#022: A Quick and Simple Healing Exercise

If you could go back in time and have a conversation with the younger version of you, what would you say?

So often, those of us from broken homes are never asked how we feel about it all. Nobody asks how it has affected us. Never having a chance to speak, we bottle it up inside.

In this episode, you’ll learn a powerful yet simple exercise that’ll give you the chance to speak to the little version of yourself. If you give it a shot:

• It may bring up a lot of raw emotions

• It’ll bring healing and relief

• It may even open parts of your heart that you’ve closed for years

• Best of all, it’s simple and doesn’t take long at all

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

If you could go back in time and have a conversation with a little version of you, what would you say? Something that's really common for people whose parents are separated or divorced is that nobody really asks us about how we feel. Nobody really asks us how it all affected us. And nobody really cares for us in that way.

And I think of Erin in episode 16, she shared her story about, you know, all of her friends, her family, and even her teachers knew. About her parents' separation, but everyone kind of acted like it wasn't a big deal. Everyone acted like it was normal, even though she was really hurting because of it. And so it made her feel like something was wrong with her.

And that is so common. And the result often is that we just bottle those feelings up inside. We just keep them hidden. We have no outlet for them, even though we're dying to be heard, to be seen for someone to just validate our pain and listen to us. Now, of course you can't go back in time, but what if I told you, there's a way for you to kind of talk with.

The little version of you to have a self dialogue with that younger version of yourself. And I'm not talking about some bizarre self-help crystals thing. No, there's lots of weird stuff out there. We don't condone any of that. I'm just talking about a simple, psychological exercise that I learned from a counselor that I know that'll help.

You kind of have an imaginary dialogue with that little. Version of yourself. And I know some of you may be thinking how that's not like me. I don't do stuff like that, but please give this a shot, give it a shot. I did it. And it made me cry. And I'm not someone who really cries easily. It was just so helpful.

And it just got to the core of so many of my wounds over the years. Now if you do it, I think you'll find that it's surprisingly healing. That'll bring a lot of relief because you're giving the little, you a chance to speak out in a way that maybe you were never even able to do. And it may even open parts of your heart that you just had closed off for years even.

And you might even find that this exercise comes some of those really intense emotions that you feel like anger, because those difficult emotions that we deal with. Are intimately connected to the wounds that we sustained over the years. And really the best part of the exercise is that it's simple to do.

It's not complicated and it doesn't take long at all. It could be as simple as 20 minutes or as long as you really want it to go. So if you wanna give this a shot, if you think this will be useful to you, keep listening.

Welcome to the ReSTOR podcast, helping you cope, heal, and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce or separation. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 22 and it's kind of a mini episode where it's not gonna be long at all. And we're taking a break from our love and relationship series to bring you this really quick and simple exercise to help you.

So let's dive right in. What you're gonna need is a pen and paper. Uh, you can grab your journal if you wanna use that instead. Totally fine. And then just go to a private place. And there's three steps to this exercise. I'll go through each of them more in depth, and then I'll repeat them at the end so that you know what you're doing the first step with your dominant hand.

So if you're righty, that will be your right hand. Write a question. That the little, you needed to be asked to care for his or for her heart. So a question that you really wish someone would've asked you when you were younger and these are open ended questions. This is an exercise of the heart. It's not an exercise of the mind.

And so just open ended questions. Again, you're directing these questions to the little version of you at the time your parents separated or divorced, or really any other point in your life that was difficult for you, especially at a time where nobody really asked you how you were doing and you bottled up a lot inside for me, that was when I was 11 years old.

That was when my parents separated lot, a lot of difficult things happen around that time. And it was certainly a time where. I felt like I didn't really have a voice. And so in my exercise, some questions I asked to that 11 year old Joey was, how does all this make you feel? You know, what do you wanna say to dad?

If you really could have no filter? What would you say? Uh, what would you wanna say to mom? If you took away the filter. When you're writing all this right in the present tense go where it leads you. It's a dialogue between you and the little version of you, just like any other conversation. So just go where it takes you.

And I recommend I'll cover this more in a second, but I recommend doing one, uh, question at a time and then doing the, the rest of the exercise and then getting into another question. So that's step number one, using your dominant hand. Again, you're writing a question. The little you needed to be asked to care for his or for her heart.

So step number two, using your nondominant hand. Uh, for me, that's my left hand, cuz I'm all righty. Answer that question. That first question that you wrote down as the little, you and guys, no filter, no filter. Be blunt, be super, super blunt. Don't hold anything back. Think back to how you felt in that moment or on that time and speak from that emotion.

And if you have to swear, if you have to curse, do it. Okay. Just be super, super blunt, be raw with your emotion, with your words. And one thing that the counselor, I learned this from said, you may need that older version of you to encourage the younger version of you to really open up and to get it all out.

So you might need to give the younger version of you permission to, to speak freely. So that's set member two. All right. Using your nondominant hand, your an gonna answer that question that you wrote and step number one, and then step number three. Is go again back to your dominant hand. So for me, Maite, and just respond and affirm the little you affirm the younger version of yourself and whatever you said, empathize with them, tell him, or heard that, that you get it right.

You know, that it hurts, you know, it sucks and tell them. You know, if you wanna relate with them, you can say how you feel today about that thing as well. And keep in mind this isn't a performance. In fact, nobody's ever gonna see this. This is just for you. So feel free to, you know, write in whatever way you want.

You're not gonna be graded. Your grammar doesn't matter. So that's step number three. You're gonna respond to the little version of you and what this looks like on paper. So imagine a piece of paper. What I would do is you write one question down on one line, and then on the next line, you start to answer it and you can go for as many lines as you need.

And then once you're done with that answer, then you go to the response on another line and you can use as many lines as you need with that. And so it's just this back and forth. Dialogue and, you know, once you've done the question and then the answer, and then the response, you can start over again and ask another question and just go back and forth.

And I recommend doing this for at least 20 minutes. Uh, you can do more time too, but don't feel like you have to, uh, if you get to a point where you feel like you've just had enough. You're ready to stop, then just stop. That's okay. It took me about 45 minutes to, to do all this. I really dug into it and thought pretty deeply about it, but by the end I was done.

I was ready to, to put this away, cuz it had been pretty emotional for me. And to keep in mind that you can always do this again in the future. So don't feel like you need to get everything out right now. And also if there's a particular question or a topic that's just too much for you to handle, right.

It's too raw. Then answer another question or talk about another topic. That's totally okay. Sometimes our emotions are just too raw to, to handle in the moment, especially when we're doing something like this on our own. And so just to review quickly, step number one, using your dominant hand, just. A question that the little you needed to be asked to care for his or for her heart.

And then with your non-dominant hand, step number two is answering that question as the little you and lastly, step number three, using your dominant hand. You're gonna respond with empathy with affirmation and with love to the younger version of yourself. So again, it's question, answer response, repeat as much as you want.

So my challenge to you is simply to do this, make time to do it either when this episode ends, or if you're in a spot where you can't do this right now, put something on your calendar with an alert so that you go back to this later and really do it. And when you're done with this, something that could be really good is talking with someone about the exercise and talking about the topics that came up.

You can do that with a mentor, with a friend or a counselor, and there's no pressure to do this, but if you want to, you can come into resort's online community to talk about this. And it's really simple to join. And again, no pressure. You don't have to. I'm just throwing this out there as an option. If this would be helpful to you, uh, there's three steps to, to join first, go to restored ministry.com.

Slash community again, that's restored ministry. Ministry's just singular.com/community. You're gonna fill out a quick form and then, uh, we'll add you to the Facebook group. That's about it. And once you, you can create a post and just talk about this exercise. You can say, Hey, you know, I did the exercise from episode 22 and I just wanted to talk to someone about it.

And everyone in the group is just so. Empathetic and just wants to listen and support you. So we'd be more than happy to, to have you in our community. If you want to. Thank you so much for listening. I hope this was helpful. Hope it was useful. We are dedicated at restored to bringing you practical advice and tools like this exercise to help you cope, heal, and grow from the trauma, your parents divorce a separation.

So you can feel whole again. So this. Exactly in with our mission. So I was so excited to, to bring this to guys. I hope it was helpful for you. And if it was useful, I just wanna ask you, would you leave us a review on apple podcast? We love to, to see your reviews, just to hear what you think about this podcast.

You know, maybe something we can be doing better, anything at all. Tho those reviews really help us, not only to get that feedback and improve or know that we're on the right track, but also it gives us more visibility in the podcasting apps. And please share this episode with someone that you know, who could use.

Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.