Hey there. Welcome back to the podcast. I am Amanda. I am Laura. And I'm Kendra. And today we are going to continue a series, a little mini-series that we're going to do based on the work by Terrence Real. This one specifically is a book club on his book, *Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship*. And so this is where the goal is to be in your significant relationships, an us rather than a you versus me. But if you have been in a significant relationship for any period of time, you've probably noticed that, at times, you versus me takes over. Maybe most of the time, it takes over.
And so how do you identify that? A good clue is when you're starting to feel triggered in your close relationship. Sometimes that indicates that your adaptive child is starting to take over. We did talk about this in the first episode of the series, which I think is number 140. You kind of feel taken over and reactive and wanting to push back. It makes tons of sense. It served you in your childhood. It's how you learned to cope in the best way that you knew at the time. But the problem is the adaptive child, although it served you so well and it was the best way that you could survive at the time, sometimes it's not serving you to live your best life in your adulthood.
And so you end up offending from the victim position. You feel like you're a victim while acting also like an offender. "You hurt me, and so I get to hurt you back twice as much." When our inner child gets triggered, we often act like a child, and so that's a clue too. Like in the eating arena, when you are binging from an emotional place, you're not having carrots, usually.
It's usually child-like foods: ice cream, macaroni and cheese, those sorts of things. So it's really interesting how there are parallels sometimes and how you're reenacting things from a previous time. So each generation acts out of its wounds—you can't help it. Parents pass down a version of their own hurt to their offspring. It's just what they know, and, without work to learn a new way—which I don't think is very automatic to most of us—you do end up passing some of it to the next generation. Hopefully, a lesser version of it, but it makes sense. That was normal in your household.
And so let's start thinking about what your reactive child might be. Where do you go when you're having an off day? This can give you a clue to what your reactive child is like or your dysfunctional state. Do you tend to withdraw? Do you tend to people-please? Do you tend to complain or control or manipulate? And so then, when you start to identify what your default position is, you can start to ask yourself three questions:
1. Who did I see this from?
2. Who did it to me?
3. Who did I do it to, and no one stopped me?
And so I learned to perpetuate this behavior. Yeah, that part is interesting in that we can be falsely empowered by our parents, and we can falsely empower our own kids when we say, "You're a good person" or "You're a good kid," even when they've done something wrong that could have been hurtful. This happens a lot in sports and with parents who are, you know, trying to have tough kids and encourage them to be hard or mean or whatever they need to do. "You've got this; you're better than they are," blah, blah, blah. That's false empowerment because the reality is we're all equal in value.
And when we empower our kids or empower ourselves to think that we are better than other people, we think we're helping. It actually doesn't serve anyone. And in this book, Terry talks about relational trauma, and there's talk about Big T trauma and little t trauma. Big T trauma can be different for everyone.
It's the things that we think about like abuse or substance abuse in the home or somebody actually physically or emotionally harming us. In a way that, if you look at the Adverse Childhood Events scale, you could look down that list, and that is all big trauma—substance abuse in the home, sexual abuse, physical abuse, witnessing physical abuse, those kinds of things.
Little t trauma happens all the time. It's little things where we get our feelings hurt. It can happen every day of our life, and our parents could be good parents and have inflicted a lot of little t trauma without them even knowing it. And we likely do this to our own kids as well.
So the reality is that this most vulnerable part of us, which Terry refers to as our inner child, is still needing nurturing and support. And the only person who can be there for that inner child consistently is us. And so whatever trauma that inner child experienced, whether it be Big T or little t, we have to take responsibility for it and help that inner child heal from it. And it sometimes seems kind of weird talking about different people inside your own head, but as you open your mind to it and just try it, it actually is really, really powerful. So just suspend disbelief for a moment and imagine how we can use our adult selves to help that child heal.
So how do we do that? We become aware of when that inner child shows up, and that's typically when we're triggered. Triggering is when we're really upset about something and sometimes out of proportion to what has happened. If there is something that happens that our brain thinks is similar to a previous trauma, our brain goes on high alert and goes into fight or flight. Our brains are "do not get killed" devices.
They want to keep bad things from happening to us. And so they're going to show up in a protective way. And usually, it is an adaptive inner child who shows up. So whatever mechanism we used as a child to keep ourselves safe, that shows up when we're triggered. So it could be if we grew up knowing that we had to fight back, that can show up.
If we grew up knowing we had to avoid and get away from whatever was going on, that can also show up. So just becoming aware of what happens to us when we feel super stressed like that. And then have some grace—look at it in an objective way and realize that it makes sense. It made 100 percent sense when we were children to behave that way. It was really wise for our young selves to do that, to have protective mechanisms so that we could minimize whatever hurt was happening to us. However, when it shows up in adult relationships, it can be damaging and keep us from what we really want in terms of, like, we really want loving, connected relationships where we feel safe. But when that adaptive child shows up, it can thwart that.
What we can do is tell that child, "We'll take care of you. We will take care of them and protect them and forgive them for whatever harm they caused," and ask them what they need in that moment. What can the wise adult version of ourselves do to help that inner child feel better? And so Terry teaches that real maturity comes when we tend to our inner children ourselves and don't inflict them on our partners to care for. So we're able to help them manage in a way so they don't have to show up. And I know, like, again, this sounds weird talking about different parts of our psyche this way, but try it.
It really is fascinating how accurate he is in approaching it this way. Many therapists work with that innermost vulnerable part. In Internal Family Systems, they call it the exile, and then they have protectors. It's a similar concept. Terry also talks about something called the trauma grid and, very similarly, the relationship grid. Each kind of psychological trauma causes its own predictable type of damage and its own particular adaptation. So, if you can imagine a vertical line—this is like a cross situation where you have self-esteem—and the horizontal line is boundaries. When you have health, health is in the center. That's when we feel safe. We are coming to other people in our lives as equals and we're functioning well.
When we go up on that vertical line, if we were falsely empowered as children, we may have self-esteem that is unrealistically high or inappropriately high. We go "one up" and kind of look down on our partner when we're triggered. This may show up as being judgmental. Or, if we are "one up and to the left"—if we were falsely empowered and abandoned—then, in that left upper corner, we may be avoidant. We may be judgmental. We may look down on our partner and feel like we need to move away from them and avoid them, if that was what our adaptive child did.
That is what we may do if we go "one up and move to the right." This is boundary-less. And that can look like us trying to control people or being demanding or feeling like people owe us things and trying to extract things from our partner rather than just coming to them as equals and making requests. We feel entitled and demanding, and this is kind of a more narcissistic area to be in, where we expect others to do what we want. We’re entitled. This comes from, say—this is where domestic violence would come from. Somebody who feels like they’re owed something and is also feeling "one up."
Yes, absolutely. So, no boundaries here—very intrusive. Right. And that came from being intruded upon themselves and falsely empowered. A lot of times, you know, men and women can do this. But if a man grew up in a home where he saw his father abuse his mother, he may have hated him in that moment but also he is still likely to repeat that behavior because he was falsely empowered and was taught boundary-less behavior. So it’s really fascinating how these early experiences affect how we show up.
Then you have, in the left lower corner—down that axis, down that y-axis or that vertical line—you have disempowerment. And to the left is abandonment. So if you felt disempowered and abandoned, you will show up as someone who is very avoidant, with strong boundaries that are too strong. Kind of like that toxic independence that we’ve talked about in previous podcasts, where we really just don’t want to have anything to do with what’s going on with other people. Oftentimes, we can get depressed in this quadrant and feel kind of resigned to, like, "This relationship is crap and there’s nothing I can do about it."
On that right lower quadrant, we have, to the right, intrusion and, below, disempowerment. So, if you felt intruded upon and felt disempowered, this is like the traditional codependent situation, where your self-esteem is really low and you feel desperate to be loved. Terry calls this "love addict," and you manipulate to try to get love. That boundary-less and one up, and boundary-less and one down, often are paired together, where that person who's one down is trying to craft an environment that will soothe the emotions of the one up person and make them love them.
Anyway, it's just—it’s a very, very fascinating scenario. And there’s a whole spectrum of ways we can show up in all these different quadrants. We may show up a little bit boundary-less and one up, or a little bit walled off and one up, or there can be extremes, you know, like the abuser. If we’re yelling at our kids a lot, we may be boundary-less and one up. That’s just something to notice—that we don’t have to be physically abusive to be boundary-less and one up. If we are just passive-aggressive and looking down our nose at other people’s strong emotions, we may be walled off and one up, and avoidant.
And so the healthy place to be is to be able to be in relationship to other people in a "same as" situation, where we don’t think we’re better than them, we don’t think we’re less than them. We honor their experience. We honor our own experience. And we’re all trying to grow and be better together.
So, it’s a fascinating way to look at relationships and see how our trauma shows up—how whatever kind of trauma we had shows up in our current relationships. Like for me personally, I switch between the left upper and left lower quadrants when I’m not in health. I’ll either be in the left upper quadrant, super judgy, and be like, "How can you be like that? You know? The way you’re doing this is wrong. You just don’t know as much as I do," although I wouldn’t say that out loud—that’s really what’s going on.
And then sometimes I’ll go left lower, where I’m like, "I give up. I can’t. I just don’t feel like I can do that." Interestingly, some of this shows up in our relationship to our careers too. If you look at it, it’s kind of interesting. Sometimes it’s like that dog on the shock plate—that’s down in the left lower quadrant, where you just give up. You don’t care. You feel like there’s nothing really you can do to improve your situation.
It’s very interesting to see—we all do this. We all go one up. We all go one down. Sometimes, in the same conversation or argument with someone, we can be going one up and one down. We can even be in all four of these quadrants at any given time. It’s not like, "I’m always going to be in that left lower quadrant," or "I’m always going to be in the left upper quadrant." It can change.
Becoming aware of our own tendencies will help us to stay more in the center and avoid these maladaptive ways of relating. Because, obviously, when I’m one up and judgy, guess what? Whoever is in a relationship with me at that moment is not going to feel great. There’s not going to be a connection. Just like when somebody is boundary-less around me, I’m going to naturally go back down to the left lower or left upper quadrant and just wall off.
So, the idea is that our relationships are this environment between people. Most commonly, he’s talking about intimate relationships, but it can be with any relationship. There’s an ecosystem between us, and we’re each in charge of taking care of it and helping it to be healthy. And we do that by staying in that center of health and coming to each other as "same as."
When he talks about grandiosity, I used to think about it as, like, narcissists—you know, people who are famous for talking about how great they are. But, actually, anytime we go one up and think that we know better than other people, or that their way of doing things is inferior, we’re being grandiose. So, it’s just interesting. Sometimes what feels natural is actually maladaptive, and we can’t change it and become the healthiest version of ourselves unless we’re aware of it.
So, check out this grid—we’ll put a link to it in the show notes so that you can kind of ponder it. It really does take—and it sometimes takes working with a coach or therapist—to be able to see where you, yourself, go one up or one down, or go boundary-less or walled off. We might not always see it in ourselves because it just feels like, "What? No, I’m living life. This is just who I am." But, actually, it might not just be who you are. It might be trauma responses.
Another thing I would add, in this podcast and the last podcast too—we’ve kind of talked about how you pick up things in your childhood because caregivers weren’t an emotional match with you, blah, blah, blah. I want to just relieve everyone, especially conscientious parents: No one has had a perfect parent. It’s okay. It is not a prerequisite for being a healthy adult.
And it’s also another reason to get really good at repairs because you are going to screw it up. You—there’s no choice. Nobody’s perfect. And so you are going to screw it up. But I think it’s episode number 135 where we talk about how to do repairs with your children. So that, then, maybe they have less of a likelihood to pick up some of these things.
Yeah, that’s good. And just like Elle was talking about how she tends to show up, there are really two ways that we show up in our adaptive child, in accordance with what we experience. So, on this grid, what you experience—you can either react, like in physics: every action causes an equal and opposite reaction. You just resist what you were shown.
So, if your parent was, you know, walled off and one up, then you're going to resist. You're going to go the exact opposite and maybe be boundary-less and one down. In the reaction mode, when we react, that is when our adaptive child—our coping mechanism—is to do the exact opposite of what we experienced. So, if your mom or dad was extremely intrusive, you're going to put up walls, and you're going to show up as walled off. If you were abandoned, and your parents worked too much or weren’t there, then you are going to be intrusive. You're going to show up as someone who is very intrusive, boundary-less, either one up or one down.
So, that's one way that we develop our adaptive child. The other way is modeling. You internalize it, and you actually identify with either parent or either situation. So, if you were modeled intrusion, you identify with intrusion, and you show up as intrusive. Or, if you were modeled abandonment, you identify with that, and that's how you show up.
So, these are two ways, and we've done a podcast before on the losing strategies in a relationship, and this is how they show up. Like we talked about being right—that’s that grandiosity that Laura was just talking about. It may not be as overt as, like, full-blown narcissism, but it is always about being right. "I know more than you. You just need to listen to what I'm saying because I have some expertise here that you might not have." And while you're meaning well, it just might not be received as well.
And then that controlling thing—that controlling the partner. So, that's going to be that false empowerment, and you may be intrusive. Unbridled self-expression—so, boundary-less and one down. When we say one up and one down, it's a pride versus shame thing. So, if you're boundary-less and one down, that's going to breed a lot of shame. And full emotional unbridled self-expression—just really histrionic, and something to where it’s just completely foregoing anybody else's feelings.
Retaliating—that might look more like being walled off, usually walled off and one up. And then withdrawing—obviously walled off and one down. And so these are those losing strategies we talked about in a relationship.
And also, if we've experienced these little traumas—like I said, they may be very subtle, and you experienced them every day in your life and didn’t realize it was a small trauma—you’re showing up as your adaptive child. We all do it. But the problem with it is if we don't do the work to become aware of where we are.
Really, this grid—the relationship grid and the trauma grid—is just trying to give you a spectrum and some language to help you figure out where you are and then maybe set a goal for where you want to be or a direction you’d rather be, and move more towards that center.
Terry Real talks about Pia Mellody a lot—she’s a relationship expert—and she says multi-generational legacies get passed down from one generation to the next through trauma. And so, this is what we've talked about before too. If you have tools that you were given, the likelihood is that you gathered some tools from your own parenting experience or your parents’ parenting experience. They grabbed some tools from their parents’ parenting experience. And so these tools get handed down. While you're doing the best that you can, they are the tools that you have.
And so you're going to show up either identifying with a parenting style or doing the exact opposite. I always think about, like, "My parents didn’t talk to me at all about anything." And I was like, "I’m going to inform my kids. I don’t want them coming back saying, 'Well, I didn’t know about this,' right?" Making a dumb decision because they didn’t have all the information. So, I’m aware that I show up like that. And does that make me an oversharer? I don’t know, maybe. Or does it at least allow my kids to see some of my innermost worries and fears? It might. But, like, I find myself saying, "I am going to give them all the information. I want them to be equipped."
Maybe I wouldn’t have made some of the decisions I made growing up if I’d had more information, right? So, it’s not always a bad thing. But maybe sometimes it can show up a little excessive.
Terry says the only wise adult part of us is the one that really strives for that intimacy. And that’s that wise adult self coming into your prefrontal cortex, like we talk about. It’s when you get triggered. So, that limbic system is like, "Reee, reee, reee," you know, like level 10. And then when you move into your prefrontal cortex, you get to decide.
So, these tools are about learning how to hack that response. When you're triggered and your amygdala is hijacked and full-on emotion is taking over, it's about coming into some tools to help your prefrontal cortex make the decision. And that's really what drives it home—the ability to choose. Yes, you can continue to choose to show up like this, walled off and one up, knowing that it's not working for you. But that's the thing—you get to choose.
Even though you may identify some of these things in your partner, it's up to you now, because you're the one listening to this podcast. Now you have the information. So, it is up to you to start making some different decisions. But what happens is, the child will choose self-protection over the vulnerability of connection every time.
So, that's the constant tug and pull: "Yes, I need better tools. Yes, I want a strong connection." But if you're triggered, unfortunately, that adaptive child is going to want to self-protect every time. The point of this is just being aware.
A lot of this that we’re talking about may be sort of complex and kind of over your head. So, we’ll continue to dive into this book and bring more insights. But just know that your inner child represents the reactive ego state formed at about the age when your "trauma" occurred. Whether it was one-time Big T trauma or 365 little traumas, your inner child is like a form of arrested development.
That is the age of the child that shows up when you're triggered. And knowing that makes complete sense when you think back, like, "Oh, now I see why I show up this way." You may not remember the actual Big T trauma or the details of the little t trauma from every day. But it’s going to get relived through experiences now as an adult. You may not remember the actual day you were abused, but you are triggered by being yelled at. Or you’re triggered by an experience with someone who was boundary-less and one up, right? And so that’s what gets triggered, and that’s what gets relived in your adulthood.
That’s kind of the difference between going to therapy and coaching. Therapy is going to help you remember where that was and help you work through that trauma response. Coaching meets you where you are now and says, "Okay, where do you want to be? How do you want to move toward that center, that state of health? Let’s keep you moving forward."
Another thing is that society, unfortunately, does not support our wise adult. It actually supports our adaptive child, which moves us away from intimacy. We’ve said this in multiple podcasts—Western society, by default, has adopted an individualistic bias, which moves us away from relationships.
What we want is to move into connection and community. Why? Because, as we’ve talked about in multiple podcasts, it beats back loneliness. It actually prolongs your life. It increases longevity, decreases stress, helps you sleep better, and helps you make better choices. There are so many benefits.
But we’re going counter-culture. And so that is going to take some work and intentionality because everything we’re being fed through mainstream media is individualistic bias. So, we really, really have to be intentional about countering that. About saying, "Okay, I appreciate what the world says, but I actually know where I want to go and how I want to show up."
And so it’s just going to take some intentionality and a little bit of work. But once you become aware, man, that threshold really lowers, and you start to recognize it. It does get easier. You have to be intentional. You have to remind yourself. It does get easier.
Hopefully, like we said, this episode was a little convoluted and a lot to throw at you, but it really is about first steps: recognizing, "Okay, yeah, it was actually a bunch of little t trauma," or, "Actually, I didn’t even get out of middle school before I basically developed my inner child and my adaptive child." Just having that awareness really allows you to understand more.
And then, like we say, we’re problem solvers. We always want to find a way to solve a problem. But just knowing that this may not be a "problem"—there just may be a better way or another option to show up.
We hope you gained at least one or two takeaways from this podcast today. If you did, tell us about it! We’d love for you to email us at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) and let us know. We love to share experiences, and we’d love to hear what you’re going through. It might even lead to a future podcast episode.
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