112: Why Do I Seek Parental Validation as an Adult?
In this episode, I answer a question from a listener who is wondering why they still seek validation from their parents even though they already know their parents are unsupportive and are often left feeling unhappy. I discuss how so often our need for parental validation and approval is tied to deep rooted human fears, including the fear of rejection, the fear of abandonment, the fear of criticism, and the fear of being unlovable. My intention is to help you to feel less alone, validated in your experience, and offer you ways to begin healing from these fears and how we can begin to validate and love ourselves, one step at a time.
This post contains affiliate links to some of my favorite tools and resources. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Full terms & conditions here.
Recommended Episodes 🎙️
Book Recommendations 📚
Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect by Jonice Webb
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson
How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self by Dr. Nicole LePera
Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers by Dr. Karyl mcBride
Growing Up as the Scapegoat to a Narcissistic Parent: A Guide to Healing by Jay Rein
Inner Child Resources✨
Episode References
Alleviating Social Pain: A Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial of Forgiveness and Acetaminophen (National Library of Medicine)
A prescription for the pain of rejection: Acetaminophen and forgiveness (UCLA Health)
Timestamps ⏱️
Introduction: 0:15
Listener Question: 1:45
Outro: 35:28
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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get started. Hey there, beautiful soul. My name is Amanda, and this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. It's not my intention to give you all the answers. I believe you have all the answers you seek.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:26]:
You just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you for joining me for this episode. In this episode, I'm answering a question from a listener who is wondering why they seek validation from their parents even though this listener already knows their parents are unsupportive. And when they seek this validation, they're often left feeling unhappy. I love this question. I think so many people can relate to this question. Why do we seek parental validation even though we know we're not going to get it? Or why do we hold on to the hope that something will be different this time even though the past shows us that our parents are unable to give us this validation we're seeking? So in this episode, I discuss why so many of us continue to seek this validation from our parents. We discuss how so often our need for parental validation and approval is tied to deep rooted human fears, including the fear of rejection, the fear of abandonment, the fear of criticism, and the fear of being unlovable.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:13]:
My intention for this episode is to help you to feel less alone, help you to feel validated in your experience, and offer you ways to begin healing from these fears and how we can begin to validate and love ourselves one step at a time. Before we jump in, I always like to mention that if you haven't checked out my site, I invite you to check it out after this episode for more free resources. You can check that out at newviewadvice.com, and today's episode show notes will be at newviewadvice.com/112. So with that, let's jump on in. Why do I look for validation in other people like my parents or possible boyfriends? It leads me to nothing but unhappiness, especially since my parents aren't the best supportive people and the men I talk to aren't going to save me from my situation. But my brain likes to think that it does. I do wish to have a boyfriend, but I don't want to be dependent on him for my gratification and happiness. I know that job is made for me and me alone.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:09]:
Thank you so much for this question. I think this is a great question that so many people can relate to. I know I can relate to this question. I feel like everybody at some point in their life has sought parental validation and not received it. Maybe some people never receive it. Maybe some people receive it sometimes, but I really believe that these parental wounds are universal. I think everybody on some level has a mother wound or father wound. And if you don't, god bless you.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:35]:
But there's a lot of us out there who can understand this question and have sought that validation you speak of. So for your question, I'm really going to focus on seeking validation from our parents even when they're not the most supportive people. I think the other relationships you mentioned likely tie into this parental validation that you're seeking. But I do wanna mention that if at the end of this episode, you want me to focus on boyfriends because you don't feel like your question was fully answered, please write in again, and we'll do another episode fully on boyfriend validation. So I chose to focus on parents for this episode because I think that for so many people, the root wound or the beginning of this pattern of seeking validation originated in childhood by seeking the love and acceptance from our parents and feeling as though we did not get it or receive it or feeling unseen by our parents. But I believe that as we go about life and we're seeking this validation, very often, it's rooted in an original wound that started in childhood. So that's why I wanted to focus on that for this episode. And for me personally, even though I have experienced a lot of trauma in my life that was done by people not in my family structure, I've actually found that healing some of these core parental wounds are just as painful as other traumas, if not more painful.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:45]:
For me in my life, I've found that that lack of love when I look back at my childhood, it's not that there was no love, but there was conditioned love, which we're gonna talk about today. That when love becomes conditional and is not unconditional, it can create a lot of wounds and can create a lot of fears such as the fears we're going to touch on today. And before I jump into discussing this childhood wounding further, I do wanna say here upfront that seeking validation from others is very human. We are wired for connection from one another, and being validated by one another is a way that we feel that connection and we feel belonging and acceptance. And these are things we inherently seek as humans. Of course, we wanna feel connected to one another. Of course, we wanna feel seen by one another. Of course, we wanna feel like we belong.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:32]:
So don't judge yourself for seeking external validation. I saw that in your question. You were like, this is for me and me alone. And, yes, we want to learn to validate ourselves. But don't judge yourself if you are seeking external validation because as I mentioned, being validated by one another creates that connection, so, of course, we're seeking it. Today, we're just focusing on why you keep seeking it from a place for this question. It's your parents where you know you're not actually going to receive it. So we wanna look at this question because it can become unhealthy for us when we continue to seek that validation from people who aren't able to give us that validation.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:09]:
And for so many of us, it's our parents. And this is a painful truth that it's taken me many years to see in my own life that the validation and the approval I was seeking from from my parents, I will never receive. So I could either live my life as I will never be good enough for my parents' approval, or I can live my life as I am already enough, I am always enough, I am always worthy. Unfortunately, my parents don't mirror that back to me every day. And I believe that you will find people who validate you, and this will happen more easily as you begin to validate yourself. I also find with this question that if we don't truly validate ourselves, someone outside of us can validate us and we just won't see it or it'll be a temporary fix. Very often, you won't even be able to hear when somebody's validating you because you'll be in your own head or your own mind, and you'll be making up stories about how maybe you think that person's lying or they're not being truthful or you just won't believe them, or they'll validate you in that moment. It'll feel good.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:12]:
And then the next day, they'll say something else, and that'll feel like an invalidation. And then it'll, you know, send you down a rabbit hole of feeling invalidated again. So the reason we validate ourselves is really because that's how we begin to embody our worthiness, our lovability, and feel that validation we deserve. It's because very often it starts within. And when you validate yourself, you'll believe the validation that comes to you. And when somebody doesn't validate you, it won't change your point of view of yourself. It won't rub your self esteem wrong. You'll know your worth.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:44]:
That's why we do this, if that makes sense. So for this question, I broke down why we may be seeking validation from our parents into 4 fears that this lack of validation may be triggering. So for each listener, childhood wounding is different, but I'm going to touch on these very common fears and wounds that can lead to seeking validation from your parents even as an adult because these are just 4 wounds that so many people can relate to. So the first fear we're gonna talk about is the fear of rejection. And the fear of rejection very often can lead to us seeking external validation because we are trying to prevent ourselves from feeling rejected again. So I find that the fear of rejection is very often a root cause to seeking this external validation. I think for so many people, there are many times throughout our youth when we experience rejection. And I've talked about rejection on the podcast before.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:37]:
And one thing I find really interesting about rejection is that it triggers in our brain the same place gets activated as physical pain, meaning that it feels just as painful to be rejected as it does to get punched or to experience physical pain. And I actually read a study where participants took Tylenol before discussing experiences of rejection, and that actually alleviated the emotional pain. And that to me is so fascinating. And so I think this is important to note because, of course, we develop coping strategies when we're young to not experience rejection if it's that painful. Just like you know that if you throw yourself down a flight of stairs, that's really gonna hurt, so you don't do it. So if you know a certain conversation is going to lead to you feeling rejected, you won't have it. And so many times we develop these ways of being in order not to feel rejection because rejection is very painful. And so if you felt rejected by your parents in your childhood, you may be playing out a pattern where you are seeking that validation to heal that feeling of rejection.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:39]:
But since your parents are unsupportive, as you said, instead of it healing that feeling of rejection, instead it's just triggering that feeling of rejection over and over again. And oftentimes, we play out these patterns because we're looking to heal that feeling of rejection. Right? So why do you seek validation from your parents? Likely because there's a wound there, and you're looking for that wound to be healed. And currently, when we seek something, we're never gonna get we're going at it in an unconscious way. But the more consciousness you bring to this, the more awareness you bring to this, the more you'll be able to heal and no longer seek the validation that, unfortunately, you are not going to receive or is very unlikely for you to receive. So some examples of being rejected by our parents can include that when we were children, we experienced something very difficult, such as a hard experience with a sibling or we experienced something difficult at school, such as bullying, and our parent rejects us. They do not bring us comfort or validate our feelings. They can sometimes invalidate us and reject our experience.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:36]:
For example, in my life, I used to feel rejected when I would come home from school and I would talk about the girls at school who were bullying me, and my mom oftentimes asked me what I did in the situation. Rather than validating the hurt I was feeling. I was often asked, what did you do? What did you do to create this situation? And for me, I internalized this as being rejected not only at school by the girls who I felt were bullying me, but also by my mother by not validating how painful it was to be bullied, excluded, and honestly shunned at certain points of my childhood by girls who I considered friends for a really long time. So I experienced that rejection over and over again, and that was really painful for me. Another example could be where our parents reject what we're good at. So say you're a creative and your parent rejects that part of you. That could be very painful and could lead to feeling rejected. Or say you had something you were really proud of and your parent dissed it.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:28]:
That could be internalized inside as rejection. Another example of rejection is when you try to share your feelings and emotions with your parent and they reject your experience or your feelings or they make it about their experience and their feelings. Many parents, unfortunately, lean on their children to validate their experience while not validating their children's experience. So that can lead to other unhealthy coping strategies for children as well where they take on the emotional burden of their household. The next fear I wanted to mention that can be a reason that we seek external validation is the fear of abandonment. You may fear that if you are yourself or if your parents disapprove of you and your actions that they will abandon you. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, it's not wrong to seek validation. It just becomes extremely painful, honestly, to seek validation from the wrong people.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:16]:
Because as I mentioned, so many of us are seeking that feeling of belonging. And for a lot of people, no matter how painful your childhood was or no matter how emotionally mature your parents may have been, you may always feel like you belong at home. You may always know that at home, I'm at least accepted to some extent. And so that can lead to us fearing being abandoned. So you may know that if you act a certain way at home, you'll be accepted, but you fear that if you were to change or disrupt the norms that you may be exiled, shunned, ignored, or abandoned by your family. We all desire community. We all desire acceptance and belonging. And if your family is a place where you feel community, say, you don't have a big community outside your family, it could really scare you to feel abandoned by your family.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:06]:
But the truth is that as scary as it is to go against the norm of family structures and to rock the boat, so to speak, the truth is that if your family was to abandon you because you were being yourself or because you're being your authentic self or because you were following your heart, it means nothing about you and instead says something about your family's emotional maturity. And this can be a really hard thing for us to accept, but this is true about anybody. If somebody abandons you because you are yourself or because you have hard feelings or because you try to maturely express something and that leads to someone abandoning you, that does not mean anything about you. No matter what happens, in this moment right now, you could not heal from anything else, you could stop listening to healing stuff, you could just go about your day exactly as you are. There are a few things that are always true. You're always worthy, you're always enough, and you're always loved. It is us who forgets that. It is us who believes the lies of the world, the lies of these relationships, and who takes on beliefs that are untrue.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:13]:
Because, again, no matter what, you're always worthy. You're always enough, and you are always loved. And these are truths that we go on the healing journey to remember. It's not to get something we ever lost. It's to remember this. But throughout life, we experience a lot of pain. I sure know that. I've experienced a lot of pain throughout my life, and I forgot those truths for a very long time.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:37]:
Especially as a sexual violence survivor, I labeled myself as an unworthy, horrible person for a very, very long time. But the more I heal, the more I connect back to myself, I realize that the truth is I was always enough. I may have gotten a little lost. I never deserved to be punished for getting lost. I wish the world was a little more forgiving, a little less hostile, a little less divisive. But I mentioned that because the journey of healing is a journey of remembering, and it's a journey of coming home to yourself and remembering your lovability, remembering your worthiness. And so with these fears we're talking about today, if your family does reject you, if your family does abandon you, you are still worthy, you are still enough, and you are still lovable. And you deserve all the good things that are coming your way.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:23]:
Because you deserve to feel free to be yourself, to make mistakes, to grow, and to learn without the fear of abandonment. And so I mentioned that here because as you move forward and you begin to become aware of why you seek this external validation, I want you to remember those truths, and I want you to remember that you will find your people. And maybe the more you stop seeking validation from your parents, maybe your relationship with them will change and grow as well because you will no longer be seeking something they can't give you, so maybe it'll make room for something else. You never know with these type of relationships how they will change when you begin to no longer seek something that they're unable to give you. And so for me, one thing I want to mention here is that for me, the fear of abandonment always manifests as the fear that people won't have my back. So as you're diving into these fears, you may find that you have specific language for these fears. So I don't really tell myself I fear being abandoned. Instead, I tell myself I fear people won't have my back.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:22]:
That's the wording that plays on repeat in my head. What if they don't have my back? And for a long time, I had an immense fear of being abandoned. I still can hear that in my head. What if these people don't have my back? What if nobody has my back? When it comes to my parents, my fear of abandonment really goes back to feeling abandoned and ignored in my deepest times of need. You know, I tried to think of a specific example, but the truth is I had a lot of hard feelings growing up, and I didn't have a support system. I didn't have anybody who validated my experience. I either would get yelled at, which was actually being rejected for those hard feelings, or nobody would come to my aid. I cried myself to sleep so many times as a child.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:02]:
I cried in my room all by myself knowing everybody could hear me and everybody just walked around me like they were walking around on eggshells, which was very hard for me. I was the youngest in my family. I have one older brother, and I had 2 parents. I was the youngest, and I felt like people ignored my pain and walked around it like it didn't exist. I felt abandoned in my deepest, darkest hours. And so I mentioned that because all that was very, very painful. And I ended up changing myself after that to become somebody who wouldn't be abandoned. In my college years, actually, I stopped telling everybody how hard it was.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:40]:
I began bottling all that up, and I began pretending I was okay because I realized people didn't abandon Amanda when she was okay. People only abandoned Amanda when she wasn't okay. So if Amanda pretended she was always okay, people were around. But the truth was, I wasn't okay. I wasn't okay in college. I wasn't okay in my twenties. I'm just getting to be okay in my thirties. And I mentioned this because I developed this coping strategy that maybe some of you have developed as well where I became a people pleaser, and I became somebody who did not share their feelings with others because I labeled them as too much.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:14]:
That's what I learned in my youth, that my feelings were too much. And if I shoved them down and I dealt with them on my own, then I wasn't too much and people wouldn't reject or abandon me. But this was a temporary fix because by doing this, I disconnected from myself. I disconnected from the truth of who I really was, and I didn't feel seen in my relationships. I didn't feel loved in my relationships and resentment grow. So I had to become honest with myself throughout my healing journey and allow myself to be who I am, who I truly am, no matter how I show up. Some days I'm good. Some days I'm having hard days.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:43]:
That's okay. That's life. I just mentioned all that because throughout that journey, I was still seeking that external validation from my parents, which is why I changed myself. The third fear I wanted to touch on that can lead us to seeking validation from our parents is the fear of criticism. Many times when we are criticized as children, that's extremely painful. Criticism can look like direct criticism. It can also look like comparison to siblings or comparison to other children your age or comparison to adults even. And so when we're criticized as children, we learn that there's something wrong with us.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:18]:
We learn that we're not enough as we are. We can feel like we're not loved when we're criticized. So that can lead to us, again, changing our behavior, changing how we show up in the world, changing what opinions we share and how we act, and that can lead us to seeking external validation from people who can't give it to us. Because say your parent always criticizes your external appearance, and you keep going to that parent for validation with your external appearance. But they're likely gonna just continue to mirror back to you that your external appearance isn't enough. Even if you lose weight, even if you gain weight, even if you gain muscle, even if you cut your hair, even if you change your look, they're probably still gonna mirror to you that it's not enough. Or eventually, you're gonna become this person that's not you to make them happy, and then you're not gonna be happy. But if somebody is criticizing your external appearance, it's not about you.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:07]:
It's about them. And that again can be really hard for us to see. But when people are criticizing us, it's truly not about us. Even though they're gonna tell us it's all about us, it's really not. And it's so hard not to take things personally. I can still struggle with this. I can still take things personally. I'm human.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:25]:
But I always remember that it's really not about me. This came up for me recently that I met a woman who's a fellow survivor, so I mistakenly thought we would get along. We did not get along. I don't think she likes me, which is okay, but it took me a little bit to accept that. But what I saw in that moment was that I was seeking validation from this woman. I really wanted her to like me. And the second I stopped seeking validation from her, I felt so much better. We can have this conversation better if I'm not seeking anything from her.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:53]:
I'm actually much more confident in myself when I'm not looking to her for approval. Because when we look to somebody else for approval and for that validation, we're really giving our power away. And when we can understand that when somebody maybe insults us, intentionally or unintentionally, and we choose to be like, that has nothing to do with me, we take our power back, and we let it go, and we move forward with more connection to ourselves and reminding ourselves of our worthiness. So this fear of criticism in parental relationships, as I mentioned, can be insults directly from your parent. Maybe you had an emotionally abusive parent. But if you did, you may change yourself or seek validation in order to try, like we've said, to heal that part of you that still feels that criticism that you received from your parent. But, unfortunately, people who are critical tend to remain critical, and they tend to be critical of everybody. And, again, it's just important to remember that critical people are really actually the most critical of themselves.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:47]:
People don't criticize others when they have empathy and they can understand somebody. They criticize things because very likely inside they have their own wounded inner child that they have not dealt with. The last fear I wanted to mention here is the fear of unlovability. I think all of the fears I've mentioned, the fear of rejection, the fear of abandonment, and the fear of criticism can all tie back to the fear of being unlovable, which also to me is the fear of being unworthy of love. I think at the heart of all wounds, it's this fear of being unlovable. Humans are beings of love. We're here to love one another and to love ourselves and to remember that we are loved and we're worthy and we're enough no matter what is happening, no matter what anybody says. And in every moment, as I've mentioned, we are loved.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:30]:
But for many of us, we did not experience this unconditional love from our parents. We learned that love was conditional, which is a very painful experience because at the heart of life, when we feel loved, we feel safe and we feel good and we feel connected to ourselves. And it's that unlovability that so often creates fear, suffering, separation, and disconnection from ourselves and from one another. So when we're still seeking that parental validation, it very often stems back to this core wound of feeling unworthy and feeling unloved or feeling like the love within your home was conditioned, and you're looking for it to feel unconditional. And the truth is so many of us wanna feel like our parents love us. So many of us know logically that our parents love us but do not feel that love, or we don't feel that love at all times, and that can lead us to changing ourselves in order to gain that love. But the truth is that love isn't to be gained or taken away. True love is unconditional.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:21]:
And that's why on the healing journey, we're practicing self love. It's because we're remembering that that love is unconditional for ourselves. Because the outside world may not mirror back to us unconditional love, but true love is unconditional. True love is knowing that in every moment, you are lovable. No matter what mistake you made, no matter what you are looking for forgiveness on, it did not take away love. It's a moment of suffering. You know, for me as a rape survivor, it's been a really hard lesson for me knowing that in every moment of my life, there was a higher power and also myself. My heart loved me through all those moments.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:59]:
It's incredibly humbling to come back to the truth that we are always loved, and it's humbling to realize how conditional love can feel from other people. It's incredibly painful to feel like when we are ourselves, we are not loved. And so that's why so many of these fears go back to that fear of, oh my god. If I'm myself, will you not love me? What does that mean about me? And the truth is humans are humans, and they're only able to love you as much as they love themselves. So anytime love is conditional from another human, it means that they're blocking themselves from that love as well. So that's why, again, we go back to practicing unconditional love with ourselves. And so why do I bring all these fears up? I bring all these fears up because all the above fears can lead us to disconnecting from ourselves. And so how do we let go of this need for parental validation which leads us to disconnecting from ourselves, and how do we reconnect to ourselves? So my first suggestion is to practice self awareness.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:56]:
That's what we've begun doing on this podcast is by bringing awareness to these fears. So these are some questions you can begin asking yourself to help you to become more aware and to connect back to your truth. So some questions I suggest are, why do I seek validation from my parents? How do I think I will feel when my parents validate me? What's a time that comes to mind where I wanted my parents' validation and I did not get it? How did that feel? How did I handle that situation? Am I able to validate myself? Why or why not? Do I have a fear of rejection, abandonment, criticism, or unlovability? If so, explore this deeper. And what do I believe about myself when I do not receive external validation? So these questions will help you to become more aware of your situation and where this seeking external validation may originate from. I also invite you to become aware of your thoughts when you're around your parents as well as your feelings. Do any specific feelings arise when you are with them? For me, I found for a long time, I felt hyper alert when I was with my parents. I felt like I had to act a certain way to make them happy. So for a long time, I had to pretend I was okay like I mentioned, and that was exhausting.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:11]:
And I felt like I was hypervigilant, and I was really on guard when I was around them. And so for me, it took me becoming aware of this is how I felt, and this is what I was doing in order to begin understanding why I was doing that and healing and moving forward in a new way. I also find when we are practicing self awareness, it can be helpful to read books. A few books I recommend for healing parental wounds and healing this need for external validation from your parents is 1, Running on Empty by Jonas Webb. This is about overcoming your childhood emotional neglect. This is a great book that talks about really the things that may have been missing in our childhood. So you may be listening to this episode like, well, my parents were great. They didn't abuse me, all these things.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:54]:
But this book talks about how maybe there was something missing. And sometimes the thing that was missing can be harder to identify than the thing that happened. If you experienced abuse, it's easy to be like, oh, that was abuse. But if something was missing, you may not have the language for it, and this book could really help you. I found it helpful on my own journey. The second book I recommend is adult children of emotionally immature parents. This is by Lindsay c Gibson, and this book really talks about how emotional immaturity from our parents can really impact us. The 3rd book I recommend is How to Do the Work by doctor Nicola Pera.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:27]:
She talks about her own experience throughout this book. The book is really broken down in how to do the inner work, but throughout the book, she talks about her own relationship with her parents and how she began to become aware of that and how she saw how it was impacting her. So I thought that to honestly be the most helpful part of that book for me. The 4th book I recommend is will I ever be good enough? Healing the daughters of narcissistic mothers. This is for people who either wonder if their mother was a narcissist or have a narcissistic parent. I found this book really helpful along my own journey. And this book is by Carole McBride. And the 5th book I recommend is also for people who may be healing from narcissistic parents, and it's called Growing Up the Scapegoat by Narcissistic Parents by Jay Reid.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:05]:
And this book talks a lot about being the scapegoat, which is being the person within a narcissistic family who a lot of the blame is put on for problems within the family. And so I'll link all those also at nuvioadvice.com/112. The second thing I recommend for healing is to practice inner child work. I talk a lot about inner child work throughout the podcast, but connecting with your inner child will be really, really helpful for you in healing this wound of seeking external validation from your parents and healing these wounds we talked about today. So inner child work can be done in many different ways. I'll link a meditation in the show notes as well as a journaling exercise on how to dialogue with your inner child. But I find journaling with your inner child to be really helpful, meditating. You may find that working with a therapist could be really helpful.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:51]:
I also find when healing these parental wounds, working with a therapist can be really, really helpful or a mental health professional or somebody who can hold space for you to dive deeper into this because the truth is you deserve to be validated in your experience. And sometimes that's what a therapist is there for, just to validate you and your feelings and to tell you it's okay you feel that way. That's what I personally use my therapist for mostly at this point is just the things I'm working through. I come in and I talk about the ahas I had and the feelings I'm having. And my therapist says, yes. All your feelings are valid, and I always feel better afterwards. Because as we've talked about, it's okay to seek validation from others. It's just right now you're seeking it from a place where you're not going to receive it.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:31]:
And that can even be a really hard realization is that you may never receive the validation you are seeking from your parents. I know it took me a really long time to finally accept that I will never receive the validation or approval from my parents no matter how hard I work. It takes time to accept that and it takes a lot of hard feelings and connecting to that inner child. Another thing I love to do with the inner child work is to write letters to your inner child and to write letters as your inner child so if you write back and forth between you and your inner child. The third thing you can practice doing is allowing yourself to feel all your feelings. As you practice awareness and inner child work, you'll find that feelings arise or you'll become aware of your feelings Even if you feel disconnected from those feelings, you may be like, that makes me angry even if you're not connected to that anger. And so it's important to begin processing these feelings. Many people become aware, but try to skip the feeling the feelings part, but that's really where the goodness is.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:24]:
I like to view it, but it's the hardest part, which is why we avoid it. Oftentimes, we feel like our feelings will be the end of us. But the truth is that when we feel those feelings, 1, the feelings won't last forever, and 2, that's when the relief really comes. So sometimes we bring the awareness, and we just keep playing the awareness on repeat because we're still in the mind. It's when we allow ourselves to feel our feelings. It's when that relief finally comes and we feel a release, and we're able to move forward in a new way. So feeling your feelings is similar to inner child work where you can meditate. You can journal.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:00]:
I think doing inner child work often brings up feelings. I also find creativity is a great way to process our feelings. So finding a way to use creativity to process your feelings, such as writing poetry, writing stories. You could color. I find sometimes when I color, it helps me to just feel sad if I have, like, the feeling of sadness or one of those softer feelings. But finding different ways to feel your feelings. Also, a big thing with feeling your feelings is making the time to feel your feelings. I think so many people run around all day with endless to do list in order to not feel how they're really feeling and not to look at their feelings.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:34]:
So for you, feeling your feelings may be giving yourself a full day, giving yourself a Saturday where you're just going to leave it unplanned and you're gonna unplug for the day, or maybe it's giving yourself 15 minutes in the morning or 15 minutes in the evening to feel your feelings. And maybe the first couple times you sit down, you don't have any feelings for those 15 minutes, but it's a practice. Right? So the more you create space for your feelings, the more they will begin to come up. Me, personally, I feel my feelings through meditation. Every morning, I meditate. I do an energy cleansing meditation, and then I sit for about an hour. I know not everybody has the luxury of an hour, but that is how I feel my feelings at this point is that some days it's feeling really hard feelings, and sometimes it's reassuring myself that things will be okay. But I give myself the time of meditation to be with myself every single day.
Amanda Durocher [00:31:20]:
And that was a practice I built over time. Now I notice the days I don't sit down to meditate, it's very rare. But even Evan will be like, did you meditate today? And I'll be like, no. And he'll be like, okay. Go meditate because you are moody. So for me, meditations is an essential part of my healing and my day. Also, finding ways to move your body can move energy and move feelings. Yoga is a fantastic way to move your feelings, move your energy.
Amanda Durocher [00:31:42]:
Dancing and even going to the gym or going for a run can help you as well with finding different ways and what works best for you. That's gonna be a big part of feeling your feelings is that you're going to find the way that works best for you. And, again, with feeling your feelings, I mentioned therapy or working with a professional a already, but another way to feel your feelings is to begin working with a professional who can help you to heal back the layers, bring awareness, and to feel your feelings, and you may need help diving deeper. The 4th thing I wanted to recommend here for connecting back to yourself is practicing boundaries. So as you're looking at and healing this, you may need to set some boundaries with your family. I find that many times when we're healing relationship wounds, we need space from those relationships in order to see our own situation clearer and to give ourselves the safety and the distance to have all those feelings. So I like to view it that when we're healing these emotional wounds, I like to view it like a physical wound. So if you broke your ankle, you wouldn't keep trying to walk on that ankle.
Amanda Durocher [00:32:34]:
You would give it time and rest. It's the same when we're healing emotional wounds. So if you're healing a frontal wound, you may need some space in order to heal that. If you're unable to take space, you can also practice boundaries by knowing what conversations you're willing to have with your family. So I would invite you to not open up those vulnerable spaces as you're healing this. And then when you feel like you're in a more stable place, you can begin to create a new relationship with your parents. But as you're healing from their unsupportive behavior, I wouldn't be looking to them for support because you're likely just going to retrigger yourself, if that makes sense. And the last thing I want to mention here is that it's important to practice self love.
Amanda Durocher [00:33:13]:
I think practicing self love is the most important always, and it's easier said than done. Self love to me is unconditional love of self, and it's learning to validate yourself. It's learning to feel worthy no matter what happens and no matter what anyone else says or does. And this is hard work, especially when we've been seeking external validation for our entire lives. Self love is a practice. It takes time, but you are worthy of your own love, and that love of self will penetrate deep within your bones. That's how I'm seeing it right now is that the more you love yourself, the more you will always walk around with this almost shield of protection because that's what love is. It's a protection from that which doesn't serve you.
Amanda Durocher [00:33:54]:
Because if you love yourself, the words that would hurt you will just bounce off you because they won't penetrate you because you'll have your own back so deeply. And, again, this is a practice. Doing this work is hard work. And self love is so important here because the love a parent has for a child should be unconditional, but, unfortunately, this is not always the case. And this is why so many people honestly begin their healing journey is to heal from the mother wound, the father wound, those parental wounds. And the healing journey to me is really a journey of remembering that we are loved. It's a journey of love of self and learning to love ourselves unconditionally, especially when we didn't grow up in environments where unconditional love existed. So everything I just talked about takes time, and it's really just beginning to feel your feelings, have that awareness, and to love yourself along the way will go much farther than you may think.
Amanda Durocher [00:34:41]:
I find that people think self love and self compassion are these fruity things, but, truly, they are so important and they are so difficult. We build up all these walls to love. We build up all these walls to self kindness. And the more we begin to peel back those walls and we begin to give ourselves that loving kindness, the easier life becomes in all different ways and the more we feel that worthiness that we've always deserved to feel. Because that's how I just wanna end this episode is that you deserve unconditional love. You deserve to feel worthy. You deserve to feel enough. And though many of these steps I talked about can feel really hard or difficult and challenging, we go on this journey because we deserve to remember our worth.
Amanda Durocher [00:35:16]:
We deserve to remember how lovable we are, and I hope something in this answer was helpful. I'm sending you so much love. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of newbie advice. As always, I am so grateful to have this space here where we can have these type of conversations. If you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to leave a 5 star rating and a comment wherever you listen to podcasts. Ratings and comments and subscribers help to bring more people to the podcast and helps us to have more of these conversations. So I'm so grateful for everybody who has already left a rating and a review. It continues to help the podcast to grow.
Amanda Durocher [00:35:52]:
So thank you again for joining me for another episode of new view advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Sending you all my love. See you next time.
