5 Emotional Development Delays: What You Need to Know

Summary

In this insightful talk, Patrick Teahan delves into the emotional development delays faced by childhood trauma survivors. He explains how adult survivors often struggle with developmental milestones that seemed easy for their peers, due to neglect and abusive parenting in their formative years. He outlines five key areas where these developmental delays manifest: codependency, security, perception issues, functioning, and negative coping strategies. Teahan emphasizes that these delays are not moral failures but are healable with inner child work and therapy.

Highlights

• Patrick Teahan discusses how childhood trauma survivors face unique emotional development challenges as adults. 🧸
• Exploring codependency as a significant delay experienced by survivors who struggle with healthy connection and self-sufficiency. 💞
• Handling of security issues where survivors continuously feel unsafe or anxious due to past neglect. 🔐
• Examining perception problems which make survivors misinterpret intentions, often assuming negative outcomes. 🔍
• Understanding functioning delays stemming from neglected upbringing, affecting basic life skills. 🧩
• Identifying negative coping strategies developed to self-soothe during traumatic childhood experiences. 🍂

Key Takeaways

• Childhood trauma can lead to emotional development delays that persist into adulthood, affecting relationships and self-perception. 🚧
• Five key emotional developmental delays include codependency, security, perception issues, functioning, and coping strategies. 🎭
• These delays are not fixed; with the right support, such as therapy and inner child work, healing is possible. 🌱
• Comparing oneself to non-traumatized peers can intensify feelings of inadequacy, but understanding the root cause can relieve self-blame. 🧩
• Healing involves not only addressing current behaviors but also reparenting the inner child who was neglected. 🤗

Overview

Patrick Teahan, an experienced clinician and former childcare worker, provides an in-depth look at how childhood trauma can disrupt normal emotional development well into adulthood. Through his observations in private practice, he notes how adult survivors often feel like they're missing a 'handbook' of life that their non-traumatized peers seem to have.

He introduces five specific developmental delays that are common among trauma survivors: codependency, where individuals struggle with romantic intimacy; security, a persistent feeling of unsafety; perception issues, which cause individuals to misinterpret their environment; functioning delays, impacting everyday skills; and negative coping strategies initially developed for survival.

Teahan emphasizes that these are not failures of character but understandable outcomes of their upbringing. Healing is achievable through targeted support such as therapy and inner child work, where one learns to reparent themselves, fostering growth and emotional resilience. His compassionate approach invites survivors to view themselves with kindness and encourages them to seek supportive networks for healing.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction: Adult Clients and Childhood Trauma Patterns The chapter "Introduction: Adult Clients and Childhood Trauma Patterns" discusses the observations of the author, who is a parent, clinician, and former childcare worker. They noticed recurring patterns among adult clients who experienced childhood trauma. These individuals often become stuck in developmental stages that children naturally progress through. While children with healthy parental support can navigate these stages effectively, those who suffered trauma struggle as adults because they were not adequately assisted during these crucial developmental phases.
• 00:30 - 01:00: The Impact of Neglect and Abusive Parenting This chapter discusses the long-term impact of neglect and abusive parenting on individuals. It highlights how those raised in such environments often have to overcome basic issues later in life that others may not struggle with. The chapter emphasizes the struggles faced by childhood trauma survivors in achieving milestones compared to their peers and the consequences of not growing up in a safe and healthy environment.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Long-lasting Effects of Childhood Trauma on Adults The chapter discusses the long-term impacts of childhood trauma on adult survivors, highlighting common feelings of lagging behind peers in areas such as career, relationships, and basic self-care. It underscores a shared sentiment among many survivors of not having the necessary tools or knowledge ('the handbook') to navigate through life successfully, starting from a young age and persisting into adulthood. The text emphasizes the isolation and pressures to hide or overcompensate that arise from these perceived inadequacies and developmental delays.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Shame and Developmental Delays The chapter titled 'Shame and Developmental Delays' explores the impact of shame on individuals with developmental delays. It draws a parallel to situations in adulthood, such as starting a new job without proper training or support, where individuals are expected to perform flawlessly without guidance. This analogy is used to illustrate how a lack of support and understanding from management—or childhood caregivers—can lead to feelings of inadequacy and shame. The chapter highlights the importance of recognizing these dynamics and encourages avoiding self-blame or shame when reflecting on developmental challenges and differences with peers.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Understanding Neglect and Abuse in Childhood Development This chapter delves into the significant impact of neglect and abuse on childhood development. It discusses the normative challenges and milestones typically expected in a child's growth, emphasizing the role of security and healthy relationships in this process. Ideally, as children progress from infancy through college, they mature, becoming more secure, self-actualized, and well-adjusted. However, the chapter highlights that these developmental goals can be severely hampered if early childhood is marked by neglect and abuse.
• 02:30 - 03:00: Examples of Developmental Stages Affected by Trauma The chapter discusses the impact of trauma, neglect, stress, and abuse on developmental stages. It emphasizes that getting stuck in certain developmental stages due to childhood trauma is common and not a personal or moral failing. The chapter provides five examples of developmental stagnation due to trauma, highlighting that many of these examples overlap and that such stagnation is a typical part of the development process.
• 03:00 - 07:00: Codependency and Intimacy Delays The chapter titled 'Codependency and Intimacy Delays' discusses the natural tendency of children to be codependent. This is a survival strategy, as young children, especially those under the age of 10, have a desire to maintain a connection with caregivers, even if those caregivers are also abusers. Children at this age tend to focus on seeing the good in their parents and abusers in order to avoid emotional distress and maintain the important emotional connections necessary for their survival. A 4-year-old, for example, would be terrified at the thought of losing this connection, highlighting how deeply ingrained and intense these feelings are from a very young age. The delays in romantic intimacy in adulthood may stem from these early childhood experiences of codependency.
• 07:00 - 11:00: Security Delays and Transitional Objects This chapter discusses the psychological mechanisms and strategies developed by individuals, often starting in childhood, who are raised by an angry or aloof parent. These individuals attempt to appease or please their parents to reestablish a connection, even if these efforts consistently fail. The chapter highlights how these early strategies can lead to emotional developmental delays and can perpetuate patterns of codependency into adulthood, affecting relational dynamics.
• 11:00 - 17:00: Perception Problems and Delays The chapter 'Perception Problems and Delays' explores the manifestation of perception problems and developmental delays in adulthood. It emphasizes avoiding the shaming associated with perceiving these issues as mere childish behavior. The discussion includes examples of codependency in adults, such as engaging in magical thinking about a person or relationship improving without any concrete efforts like therapy. It also highlights the danger of believing in a delusional special bond with a partner that does not align with reality.
• 17:00 - 23:00: Functioning Delays and Parental Neglect This chapter explores the impact of parental neglect and the functioning delays it causes in survivors, particularly in their interpersonal relationships. It discusses how some survivors experienced parents who indulged in fantasies with abusive co-parents, highlighting an absence of true intimacy. The chapter also touches on issues such as rushing into romantic relationships and the complications that arise from such hurry, largely stemming from a lack of patience developed in childhood. Another aspect covered is the insecurity experienced when mixing partners with friends, fearing potential loss, which reflects underlying attachment issues.
• 23:00 - 28:00: Negative Coping Strategies and Addiction The chapter discusses the manifestation of negative coping strategies and addiction, particularly highlighting how childhood trauma and insecurity issues can project into adult relationships. It explores how individuals might stay in abusive relationships due to fear of being alone or being wrong, highlighting a form of codependency. Such patterns illustrate the unhealthy level of need individuals may have from their partners, rooted in past insecurities and traumas. The chapter emphasizes recognizing these patterns to address the core issues of dependency and abuse.
• 28:00 - 31:00: Conclusion: Healing and Overcoming Trauma Delays This chapter delves into the concept of handling and overcoming delays in healing from trauma. It suggests that individuals may struggle with maintaining appropriate partnerships due to underlying security issues, resulting in them viewing normal relationship issues as significant threats. The chapter emphasizes the all-or-nothing mindset often seen in children, such as extreme reactions like deciding never to speak to someone again. This mindset is seen as a challenge, especially in scenarios that might involve abusive relationships. Overall, the chapter highlights the importance of recognizing these patterns to foster better security in oneself and manage trauma-related delays effectively.

5 Emotional Development Delays: What You Need to Know Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 so as a parent and a clinician and actually a former childcare worker in my private practice I kept noticing similarities in my adult clients who went through childhood trauma really get stuck in very like normal developmental stages that children are going through and sort of like in terms of like milestones and well if those kids are actually sort of safe with healthy parents and they're assisted to go through those changes and what that looks like is for adult childhood trauma survivors tend to really struggle
• 00:30 - 01:00 compared to certain milestones in our adult lives with that of our peers that they don't seem to struggle with things as much as maybe we do and I think that everyone has issues in some ways but some more so than others especially if they were raised in neglect and abusive parenting there are just basic things that usually got skipped and missed in a childhood trauma survivor's life that they may need to overcome later on and when we do not grow up in safety with healthy parents who are focused on our
• 01:00 - 01:30 development in a good enough way we get stuck and stop developing until something shifts in our healing work later on many survivors including myself had felt really behind compare with our peers in terms of things like career relationships functioning like basic functioning self-care and I personally felt that in my own life all the way from first grade through college I just did not feel like I got the handbook in life and noticing these difference with our peers can really make us like want to hide or overly compensate in our
• 01:30 - 02:00 adult lives or feel really lonely in seeing the differences with our peers and it's really important for you to not go to that Shain place when we're discussing this stuff and looking at that stuff or in general so I like in developmental delays if you've ever started a new job where management just expects you to perform flawlessly without giving you any training or a process of learning the ropes like you're just thrown to the woles like that could have been our childhood and that's really about Management's failure not yours same with being neglected
• 02:00 - 02:30 growing up which is a form of abuse and the normative challenges and Milestones that children go through in terms of security um into functioning to being able to relate in healthy ways that's what comes with helping a child develop and ideally as we grow from infancy all the way through college we hopefully mature we become more secure more self-actualized and more well adjusted however things do not really go according to that plan if our Earth early years are marked with things like
• 02:30 - 03:00 neglect and stress and abuse and Trauma so it's entirely expected and understandable for childhood trauma survivors to get stuck in some developmental stages and challenges and none of that is a personal choice or moral failing I just want to be clear about that so here are actually five examples of what it looks like to get developmentally stuck and again there's no moral failing within that out of these five you'll see that many of them overlap like it's not just kind of one thing as we kind of develop
• 03:00 - 03:30 from childhood through adulthood so here it goes the first one is what I'm calling a codependency and romantic intimacy delays young children are naturally codependent to believe it or not they want the upset to go away and they only want to see good in parents uh and see kind of good in the abusers which is a good adopted survival strategy and here I'm really talking about young children like before the age of sort of 10 so a 4-year-old will be terrified that connection is severed
• 03:30 - 04:00 with an angry or aloof parent so they often come up with really good attempts to appease the parent or please a parent to reestablish or make that connection even if it consistently fails they're still going to try even that if it means just to be more tolerable to the abusive parent that's how powerful this stuff is we can have a significant emotional developmental delay and getting stuck in that codependency into our adulthood where we have the same kind of relational strategy here are some
• 04:00 - 04:30 examples of what these delays will look like in our adulthood and try to make the connection of these being childlike try not to think of them as childish because again we're going to self shame ourselves try to see the delay in these related to our development so here are some examples of this codependency thing in in adults magical thinking about a person or relationship changing without taking any action like say going to coup's therapy believing that there was a special bond or a fantasy with their partner which doesn't match the reality
• 04:30 - 05:00 of what it is like it's that's not real intimacy and some survivors have a parent who actually lived in fantasies with an abusive co-parent if you can think of that another example is struggling with going too fast in dating life which can really create problems the delay is that children don't like a process of getting to know someone slowly and they want things to be more immediate another is not liking to mix partners with friends for fear of losing the partner like an insecurity thing
• 05:00 - 05:30 like we didn't have full access to say the caregiver that we were attached to so you can see the security issue and projection of childhood trauma stuff happening in the present from an insecure Place another example is not caring if our partners are actually abusive for fear of being wrong or being in a relationship we're not a good match for I mean maybe we stay out of fear of being alone it's another example of the codependency delay here another example is level of need from our partners that
• 05:30 - 06:00 goes beyond appropriate partnership stuff and again this is strongly related to the next issue of security where the delay here is not really being secure to ourselves another is taking normative bumps in the relationship as extreme evidence that one that you're not safe the delay going on here is that this All or Nothing kind of thinking that children can often go to like I'm never talking to you again kind of stuff that one is tricky because sometimes we we actually are in an abusive relationship
• 06:00 - 06:30 and we'll need some outside help kind of figuring that out we really don't like it if someone is trying to tell us to just chill especially if we're in the middle of a big trigger to get unstuck in this developmental delay survivors can actively educate themselves on codependency and work a program of recovery around it such as with alanon or Koda and doing some inner child-based work is highly beneficial it's also very powerful to do inner child work where we are bonding with our inner child who is seeking rescue outside of ourselves so
• 06:30 - 07:00 it's really about strengthening the bond between our inner adult and our inner child to start to create that security that's missing the missing piece in this codependency thing in terms of a healthy development in childhood is that we want our children to be both capable of intimacy but also be self-sufficient in terms of security and self- intimacy like I mentioned they can self sooe and they can also see their goodness which is super helpful in relationships the stuck place here involves a
• 07:00 - 07:30 developmental delay in terms of security our inner adult also needs some help from someone to bounce things off of knowing we are stuck in a developmental All or Nothing place um working on security say with a therapist and having a process really helps that so that's the first one the second developmental delay that I want to talk about is security delays like I mentioned young children need a consistent safe Attunement with a healthy parent to build inner resources for security a
• 07:30 - 08:00 good example of that inner security is the gradual withdrawal of security blankets or sucking one's thumb or gradually like in later school years like in sort of you know uh grammar school years to not be so disregulated as a child without like a beloved stuffed animal and these security transitional objects are all part of a healthy childhood but they're often signs of security problems when children age and they cannot let go of those things they get stuck into a transitioning from childhood to
• 08:00 - 08:30 adolescence and on into adulthood to share a little bit on that I had this pillowcase blankie thing forever and I sucked my finger way longer than what is actually recommended I was sort of doing it into the third and fourth grade when it's recommended that the cut off of that stuff is usually like around five or six I feel actually grateful for having sort of the blankie and all that kind of going on given what was going on around me in my childhood but it would also bring a lot of negative attention from people that felt very shaming like why is he still doing that when he's in
• 08:30 - 09:00 the third and fourth grade it wasn't it was a red flag to other people but not within the family so when children are neglected and grow up in abuse the need for external security is greater which is beneficial since they're not getting any help from the adults however as we grow into adulthood we can get stuck and living from an insecure place and this is what that looks like we can be really resistance to change like fear of the unknown as a security issue we can get into some big procrastination problems
• 09:00 - 09:30 which is fear of maybe criticism or failure can be more complex than that at times um we can have a lot of social anxiety or go into social situations and feel anxious without an anchor like a safe person with us at the like the work party or the work event um we can actually have some some controlling behaviors like getting to places on time can be a security thing and also a trigger and a projection um we can get into something called mood dependent behaviors like I will quit smoking when I feel better is like I need to be
• 09:30 - 10:00 secure in this one area before I move into this next thing um security can also look like Intimacy in social problems like not being comfortable being seen or not being comfortable being known another example is living in fear mostly as opposed to living and having some spontaneity in life all of those are examples of security issues in my mind and these security issues I'm not trying to say they're solely related to blankies or stuffed animals or sucking our thumb they're really related to children not having a safe home base
• 10:00 - 10:30 and a healthy parent from which they can also kind of you know they can always return to they can always like talk with and feel more secure that's where the security stuff really comes from and it's difficult to see peers move more freely in the world than we can and they can maybe weather breakups better or job changes better and they don't go so much into their head about say planning or expectations from an insecure Place security delays are greatly improve with inner child work and it feels like to
• 10:30 - 11:00 the inner child there's a new safe home base coming from our inner adult um within that reparenting work and that's a process of really rebuilding a relationship with our inner child and I think whatever the healing modality is going on there I think about inner child work especially with helping the inner child let go of something as you can picture say um a monkey clinging to a branch or an animal clinging to a branch and there's a deep there's a big fall going on they're on for deal life in
• 11:00 - 11:30 inner child work we need to help that inner child we can't just demand that they let go of the thing that helps them feel secure like you know getting to places on time or whenever we can't like just take that away from them we have to like let them grab on to another Branch to feel more secure which is either us or an idea or something like that so what I'm trying to say with that analogy is we can't just say poof stop doing that thing and and just let go that never really works we have to replace it something that the child can feel some
• 11:30 - 12:00 trust in and that is maybe the inner adult moving on to the next one which is a big one which is called perception problems delays problems of perception I.E how we interpret people in the world how ourselves this is really a top tier childhood trauma symptom of problems of perception growing up in abuse often the abuse itself is a parent damaging a child's perception because the adults have all the power over reality which is scary perception delays are not unlike
• 12:00 - 12:30 seeing a preschool age child intensely assume that someone did something on purpose um many adult childhood trauma survivors can get stuck still assuming things are done on purpose sometimes they are but we can really see our peers not get so bogged down in taking things personally um regardless if they are actually offended and someone is a jerk or an idiot or as someone is harmless I hope that makes sense survivors do to those perception delays really get into
• 12:30 - 13:00 fights in their head and the offense real or imagined stays with them and I'm saying this from experience here where we perceive the person really having an issue with us or really making it about us when it's probably about the other person you've probably heard that somewhere down the line but what's tricky about this is often in the toxic family system growing up things were highly personal or if we're still engaged in that family system they can be highly personal So It's Tricky for
• 13:00 - 13:30 survivors to embrace thinking differently about the world and not take things so personally but it is possible over time essentially when we have a toxic parent a child is whatever the parent says they are in addition to a toxic parent they can have problems of perception on their own such as like everyone's out to get me or I'm better than everyone else or no one gets how hard it is for me those are all perception issues that we can kind of absorb or react to or or kind of reject um survivors can again they can rebel
• 13:30 - 14:00 against those or take them on both become extreme distortions of perception though such as when a Survivor never wants to seem like they're Superior to others for having a parent who lived in that um in an immature and grandiose way but that Survivor might never really take themselves seriously and they will stay small they'll be humble because if they perceive they might kind of perceive that all self-positivity is grandiose unconsciously I got this course called the family Rules that I
• 14:00 - 14:30 offer here are some additional examples of abuse of perception coming from an abusive family system these are like unspoken or sometimes spoken family Rules such as it's your fault things go wrong it's like a problem of perception expect unreliability from people again it was probably correct in childhood but we might sort of like overly think people are going to let us down I know I did perception problem read my mind coming from the family system is a huge perception problem don't trust again probably very true in childhood
• 14:30 - 15:00 but in our adulthoods we can have a perception problems around who is trustworthy and who is not in addition while not in the family Rules from a toxic parent there's usually like you're a terrible kid and I can't believe you just did that that's usually kind of a Vibe around definitely abuse around perception like you're bad but there's also kind of a developmental issue there is a toxic parent expects adult behavior from a child which is again another perception problem and a developmental
• 15:00 - 15:30 problem the developmental delay here is that adult survivors struggle is not seeing their own Humanity as well as the humanity and others and the perception delay usually makes us go to a big place where we're convinced we've done something wrong without evidence we're convinced things can be done on purpose when maybe they're not we can be convinced that speaking up is wrong or dangerous or even lame we can be convinced that everyone is doing so much better than us when maybe that's not true we can be convinced that we're the
• 15:30 - 16:00 only one with problems we can be convinced that we're the problem can you see the perception delays as something that those are childlike and you probably identify with some of those yourself and you may also really know people in your adult life who might behave from that place as well or think from that place as well childlike not childish childlike because they got stuck in childhood again and that's not a moral feeling so survivors can view themselves as a horrible person when they're not
• 16:00 - 16:30 and they can also view others as Angelic when that's not maybe true either so helping out an inner child with a perception delay which will also involve some critical thinking from the inner adult is helped when the inner adult has some resources to bounce questions off of such as with the therapist or with a fellow Survivor what I mean by that is like I'm feeling like this was done on purpose can I run that by you about something that somebody did or you know such as also going to that person and
• 16:30 - 17:00 kind of saying am I totally defective or did I make a mistake are all humans Predators or do I project and look for evidence that they're all predators again did they do that on purpose or does my inner child live in people's bad intentions and only look for that so additionally while factchecking and bouncing things off of somebody it sounds kind of like cognitive and and almost like almost like cognitive behavioral therapy where we check out our assumptions childhood trauma survivors need something deeper than that processing where these assumptions
• 17:00 - 17:30 come from in childhood trauma cognitive stuff only takes us really so far when we need a deeper processing of our childhood stuck emotions and situations and relationships with abusive parents functioning delays are essentially the evidence of Parental neglect during childhood and not to be confused with things like learning problems or neurode Divergence so many childhood trauma survivors including myself often had to hide that they struggle with basic learning skills due to a lack of
• 17:30 - 18:00 consistent care from a parent who is supposed to be helping them have some Mastery over some basic skills some examples I've had several clients actually several of them tell me that still in their 30s or 40s they still need to hold out their hands like this to decide which one's the left one which one's the right one because they had to come up with that on their own or somebody helped them at school with that and it's like the Habit has stuck and I've also had clients tell me that they assume that they can get through their day with only one or 3 hours of sleep from
• 18:00 - 18:30 staying up late or believing that 2 hours of work can maybe happen in 20 minutes so some magical thinking there around functioning here are some other specific examples related to functioning delays and neglect fear of how your handwriting looks you might get anxious writing out a check or signing something for fear of doing it wrong that kind of makes me wonder about neglect um hiding that you still don't quite understand how something works such as making like a doctor's appointment or how a deductible Works um maybe that's a bad
• 18:30 - 19:00 example because I still struggle with understanding how an in a health insurance deductible Works um another is not knowing how to bring something up in conversation to like knowing how how filing taxes work not taking in that the check engine light is coming on or that you should maybe be concerned about that and again this is not criticism these are sort of things that come with neglect I know that these things seem embarrassing but functioning delay are real and they can also be Complicated by
• 19:00 - 19:30 symptoms of depression and dissociation where it's difficult to cut through the fog to function better so and we can grow out of these over time but they're not to be confused with like say just being young and inexperience like a teenager might ignore a check engine light out of just being a teen not knowing what that means hopefully not but the functioning issues are not all black and white and only related to neglect however while these can be seen as say human mistakes there can also be
• 19:30 - 20:00 a childhood trauma story underneath them such as being raised by a very limited parent um say like say someone struggling mental illness or a hoarder who had their own functioning problems um I find that those raised than that can be like overfunctioning which is another problem of um the functioning delay the functioning delay in context is a combination of neglect and the child's tendency to think in terms of magical thinking or being wrapped up in
• 20:00 - 20:30 fear they never really had a parent to help them with basics in the day-to-day parenting work of helping them with homework or preparing something or getting a child's resources getting them resources like say a a school tutor or helping them learn how to even wash their hair with shampoo I've had many clients actually show their neglect when they would come into my office not dressed for the weather like they might come in with flip-flops in an ice storm um and that might make me curious about their aware Wess of self-care or
• 20:30 - 21:00 preparing that kind of stuff and chances are knowing that their story is they were profoundly not care for so why would these things matter to them functioning delays are often evidence that someone doesn't really care much about themselves we kind of treat ourselves The Way We Were parented I've also had clients have some magical thinking about overfunctioning like I mentioned where they have a deep childlike belief that they may not need much sleep or eating or resting and they can get so much done in a day without taking in that there's limitations to
• 21:00 - 21:30 the human body so I find that these things come from the child really being on their own in childhood having to navigate school or Community or Basics such as hygiene and as adults we can have a lot of Shame and difficulty in our adult lives due to not fully knowing that how much sleep we need to get or how to do a budget we can also have a deep Shame about say learning disabilities and delays that we had to hide and we still believe we really can't meet those delays head on in the
• 21:30 - 22:00 third grade I was in danger of being kept back for having problems with reading comprehension and at the same time I discovered that I I loved comic books and I started reading these comic books which had less complex dialogue and they had correlating pictures that would help me understand what was going on more and that's what actually proved my reading on my own I was even keeping it all kind of secret but that's what I mean like also developmental delays would also may get you into trouble more if you talked about them and later in
• 22:00 - 22:30 therapy I would really realize the level of neglect and the kind of help that I really kind of needed so working on the functioning delays are very possible from an inner child work perspective our inner adult is often in need of a resource to learn how to overcome some things such as getting somewhere on time or getting support from someone like a therapist or fellow Survivor who gets it and by resources YouTube I love it it's a good example is you know if went on YouTube I can learn about budgeting I can learn
• 22:30 - 23:00 how to read more books instead of on being on my phone all the time I can learn how to contribute better to a conversation by being more an active listener that's what I mean by resources and thank God for those really um think like how to in terms of those and it's hard to admit that we don't really know how to write a check or we get anxious around writing a check or that we can't ask for directions which is also a security thing but if we hold our neglectful parents accountable we can Sid a lot of that shame because the
• 23:00 - 23:30 accountability is definitely warranted insid stepping that shame helps us to be able to learn things on a deeper level we really can't learn things if we're overwhelmed with shame working with our inner child on the functioning delay is really letting them know that they didn't get what they needed growing up to be successful and to help them with that level of Shame as well as your inner adult actually working on the functioning piece which is the where the resources come in you start I would recommend starting small on something before tackling bigger stuff smaller
• 23:30 - 24:00 functioning stuff um reminding yourself that of course you struggle with these things due to what happened to you growing up is going to again help combat that change last one here is negative coping strategies delay um while it might be hard to see addictive behaviors as developmental delays I see them as really closely related as children growing up in abuse we often found things before and after puberty that would help us to address pain as adults we can be developmentally stuck in
• 24:00 - 24:30 needing to be soothed from behaviors instead of having like internal resources to manage them we should be getting that from a healthy system here are some examples a teen can find that looking physically perfect or attractive as a way to help them feel okay and battle insecurity a teen can also find drugs and alcohol I did to manage some horrific stuff going on at their home life or in their parental relationships a child can discover that eating is always a good way to distract from their
• 24:30 - 25:00 emotions is all not really conscious at the same time too when it's going on in a teen can discover that they can get missing attention from adults at school by being an impressive a student and of course there are other examples but these are examples of self soothing that again come from an external thing like the perfectionism or the looking or the a or the drugs instead of having a safe home base at home regardless of what age the child is the child or the teenager is doing their best and the strategies are often really genius given the
• 25:00 - 25:30 situation that they're growing up in however these coping strategies can carry on into our adulthoods and it looks like this as adults we can be workaholic instead of knowing how to manage and soothe our feelings like really being disconnected from ourselves and just doing life from a place of doing um and we're not developing intimate connections with others or ourselves we can still engage in substances for emotional regulation instead of knowing how to do that naturally we can never feel what is really good
• 25:30 - 26:00 enough and we continue to try to be perfect at something which really kills our ability to be present we can be attached to processes to feel more secure such as needing that cup of coffee from that that place before work at that time or eating the same thing for lunch every day um you know this one doesn't have to be so black and white it depends on you and it depends on your your personal story and how it might relate to your trauma we all have things like I like going to a coffee shop every
• 26:00 - 26:30 day and getting sort of similar things but usually it's not something that I need to have happen every day to feel grounded or secure so that's kind of my point there what prevents a child from developing self- soothing as opposed to external resources is when they are taught early to manage and talk about feelings and situations that come up with their safe home base again imagine being like a new kindergarten at the end of the first day imagine having a parent
• 26:30 - 27:00 that you're able to reconnect with and discuss how the day went um and that's like a loving experience of reconnection and celebration and that's the thing that resets kids from their fear or their anxiety through a transition most clients including myself in most instances didn't have that and needed to rely upon like say playing video games or going home and watching The Brady Bunch and sit in that loneliness but still have something that we can kind of latch on to um kids need so much
• 27:00 - 27:30 connection and help and if they don't get it they come up with ways to deal somehow which is pretty sad the recovery around the negative coping strategy delay depends on kind of what you're coping with if it's substances you'll need a specific addiction resource that works for you if it's workaholism same thing like the others getting out of these delays are kind of twofold finding the resources about the thing you soothe with as well as the piece of working with the inner child about discussing
• 27:30 - 28:00 where it comes from and what can be offered to your inner child to replace what the inner child came up with remember that Branch analogy from earlier and if you're curious about how to reparent the inner child I have a course available that I'll put in the video description of this video I reference it inner child work as something very specific that I do on paper between your non-dominant hand and your dominant hand so lots of good inner child parenting can be done around this stuff and again access the therapy which someone supportive is ideal and I know
• 28:00 - 28:30 that there's a whole bunch of barriers to that which we all know about so some final thoughts try to avoid seeing these delays as forever stuck places these are fixable over time with some help and I think good enough healing brings maturing and catching up in good enough ways also try not to see this as a shameful immaturity that happens but instead as places where we often get stuck and when we don't grow up in a developmentally safe household or envir environment or have safe relationships
• 28:30 - 29:00 with caregivers here are some not really connected thoughts here a toxic family loves to point out your functioning delays while not understanding that they cause them when you think about the parenting and the neglect in other words we can often be kind of like entertainment for the toxic family about our anxiety about writing a check and all that stuff if you know you know so you can also become stunted when the family indirectly says that this is the best it's ever going to get so get used
• 29:00 - 29:30 to it because of like what they modeled like you may have a very limited parent who didn't really try to do better in their life and struggle with functioning stuff but they're like this is what life is like when that's not fully true allow for more process such as getting better at something over time which doesn't exist in a toxic family in the five delays that I discussed here our family can indirectly say that you're on your own sink or swim you either got it or you don't there's no process in any of that the ability to get good at something and have some Mastery over
• 29:30 - 30:00 something getting ready to give up a negative coping strategy or to move on to another level of living is a process that one gradually becomes prepared for whether that's quitting smoking or getting into therapy it's a process of moving towards something like development um the childhood development that got stunted due to the abuse is moving towards something that is more significant that is kind of exciting like a new level of achieving or a new level of maturity um healthy parents are
• 30:00 - 30:30 working to help their child function and navigate life not struggle through it without having a sense of the handbook that other people seem to have gotten um it's you know I think that the handbook is actually being loved and cared for and being sort of taught how to sort of live I hope that this video and these ideas are helpful to you and I would love to hear from you in the comments about stuff that you relate to or questions you might have and as always may you be filled with loving kind may you be well may you be peaceful
• 30:30 - 31:00 entities and may you be joyous and I will see you next time [Music]