Welcome to Vera’s Blog!

If you’re a parent, I want you to take a quick trip down memory lane and answer this question for me:

Before you had kids, was there something that your parents did that you swore you would never do with your own kids?

For example, maybe you told yourself that you would never ignore your kids’ requests, let stress about your own problems take attention away from them, compare them to siblings or cousins, or discourage them from pursuing their interests.

But now that you’re a parent, you might be realizing that as much as you told yourself that you would never be the kind of parent or caregiver that your mom, dad, or grandmother was, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

Recently, I’ve chatted with you about attachment styles and how they affect your current close relationships, such as your romantic and non-romantic relationships with other adults.

But what if you’re the parent of a kid or adolescent? How does your attachment style influence...

Have you noticed that you tend to do the same thing over and over again in different relationships?

For example, maybe you get jealous easily in relationships.

Perhaps you cling to partners and loved ones almost to the point of driving them away.

Or maybe no matter how awesome someone seems, you never want to get close to them.

In my last post on inner child work and relationships, I talked about the benefits of identifying patterns in your relationships and how they may be linked to your childhood.

One specific link that’s especially helpful to explore is the one between your current relationship habits and patterns and the first relationship you were ever part of: the one you had with your primary caregiver.

Why is this first relationship so important—even if you don’t have any contact with this person now?

Because according to psychological theory, the first relationship that we form with our primary caregiver influences the relationships that we form later on...

Whether we’re experiencing some challenges in our relationships or generally feel fulfilled in them, most of us would love to enjoy them even more.

After all, if you find that most conversations with your mom end with you feeling frustrated or upset, you’d probably love for this to change.

And even if things are generally going well with your romantic partner, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind enjoying a bit more intimacy and connection in the relationship.

As I’ve mentioned recently, one of the key benefits of doing inner child work and healing your inner child is that it can help you build stronger, healthier, and more fulfilling relationships.

But in thinking about whether inner child work is truly worth your time (which I know you can’t afford to waste), you might be wondering how exactly inner child work can benefit your relationship.

That’s why in this blog post, I’m going to pull back the curtain on 3 key ways that healing your inner...

Have you ever thought lately about how great it would be to…

• feel happier and more relaxed?
• be able to navigate daily stressors without getting flustered?
• have stronger, healthier relationships with the people who matter to you?
• live the life you’ve always pictured for yourself?

Well, my dear, as much as each of these may seem like a distant fantasy, it doesn’t have to be.

Because inner child work can make it a reality.

Specifically, by getting to the root of your current struggles, healing inner wounds, and breaking through limiting habits, you can finally have the joy, love, or lifestyle you’ve been longing for.

But what if the idea of healing your inner child seems too “out there,” terrifying, or hard?

Or what if you’re just not sure whether inner child work is the right fit for you?

Then you’re in the right place!

Because in this blog post, I’m going to share 5 simple ways to get your feet wet with inner child work and...

You probably know that your experiences in childhood were important for promoting healthy physical, motor, and language development.

But before reading my recent post on inner child work, you might not have realized that your childhood years also played a big role in shaping how successfully you pursue goals, cope with challenging situations, and navigate relationships today.

That’s why recently, I’ve been highlighting how inner child work can help you get to the root of your current struggles as an adult; heal your inner wounds; and break free of barriers that have been stopping you from enjoying the happiness, life, or relationships you want.

One of the challenges with inner child work, though, is that many of us have become pretty disconnected from our inner child. Specifically, we might not know that we have an inner child. Or we might be out of touch with the difficult memories, painful emotions, fears, and limiting beliefs that make up a key part of our inner child...

Have you ever reacted to a situation in a way that was out of proportion to what happened?

For example, have you ever…

• lashed out at your partner because they put their coffee cup on the kitchen counter instead of in the dishwasher?
• started sobbing because your sister was 20 minutes late to pick you up from the airport?
• yelled at a junior colleague for not printing a document in the exact way you asked them to?

If you’ve ever found yourself reacting to a situation in a way that seemed extreme or even irrational, you might think that you were just “on edge” or “having a bad day.”

And this may very well be the case if it’s only very rarely that you have these kinds of disproportionate reactions to situations.

But if you find that you frequently react to situations in ways that seem “over the top,” it may be one of many possible signs that you have a wounded inner child.

You can find more detailed information on what it means to...

I’m sure it doesn’t shock you to know that we can experience trauma at any point in our lives.

But what you might not know is that trauma is especially likely to affect us, our lives, and our relationships when we experience it in childhood.

Many of us might be quick to think that we didn’t experience childhood trauma if we weren’t sexually abused, involved in a severe accident, or orphaned by war or a mass casualty event.

However, what many of us don’t realize is that childhood trauma can also occur when a caregiver is emotionally unavailable, expresses love only under certain conditions, or is working multiple jobs to make ends meet and isn’t home enough to give a child the love and attention they need.

No matter the specific event or experience, childhood trauma can affect our lives in profound ways. This is because whether we realize it or not, the experiences that we have in childhood can play a big role in shaping how we see ourselves, other...

Recently, I shared a social media video about one of my favorite quotes about trauma: “Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you.”

Why do I love this quote by Dr. Gabor Maté so much?

Because it underscores that trauma isn’t about a past event (e.g., physical assault or accident) or, in some cases, a past experience that unfolded over a period of time (e.g., abuse, neglect, or war). Instead, it’s about how your body and mind responded to the past event or experience and how they CONTINUE to respond to it even today.

That’s the thing about trauma—it isn’t just a memory of the past that you can’t “let go of.”

It’s a lingering internal wound that can “reopen” and cause pain and distress whenever a trigger in your environment unconsciously reminds you of it.

The challenge, though, is that the distress you experience might be more than just the type of momentary pain or...

You might know from your own personal experience that the wound created by a traumatic event isn’t something that exists solely in the mind. It can also be present in the body.

That’s why when you’re consciously or unconsciously reminded of a traumatic event from your past, you might not just feel panicked or become hyperaware of your surroundings. Instead, you might also notice that your muscles have tensed up, your breathing has become rapid, your palms feel sweaty, and your stomach feels like it’s in knots.

So if trauma can reside in both the mind and body, what does this mean for treating it and healing from it?

Many therapies that are used to help people heal from trauma acknowledge the mind-body connection in trauma. But they’re what we call “top-down approaches.” This simply means that the therapy uses a client’s cognitive skills to access and process traumatic memories and the feelings associated with them. The idea is that...

Why can it be so challenging to heal from trauma (especially when you don’t have the right tools and support)?

As I mentioned in a recent post, one key obstacle is that many of us aren’t aware of how common trauma is and that we may very well be carrying it around ourselves. And of course, when you don’t know that you’ve experienced trauma, it’s pretty hard to address it and heal from it.

But another big obstacle is that we often have an oversimplified understanding of why traumatic events continue to affect our lives long after they’re over.

You see, many of us tend to think that if trauma is affecting our happiness, life, or relationships, it’s because the traumatic event was so jarring that we can’t stop thinking about it and we’re constantly distracted by it. As a result, we might think that if we just tell ourselves to stop thinking about the traumatic event, we’ll “get over it” and be able to move on with...