Why Your Childhood Wounds Keep Showing Up in Your Life

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1:41Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I've got something a little bit different for you today. This is a real coaching session recorded from one of my private groups called Mindset Academy. And it starts with a lady named Cindy telling me her situation with her boss that keeps triggering her. But as we dig deeper, we realize something that's really important here. Her boss isn't actually the problem at all. He's triggering a wound that was created decades ago in her relationship with her mom when she was a child. And this is important for you to see because sometimes it's great to listen to a podcast episode, but sometimes when you hear somebody else be coached and actually hear the context of their life and see yourself in them, you can actually start to learn more about yourself and heal quicker.

2:25And I think you're gonna see yourself somewhere in this conversation because so many of us spend years trying to fix what's happening on the surface without actually ever realizing there's something much, much deeper happening below the surface. And so if you keep treating the symptom and not finding the actual root, the pattern will keep coming up. And so I'm going to coach Cindy through this and how to actually find the root so that she can actually start changing it and start healing herself. So I think you're going to love this episode. And if you want to learn more about Mindset Academy and coaching with me, there's currently a seven day free trial happening right now inside of Mindset Academy.

3:04You can go to coachwithrob.com right now to learn more. Once again, it is coachwithrob.com. Okay, let's dive into today's episode. My question is about emotional attachment. My mentor for my business is very frequently telling me that I'm too emotionally attached to everything. He says that I need to work on detaching emotionally. I have a big heart. I have always been one to take care of others before I take care of me. My concern is if I emotionally detach, will this be a positive thing or a negative thing for me? Is there a fine line of being too emotionally attached? Do I need to work on becoming more emotionally detached?

3:40I want to live the best me that I possibly can, so I'd love your input on it. Well, I would kind of need some more context of what exactly that means of being too emotionally attached to something. Cindy, do you want to describe it for me? Lots of times when something comes up, his big thing is if you could just emotionally detach. You are too, to whatever. Something happens with a coworker. if you weren't emotionally attached, you wouldn't react that way. I am an emotional being. I know we all are to an extent. So I guess my question is, is there a way to level that attachment down without changing who I am on the inside?

4:15Or does that even make sense? Let's try to work through it. Can you give me an example of like one situation where this actually happened? Okay. Just a few days ago, I'm in sales and I've not been in sales about a year, almost two years and I have always been not real confident so if I don't understand or if I have a question I ask I always ask and his thing is Cindy we have gone over this a million times well when he says that I feel very I feel like a child so I brought that up the other day this is just one small example and he's like that's just because you're emotionally attached it's like it's almost like he's like i'm an asshole all the time you should try it that's just one of his little things that's not who i am so here's here's the easiest way to work through it right whenever we're triggered by something you guys all are triggered by something different cindy might be triggered by something that i'm not triggered by i might be triggered by something that cindy's not triggered by because the way that i like to think about things guys this is just my mental processing is is i like to look at things from like 50 000 foot overview so if we look at the situation and we're getting triggered by something, we can go, why am I triggered?

5:28But if we go a level above and we look at it from 50 ,000 foot looking down, why are we triggered in some sort of way? What's happening is your boss is reminding you of your parents, most likely. And it's something that's unhealed. So if we can try to think about it for a second, Cindy, when your boss does that to you, does it remind you of any situation from one of your two parents? Of course it does. But the thing that also throws me off is your parents are not even here anymore. They have both passed away. Why do you let them control the way you think? They're not controlling the way you think.

6:02They raised you to be the way that you are. Do you think that you automatically heal from your childhood trauma when your parents die? Oh, dear God, no. So you just answered your own question. It's like, oh, guess what? It's not when my dad died when I was 15 years old from being an alcoholic. I wasn't like, oh, my God, my trauma from an alcoholic father disappeared. No, it's because not on purpose. Nobody purposely instills trauma into their children. It could be big T trauma or small T trauma. So let's go back to the original question I asked you. When you look at your boss and what happened, what parent does that kind of remind you of if there's some similarities?

6:39Always my mom. How so? I had one sister. She was always very thin. She was born three months early. They thought she was going to die. So I guess in my mom's eyes, she was it. I was not. I was always a bigger child, not like I am now, but not tiny like her. She used to literally make me way on a scale every single day. And she would do the same with my sister. And sorry, this is so hard to talk about. She would tell my sister, oh, you know, you're beautiful, small, blah, blah, blah. And then she would look at me and just say things a mother should never say to a child. And I still, that still hurts.

7:20It still hurts. And then I lost my dad when I was 56. So like he died in a car wreck. Anytime I hear of anybody dying in a car wreck, it hurts. Because number one, I know what they're going through. First off, number one, don't ever apologize for being emotional. Because that's the problem is that we've all been taught that that's incorrect to be emotional, to stick, you know, throw it away, all that type of stuff, not feel emotions. It is not the situation that we're currently in that is causing the emotions. It is these emotions have been here for a long time. And now you're giving yourself a chance to feel them.

7:54That's the crazy part is we think we're like, we're the only one that's fucked up with the stuff. Everybody has these things, right? So I want you to wonder that sometimes. So to answer your question around this is the, and this is why I had to ask you a question directly and not answer the emotionally detached thing is because the problem is not emotional attachment or detachment. The problem is you're not healed in the triggering is trying to show you where you're not healed. I will take you through for those of you guys that are, I know a lot of you guys are coming to freedom live in December and Austin.

8:27This is why we have three days. Like we're going to work through all of this shit so that we can literally get rid of all of the weights that are holding you back and holding you down. And we will be right back. I was constantly getting distracted and struggling to stay focused. Cal Newport's class on Masterclass gave me practical strategies to reclaim my time, and they've genuinely changed the way I work every day. Masterclass puts you in the room with the people who define their fields, not just experts, but the best in the world, and they make it easy to learn on your terms. With audio mode, you can turn your commute or workout into a classroom or download lessons for offline access.

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11:27Built for every industry, ready for every boardroom. netsuite.ai.dial. And now, back to the show. It's like, the way I like to look at it, it's like, if you're trying to, if you're a swimmer and you're trying to swim faster, right? You're going to swim a lot. You don't need to work harder. what you need to do is you need to take the weights that are on your ankles off and you'll naturally just swim faster with the same amount of effort. That's what life is. And the problem is all of us, all of us are walking around with weights all over our body, all over us. And we're like, well, I can't, I've been working so fucking hard to try to do this.

11:59Yeah. You've got to realize there's things that have to be let go of to then become someone who is a high performer or else you're not going to get to your true potential ever. Because if you've hit like 60 % of your potential and you're trying and trying and trying and trying, it's not your potential that's the problem. It's not your effort a lot of times that's the problem. It's that there's weights that you need to let go of so that therefore you can become better with the same amount of effort. That's the craziest part. So the thing that we all have to look at is when we are triggered by something, it is my opinion that I think this is God's way, the universe's way of saying this is your work because this thing that is being triggered within you is showing you where you're not free.

12:40And so I've got to work at where I'm not free because I need to become free of the things that are holding me back. Right. And so once what I am triggered in some sort of way, it is showing, like, if I get into an argument with my wife and I'm triggered, it's usually not the situation between me and her. It's usually a situation between me and something in my past that has not healed. And what happens is over time being a child, and mind you like i've i've known this i've taught this i've read so many therapy and psychology and neurology books but having a two-year-old downstairs is literally the i'm in it from the very beginning right like i'm in it in the most important stage of building a human psychology and i'm noticing ways that i could go down old paths that i know my parents would have gone down with me and they that is then going to build the same things within him that they built within me And mind you, my parents built very, very good things within me.

13:34It's not all bad. I'm not trying to say that. I noticed the things and I'm like, but I'm going to choose this way because I know what the long-term effect of building an adult is going to be like, because I'm essentially trying to fix adults' problems that come from the childhood that come from the parents. So now I'm in it with the parent-childhood relationship. And so the thing that happens is nobody can raise a perfect person because there's no such thing as perfect. I think as part of our mission and part of us being humans is to lose ourselves to find ourselves. And the way that we lose ourselves is we come in, we're excited, things are amazing, beautiful little children, and maybe they're too loud.

14:14And they're screaming in a restaurant. And that's not okay. So your parents have to say, be quiet, you're too loud, all of this stuff. so that the child learns to silence themselves and not let out their true emotions or true feelings or true happiness. And that's what's called a behavioral adaptation. So we adapt our behaviors to fit in with the environment that we're in. And we all were raised in different environments. Those behavioral adaptations, as we get older, morph and change into different things. Like Maybe what it turns into in a more romantic relationship is that you don't speak your truth because you're afraid of losing that person.

14:58Do you guys see how the behavioral adaptation then morphs into something a little bit different but still very similar? And what happens is, then we go, you know what? I need to learn to speak my truth. I need to learn to speak my truth. I've got to speak up in this relationship with my husband. And we try to fix the current situation, you, your emotions. when in reality, the way that you fix it is by healing the child that didn't get what they needed to in the first time. Like whatever happened was healing our inner child. I was like, that sounds fucking woo-woo-y and stupid. And then as I dove into it, I was like, oh fuck, this is the whole game of life.

15:38The situation in this, it made up example that I have with someone with their husband. They're trying to become more vulnerable with their husband and speak up more. They definitely can work on that. But what's going to make this behavioral adaptation dissolve is by healing the inner child that we have. How do you heal the inner child? You ask yourself, what did I not get that I needed in childhood? And you start giving it to yourself. Because you might see like on this, guys, let me tell you the full truth. And this is why I have so much compassion for people. I have heard the worst things you could possibly imagine.

16:13Like take it to the worst degree, heard it. anything, everything. I've heard it all. So I can't have massive amounts of compassion for people, right? So when you're looking at Rob, you're not looking at a 40 year old guy. You're looking at a seven year old boy that really just wants his dad to be around. And guess what? Never going to get it. Who can give it to me though? I can learn how to give it to myself. That healing is what gets rid of all of the behavioral adaptations that are holding me back from being the person that I can live to my true full potential. So when I see you, I'm not seeing an adult.

16:46I'm seeing a child who didn't get specifically what they needed to in childhood, creative behavioral adaptations to fit in and to be what they needed to be in order to get their parents love. Because all we care about is getting our parents love. That's it. That's, that is literally the only thing that we care about is in childhood senior parents love. And so we adapt ourselves to get the love that we feel like that behavioral adaptations morph and shift over time in order to be something. And those are, those behavioral adaptations are usually our barriers to our greatest potential. And so we tried it.

17:19And the crazy part about it, I fucked this up for 16 years of self-development, everybody. And I was like, I need to jump the barriers. I need to jump the barriers. I need to jump the barriers. When in reality, what I needed to do was heal the parts of me that were still unhealed and the barriers just dissolve. So your, your emotional or too emotional or not emotional has nothing to do with emotions. It has to do with this moment is reminding you of something in your childhood that is not healed. All of us have this. And so when I bring it up to you and you say, oh, well, this thing that happened with my boss, I'm not hearing about something that happened with your boss.

17:52I'm going, well, where does this remind you of your childhood? It reminds me of my mom. Boom. And when you feel the emotions come up, we found it. That's it. That's a hundred percent. I know it's like, it's been waiting to come out. It's literally like you've been holding onto a hose, you know, where you bend the hose and you hold it. And it's like, we have this moment you've been holding, you're fucking holding it back. And And now like your boss says something, you get triggered and stuff. And you get this moment where you can think about it. It's like release. It's out. And that's how you know that this is the thing that you need to work through.

18:20Is ask yourself, what does this remind me of my childhood? It almost always is about one of your two parents. And then ask yourself, what did I need back then that I did not get in my childhood? And you learn how to start giving it to yourself now. A lot of times, it's like closing your eyes. The cave that you're afraid to enter holds a treasure that you seek. The main thing that it's about is two things, love and safety. Something made you feel unsafe. Something made you feel that you weren't loved. And so what you've got to do is get yourself into a state where you're do some breath work for five minutes.

18:54You've got yourself calm and you might have to develop some sort of strategy. Put your hands on your chest. You feel your heartbeat. And you think about like that little six-year-old girl that was going through what she was going through. She didn't feel loved. She didn't feel fully safe. And you might just say to yourself, I see you. I love you. and you're safe. The first few times you do it, you feel fucking weird. You're like, I'm talking to my six-year-old self. This is the weirdest thing I've ever done. Over time, you'll start to notice your body just settles into it. You'll feel it truly.

19:25And that's how you actually start to heal these things. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, once again, like I said, this is exactly what I'm gonna be diving into in a much, much, much deeper way over the course of three days at Freedom Live in Austin, Texas. It is going to be live in person, Austin, Texas, December 3rd, 4th, and 5th. If you want to learn more about it, you can go to freedomlive2026.com. Once again, freedomlive2026.com. And with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better.

19:55I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day. Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections for what teens see and who can contact them. Plus time management tools. And Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com slash teenaccounts.

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