Dr. Nicole LePera

It impacts how we show up in relationships.

What I hope to add to attachment theory is the neurophysiological biological imprint of attachment that makes some of us very versed in what our attachment style is, but still unable to create the secure attachments that we want and deserve.

Admittedly, I would have been a person that, you know.

didn't understand what it was when I read the limited literature on it, because I'm not the first person to speak of inner child, of course.

It seemed to me that it was like this visualization, this kind of like talking to this more amorphous aspect of ourself.

And for me, the scientist at heart, it just simply didn't land.

So I didn't really care to think about it, even though I was clear that childhood did impact us.

It took me to be well into my career to begin to explore working with clients who were kind of feeling stuck despite having incredible insight, awareness, even commitment to their healing to again, understand that to build that bridge from insight into action, we actually need to create new choices and our body is so foundationally involved in those choices.

So if I were to simplify what inner child is doing,

And I hope the takeaway is for anyone that is listening or chooses to buy my new book is that it's a part of us that we all have, no matter how long ago childhood was, no matter how difficult it was, and we don't want to think about it, it is still literally wired into us as those implicit emotional memories.

And it impacts, right, because this part early in life did a lot of learning.

Just like I said, it learned how to stay connected when security or attention was scarce or inconsistent.

It also learned how to handle unpredictability.

It learned how to handle conflict, disconnection, unmet needs.

And so those then, right, that learning is what most of us meet sometime in our adulthood, right, when we seemingly instinctually feel disconnected.

driven to certain emotions or reactions or even roles in our relationship despite wanting to change knowing that they don't serve us because again they are so wired into our body so it takes us not only understanding maybe more compassionately

why, right, maybe us staying quiet now in an argument where we could speak up at one time that maybe helped prevent conflict in childhood so we can see that part more compassionately, but at the same time, we can now show up differently, right?

We can teach our body that it's safe to speak our mind or to express our needs to someone else.

Or for me, right, the overachiever, I can understand that I learned that that's how connection and worthiness was created for me in childhood,

Right.