2: How Your Partner Can Trigger (and Help You Heal) Childhood Wounds
In this episode, Amanda and Kelby explore how our romantic partners can trigger and also help us to heal childhood wounds. They share personal insights and experiences on how early life experiences and relationships with our parents can shape romantic relationships. Both Amanda and Kelby found Harville Hendrix's book Getting the Love You Want to be a key resource on their journey of understanding and healing childhood wounds with their partners.
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Throughout the episode, they reference concepts from the book. The conversation emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and offers actionable practices to help partners navigate triggers, do the inner work, and foster compassionate relationships. Listen to this episode for guidance on healing childhood wounds in long-term partnerships.
Book Recommendations
Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt
Interested in Learning More about Kelby’s Coaching Services?
Check out Kelby’s Website to learn more
Or email her at - coachedbykelby@gmail.com
Looking to learn more about Amanda?
Check out Reflections to learn more about Amanda’s Healing Journey
Connect with Amanda & Kelby to keep the love going all week!
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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Kelby Knutt [00:00:09]:
Love under the scope.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:13]:
Welcome to Love under the scope. I'm Amanda Durocher.
Kelby Knutt [00:00:16]:
And I'm Kelby Knutt. And this is a podcast we're doing a deep dive into long term relationships and all of the ups and downs, the beautiful and the frustrating dynamics that can happen when we're with somebody long term.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:32]:
And in today's episode, we're going to discuss how our partners can trigger and also help us heal our childhood wounds.
Kelby Knutt [00:00:40]:
Yeah. We're gonna be, taking some inspiration from the book, getting the love you want by Harville Hendrix. This is a book that totally blew my mind when I read it. It was a huge paradigm shift for me, and I know that you read it as well, Amanda.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:56]:
Yeah. I read it and so did Evan. And we found it really helpful to read as a couple.
Kelby Knutt [00:01:00]:
Yeah. It's very revealing as far as, you know, where a lot of our frustrating dynamics come from. And it kind of serves as a guide for moving through these patterns that we keep going through over and over again on how we can navigate them in order to come to resolution and find really deep healing.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:19]:
Yep. Was reading this book the first time you heard of the concept of how your childhood wounds could come up in your relationships?
Kelby Knutt [00:01:26]:
You know, that's a good question. I had heard well, a lot of us have heard of the Oedipus complex. Right? We we love our father. We wanna kill our mother or what as a woman, right, or as a man, it's the opposite. And then also I'd heard we marry our parents. Right? If you're a man who is straight, you you marry your mother. I've heard that. I didn't know how deep it went, and I didn't know that you could actually use that concept as a way of healing childhood wounds.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:54]:
Yeah. A %. I first understood this when I went to therapy around '23, and I went to talk about grief over the death of a friend and ended up spending a lot of time talking actually about my relationship. And my therapist at the time was constantly showing me how my relationship with Evan was similar to my relationship with my dad in some ways, like how I was playing out some daddy issues. I guess that's probably where I first heard about it was the phrase daddy issues, and I didn't think I had daddy issues. And it was so eye opening that it was like, oh, man, do I have daddy issues? I also have mommy issues. I have parental issues, but I think so many of us I don't know if anybody gets out of childhood and isn't impacted by their parents in any way.
Kelby Knutt [00:02:36]:
Yeah. Like, nobody's perfect. Right? And so to have the perfect parent, I don't really know what that looks like. I don't know if it exists. And the fact of the matter is we can't get all of our needs met by our parents all the time as children. And also looking at society impacts us us as children too. So not just our parents. So to have a perfect childhood, I don't know that that's possible.
Kelby Knutt [00:03:00]:
And therefore, we end up running into a lot of our wounds in our romantic relationships.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:06]:
I've worked with a lot of people or I've had people writing questions to NewView Advice where they talk about having a perfect childhood, and so they don't understand this concept. And that's why I just wanna stress that I think that no one has a perfect childhood, and there's varying degrees of trauma and abuse and emotional neglect. And it's not a bad thing to have wounds from childhood. It's not a bad thing. And it's not it doesn't make you wrong or weird or bad or different. It's universal. I think it's part of being human.
Kelby Knutt [00:03:42]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And even the parent that is meeting a lot of the needs. Right? Like, they're still gonna have their little ticks and their quirky personalities. Right? And we draw a lot from that as children because our parents are everything to us when we're so young.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:59]:
Yeah. And we learn how to love from our parents. You know, we see how they love people. We see how they love us, and that's one way we learn what love is. We also learn what love is, as you mentioned, from society or from friendships. But a lot of times, we're learning what love is from people who don't necessarily know what love is either or have their own wounds. And so it creates this, as in the book, they call it the Imago, the combination of the good and bad qualities from our parents and from childhood around what love is.
Kelby Knutt [00:04:31]:
Yeah, absolutely. We come out of the womb and who do we see first? We see our mom and our dad and they are everything to us. And so, yeah, just like you said, we take the way that they give us love, the way that we receive love from them, the way that we love them back. Right? The way that they love each other. We take that almost like a blueprint and it lives deep within our body. And, yeah, Harville Hendrix, he calls it the Imago, this blueprint of the combination of our mother and our father and all of the good ways and maybe the bad or the frustrating ways that they expressed love. We create this Imago or this persona. And we actually look for someone as we're dating that fits that persona.
Kelby Knutt [00:05:18]:
And so anybody who doesn't fit that persona, they could be the most attractive, you know, for me, I'm a straight woman. They could be the most attractive man, the sexiest. He's got best job in the world. He's funny. He's all of the things. Right? But he doesn't fit my imago, my blueprint of love. Well, there's gonna be no chemistry then according to Hendricks.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:40]:
Yeah. I feel like we've all had those experiences where there's someone who's textbook version attractive or so many other people find that one person attractive, and you're like, I'm not attracted to that person. And I think that goes back to this. They don't fit these wounds you're looking to heal. Exactly.
Kelby Knutt [00:05:55]:
And you just said it. We're, we're looking to heal deep down unconsciously. We are looking to heal. And, and again, unconsciously, when we look at how we're receiving love from our parents and then from our partner later in life, it's actually the same thing. Our unconscious mind just says deep love, deep love from parent, deep love from partner. It's the same thing to the unconscious mind. That's why a lot of the same patterns from our childhood can show up with our partner waiting to be healed. Yeah.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:28]:
And I think for anybody out there who struggles to look at parental wounds, I know that at the beginning, for some people, it can be really hard to even say there's anything, quote, unquote, wrong with your parents. I wanna say that some of these wounds are even things that a child interprets as wrong, but was nothing wrong with your parent. Like, for example, for me, my dad worked a lot. As a child, I didn't understand why my dad had to go to work at all. I'm not saying all that was right with how much my dad worked, but there is a part of it that I didn't understand how money was made. I didn't understand what responsibilities he held. I didn't understand a lot around it. So my child self just viewed, like, work as bad.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:10]:
You know? So when you're looking at your own parents and looking at maybe some places where you had childhood wounds, it's not about making it personal and blaming your parents and being like, you're the worst parent ever, because I know some people really struggle with that. I know that popping that perfect childhood bubble is hard for some people because I don't believe anybody had a perfect childhood. But it's not about making it personal with how your parents may have shown up in ways that hurt you or wounded you in some way. It's about seeing it because if you see it, then you're able to heal it. And that's why the awareness is important. And as long as we remain blinded to that or we're not even willing to look at it, we're unable to heal that.
Kelby Knutt [00:07:47]:
Yes. And you named it the awareness. It's making sense of what's going on. Right? Like, we have this pattern. Maybe we don't know where it came from quite yet. Right? So again, like you said, it's not that we're going to our parents and going, oh, it's because they were bad parents and they did this wrong and that wrong. No. No.
Kelby Knutt [00:08:05]:
It's just that again, like you said, as a child, we don't quite understand the adult world. Right? We do this thing too where we blame everything on ourself as a child. You know? Oh, if daddy's at work all the time, it must be because I'm unlovable or right? We make these connections that maybe they're not logical, but we're children. So it's really just about making sense of what is going on so that we can repair and heal with clarity. Right? Because sometimes these patterns can feel so cloudy and, like, we have no idea what's going on. All we know is we have this visceral, deep reaction and it could be to the smallest little thing.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:45]:
And as we mentioned, we want to heal these childhood wounds, and so that's why we choose a partner who can help us to heal these. So they're going to trigger us, and sometimes they're small ways and sometimes they're big ways. But those triggers aren't a bad thing. It's because we're looking for healing within. We're looking for resolution. And to know that that pattern we played out where we maybe didn't feel safe or we didn't feel loved or we didn't feel enough, that that's not true, and we can heal that and create a new story with our partner in any way.
Kelby Knutt [00:09:15]:
And I think it's important to name we talk about, you know, having our buttons pushed or being triggered. And this isn't when Amanda and I speak in any of our podcasts, it's about these, like, healthy relationships where Mhmm. We do love someone deeply, and there's not this sense of abuse. You know, abuse versus buttons are being pushed, two totally different things. Right? So we wanna just make that very clear that in all of our episodes, we're talking about healthy relationships where there is this deep sense of love present.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:47]:
Definitely wanna clarify that because sometimes there are relationships where you'll need to leave, and that'll be something that is personal decision for each person, but this is really about when you're in a relationship where you are committed and you know you love the person and the person loves you too, but you keep getting triggered. Right? So maybe you've been with this person for six months or two years and the honeymoon phase is ending in your relationship, and you're just beginning to wonder, why does this person trigger me so much? And you were so in love with them, but now they're starting to irritate you and annoy you.
Kelby Knutt [00:10:19]:
I like that you speak to the honeymoon phase. So we're kind of backing up here. You know, you've picked this person. They fit your imago. You choose to enter a relationship with them. Those first, you know, year, two years, they feel like heaven. Everything is wonderful and amazing. And, actually, it's widely accepted that you don't get sick a lot of the time because it just feels so perfect.
Kelby Knutt [00:10:44]:
And then once we get past the honeymoon phase, it's like that record scratch moment where we're like, oh, we've taken them off this pedestal. Right? And now they've become just another human being who we love, but they are flawed just as anyone else is. Right? And so it's that moment of like, oh my gosh. They aren't this perfect godly being. Right? They are just a human like I am.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:12]:
Yeah. And that's when the work comes in.
Kelby Knutt [00:11:14]:
That's when you can start bringing in that awareness. So you might start to feel yourself being triggered by the qualities that you actually loved about them when you first met them. So for example, if you loved that they're this social butterfly, you can bring them anywhere and they'll be chit chatting and they're almost like an entertainer type. Okay. Now you get past the honeymoon phase and suddenly you realize that, oh, they're so social that they forget about me. Or, you know, they're so social that I'm completely lost. Right? So the one thing you loved becomes the thing that is actually deeply frustrating about them.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:54]:
Yeah. I think it's fascinating how that happens.
Kelby Knutt [00:11:57]:
Yeah. It's like that shift.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:59]:
And in the book, he calls it, like, the power struggle. I think that's what he's referring to.
Kelby Knutt [00:12:02]:
Yes. And in the power struggle, he mentions how we play these games where we try to get them to love us. And I think as women, we can do this, like, criticizing game where we expect them to know exactly what we need. And then when they don't inevitably give us that, then we go into the criticizing. Well, why don't you do this? And why do you always? Right? Like, both genders do this, but with women, you know, I'm a woman. That's my experience, so I can speak to that.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:30]:
I also have done that. And he mentions it in the book, but it's a funny concept that we think that criticizing somebody will give us what we want. Like Yes. We think that the meaner we are will get what we want at the end.
Kelby Knutt [00:12:42]:
Right. And I think it's that inner child coming up again. Right? Like, for me, I can go into this brat mode where it's my inner child is frustrated, and she doesn't really know how to communicate because she is a child.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:55]:
Mhmm.
Kelby Knutt [00:12:55]:
And in those moments of trigger, she is there at the forefront a lot of the time. And because I've done inner work, I can balance her with the more logical, like adult parts of me. But yeah, when we get triggered, there's the inner child coming up to the surface, and she or he may not have the most logical way of going about an argument or a conversation.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:18]:
Yeah. And I think sometimes these immature behaviors did work in childhood. You know? So maybe if you threw a temper tantrum when you were younger, your parents would give you what you wanted, or maybe you'd get a little bit more attention. Maybe you didn't, but I think sometimes these immature behaviors can come up because they did work. But you were a child. You know? Now you're an adult, and you wanna find a healthier way that builds trust and safety within your relationship. Because that's the other thing is maybe you criticize your partner and then he does change in the moment, but it's likely that person feels wounded. They feel hurt.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:50]:
And so they're doing what you want out of spite or out of resentment rather than out of love, care, and wanting to do. For example, we can say, like, doing the dishes. So say you said, hey. Can you do the dishes? And they didn't do the dishes, and then you yell at them like, oh my gosh. I can't believe you didn't do the dishes. And then your partner does the dishes. They're not necessarily doing them in that moment out of love. They're doing it because you criticize them, and they're likely going into their own child responsive.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:15]:
Oh my god. I just got yelled at. I have to do what I was told. And so we want to work on healing these wounds in relationships so that we can love each other and speak to each other kindly and maturely, not in this immature way that is almost a default pattern.
Kelby Knutt [00:14:29]:
Yeah. Nobody responds well for the most part to being straight up criticized. You're so lazy. I don't know anybody that would hear that and go, oh, honey. You know? Thank you so much for bringing that awareness to me. And that goes for any kind of confrontation where we're blaming. Right? Because that's just the way that we know. Again, the inner child comes up.
Kelby Knutt [00:14:53]:
It's just the way that we know how to deal. Right? Before we bring in the awareness and that inner work too. And I think that's an important note to make. We can do this work with our partners, but can we start with ourselves too? Can we look at our inner child and take responsibility for our own shit? That's a big deal too.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:15]:
I don't know about you, but for me, I had to do some inner work before I brought Evan even into this process because I had to begin to get to know myself, my inner world, my triggers, my childhood wounding and patterns, and believe myself and trust myself and what was going on before I even began communicating it with Evan. I we used to fight, and then I would go off on my own, and I do a lot of inner work. And then I wouldn't communicate with him about it. I'd just take full responsibility, which wasn't right either. But I look back, and I see that I needed to sort some things out before I could even articulate them. Because if you're new to inner work or you don't have much self awareness, it's like building a new language. And sometimes you do need some time to do it with yourself. But I also think doing it in partnership is where the real healing happens and where that real trust is built.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:07]:
And I see the positives and the negatives to how much time I spent doing that by myself. I definitely could have brought Evan into the process sooner than I did.
Kelby Knutt [00:16:14]:
Absolutely. It's definitely very healing to know that we are loved by someone else. Like the inner child really does benefit from the love from another outside person. But can we go in and work with the inner child and see what's going on with, again, going back to the parental stuff? Like, what did we not feel like we received maybe from our parents? And can we kind of take care of that within ourselves before we bring it into the relationship dynamic fully. Right? Because we can actually meet some of the needs that we didn't have met or feel that we had met by our parents inside of ourselves. And that's a whole other conversation. I work through that with my clients. Actually, going within and and meeting those needs is really powerful.
Kelby Knutt [00:17:04]:
But, yeah, eventually, we can bring it to the relationship, and then even more healing can be done there.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:09]:
Yeah. The more we talk about it, I realize I really needed to build that relationship with my inner child first. You know? And I think it's important, I think, to build a relationship with your inner child and to learn to communicate with that part of yourself that, at least in my life, I was ignoring for a very long time. So I first had to get to know her before I could really bring her into the relationship because she had to feel like I was protecting her a bit before I invited somebody else in to see her, if that makes sense.
Kelby Knutt [00:17:36]:
Absolutely. It can be very vulnerable for that to happen. So, yeah, totally makes sense. So going back to that awareness that we were just talking about, why read a book like getting the love you want? You know, why do we look at our parental conditions, like our conditions of how we receive love? Why do we do that? So we can have an awareness, and then that kind of gives us this sense of where do we go from here, and and what is going on the relationship that is my shift, and what is your shift, And how can we work with those two patterns? Usually, you'll find because you picked this person based on your childhood and they picked you because of their childhood, usually, it's like a puzzle piece. You two fit perfectly together so that you can work through these issues. And it's really beautiful the way that works. You're designed perfectly for each other. Right? And so having that awareness can lift away that sense of confusion and hurt.
Kelby Knutt [00:18:36]:
It's very deeply hurtful when we don't know what's going on.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:40]:
I think that's when we can create a lot of self judgment. And I know in my past, the more I judge myself within relationship, the more I wanna leave the relationship. But we want to be in committed relationships. We don't wanna run from relationships. And I think that a lot of people can struggle with commitment because they don't understand what's going on behind the scenes or within themselves or within their part.
Kelby Knutt [00:19:03]:
And being able to have those conversations, let's say you've done a little bit of excavating. You both have looked at, you know, how did I receive love for my mom? How did I receive love for my dad? Or how did I not receive love from them? Right. And so we both do some of that excavating and then we come together and we can meet in this, vulnerability, and have a conversation, you know, a trigger happens and we can own our own shit in the midst of whatever is going on because we've looked at the inner child and what hurts her, what she didn't receive. And we can trace that into oh, and this is how it's affecting this pattern that's going on. And I keep going through it over and over with my partner. Right? And we can actually intercept that pattern. And that's really, really liberating because it can feel like you're stuck.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:57]:
Mhmm.
Kelby Knutt [00:19:58]:
And so that awareness kind of lifts away some of that stuckness.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:02]:
Yeah. And I think when we do it in partnership, we also can begin to recognize within one another how some of these reactions aren't personal. So we've talked a lot about our own experience, but sometimes if Evan has a certain reaction, I'll know that his inner child's triggered as well, and I'll be able to be like, oh, okay. This isn't necessarily personal right now. Something's triggered here. And it's the same for him with me, but I found that not only is this work helpful for me to connect with my own inner child, but being able to see his is very helpful for me as well because then I'm able to meet him in a new place, a softer place rather than that triggered place.
Kelby Knutt [00:20:40]:
And I think it's really cool too. You're talking about, like, our partners doing the same work. And, you know, when I've worked through a couple of the practices from this book, getting the love you want, he he has practices in the book that you can use in order to do this kind of healing. And it's was really beautiful. I saw why Kai picked me based on how he spoke about his mom. And I saw the qualities that I had in common with her. And that actually was really touching because I I really love his mom. And so I just was like, wow.
Kelby Knutt [00:21:13]:
He really loves her, and I can see that he really loves me for the same reasons. And then I also frustrate him for some of the same reasons. So being able to, yeah, not just identify that in yourself, but also have that awareness in your partner. It's really cool.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:31]:
I think so too. I think it helps us to see each other in a new way and in a way that you don't see a lot of relationships. Right? That's what makes romantic relationships different is that you see each other in a more I'm seeing, like, full circle way. You really see how all the puzzle
Kelby Knutt [00:21:46]:
pieces fit. Yeah. Absolutely. And you can kind of do this beautiful dance between vulnerability and being maybe even a protector of your partner and showing up as a mother to them, showing up as a daughter, showing up as a lover. We can show up in all of these different ways when we've done this kind of extraction. It really is just looking at our own stuff. Right? And that's really empowering when you can own your own stuff. You know, I call it owning our own shit.
Kelby Knutt [00:22:16]:
Right? Because it's shit. A lot of the times we don't wanna look at it, but, you know, what grows under shit? Truffles. Beautiful, delicious truffles. So can you look at your shit and own it and feel the liberation and the empowerment that comes with that?
Amanda Durocher [00:22:31]:
Yeah. Because that's what it is. It's liberating. It is so freeing because so often we have these stories attached to those childhood wounds or to our shit, for lack of a better word. And when we're able to see it clearly and to excavate it, it frees us from it, and we get to fill ourselves with something new, a
Kelby Knutt [00:22:47]:
new story. So liberating. Because it again, I wanna emphasize that we can kind of feel like a victim to these patterns or a victim to our partner, which is a horrible feeling to feel a victim to anything, much less the person that you love deeply. It's very hurtful. So this work, it allows us to, again, feel that power that we have, reclaim that power. And it's not, for the faint of heart. I will say that it's not for the faint of heart. If you're just getting into this work, it's totally fulfilling.
Kelby Knutt [00:23:22]:
It's totally worth it. Assuming we're gonna be with this person for the rest of our lives, there's nothing better that you can do with your time in my opinion, but, it can be challenging.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:31]:
Definitely. And it's a messy process. It's not like you're gonna read this book and you're going to have healthy conversations immediately or be able to communicate right away. All these things we're talking about and all these self help books give us the tools to begin practicing. And when we practice something, it's rocky. You know, I play the piano and it's similar where there's days I'm great at the piano and there's days I'm not so good because I just started. But it's a practice. It's showing up every day and continuing to build those skills, and it gets easier over time.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:02]:
And same in our relationships. These conversations get easier. The inner work gets easier. The self awareness gets easier, but it's not easy. And it's not easy when you just sit down and start doing it.
Kelby Knutt [00:24:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna just name it right now. I'm a relationship coach. I help people work through these kinds of patterns and work with their inner child and I struggle with this stuff regularly. I still feel triggered by a relationship. Absolutely. I don't know that anybody doesn't ever feel triggered.
Kelby Knutt [00:24:32]:
The difference is after reading this material and doing this work, when a trigger comes up, I can kind of work with it at a new way so that I don't go off the deep end and start blaming my partner left and right. But does that happen still? Absolutely. I'm only human. Right? And I don't know that we ever stop working through or working with the inner child. I can't say. I'm 30 years old, and I haven't stopped yet. So
Amanda Durocher [00:25:01]:
And I liked how earlier you talked about how we can feel victim to these things because I think what you just expressed is how you no longer feel a victim when these patterns come up because you have the steps and the tools to move through it. So it's no longer so unconscious. You understand what's happening. But when something is unconscious, we can feel like a victim over and over again. And this process, though it can be difficult, helps us to time and time again free ourselves of those past limitations.
Kelby Knutt [00:25:29]:
Yes. Again, I just wanna really bring it home that it's totally normal to feel childlike. In fact, that's actually the beautiful thing about romantic relationships is it's a place for us to explore the childlike feelings that maybe we push down. Right? Because we weren't supposed to feel that. Like, maybe your parents or society told you you're not supposed to feel sad you're not supposed to feel angry right? So we can enter this really shameful place when we're feeling triggered oh I shouldn't feel this way oh why am I, you know, so sad why am I so angry right? And there's no shame there. There's no shame to feeling childlike. You know, assuming your partner can receive you in some way in that childlike place, there's no shame.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:17]:
I agree with that. I used to feel a lot of shame around when my inner child came up, which doesn't create safety. It doesn't create safety for that inner child. So I would go into all these shame based behaviors. But over time, I've realized Evan and I both can have childlike behaviors come up, and that's the beautiful thing that happens in romantic partnerships as we get to be all of us. And that includes that childlike nature, which can get triggered and have these small childlike responses, but also can be really beautiful. It can be playful. It can be innocent.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:46]:
It can bring, like, a joy and a laughter into the relationships too. You know? Our inner child isn't just wounded. Our inner child also holds these beautiful gifts that we often have shoved down, and in that relationship, we get to bring to the surface. And for me, it's really that playful part of me.
Kelby Knutt [00:27:00]:
Okay. I love how you mentioned safety too because I think I wanna name that safety. A lot of the time, we think, like, safety is, you know, physical safety. Like, I'm not gonna be physically harmed. I'm not gonna be attacked by a stranger in a in a dark alley. That's not the safety that we're talking about necessarily. We're talking more about, like, a nervous system sense of safety. A lot of the time we suffer with anxiety.
Kelby Knutt [00:27:25]:
We feel like we're actually under attack when we're not. So that's the kind of safety we're talking about. And that's what this book can help you create in your relationship and other methodologies too. Right? Not just this book, but it's that sense of safety. I can be received in my childlike state and I can be received in the iterations of my inner child in in a safe way. Right? Assuming that we're not hurting anybody. There is something really healing about that guarantee of safety.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:57]:
And I think that building safety within romantic relationships is so important.
Kelby Knutt [00:28:03]:
Especially if you felt unsafe, again, not physically, but nervous system, unsafe, right, in your childhood, for whatever reasons, maybe your parent was away working a lot. Maybe your mother was chronically ill or mentally not all there, whatever it was that can create a sense of unsafety because as a child, we rely on our parents to help us feel like we are taken care of. We're safe. Right? We can't take care of ourselves. And therefore, if a need isn't met, right. And again, doesn't mean our parent isn't a good parent, but if they could not meet a need, I am unsafe because I am not being taken care of and therefore I could die. Right. So there is that fear of death and that stays with us in our current romantic relationships.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:53]:
Yeah. I think that's why so many people live in survival mode, like, all the time is there's still just some unresolved patterns from past and wounds from the past where you really felt like your survival was at risk. Even if it wasn't, it just feels that way in the moment. You know? Yeah.
Kelby Knutt [00:29:08]:
For a child, that's not a logical right? Like, children don't know logically what's going on. They just think, you know, I am not being loved right now. Therefore, I'm unlovable. Therefore, I could die. Right? And I say this not because not to be dramatic, but because it's true. When you're five years old, you cannot take care of yourself. Right? And we're tribal people. Right? We rely on each other.
Kelby Knutt [00:29:32]:
So there is that that built in fear of death.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:35]:
And children see the world very self centered, and that's not wrong. But for example, when my father worked a lot, I thought that was my fault. Like, my dad works a lot because I and created stories based off that. None of that was true, but my child self had to make sense of the world in the way she could, so she created stories that weren't real. And I bring that up because sometimes when we're looking at childhood wounds, the story we've created will feel illogical for our adult mind. And I've worked with people in the past who can struggle to get past this because their adult mind will come in and be like, well, that's not true. But if it's a story coming up for you, your child self feels like it's true. And, yes, you can see now that it's not true, but it's okay to allow that story up, allow those feelings up because that's how you can heal it and move past it.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:26]:
But I just wanted to bring that up because I know sometimes the adult mind can come in and try and tell the inner child that's not true, but the inner child will hold on to that story until it's honestly looked at, acknowledged, and accepted for what it was to be able to heal and move forward.
Kelby Knutt [00:30:44]:
No, absolutely. You can intellectualize it all you want. But the fact of the matter is it's stored in the body, in the nervous system, and you cannot intellectualize the body. The body needs to feel. The body needs to process and move through emotions in order to heal. Right? We can't just say, I shouldn't feel that. Boom. It's gone.
Kelby Knutt [00:31:05]:
No. The body is still feeling it. And that's why too, I I wanna just make a note that when we get into those patterns with our partner, I know for me, when I've gotten into some really deep triggering moments with my partner, it feels like the world is ending. I mean, it really feels like I'm going to die. It's feels that serious. And that's why we do this work so we can meet those feelings with some compassion and understanding, and we don't have to feel like we're crazy or, like, we're all alone. That makes a
Amanda Durocher [00:31:39]:
lot of sense. I think that's so true. For me, one of my wounds has been an abandonment wound. And as you mentioned, we're tribal people. I think a lot of people have an abandonment wound. That's why I'm mentioning this one. But feeling abandoned feels life or death even though it's not life or death, but many of us had a moment in childhood or moments where we felt abandoned, and maybe it was just you crying and you expected somebody to come and they didn't. But that experience lives in us because if we created a story in that moment, I've been abandoned, no one's coming, then that is something that will come up again until we're able to look at it.
Amanda Durocher [00:32:14]:
And oftentimes, it's those romantic relationships that will trigger those deep wounds around love.
Kelby Knutt [00:32:20]:
Absolutely. And in fact, I'm glad you said that because of what I love from this book too that really struck me was how he says the deepest heartbreaks in our life, the deepest heartbreaks, that breakup that just you can't get past. It's usually because that heartbreak played right into the dynamic that you had in childhood. So let's say somebody left you without a warning, just got up and left. Right. And if that was deeply heartbreaking for you, how does that relate back to what you experienced as a child? And it's a vulnerable process, but it's worth taking a look at because then we can understand like, oh, that's why I can't move past this breakup. Even though I'm with somebody new now, I still can't get past this breakup because that guy played right into my childhood dynamic.
Amanda Durocher [00:33:10]:
That's so true. I'm always saying my father, the first man who broke my heart. Time and time again, I'm like, woof. But it's so common and it's, again, it's not, like, personal. And I know that my dad did the best he could, but it's true how just these wounds live within us and our child cells oftentimes take on a lot of the blame. At least I did. I don't know if that's true for everybody, but we just take on a lot. And it all deserves to be looked at.
Amanda Durocher [00:33:37]:
That's another part of this is this work can be hard and challenging and brings up a lot of feelings, but I always view it as my inner child deserves this time and attention. My inner child deserves all her feelings. My inner child deserves to be seen and heard, and she wasn't. So I do it for that reason, not because it's easy, but I do it because I really do deserve for all these wounds to be acknowledged.
Kelby Knutt [00:34:00]:
Yes. And it's really beautiful when we can actually reparent ourselves. So if we have a wounded inner child, we also have a part within us that is deeply compassionate and what is sometimes called an inner mother or an inner father. Right. So when I talk to my clients, I'll say, let's look at your inner mother. They'll ask, what is that? Okay. The inner mother, do you, do you have a pet? Yeah. Okay.
Kelby Knutt [00:34:23]:
I have a dog. Well, that part of you, that when you're taking care of your dog and you just think they're the sweetest, most adorable pure thing in the world, that's your inner mother that comes forward, or if you have a niece or a nephew. Right. Where does the unconditionally compassionate part of you live? Because we can use that part to come and reparent the inner child in a way that she or he did not receive from her own parents or did not feel she received.
Amanda Durocher [00:34:53]:
Right? And the inner parent is really how we learn to love ourselves, I think. The reparenting, we love all aspects of ourselves, but having that parent come forward, it's just that act of love. And I was thinking about it this week. I think I talked to it on therapy that self love wasn't even a word I understood in childhood. I didn't even know I was supposed to love myself. That was something in my twenties. I must have read in a book where it's like, oh, I'm supposed to love myself. Like, I didn't even have any language for that.
Amanda Durocher [00:35:21]:
And so, of course, I was disconnected from myself. Of course, I didn't know how to love myself. I didn't know that was something that we did as humans. So that's another way I'm compassionate with myself when sometimes I feel a lack of self love is just this is a new skill. You know? This isn't something I had language for my whole life. It's something new. It's not about judging myself for my mistakes. It's about learning to love myself knowing that this is, like I said, new for me.
Kelby Knutt [00:35:45]:
It's a beautiful thing, and I do think, yeah, that reparenting process does bring, in a lot of self love. If you don't know what that feels like, here's where you can start by reparenting yourself. And then you can turn around and use that in your relationship. How can you help, you know, your partner to reparent themselves? I mean, there are times when I show up as a mother to my partner, and it's really fulfilling to do that for him. And, again, it's not a role that I'm in all day, twenty four seven, but if I'm seeing that that's something he's needing, I can do that. Right? And we are loving by nature, in my opinion. So if we can provide that to the person that is, you know, the most important person in our world, it's really satisfying. And it it helps us like, there's something about being needed in that way that's really special.
Kelby Knutt [00:36:34]:
Yeah.
Amanda Durocher [00:36:35]:
Yeah. It helps us to connect with one another, and we're able to play that role, like you said, that we don't play with other people. So it's vulnerable and it's honest, and it's creates that intimacy, I think, between you two.
Kelby Knutt [00:36:47]:
Yeah. So, just wanna make it clear that in this book, Harville Hendrix, he actually maps out these practices that you can use to to do this kind of healing. You know, Amanda and I are kind of speaking about it in the abstract and out of our experience, but he gives you tools to actually do this work and, like, scripts. So I just wanna make it clear that this isn't, like, a mysterious process. It does happen in mysterious ways sometimes. Sometimes you'll do a practice from this book and then you'll watch it unfold, over months. Right? It's not that you do a practice and suddenly you're healed the next day, but it takes time to unfold like a flower.
Amanda Durocher [00:37:27]:
I'm like seeing the relationship blossom.
Kelby Knutt [00:37:29]:
Yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Exactly.
Amanda Durocher [00:37:32]:
One of the practices in the book is the Imago dialogue where you learn to communicate effectively with your partner. And Evan and I have practiced this for a while, and part of the practice is saying something to your partner and having them repeat back to you what they heard. And I found this really eye opening in my relationship and really helpful because it's so interesting how when each partner speaks, we often hear something different than what they said. And so, for example, you say, why didn't you do the dishes? And your partner may repeat back to you that they heard, why didn't you do the dishes? You're never doing the dishes. Why can't you ever listen to me? And you're like, I didn't say that. I didn't say all that. All I said was, why didn't you do the dishes? But so often, we add to what somebody says through our own filter. And so it's a really great practice, at least I found in my relationship, to mirror each other what we're really hearing because so often that mirror has our own stories attached to it.
Kelby Knutt [00:38:31]:
Yeah. I think our inner child puts additional meaning, like, puts a filter on what we're hearing. We can take a simple sentence and turn it into an entire story about why we're a horrible person. We don't deserve to be loved. And there's that shame spiral that comes up again. And these practices really help to cut through that. Right? Like, it's it's not that we're a horrible person. It's not that we're unlovable, although it can feel that way.
Kelby Knutt [00:38:59]:
And so that mirroring process can help us to really get on the same page with
Amanda Durocher [00:39:03]:
Yeah. MC is, like, see the truth of what's happening rather than seeing it through, like, rose colored glasses. So these glasses we would wear would have the stories that we're telling, like, maybe a story of I'm not enough. And these communication practices help us to take those glasses off and see the truth of the situation that our partner is not our parent and that what's happening now is not something that happened fifteen years ago. It's a different situation right here in the present.
Kelby Knutt [00:39:29]:
I love that you bring that up because, yes, we can be so stuck in being 10 years old. And if we're in that trauma, right, we'll call it, it feels like we're still there right now. And that's actually in the body keeps the score. He talks about how when we're traumatized, it can feel like it's never ending. That moment where or if it's complex trauma that happened over a a longer period of time, it just feels like we're trapped in that time, and it's happening right now with our partner. So using these tools can help us bring us back to presence and reality. And you said rose colored glasses. When you said that, I was like, for me, it's like shit colored glasses.
Kelby Knutt [00:40:12]:
Because it's like Yeah. Everything is wrong. I am horrible and and unlovable, and my partner is gonna leave me. Right? The shit colored glasses. Yeah. When, like, that's not happening at all. Like, it's a story that I've told myself.
Amanda Durocher [00:40:26]:
Yeah. It's funny. Now that you say that, I'm like, I feel like the honeymoon phase is the rose colored glasses where you're like, oh my gosh. This person's gonna fix me. This person's everything. I am lovable. Yay. And then all of a sudden, you wake up one day and you're like, wait.
Amanda Durocher [00:40:36]:
What are these new glasses? These are shit colored glasses. And, like, I'm so triggered.
Kelby Knutt [00:40:41]:
Yes. Exactly. Yeah. That's why we need work like this so we can remove the shit colored glasses and and just see it with no glasses. Just truth. Right?
Amanda Durocher [00:40:51]:
Mhmm.
Kelby Knutt [00:40:51]:
It's not that our partner is a god and it's not that our partner is attacking us. It's just, they're a human being and we're trying to understand each other. You know, we're two complex individuals with our own childhood experiences. And again, we're perfectly matched to work through those things together. But if we don't have the awareness, oh, it can feel like you're living in a hell when you get triggered.
Amanda Durocher [00:41:15]:
And with that, I found throughout my relationship that there were things that I was projecting onto Evan, and I was seeing him just like my dad or like my mom. And when I was able to take those glasses off, I was able to see Evan as Evan and see that I was projecting something onto him that he wasn't even doing, but I had this whole old story.
Kelby Knutt [00:41:38]:
I like how you say that we look at our partner and we see our parents and we literally are like, that is my mom. You know, he says one thing and it's like, whoop, I'm right there back with my mom or my dad again. And there's just this whole paradigm that we can shift into. And so doing this work, it's just really helpful to bring us back to reality. You're here right now, 2025. This is your partner. He is not your mom. He is not your dad.
Kelby Knutt [00:42:06]:
And that's actually really liberating. It sounds obvious, but in the nerve in the body, it actually isn't that obvious. Because, again, going back to that unconscious mind that is confusing, the love of a partner and the love of a parent.
Amanda Durocher [00:42:19]:
A %. And I always like to remind myself, he's not my dad and I'm not my mom.
Kelby Knutt [00:42:24]:
So
Amanda Durocher [00:42:24]:
I like to remind myself that I'm not my parent either.
Kelby Knutt [00:42:27]:
That's liberating too because we can do this thing. I've seen this a lot, including with myself. Oh, I'll never be like my mom. I'll never be like my dad. It's like, but your mom and dad had really great qualities too. Why would you wanna be nothing like your parent? I mean, sure, there are things that we don't wanna repeat, but there there's gotta be something there with your mom or your dad that you admired. Right? And for the most part, I don't know. That's my experience anyway.
Kelby Knutt [00:42:54]:
So how liberating that we don't have to be attached to either being exactly like our parent or being the antithesis of our parent, how liberating that we can be whatever the hell we wanna be in our relationship.
Amanda Durocher [00:43:06]:
Yeah. We gotta be ourselves. And so often that was shaped by our upbringing, which include our parents.
Kelby Knutt [00:43:11]:
Yeah. Exactly.
Amanda Durocher [00:43:12]:
There's nothing wrong with that.
Kelby Knutt [00:43:14]:
No. Not at all. We get to live our own life separate from what we experienced in our childhood. And, and I think that's really cool. And we can even bring the inner child into the relationship in ways that are really fun and playful too. And we've done some of this work. Like the inner child is here to help us feel innocent and Mhmm. Playful.
Kelby Knutt [00:43:34]:
And you feel that sense of wonder with the most simple of things. Right? So can we also help ourselves by bringing that sense of childlike wonder back into our lives.
Amanda Durocher [00:43:47]:
I love that you say that because I find that the moments I feel the most loved are small moments, and I feel like our child selves really love those small moments. It's the adult self that thinks it needs to be this big grand gesture where it's the child who really understands that it's small moments in life that are the most valuable.
Kelby Knutt [00:44:05]:
Totally agree. Something else that I've noticed by doing this work is that we unpack our experiences with our parents. And as we do that, like, ideally we're healing with our partner. Right. And then in my experience, I've been able to look at my parents with a little bit more compassion because I love my partner and he has certain qualities that are the same as my parents. I can then turn around and I feel like I can love them for those same qualities. And so it's helped me feel compassion all around by doing this, which that's really healing in itself, not just with our partner, but our familial relationships. I agree with that.
Amanda Durocher [00:44:48]:
I think that it really helps us to be empathetic and compassionate, like you said, with everybody. You know, for me and my relationship, watching Evan work a lot has helped me build empathy with my dad working a lot, seeing the world from a new way. Also, just being an adult, we begin to see our parents a bit differently because as we mentioned, when we're children, we put our parents on that godlike pedestal. And when we become adults, you know, it's like I'm able to see it in a new way, but that's through awareness. And that's the first step so often with healing.
Kelby Knutt [00:45:17]:
Yes. Definitely. And, again, this all happens over time. I always stress with healing that time is always an element. So sometimes that's frustrating to hear because we're in this society of like right now make it happen. But healing cannot be forced. You can't force a flower to open up. You wait patiently for the flower to bloom.
Kelby Knutt [00:45:39]:
Right? So this is a process that happens over time, and there's no rush too. Right? Like, we have our whole life to work on these things. And so just wanna make a note of that because it can kind of feel like, oh, why haven't I healed all these wounds yet? You know? But it's a delicate process. And I just love the flower symbol because, again, you don't force a flower open. You wait patiently for it to bloom.
Amanda Durocher [00:46:07]:
I wanna say too that if anybody's like, oh, like, why am I in this pattern in my relationship again? Or why is my partner triggering me again? It's really that compassion and that patience that you mentioned that there's a part of you that just is still looking for attention. It doesn't have to be the end of the world even though it can feel like it, and we don't have to be hard on ourselves because it's just there's a part of us still looking for attention, and that's okay.
Kelby Knutt [00:46:28]:
We deserve it. I like the idea that even though we're doing the work and we're seeking this healing, the healing is happening. You know, healing, if you cut yourself, you don't heal overnight. It takes time, and you can even still experience pain. I've had deep cuts. I have one in my finger that I cut myself with a knife, and it still hurts. This is a year ago. And, again, that symbolism.
Kelby Knutt [00:46:52]:
Right? Because wounds inside are the same kind of feeling where, yeah, we do the healing, and there's still a little bit of tenderness there. I can say as a person who is very much in self help and inner work that I get triggered all the time. And the difference is I have a conversation with myself, and I bring in some compassion as much as I can.
Amanda Durocher [00:47:14]:
That compassion is huge. I always talk about it. I feel like people are like, Amanda, why are we still talking about compassion? But to me, like, compassion's literally the everything.
Kelby Knutt [00:47:22]:
Yeah. Compassion is when we get triggered instead of going, ugh, this again. Why are you feeling this way? God, you're such a horrible partner or whatever the story is. The compassion is, okay. There's the trigger. Okay. Let's see what's going on here. I think this is my inner child.
Kelby Knutt [00:47:39]:
And what does she need right now? Okay. She needs to hear that she is lovable or whatever the case is. Right? Whatever the conversation is that you're having with yourself, it can be really helpful to have that almost like a third person that comes in and is like, okay. Let's put the brakes on the shame spiral.
Amanda Durocher [00:47:57]:
And compassion just reminds us that we're all human, and we were never meant to be perfect. And we were never meant to have all this stuff figured out.
Kelby Knutt [00:48:04]:
And compassion is a practice too because we can still have that frustration with our partners and our parents. Absolutely. You know, we don't just do this work and then all of a sudden it's rainbows and butterflies, but compassion, it's a practice, and it's a daily walk through this self love and self compassion.
Amanda Durocher [00:48:24]:
A hundred. Cool. I also
Kelby Knutt [00:48:26]:
just wanna name as we close out here that, you know, Harville Hendrix in this book, he says verbatim, one part of creating a conscious partnership is accepting the difficulty of creating
Amanda Durocher [00:48:39]:
a
Kelby Knutt [00:48:39]:
lasting love relationship. So as we do this work, there's an element of that acceptance that there's gonna be challenge. And that's the beauty of it that we get to keep going back to, like, unfolding what's going on and addressing any needs. And when we can meet those needs, the healing that is there is really wonderful. So, yeah, this is a lifelong practice.
Amanda Durocher [00:49:06]:
Because I also think that as we heal from childhood wounds, parent wounds are usually the first ones to come up. But as we go deeper, we come up against, like, societal wounds in different ways that society has told us to be and things like that. So it's just a continuing unfolding of the onion, peeling back the
Kelby Knutt [00:49:23]:
layers. But it does get easier. Yes. It does. That's not to be, you know, doom and gloom. It it's a lifelong process, but it does get easier the more compassion that you're able to bring in.
Amanda Durocher [00:49:33]:
I was thinking about that too that what quickens the process is really patience and kindness with yourself causes it to move a little easier and quicker. It seems counterintuitive, but it's really the more patient you are and the more pressure you take off the table, the more things can flow.
Kelby Knutt [00:49:49]:
Yeah. Agreed.
Amanda Durocher [00:49:50]:
Well, thank you so much for joining us for this episode. If you have any questions or if you have any comments about this topic, about getting the love you want, about parent wounds, we'd love to hear from you. We're a new podcast, so we're still getting a vibe for what everybody's looking for. So if you are interested in reaching out, we have an Instagram at love under the scope. You could message us or you can email us at loveunderthescope@gmail.com. So thank you again for joining us as we look at Love Under the Scope.
Kelby Knutt [00:50:20]:
We'll see you next time. Love Under the Scope is a new VUE advice production. Theme music by Tyler Knutte. Podcast is produced by Amanda Durocher. Love Under the Scope.
