Hello Tanya

Ep.03- Inner Child Work and Learning to Love Your Own Company

• Tanya Barlow • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Welcome back to the Hello Tanya Podcast! This week I'll be discussing inner child work and learning to be your own best friend. Inner child work can be emotionally challenging but profoundly healing. 

• Find photos of yourself as a child, teenager, and young adult to speak to with love and compassion
• Write a letter to your younger self acknowledging difficult experiences and qualities worth celebrating, and burning the letter as a symbolic release of past pain and patterns
• Learning to be your own best friend instead of seeking validation from others
• Reframing alone time as an opportunity to enjoy your own company rather than something to fear
• Mirror Work Moment

Next week I'll be talking about crap magnets and luck magnets.


Production design, intro music and video by Christopher Stratton. Podcast photos by Frances Carter. Find Tanya at @hellotanya and the pod at @hellotanyapod on IG, and https://www.youtube.com/@hellotanyapod <3

Speaker 1:

Hi, hello, and welcome back to the Hello Tanya podcast, where I share pocket-sized concepts, frameworks, tools, tools for your toolbox, tools for your toolbox Sure, that's a thing, anyway. Exercises that I learned from seeing a spiritual healer for the last three years, things that have really helped me that I hope will help you too. Welcome back. Oh, my goodness, episode three. We've done three of these. Wow, that's exciting. That's exciting for me. If this is your first time here, I recommend heading to the beginning, starting at episode one, just for a little context for how we got here. Okay, so today is a biggie, it's a hard one, it's not for everyone, so let's just start with that vibe. Today we're talking about inner child work, okay. Okay, let's let's journey back to 2002. I'm about three sessions in with Lika, my spiritual healer, pretty overwhelmed with all these new concepts and all this homework and talking to myself in the mirror and flushing my roommate. See, if this doesn't make sense, you got to go back, you got to go back. Anyway, I've been flushing, I've been talking to myself in the mirror. I'm pretty, pretty overwhelmed. Three sessions in, I'm slowly fighting the cringe of doing mirror work and kind of leaning into it a little bit. I'm slowly opening up. I'm starting to feel a little bit better about myself and I've been giving myself pep talks in the mirror, giving myself hugs, flushing away, and I felt like, just when I was getting the hang of things, just when I was like, okay, all right, I'm on board with this journey. I'm on board with learning to love myself, learning to talk to myself in the mirror, learning to hype myself up. She always introduces a new concept just when I feel like I'm getting the hang of it, so this one in particular spun me out. As you can imagine, it sounds pretty daunting, right? Inner child work, like is it that thing where you reparent yourself? Like, oh my God, okay, all right, okay, here we go. She tells me to find some photos of myself as a kid, as a teenager and in my 20s, and much like the mirror work, you're going to be talking to yourself a little bit. She tells me to talk to my younger self with love and say what I've always wanted to hear, just like the mirror work, to give her, my younger self, advice, to give her confidence, compassion and empathy, to tell her who I am now and how much there is to look forward to. She then tells me to write a letter to my younger self acknowledging Difficult things that she'd experienced, as well as the great qualities she had and qualities and patterns that it's time to let go of. And when I was finished writing the letter, to burn it dig a hole in the ground and bury it. As you can imagine, this was pretty emotionally devastating. But the thing that Lika has drilled into me over the last three years is trust, to trust the process, to trust myself, to trust my gut, to trust my intuition. So I dug up some old photos from the archives and had a go at it. Trust, I'm trusting. I'm trusting that this isn't going to break me. I've, of course, since burnt that letter, but from memory and initial notes I have some here it went a little something like this I see a young, insecure girl constantly second guessing herself and hoping that people will like her.

Speaker 1:

A girl who felt like she didn't belong, floating through friend groups, not knowing who she was and how amazing she was. She was such a good friend to people who didn't treat her well or deserve her. Learning to people-please as a coping mechanism, learning and hoping that buying things for friends, that being overly generous would hopefully make people treat her better and stay A little girl who felt left out and ignored, but she's always been funny and expressive and talented at so many things. And so silly and talented at so many things. And so silly. I see you, shy and scared at university, insecure about your body, dimming your light, making yourself small and hiding so much, hiding. Things got so much better, my darling. You're still funny, silly and talented. You're still an amazing friend and you did learn some discernment about who to trust. You are liked and you are loved and your life is beautiful. So don't be scared. Goodbye, shy girl. You are not hiding anymore. Oh and oh yeah, oh yeah, there were tears like full on snotty subbing.

Speaker 1:

I you know, as usual, I didn't realize how much I needed to hear all of this, simply acknowledging what little Tanya went through, imagining myself as I am now 41 and fabulous, crouching down and telling little 12-year-old me all of this, crouching down and telling little 12-year-old me all of this that it got better after it got a little worse, and giving her and myself a big, big hug. Now, like I said, I'll admit this is not for everyone. This is not a walk in the park, this is. It can be really really hard and really challenging to delve into all the past versions of you, acknowledging fears, acknowledging trauma, acknowledging bad patterns, encouraging yourself to break those patterns and telling yourself it'll all be okay, even if it doesn't feel like it's going to be. So please, only do this if you feel safe to, and with as much gentleness as you can muster. I think another concept that goes hand in hand with inner child work is learning to be your own best friend and learning to love your own company. I truly believe the people pleaser to hermit slash homebody pipeline is real and I am living it.

Speaker 1:

A core issue that I've repeatedly had throughout my life has been not trusting my gut, not trusting my gut instincts and searching for validation in others, often from those who didn't treat me very well or took advantage of me and my kindness and generosity. Seeking validation is incredibly human, but what if we got that from ourselves instead of others? One session, lika tells me to be my own best friend because, at the end of the day, you're who you're stuck with, spending the most time with, and so why wouldn't you love yourself? So yeah, I know it's pretty bleak, but it made sense to me, like, why have I spent all of this time and effort, giving the best version of my funny, silly, joy-seeking self to others. I practiced reeling my energy in like a tape measure, snapping all of me back to myself. I stepped back. I spent time with myself, getting used to silence, to soft and gentle movements and moments, stepping away from social situations and circles that didn't serve me. I looked for joy, for signs, for things that made me giggle. It's not hard, it's very easy to make me giggle. And, much like Miley, I started buying my own flowers. I started doing things that I wanted to do, that I normally would have been nervous to do alone. I spent time with my dog. I honed my craft and truly learned to love no, adore my own company.

Speaker 1:

Being your own best friend might sound kind of sad or lonely at first, but to be honest, it's pretty damn awesome. I remember dreading Sundays the most, when I hadn't locked in like a brunch or a hang or activity, frantically messaging anyone who was free, because I did not want to be alone, let alone with my own thoughts or my own company. I didn't want to be. I wanted to be distracted, someone else, someone else be around so that I'm not stuck with me. But now I prefer my own company, like. How does it go? Peaceful, unbothered, hydrated, moisturized and thriving? Staying in my lane, mying my own business, whatever? All of those things. I feel them. So give that a go.

Speaker 1:

Try reframing yourself as your own best friend. Learn to love your own company. Be comfortable being alone with your own thoughts, with your own company. Your friends think you're awesome, so why shouldn't you think that you're awesome? Okay, all right, and it's finally time for another mirror moment.

Speaker 1:

As we've established, and as a reminder, mirror work is essentially gassing yourself up in the mirror, giving yourself a big old pep talk and telling yourself the things that you really need to hear. So let's build on what we've done so far, shall we? Okay, here's my mirror. Here we go. I love you and I'm proud of you. What was the next one? Oh, yes, I trust myself, I value myself and I accept myself.

Speaker 1:

This week, I'd like to invite you to try saying I can do it alone, the universe is always with me. Now, that one, that one in particular, hit hard. I have it written on my mirror and I say this to myself every day. It's kind of how I'm here doing this podcast. Pretty cool, right. I can do it alone. The universe is always being gentle with yourself. I love you, I love me and, as always, thank you for being here.

Speaker 1:

Next week I'll be talking about crap magnets and luck magnets. What are they? I guess I'll have to find out. I just want to give a big shout out to Christopher Stratton for everything. This podcast literally wouldn't exist without his help. He did the production, design, built the set, filmed the intro video, helped me edit, played the music. Literally, I can do it alone, but I'm grateful so much for Chris's help. Thank you so much, christopher Stratton. I'm so grateful for you. And also a huge shout out, as usual, to Francis Carter for the beautiful photos for this podcast. Okay, I'm going to press the outro button. Thank you so much for spending time with me. Bye-bye, thank you.