Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Ep 1332 | Inner Child, Shadow Work & Somatic Therapy: A Warning to Christian Women
13 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the biggest threat to Christian women's theology today?
The inner child, shadow work, somatic therapy, all of these therapeutic concepts are really popular, but are they biblical? We'll be getting into all of that on today's episode of Relatable. I am so excited, by the way, before we get started to speak at the Last Stand Conference this summer, June 5th and 6th. It's in Denver, Colorado.
I'll be speaking alongside Seth Gruber, Frank Turek, so many more. Go to thelaststand.com. Use code Allie for a discount. That's thelaststand.com, code Allie. Hey y'all, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday.
Chapter 2: What is inner child work and why is it controversial?
Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend watching the Masters. We did. We love the Masters. I don't have FOMO very much, but I have the Masters FOMO. We've had the privilege of going three times. We obviously didn't get to go this year, but for all of you who did, I'm trying not to be jealous. I'm trying just to be happy for you.
And I want all of you Related Girls and Related Bros out there to promise me that if you have not been to the Masters and you ever have the opportunity to go to the Masters, that you go. that you do whatever you have to do to accept the invitation of that very kind and generous person who has invited you. I don't care how much of a homebody you are.
You are going to be very thankful for the experience of the masters. I don't really say this about many things, but there's really nothing like it. It's like going back in time. It's like going to a different planet. It's an incredible experience, and I hope I get to go again one day, but I hope you all got to enjoy it from the comfort of your home like we did.
And I also just want to remind you that God's eternal plan of redemption is going off without a hitch, completely and totally. There's nothing at all that has caused any detour, any delay. No speed bumps, no accidents. There's nothing that has happened that he didn't foresee, that he didn't know about. He's never looking down and wondering, how in the world am I going to clean up the mess?
Oh my goodness, I didn't see that coming. That was a surprise for me. He's never thrown off. He's never taken aback. There is nothing that is happening in your life that he cannot handle.
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Chapter 3: How does shadow work contradict biblical teachings?
There is nothing that is happening in your life, in the world, that could ever separate you from the love of Christ. That's what Romans 8 reminds us of. Paul just rattles off all of these reasons why someone might think they could be separated from God. All of these big, powerful things that could cause a wedge between them and their relationship with their creator.
But because of Christ and what he has accomplished for us on the cross and how he defeated death, we don't have to worry about that. We are forever reconciled to God if by grace through faith we have been saved.
And we are a part of this grand eternal plan of redemption that through the mostly unseen and unsung acts of obedience that we do as Christians every day, the seemingly mundane acts of faithfulness and worship that we do when we simply do the next right thing, God is accomplishing his grand purposes through us. He doesn't need us, but he has chosen to use us.
And how incredible of a privilege is it? to be voices of clarity and courage in this age that is just riddled with cowardice and riddled with confusion. That is what the church is. That is what Christians are. We are beacons of clarity and courage in an age that is just infected by cowardice and confusion and chaos. We can be a bulwark against those things.
We can be a tower of refuge against those things by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we get that clarity and we get that courage from, yes, God himself, the Holy Spirit that he sent as a helper, to be in our hearts and to live inside of us, but also through his word.
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Chapter 4: What is somatic therapy and its implications for Christians?
And that's why on Mondays, I like to focus on these subjects, these evergreen theological subjects. I look for something that seems to be confusing a lot of us. probably confuse me at some point in my life. And especially what is confusing or what's causing chaos or what's causing some kind of dissonance or some kind of like theological mishap in the lives of Christian women.
And I'm certainly not immune to those infections. And how can the word of God add clarity to that? And so that's what we're going to be doing today, specifically about therapy culture and therapy language, specifically three concepts within that realm of therapy culture and therapy language. Before we get into it, just a couple of announcements. Share the Arrow speakers.
We finally announced our Share the Arrow speakers, y'all. And I just have to say, can I just say this? I feel like I can say this without it being a brag because it has nothing to do with me, that this is the best speaker lineup that you're going to get anywhere at any Christian conference. It just is.
And it's because all of these people are so amazing because God has equipped them for such a time as this. So we've got Shane and Shane leading worship. Incredible. We've got Rosaria Butterfield back for the second time. She was our inaugural speaker at our inaugural Share the Arrows, got a standing ovation before she even spoke because she's amazing.
We've got Kosti Hinn, first male speaker this year, also amazing. He's been on the show several times. You guys love him. We've got Elisa Childers back for the third time, and she's going to be speaking with Natasha Crane, so good at breaking down problems.
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Chapter 5: How does therapy culture influence Christian beliefs?
the lies of the new age and of the culture and of progressivism. We've got Grace Anna Castleberry and Audrey Brogy for our talk on motherhood and womanhood and homemaking and all of that beautiful stuff. And then we have one more speaker that is to be announced. It's also to be determined. So we've got one more special speaker and then of course yours truly will be there too.
Go to sharethearrows.com. Get your tickets today, October 10th, Dallas, Texas. Women only. Sorry, Relatable Bros. Maybe someday there will be something else for you, but this is a Christian women's conference. Sharethearrows.com. Get your tickets today and do not delay. Last thing before we get into it, please leave a review for Relatable. If you love Relatable, please leave us a five-star review.
Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen. Subscribe on YouTube. Subscribe on Spotify. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts. It helps the show a lot. And make sure to tell your friends about Relatable. Thank you so much for being here. Let's get into this very controversial subject. Are you ready? Okay.
If you want to know what I think is the biggest threat, the biggest threat to Christian women's worldview today, to the theology of Christian women today, to Christian women's ministry,
Chapter 6: What are the dangers of self-focused healing in Christianity?
It's actually not progressivism. It's not feminism. It's not the new age, all things that I've talked about many, many times. It's not even the toxic empathy that's interwoven into all of these belief systems that I just listed. It's therapy culture.
I actually believe that the progressivism, feminism, toxic empathy, emotionalism, me-centeredness, new age-ish stuff that unfortunately impacts so many women's Bible studies, Christian women's books, and conferences are all downstream from the secular therapy pop psychology pseudo-spiritualism that we find on social media that is dedicated to women's therapy and therapy concepts.
Now, in the past, we've talked about what I dubbed in my first book, Toxic Mommy Culture. So we've been talking about that, writing about that for years. And a lot of what we're talking about today was actually written about in my first book, but I hadn't named it the way that I'm naming it now. So Toxic Mommy Culture is...
the fad of complaining about motherhood on the internet and drowning your stress in wine and smut fiction. And that concept, while terrible, is not exactly what we're talking about today, but it's related to this. This is toxic therapy culture.
And that is the use of therapeutic language and concepts as an excuse for complaining and self-centeredness, a replacement for sanctification, for self-denial, for generosity, and the hard work of Holy Spirit-empowered holiness. Now, before we get into the specifics on this, this is not an indictment on therapy as a whole.
I've told this story many times, wrote about it in my first book, of the counselor who spoke unrelenting truth to me about my eating disorder. And God used that to reroute my life. We have had multiple counselors on this show talk about how therapy can be Christ-honoring and can help Christians heal and reorient their lives around God and His Word.
And so I believe biblical counselors are a gift to the church. And I think that there are many seasons in a person's life when seeking out counseling from professional wise Christians is necessary and good. But, but I think many Christian women have been duped by therapeutic ideas that sound almost Christian, but are not. I have been.
And actually this directs us away from the truth that God shares with us. about ourselves, our purpose, our responsibility as Christians, and what we are actually capable of. A couple of weeks ago, I got into hot water because I talked about this specifically, the concept of the inner child. I'm still getting DMs about it, still getting sent videos of therapists online very angry about my videos.
So we'll get into that to set up the context, and then we'll get into our three problematic ways
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Chapter 7: How can Christians find true healing according to scripture?
This is another Christian family owned company that's amazing. All of their jewelry, their hats, their belts, their wallets, their accessories, their bags, they all last forever and look so good. Great Mother's Day present. Also got Great Father's Day present. So for a related girl or a related bro in your life, I really encourage you to go to rangeleather.com.
You'll get 10% off of all Range Leather products when you do. Go to rangeleather.com. All right, a couple of weeks ago, former producer Brie, I'll just throw her under the bus really fast. No, I'm grateful that she did this.
She sent me a video that was kind of going viral on TikTok and I responded to this and we'll just kind of play a silent video of this so you can at least see what I'm talking about. And it was this viral TikTok of a woman speaking to her inner child before going into an interview. And in the video, the woman has her eyes closed. She's kind of cradling her body. She's rocking back and forth.
She's speaking in a baby voice. She's affirming the fears of awkwardness, acknowledging her nervousness. Now, some of you might be thinking, does this person have special needs? No, this is not what that's about. Certainly we wouldn't be highlighting something like that. This is a person whose caption says that she is speaking to her inner child.
And in my response to this, because I thought it was an important concept to respond to, it was not mocking this woman who filmed and posted this at all. I simply made this statement. Are you ready? This has caused a lot of shockwaves that I did not realize it was going to cause. There's no such thing as an inner child.
In the Christian worldview, childhood memories, in some cases, traumatic memories, yes. Childhood experiences that shaped us into who we are, yes. Childhood pain that we still carry with us, possibly. That's very true for a lot of people. But the concept of an emotional or spiritual existence of an internal version of ourselves at six or eight or 12 years old does not exist.
And I actually believe speaking to ourselves in this way can actually arrest our growth as adults and as Christians rather than develop it. So hang with me. You might completely disagree with me and that is okay. There was a lot of agreement on my post when I talked about this. There was a lot of respectful disagreement, which I welcome. Totally fine with that.
But there was also a lot of angry protestation in the comments and stitched together responses by Instagram therapists. And some, some, not all, but some went far beyond disagreeing with me and into the realm of ad hominem.
and downright temper tantrums about my statement, which doesn't surprise me at this point, but sometimes I'm like, do you not see the irony here that there is, you know, childish behavior kind of being played out in some of these responses by people who claim that fostering their inner child has actually made them healthier and more mature and developed.
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Chapter 8: What should Christians consider when evaluating therapeutic concepts?
Are there aspects of this that are not true, that are not healthy, that go against what I know about the gospel, what the God of the universe says about my body and about myself, about my past and my purpose? We should be asking that about all things, but especially God.
psychology because psychology claims to know something about the inner workings of the mind even while psychology itself the practice of it in general in principle actually denies the person is made in the image of god and denies the eternal soul so we got to be really careful when we are walking along these roads so the first concept that we'll talk about today is is the inner child theory.
The second one is shadow work. And the third one is somatic therapy. Okay. So that's like the body keeps score. You're holding trauma in your body. Okay. Wait till we get to all of these, because I know some of you are gunning to, you know, try to already respond. So let's go to the first, this idea of the inner child. Okay.
So depending on your TikTok algorithm, you may have come across some videos of grown women, adult women coaxing themselves through situations as if they're children. And I am playing these for you to give you an example of what I'm talking about. So you don't think I'm just pulling this out of a hat, not to mock these people, certainly not to make them a, you know, a target for anything.
But these people did post this publicly. And so I think it's fair to say we're talking about a concept. Here's an example of what I'm talking about. So one.
Hey, sweetie. I'm really sorry that she hit you. That she's been hitting you. You're sad. And you're mad. And you also feel like you need to forgive her because she's little. And I love that about you. But right now, you just get to be upset that you've been hit, okay? Yeah, you don't like it. You don't like it.
Okay, so I'm just gonna play that one example. The other example that we had to play was actually the video that we've already played in the past and you saw the voiceover of that just a few minutes ago, but there are several videos like this and I'm not minimizing the hurt feelings that these people have. I simply do not think
that talking to ourselves as children is actually the path that we are supposed to take to deal with very real pain. So I want to talk about what the inner child concept is and how it originated. That tells us a lot about what it means and if Christians should be toying with it. It's not just a social media fad.
This psychological term inner child actually has roots in the new age movement and quite frankly has parts of it that A Christian really just shouldn't tolerate and shouldn't play with. So let's go back to its beginnings. Sigmund Freud, a lot of you know who he is. He was an Austrian physician. He was often called the father of modern psychology.
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