Sharon Burtzlaff, MA, LPC Therapist at Renewed You Counseling Services, LLC

Today is National Depression Screening Day. Taking an online screening is one of the quickest ways to determine whether you are experiencing symptoms of depression. #MentalIllnessAwarenessWeek #CounselorsHelp

The key to understanding your adult self, is to go back to your child self. Birth to age 6 is the most impactful time in our lives. Our brain waves are in a the...ta state, similar to hypnosis. We are soaking everything in. Language, how to exist in the world, how to bond with our parent figures. Everything that’s spoken to us we internalize without question including messages about who we are. And who other people are. During this period, we are also in an ego-centric period of development. This means we believe everything happens to us, because of us. Everything is personal when we are children. We lack the ego maturity to understand that there are many reasons for people’s behavior. And many of these reasons have nothing to do with us. We might still lack this awareness in adulthood. Many of us heard direct messages like you’re too sensitive, you need to go to school + become a doctor, or you need to marry young + have a large family. We also also got indirect messages maybe a parent detached from us when we didn’t accomplish. Or denied a something that happened to us because that reality was too painful for them to acknowledge. The message is: your reality does not matter. The result is conditioning. Our conditioning is behaviors + core beliefs we adapted to survive. Survival is dependent on being loved by caregivers. So we will betrayal, deny, or repress parts of ourselves. This inner child trauma is part of our adult life until we feel + process it. This is why so many of us have deep, deep shame. We believe that if a parent couldn’t see, love, + validate us something is wrong with us. The truth is that parent(s) had their own unresolved traumas, their own wounding that they projected onto us. Here are some questions to journal or meditate on. Inner child work is painful but leads to so much healing. You can also check out my inner child meditation (on my YouTube channel + SoundCloud). Have tissues ready. I love you #selfhealers