: So I just bring that forward as a point of awareness because that's where we've started.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: This was going on in the 1960s.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: We weren't even alive then.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: And now we're here in 20, almost 2026, and we're having this conversation.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: We have both of us have ways that we work with people to move out of that and to come into some other relationship, both with yourself and with the people who you care about.
42:04
SPEAKER_00: So I think that that kind of summarizes where I wanted to get to yesterday.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: Does that did I miss anything, Elise?
42:10
SPEAKER_00: No, I don't think so.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: Was there another part of the the triangle that you were going to talk about?
42:16
SPEAKER_00: Just the victim, persecutor, and rescuer, and just that like we depending on the exchange that we have with another person, if I'm in a wounded child position and if I'm, you know, behaving and and feeling like the child who I used to be, that is going to perhaps automatically place me in that victim position in the triangle.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: And mom or dad or husband or wife or partner is going to be kind of automatically positioned in the persecutor, the bully perspective.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: Then we have to have a triangle, right?
42:51
SPEAKER_00: Because it's very unstable and very intense if you just have two people.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: So then we bring in the third person as the hero.
42:58
SPEAKER_00: That can be another sibling, it could be another parent.
43:02
SPEAKER_01: It could be the same parent.
43:04
SPEAKER_01: Yes, it could be.
43:05
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
43:05
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm going if I'm a little kid, if I'm acting like a little kid and I'm crying, mommy goes from bully to, oh, let me soothe you.
43:13
SPEAKER_01: Right.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: And rescue you.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: And so it becomes very entangled.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: And that's, I think, what I want to get at with the energetic work that we do is how do we untangle that and where are we headed next?
43:24
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
43:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:25
SPEAKER_01: So a couple of things on this.
43:27
SPEAKER_01: The way that I see it is when we're operating from that like wounded child, right?
43:34
SPEAKER_01: And to me, that's what I call your core wound.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: And once we get to the point where we're aware of what that is, where it originated, and move through the initial suppressed emotions around it, right?
43:51
SPEAKER_01: Because to me, I don't think any of these principles can be effectively applied if there are suppressed emotions underneath the surface.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: Because those emotions will make it very challenging for you to embody this type of thing.
44:07
SPEAKER_01: You could say the words, but you're not going to be able to feel it because the energetic inside of you of fear, pain, shame, whatever it is, is going to be so pervasive that the rest will be very unaccessible to you.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: So we need to feel the feelings first.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: And of course, that's why I use breath work because it's a very efficient way to do that.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: So once we've gotten through that initial stage, right, of pinpointing it, understanding it conceptually and where it comes from and feeling the feelings.
44:37
SPEAKER_01: Then what I always tell people to do is when you're operating from your core wound or your child state, as it said in the transactional analysis, there is a very different energetic operating system happening in your body, right?
44:55
SPEAKER_01: And once you bring awareness to it, it's pretty easy to be able to tell when you're operating from the wounded child versus the adult or what I call your highest self-avatar, right?
45:07
SPEAKER_01: The work is that we bring awareness to when you're operating from that.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: And to me, I always say there's a very distinct feeling in your body when you're operating from that place.
45:17
SPEAKER_01: For me, it feels like a sinking feeling.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: It feels like my energy goes from like being like out here to like my chest just sinks in and my energy just drops.
45:27
SPEAKER_01: And I kind of go into this smaller state, actually, it feels like.
45:32
SPEAKER_01: And I know in my body exactly what it feels like.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: And it feels like I don't have power or choice, right?
45:38
SPEAKER_01: Like that's kind of the feeling in my body.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: So when I go into that state, I immediately know because I can feel it, because I've brought awareness to it now.
45:46
SPEAKER_01: So now the feeling I've trained myself to that be the trigger for me to be aware of the fact that I'm operating from that state, right?
45:55
SPEAKER_01: So now I have awareness of that.
45:57
SPEAKER_01: And then I can, you know, use the tools that I have, like the inner child healing process to, you know, address the inner child and move through that state to access my highest self-avatar.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: So this is a practice, like I always say, that in the beginning, it takes intention, it takes practice, it takes energy and willingness.
46:21
SPEAKER_01: But once you get it down, then it becomes a just a shift of an energetic state, right?
46:28
SPEAKER_01: So you feel what it feels like to be in that wounded state, you know what it feels like when you're operating there.
46:34
SPEAKER_01: And depending on the intensity of it, you know, for me now at this point, it could take me anywhere from three seconds to shift it to three hours if it's a really bad trigger, you know, and I need some time to really move through it and move out of it.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: But then we move into what I call high a self-avatar.
46:52
SPEAKER_01: And that also has a very palpable energetic feeling in the body.
46:57
SPEAKER_01: In fact, you can feel the way the energy moves in your body much differently in both of those states, right?
47:04
SPEAKER_01: So I always describe it as when you are in that wounded child state, the energy is orienting outward.
47:12
SPEAKER_01: So if you think about when you're a child, you are orienting outward towards your mother to get your needs met.
47:19
SPEAKER_01: You need your mother in order to survive and get the things that you need.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: So your energy is constantly orienting out to say, can I attune to you?
47:27
SPEAKER_01: Can you make me feel safe?
47:29
SPEAKER_01: Can I get my needs met?
47:30
SPEAKER_01: And then when there are unmet needs, which usually there are, you're continuing to look outward to find that validation or that safety or that approval.
47:40
SPEAKER_01: So the wounded in our child is orienting out to say, Am I safe?
47:45
SPEAKER_01: Is somebody going to be there for me?
47:47
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of that wanting someone else to, you know, validate you or give you that safety or whatever.
47:53
SPEAKER_01: The highest self-avatar, the energy moves in the body, grounds into the earth, connects with the cosmos, connects with your higher self.
48:03
SPEAKER_01: And if the energy moves within you and you source that power from within you, because you are the power, you're the light and the channel.
48:12
SPEAKER_01: So when you're in the highest self-avatar, that's how the energy moves.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: And it's a little different for everyone.
48:18
SPEAKER_01: And I always give people a tangible way to hold on to it.
48:22
SPEAKER_01: Like for me, to immediately access my highest self-avatar energy, I just think about when I'm teaching my certification.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: Cause the energy that I feel when I'm teaching it is like I'm in my power.
48:33
SPEAKER_01: I could literally do this for three hours and it would feel like three minutes.
48:37
SPEAKER_01: And I know this is what I'm meant to be doing in the world, you know, like this is who I am.
48:42
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you know exactly who you are and you know exactly what you're meant to do.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: That is you're in your fullest identity, right?
48:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: It reminds me too about this this phrase that we always use is take, I have to take my power back.
48:55
SPEAKER_00: But you've actually given a tangible um process to literally doing that.
49:02
SPEAKER_00: So that I love how you describe that.
49:04
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
49:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:05
SPEAKER_01: So that to me is like if we can look at it as an energetic state versus it having to be a thought or a feeling, because the core wound, the wounded child, can express itself as many different thoughts, many different feelings.
49:19
SPEAKER_01: Like it can express itself as I'm not good enough or there's something wrong with me, or I'm not valuable, but they have all the same energy to them, you know?
49:28
SPEAKER_01: So if you can just be aware of the energetic state, it doesn't matter how it's expressing itself.
49:34
SPEAKER_01: You can shift that state super quickly.
49:37
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
49:37
SPEAKER_00: And then it occurs to me then in relationship, if you've shifted your core wound, your your inner child to your highest avatar, aka the adult self, then you necessitates that the relationship or the transaction is going to change.
49:55
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
49:56
SPEAKER_00: And so then it occurred to me when I was in the shower this morning, as many of my good ideas do, right?
50:01
SPEAKER_00: I know, but I was thinking about, but what about the critical parent state?
50:08
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
50:09
SPEAKER_00: What about that?
50:10
SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
50:11
SPEAKER_00: Like, how do we address that?
50:13
SPEAKER_01: So to me, it's very similar as the wounded inner child, because it's essentially just a different, again, like a different expression or a different way of engaging with the wounded inner child.
50:27
SPEAKER_01: Because instead of you just being that wounded inner child, it's like you become the parent and the child at the same time, right?
50:36
SPEAKER_01: Because you are like hearing your parent or treating yourself like your parent treated you.
50:42
SPEAKER_01: So essentially you are still operating from that place.
50:45
SPEAKER_01: And that can be hard a little bit harder to recognize at first because you might just think that you're being, I don't know, logical or practical or trying to make things better or whatever, like, oh, I should be grateful or I shouldn't complain or whatever.
51:01
SPEAKER_01: But really, you're just treating yourself like your parent treated you and telling yourself that your feelings aren't valid and that you should just stop feeling how you're feeling, which essentially does nothing to help you.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: It just makes you feel invalidated.
51:17
SPEAKER_01: So it's pretty much the same thing.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: Right.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: I think it just requires a different layer of awareness to be able to recognize how that's functioning in your system.
51:27
SPEAKER_00: Right.
51:28
SPEAKER_00: Because I think that when I look at where we're headed with these inner wounds, whether I and I think even our parenting self, our, you know, the inner parent is also wounded, you know, because at one point they were wounded children as well.
51:44
SPEAKER_00: So we see this generationally, right?
51:46
SPEAKER_00: So when I look at that, I have I have to ask the question, where are we headed?
51:50
SPEAKER_00: And the way I always look at that is, you know, the wounded child can make the transition into divine child.
51:57
SPEAKER_00: The wounded parent or the critical parent can make the transition into a natural parent, somebody who is doing the right things and saying the right things.
52:06
SPEAKER_00: And not that parents are perfect and not that we're perfect either, but I think that it's always important to have like a go-to, like, where are we headed?
52:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, the other thing, too, that I like to think of it about it like is the inner child also provides so much wisdom.
52:22
SPEAKER_01: Like the inner child says, here's where you need love, here's where you need compassion, here's what you need to look at.
52:31
SPEAKER_01: Here's like like the inner child is actually showing you the way to your genius and your talents and your purpose.
52:40
SPEAKER_01: Because for anybody, and we all know this, for anybody to step into their greatest genius or their gifts or their purpose, you have to go through the inner child.
52:51
SPEAKER_00: There's no other because the inner child is uh at best, the divine child, playful, joyful, filled with life, filled with all the good stuff.
53:02
SPEAKER_00: And you're right, that does come from going through the and that's a lot of times I think why people are so thwarted on their purpose because they haven't quite accessed what you're talking about with the core woman, the inner child.
53:15
SPEAKER_01: And also like that was what I started to realize when I started doing the metamorphosis.
53:20
SPEAKER_01: I was like, everybody who goes through this discovers their purpose on a much deeper level and what they're supposed to do with it.
53:26
SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't planning for that, but it was just a natural thing that happens because it's not this thing that you have to like discover or figure out, it's right there.
53:36
SPEAKER_01: It's just that you haven't allowed yourself to access this part of you because of the trauma and the wounding and the programming and all that stuff.
53:45
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
53:46
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking too, when I'm working with people on their the trauma piece of things, I track back as much as I can using my technology to the original, to the root.
54:01
SPEAKER_00: And when we look at it, like from you know me, I love to go to the mitochondrial DNA, which is we all carry our mother's mitochondrial DNA.
54:09
SPEAKER_00: Every human on the planet has their mother's.
54:12
SPEAKER_00: So then when we're we're looking at that at a cellular level or at a the level of the DNA, both physically and I suppose, well, generationally as well, when we're clearing that all the way back to the root and calling forward the original intention of the mother and the original intention of the daughter, I think that that's where things get really crystal clear for us in terms of identity, who I am, what I'm here for, and gives us access to what you're talking about with the joy and the playfulness and the creativity that automatically leads you into your purpose.
54:47
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
54:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
54:49
SPEAKER_01: Because also, like when you think about it, like when you come into the world, right, as a baby or a young child, all that is there.
54:57
SPEAKER_01: And then based on your interactions with your parents and the world, it gets covered up by, you know, these things that you think you have to be or you have to do, or what you decided, how you decided you're wrong or not lovable or whatever it is.
55:11
SPEAKER_01: And then you start to contort yourself to trot in reaction to those things so that you can get love and then you stop becoming aware of or being able to access that purpose.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: I love this.
55:27
SPEAKER_01: I know it's so good.
55:29
SPEAKER_01: But and I love this transactional analysis because I think it's another way of describing and helping people to understand like what's actually happening, because honestly, the way that we communicate is so pivotal and it's so hard sometimes.
55:48
SPEAKER_01: I think to communicate, it's so hard to communicate with awareness, consciousness, intention, uh especially for those that you're intimate with.
56:01
SPEAKER_00: And I think that it's because of this.
56:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:05
SPEAKER_00: Before we got on, we're going doing a staycation this weekend, and there's always a little bit more stress in the mornings because we're trying to negotiate schedules and what who's doing what with Cooper.
56:15
SPEAKER_00: And I did really well in what at one point when we almost went sideways about the schedule.
56:22
SPEAKER_00: I did really well.
56:22
SPEAKER_00: I stayed in my my adult self.
56:26
SPEAKER_00: But then Michael asked me a question.
56:28
SPEAKER_00: So you're not packed yet?
56:29
SPEAKER_00: And oh my God, the inner teenager, I have this 15-year-old part of me that's like it's just this automatic reaction.
56:39
SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, I have the same thing.
56:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying this because I'm not packed.
56:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying this because I want to make it easy, but I'm saying it in this intense, like, as only a 15-year-old can say it, I suppose.
56:51
SPEAKER_01: Way.
56:51
SPEAKER_01: No, I know.
56:52
SPEAKER_01: Like whenever we have to go somewhere and we're like not rushing, but it's like, okay, we have to leave at nine in the morning or something.
56:59
SPEAKER_01: And Matt will always be like, I want to leave by nine.
57:02
SPEAKER_01: I want to leave by nine.
57:03
SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna be ready by nine?
57:05
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I know what fucking time we're leaving.
57:08
SPEAKER_01: Like, you don't need to keep telling me.
57:10
SPEAKER_01: Like, I understand what's going on.
57:12
SPEAKER_01: Like, that's what I'll say, that's how I'll get.
57:14
SPEAKER_01: And like it just triggers something in me where I'm like, stop telling me what to do.
57:18
SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm fully aware of everything more than you are all of the time.
57:22
SPEAKER_01: Right.
57:23
SPEAKER_01: So, like you telling me, I'm just like, like, sit down and shut up.
57:27
SPEAKER_00: But it is, and it's it's like that inner like yes, it is, and then you have to, and I think that that was the whole point of bringing in TA to begin with is that it's not just like it's easy to stay inside of ourselves and do that, but it's like it's another level of the game, if you will, to be able to diagnose this in real time with your partner.
57:46
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and shift as much as you can and regulate as much as you can so that you become more like Teflon and less like Velcro when it comes to these moments where oh boy, you did not just ask me if I was gonna take Cooper for a walk this morning.
58:04
SPEAKER_00: I always take Cooper for a walk.
58:06
SPEAKER_00: There's no need to ask me that question ever.
58:08
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
58:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: And also I think even, and I say this all the time like the awareness is like 90% of it.
58:16
SPEAKER_01: Like because you have to, if you don't have the awareness, the the rest of the stuff doesn't matter.
58:21
SPEAKER_01: So, but bringing awareness to it just like it shifts so much just in doing that, and then from there you get to have so much more choice.
58:30
SPEAKER_00: So oh, yeah, and that's what this is all about is choice and personal creativity and knowing exactly who you are.
58:41
SPEAKER_00: That's where we're headed.
58:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that.
58:43
SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for bringing this forward, Robin.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: I love it, and I feel like we can I feel like we can go further with this, but we'll Oh, I think so too.
58:52
SPEAKER_00: But um, I don't want to be late for my hair appointment and I don't want to be late for the rest of my day because I want to be an adult human who has a positive and peaceful relationship with my husband.
59:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, enjoy your staycation and I'll take lots of pictures.
59:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, and we'll talk again soon.
59:09
SPEAKER_00: I know.
59:10
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for thanks for having me and talking to you.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
59:15
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for being here.
59:17
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59:20
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59:25
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59:33
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59:38
SPEAKER_01: Make sure you download my Clear Trauma Cheat Sheet at elisebreeds.com.
59:42
SPEAKER_01: See you next time.