S4 EP3: Untangling Your Past Hurts from Your Current Problems: Healing Inner Child Wounds with Erica Bennett

In this episode of The Crazy Ex-Wives Club, host Erica Bennett goes solo to guide you through the maze of inner wound healing. Delve into heart-centered clarity as Erica explores why past emotional baggage may be hijacking your present and how to differentiate it from current issues.

She shares personal anecdotes, practical exercises to release deep-seated pains, and encourages embracing vulnerability for true healing. Whether struggling with trust, coping with triggers, or seeking the courage to heal multi-generational wounds, Erica offers tools for a transformative heart-healing journey.

Join her as she paves the way for emotional freedom and a reconnection with your intuition. Tune in to take a step towards the life and relationships you deserve.

#HeartHealing #DivorceRecovery #EmotionalFreedom

Want More Help in Untangling your Past Hurts from your Current Problems?

Divorce is hard enough without feeling like you have to do it alone. There are lots of great therapists out there, but if you are done talking and want to take action to finally heal and clear the pain of the past, check out the paid-for programs with The Crazy Ex-Wives Club.

Instagram Subscription: For $5 a month you can join Erica in the private community to chat about your problems and get support to heal. Learn from Erica and the others in the safe space of a private, supportive community.

Clarity Coaching: If you are looking a more personalized approach, consider Clarity Coaching, a six-week support program to help you get clear on what you want and see past the BS that is clouding your vision. You can opt for private or small group programs.

Untangling Your Past Hurts from Your Current Problems: Healing Inner Child Wounds and Finding the Way to your Heart with Erica Bennett FULL TRANSCRIPTS

Erica Bennett [00:00:01]:

Have you ever woken up the next morning after a fight, an argument, a text battle, whatever it may be, and thought, huh, seems like a bit of an overreaction now. If you have, it's just signaling you that your heart needs a little bit of healing. Those walls were up. The reactions happened. And on today's episode, we're going to break down why this happens and how to separate out past her hurt from current reality. Let's get started.

Erica Bennett [00:00:32]:

Welcome to the Crazy Ex Wife's Club, a podcast dedicated to helping women navigate the emotional journey that is divorce. I'm your host, Erica. And if you're trying to figure out life after the big d, welcome to the club. Whether you're contemplating divorce or dealing with the aftermath or any of the many phases in between, the club has got you covered. Each week, you'll hear stories from women who have been in your shoes. This isn't about spilling tea and divorce details. This is about giving you the tools to take control of your own healing journey. Listen in weekly for advice, tips, and tools to help you move through each stage of the process.

Erica Bennett [00:01:11]:

Hey, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Crazy Ex Wives Club. I'm your host, Erica, and today we're chatting solo all about the heart, the ego, the past hurts that get in the way of you really being able to move forward right now. Let's get into it. This season, we've really been talking a lot about healing the heart. You know, the heart is the gateway to your intuition. If you're stuck in a place where you're seeking clarity, you're unsure of what decision to make. You're exhausted from going back and forth.

Erica Bennett [00:01:44]:

That's a heart issue. That's a heart clarity issue. You have lost connection with your heart because when we are connected with our heart, we can confidently make the decisions that we need to make because it comes from a place of love. I really wanted to unwind the practice of what is current pain and what is past emotional reaction, because so often it is actually our past hurts, our inner wounds, our childhood wounds that are showing up in our present day relationship. And it isn't about necessarily changing the thing in the present day relationship, but learning about your own heart and how to heal it and you taking the time to soothe those wounds, to heal those wounds so that you can move forward, whether in this relationship or your next one. So the heart itself, you know how I love to think about it. The heart is like your castle, right? It is the center of the city, the home, the heartbeat, the place where everything happens it's your safety place, right? It's where we all want to venture. The love, the acceptance, the abundance that can naturally flow from your heart.

Erica Bennett [00:03:00]:

Well, when we're little, our heart is just open and free and full of awe and love and inspiration. Inspiration about all the things that are around us. And as we grow up, as we experience life, we start to build little walls around our heart. And why? Because things happen, right? We get hurt. That's part of the process of being in this human form. It's part of the process of being alive. You're gonna hurt and you're gonna heal and you're gonna grow and you're gonna try again. And so our heart is a beautiful, beautiful vessel that can be repaired when it's taken care of.

Erica Bennett [00:03:40]:

So we've got our castle. This is the heart. Now we start to build this wall around our heart. And the wall is built by ego. Not ego with a little e. Ego with a capital ego. That voice inside your head that says, you're never enough, you'll never have what you want. How dare you think that you're worthy, right? It is that voice that tells you constantly why you're just not good enough.

Erica Bennett [00:04:05]:

Now, our ego voice started a long, long, long time ago in an effort to protect us. That really is its purpose. In fact, it's kind of like the voice in the shadowy halls of our mind, our logical thinking. Ego was there to protect us from getting hurt, protect us from dying. You think back in the day of saber toothed tigers, it was that voice, that fear that kept you hyper alert, that kept you aware, that kept you on the lookout. And the challenge is that our ego has taken over. You know, our ego has done such a job of trying to protect our heart that it's built a wall and a moat and probably some booby traps around to keep anybody and everybody out. So how do you know if this is your heart? Do you have a hard time trusting other people? Do you have a hard time relying on other people? Do you feel like most people eventually let you down? Do you feel like you really want to trust and rely on other people, but it just feels unsafe because if they don't show up, you're going to have to do the extra work.

Erica Bennett [00:05:21]:

You're going to have to catch up. You're going to have to carry the extra amount. I mean, think about in your relationships. Do you feel like you're always doing all the extra so that you really don't want to allow somebody else into your heart? These are all heart issues. These are ego walls, right. The illusion that you are not safe, that you're not good enough, that your heart's desires aren't worthy. But they are the challenges being able to remove these walls that we've built up around our heart so that you can hear it clearly. So if this sounds like you, if you're sitting there and you're like, yeah, Erica, I am guilty of that.

Erica Bennett [00:06:07]:

You know, for me personally, I was an overachiever. I was hyper independent, and I became even more independent after my divorce, which meant that it was incredibly hard for me to rely on people. But it was equally as hard for me to ask for help. I hated asking for help. I hated being in a place of vulnerability. I hated being in a place where I was reliant on somebody else. And so I chose to always figure it out, solve my own problems, do all the work, make sure that I never had to lean my heart on anybody else and risk being disappointed. So how do you heal this? If this sounds like you, the first thing I want to say is, you guys, if you're dealing with heart issues, give yourself grace.

Erica Bennett [00:06:56]:

This is big wounds. Sometimes they're even multi generational wounds that have been passed down through your family lineage. The heart can heal, and it's a very simple process, but it's one that we often avoid because we're afraid that it's going to hurt even worse. To truly heal your heart, you first need to look at what's really hurting it. You need to peel back those layers to get to the core wound. Then it wants to be acknowledged, it wants to be seen, it wants to be felt, and finally let go. So why do we avoid it? Because ego, again, has created some smoke and mirrors that are telling us that if we actually dealt with the problem, that would be more painful, that it's less pain if we just avoid it. It's less pain if we just look somewhere else.

Erica Bennett [00:07:49]:

It's less pain if we just put it away, compartmentalize it, leave it on a shelf. But the problem is, is that eventually your backup shelf fills up. These issues, these suitcases start to topple off the shelf, you get nudged in some other issue, and it triggers one of those suitcases that you have packed up, and everything comes crumbling down. Now, some people go their whole lives and they never do the work. And the reality is, is that if you never truly feel the pain, you can never truly feel the happiness either. Because our heart, our heart is the keeper of all of the good and all of the bad. But if you try to numb one side of that equation out, you end up numbing both. I would say that my divorce was the biggest pain I had ever experienced in my life.

Erica Bennett [00:08:40]:

I'd already lost my dad. I'd already had a miscarriage. I'd already moved cross country twice. I've restarted all my friendship circles. And still the divorce was more painful. And still, being able to heal my heart took peeling back a lot of those childhood wounds. I had a look at it. I had to feel it.

Erica Bennett [00:09:01]:

I had to deal with the problems, because leaving them up on the shelf, leaving them on the shelf and avoiding them had gotten me to the place that I was at. It got me to the place where I couldn't trust my own intuition anymore. I didn't know what I really wanted. I knew I was desperate to have a partnership relationship and be available, but I was too damn afraid to be able to put my heart on the line. So one by one, I started to take a look at these painful experiences. I started to look at the things that hurt, and I started to peel back the layers. Now, this is still a practice I do every single time I get upset, because it is the fastest way to move through something. I don't want my emotions to.

Erica Bennett [00:09:41]:

To control and dictate my behavior anymore. It means I have to be able to unwind what is a past wound that I haven't dealt with yet, or what is a current problem that needs to be addressed. These are two very different things, but they become so interwoven because our heart brings with it all those memories of the past hurts, the past wounds, the past, things that have happened that you have not dealt with, that you haven't felt and seen and heard and acknowledged. And each time a new thing comes and it pushes on that same little wound in our heart, our heart screams louder. Please, just look at this. Please do the work and clear the pain. A lot of times these pains come up in our relationships, because a relationship is a mirror of the places that you need to heal. A relationship is a healing tool to show you where you are being called, to grow, to evolve, to learn from.

Erica Bennett [00:10:37]:

And so we've got to get into what these heart hurts are. So the first thing that I always look at is a pattern. For example, a pattern that was really active last year is I was getting really frustrated and annoyed when working with my partner and his kids. So I knew that we were good, we were happy. We'd have the weekend where we have his three boys, and I'd get short, I'd get defensive. I would be more irritable. I couldn't tell you why I was upset, but I knew that I was upset because I could feel it. So I started to see a pattern.

Erica Bennett [00:11:20]:

Wow. We're fine. We're fine. Oh, we put this in the mix, and I'm frustrated. Then it becomes my work. It does not become his work to change what's happening. It becomes my work to figure out why I'm upset with it. Because if I just start reacting, well, I'm so annoyed they're here.

Erica Bennett [00:11:37]:

I don't feel like you're spending enough time with me or how come the rules are changing in the house. Those are the smoke and mirrors that ego creates. That is not the core issue. That is not the core wound. And if you keep chasing the smoke and mirrors, they never end. There will always be a new instance of what is annoying. There's a new instance of why that's not fair. Right? You've got to dig deeper.

Erica Bennett [00:12:01]:

So I started to look at these, and I said, okay, so what is going on? And I could see some common themes. And these themes correlated to past experiences I've had, and they correlated to values that are really important to me. I saw themes around fairness. I wanted to make sure things are really fair. And it didn't feel fair that this kid got one thing and this kid got a different thing. That didn't feel fair to me. It felt disrespectful that, am I just temporary? How come? We're good, but when the boys arrive, everything we've set in place goes out the window, right? That is me feeling valued, me feeling respected. I continued to peel back the layers because sometimes it seemed to be related to money.

Erica Bennett [00:12:44]:

Sometimes it seemed to be related to prioritizing time. Sometimes it seemed to be related to getting the work done. A lot of times it was, were we aligned on how we wanted to parent? But it was never that singular parenting conversation. It was a deeper wound or a deeper core value. Then it's time to reflect on when was the first time you felt this way? Our logical brain is trying to rationalize why something someone else did was wrong. But our heart is the keeper of the answers, and our heart speaks in emotions. So being able to look at that current situation, what is the emotion that I'm feeling around it, and the core value that it's hurting. Now, you go back to the first time you felt like that.

Erica Bennett [00:13:34]:

You might not find the first time right away. You might find other instances earlier in life, in your childhood, in your family, places where you felt the same way that you're feeling right now, this is when you know you've truly found the core wound. This is this root, right? We can continue to go to talk therapy, and we can trim up the weeds on top of the surface, and we can keep mowing them down. We talk through them logically, it makes sense. Logically, our mind lets it go. But if we do not ever get to the root that is tied to our heart, they continue to grow back. They continue to be a problem. We continue to react to them.

Erica Bennett [00:14:14]:

They continue to own and control our behaviors. So when you have found those initial earlier times, you're going to start to take them one at a time. And you, as now an adult, are going to talk to that version of you. And however old you are, it could be as simple as you know what. Okay, so I recently came across one that took me back to a graduation party when maybe I was in 7th grade. That whole, like, puberty pudge was kind of starting to show up. You were trying to figure out if you still dressed like a kid or a young adult. Everything was changing.

Erica Bennett [00:14:59]:

We had to go to this graduation party. My mom had said something about, why don't you wear that little, like, onesie? You know, like a summer outfit that we had bought. Now, we had bought one that was super florally for church because we went to catholic church every Sunday, and we had bought one that was more like a romper that I could wear around the house. She meant the romper. I thought she meant the floral one. I get dressed up in this floral one, I'm feeling very pretty. We walk into this insanely casual backyard party, and I feel stupid. I'm now, as an adult, acknowledging how much that hurt as a kid, how as a kid, I did not have the emotional chops to be able to deal with it.

Erica Bennett [00:15:47]:

How I felt shame, how I felt stupid, how I felt judged, how I felt that everybody was looking at me and I never wanted to be seen again. And it was in one of those moments where then I pivoted right, and fashion became much smaller. I tried to make sure that I was never seen. I didn't love the way that I looked and felt in clothes. And it all hinged on that one pivotal moment. So being able to sit down, to have that conversation in my mind, to finally let go of a past hurt, tying into that, leveraging your somatics, your body movement, your healing, to move it through the body, even if you do nothing else other than karate chop the bottom of your hand so flat, palm on one hand, fist on the other hand. Tap your pinky finger and the bottom of your palm into your open fist. And just tap and breathe, and tap, and breathe, and tap and breathe.

Erica Bennett [00:16:44]:

Feel the pain. You're going to cry. You're going to feel the same emotions that you never processed before back in the day. Because guess what? Back in the day, you weren't able to. You didn't have the emotional resiliency, you didn't have the emotional skills, and it was too big. And so what your little heart did is it locked it up and it put it in a suitcase and it put it on a shelf and it hoped it was never going to see light a day again. Except here we are as grown adults, having these same wounds still be a problem now, five minutes later, maybe less, after I had tapped, after I had journaled, and to be honest, after I ugly cried it out because it freaking hurt back then, something that I just stuffed down and didn't deal with. And then it went away.

Erica Bennett [00:17:31]:

And then it's current vibrations, it's current ways that it shows up around. Do I love what I look like right now? Do I embrace the space that I take up when I'm in a room? Am I allowed to. To show up and be authentically me? All of those places started to heal, started to get stronger. My heart could now let go of the thing that it was holding on to. Heart healing is all about running back to the first time you had that experience. Ugly crying it out, journal tap, move it through the body. You might put on some music and dance and stretch and just let your body feel what it wants to do to get the ish out. All of those are going to transform what's happening in your present day.

Erica Bennett [00:18:23]:

Because if you are sitting in a place and you are asking yourself, do I need to stay or do I need to go? I can guarantee that you are not sure of what way to go, because fear and ego has got you worried about all the what ifs. The what if monster has shown off. What if it goes wrong? What if it gets worse? What if this is the wrong choice? What if it hurts my kids? What if I don't ever recover? What if I'm making a mistake? So to be able to clear the what if monster, we've got to get to your heart and you have to be able to unwind. What are these old wounds versus what is an issue that I really have with my partner right now? So often the pain that we're having right now is actually related to a core wound we had as a child, a need for respect, a need for love, a need for acceptance, a need for being allowed to be authentically you. And what happens is we think that we need our partner to act different, and we think that we need them to do something different. But the reality is that you need to do the work to actually pull up that root, to get it gone, to let it go. Because when you do the work to heal these old childhood wounds, then you can look at the situation and really evaluate, what do I want? What do I want in a marriage? What do I want in a partner? What do I want in my life right now? What does that look like in terms of where you're living and how you spend holidays and how daily activities run with the kids or with dinner or with housework? What do you want in your career? What kind of support do you need in your career? When you've been able to get clear on what you want, not just what you're running from, then you can start to evaluate, hey, do we want the same things? You know, one of the biggest heart healing moments in my separation was over the 4 July. I had taken my son down to my mom's house to do some fireworks and to be, you know, small town, small town America.

Erica Bennett [00:20:29]:

4 July. I took that time and really reflected and I was like, what do I want next year's 4 July to look like? Who do I want to spend it with? How do I want to feel on that holiday? What does that holiday look like to me? And I came back after that weekend and I sat down with the then husband and I said, look, I deserve somebody who wants to be there with me on a holiday. Because guess what? There isn't anything crazy in what I'm requesting about spending the 4 July together as a family instead of out drinking and at the bars. So if you don't want the same thing, then we need to really look at that. It's with each of these little pieces. Each time you find the thing that was never acknowledged as a child, you can then remove the old hurt and look at the current behavior in the current practice to say, do we want the same things? If you and your partner no longer want the same things, that's a really hard place to rebuild from. But you won't know that until you clear that what if monster. And the what if monster is really the ego creating the walls around your heart.

Erica Bennett [00:21:48]:

So your homework for the week is this week if you get triggered. So being triggered means something happens and you just become kind of irrationally upset about it quickly it's probably a little thing, or maybe it's a repeated pattern in the relationship or it's something that somebody else always does and it just irritates the shit out of you when you're triggered, when you have that big emotion hit that seems like it's kind of out of line for whatever the problem was then I want you to sit down and ask yourself, how do I feel right now? What is it that I'm really looking for? Am I looking to be respected? Am I looking to be acknowledged? Am I having to pick up extra weight? Am I having to do more stuff? And when is the first time I felt like this? Where else have I seen this in my life? Journal it out. Write the story of how it felt. When you finish journaling, go for a walk, do some yoga, even just bouncing up and down, jumping on a bed, bounce around, move the body to help it process and let it go. The more often you do this, the more often you find those little places, those little weeds, the roots, and pull them up by their roots. The clearer you're going to get, the more you're going to be able to hear what your heart is asking of you. Because your heart will always pick what is best for everyone involved. Your heart will always pick the solution that creates the greatest good for all.

Erica Bennett [00:23:18]:

Because your heart believes in love and abundance. It does not believe in lack. It does not believe it's me versus you. It believes that everybody gets to win and everybody gets to thrive and that there is enough for everybody. So do the work. Find those triggers, find those inner wounds and start to unwind them. As always, you guys, if you want help on it, there are programs, there is support out there. We have the Instagram subscription.

Erica Bennett [00:23:45]:

You can go live with me every single week and we can talk through your real life problems that are going on. We've got group support programs or there is some one on one coaching slots available. You do not have to do it alone because I get it. It's big, heavy work. It's work a lot of us spend our entire lives avoiding. But if you truly desire to be free, to be free of your emotions controlling your behaviors, to be free of old pains continuing to haunt you, to be free to do whatever you want without the fear of getting hurt again, and it's time to do the heart healing work. So until next week, you guys give yourself grace. Journal out those pains, those traumas, those triggers when they show up.

Erica Bennett [00:24:30]:

And as always, my DM's are open. So if you have any questions, float right in send me a message. Let's chat about it live on the show.

Erica Bennett [00:24:40]:

And that's it. Another great episode of the Crazy Ex Wives Club, a podcast for women learning how to heal from their divorce. Tune in next week for more advice and tips to help you figure out life after divorce. And until then, give yourself grace. Do the best you can and know that this is all part of the process.