Do you feel like you’re overworking without feeling satisfied? Do you have difficulty accepting praise or compliments? Do you suffer from perfectionism? Do you have trouble asserting yourself with your clients?
If you’re nodding your head yes, then today’s episode is for you!
We are exploring how your inner child might be influencing your business decisions and how to change it.
Prefer the audio? Listen here.
What It Looks Like When the Inner Child Is Running Your Work Life
Overworking Without Feeling Satisfied
If you have a childhood wound of worthiness, abandonment, or rejection, the fear of not being enough creates a workplace phenomenon in which we overwork and overdeliver. I definitely suffered from this when I was younger. You can start by asking yourself, how much of the time do you do more than what is required of you or more than you agreed to? That can be leftover from childhood wounding.
Seeking Approval Through Achievements
We’re looking to quench that underlying need to be seen. In my case, because of my own father wound, I needed to prove myself. I believed my father wished I had been born a boy, which led me to overcompensate by over-delivering and over-functioning. Seeking approval through achievement eventually became tiresome and unsatisfying. There comes a point where you just want to be accepted for who you are.
Using Perfectionism to Protect Yourself
Using perfectionism to protect yourself from criticism or rejection is also exhausting because there is no perfection. It doesn’t exist. Many of us suffer from this, and it can really suck the joy out of life. The irony is that it doesn’t actually protect you, either.
Success Never Feels Good Enough
When the inner child is running the show, even great success itself, even when you’re really successful, it doesn’t feel the way you want it to feel. It’s like we have our own moving goalposts where you never seem to make it.
Sometimes I still suffer from this. I see this in my husband as well, and of course, we’ve both had lots of years of therapy, and we’ve been working on these things, but there’s still a tendency to, even when you’re successful, to feel like you need to do more.
I know when I’m striving in that way because it’s more of a grind. It’s different when I’m in a flow, and I’m feeling good about what I’m doing, and I’m feeling masterful, and I know what I’m doing, it’s not a grind, it’s a joy. It’s something I’m psyched to be doing.
When I was grinding for approval, even when I was in entertainment, when I was a talent agent, the energy that went along with that, even when I was negotiating a big contract and getting a big deal and felt like I had done a great job for the client, there would still be that achievement high that would come, but it wouldn’t last. The problem when the inner child is running the show is that you’re only as good as your last big deal.
When you create more self-worth that is actually sourced from you and not just from doing or achievements or other people’s approval, you don’t need that kind of success. You can still want to be successful, but you’re not driven by this vortex, this emptiness, this longing. No amount of working can fill the hole that only self-love and self-validation can fill.
People-Pleasing Patterns in Professional Relationships
I recently had someone in my mastermind talking about a relationship with a very important vendor in her life, someone who gave her a lot of business but was really inappropriate and had bad boundaries. He would call her off hours and all of this stuff. She’d been working with this guy for years and was really sick of it.
We played out the worst-case scenario. What happens if you say something to Larry and then Larry takes all his business away? Will you be okay? And the answer was yes. So we’re like, okay, so that’s your answer. Because continuing to put up with what felt to her like inappropriate comments, those types of things that she had gotten too healthy for, she couldn’t tolerate it anymore.
When she had a very small conversation with him, it completely transformed their relationship. Listen, he could just as easily have been a jerk about it and said, oh, you don’t like that, you’re a snowflake. But he didn’t. He said, Oh, do you think we should have a more professional relationship? And all she said was, yes, please. And that changed.
The point is you can change. It’s not their job to decode us. It’s our job to give them a clue so that we’re in relationships where people respect our boundaries. When you’re a people pleaser, you’re never asserting your boundaries enough. And just that alone obviously has already changed the quality of her life.
Money Scripts from Childhood
Do you have money scripts from childhood that impact how you’re pricing your goods or services? If we have unhealed childhood wounds, we can carry that.
Especially if you grew up in poverty or where money was erratic, sometimes your family had it, sometimes you didn’t. That can be really hard to shake unless you do it on purpose, because for kids, food or financial insecurity can hit deep, and it often doesn’t go away.
I see with my husband, his mother survived a Russian prison camp after the war, where she was starved. Even though he always had food growing up, that secondary trauma shows up. You will never run out of anything at my house. The little kid in him is running the food shopping.
Fear of Taking Up Space
This is the fear of being too much. I see it with clients with unhealed childhood wounds, especially if they came from a family with someone who was scary, erratic, or a bully. They don’t want to be too visible. But if you’re smart, if you’re accomplished, it can be an inner conflict because there is a part of you, the healthy part, that does want to be visible. This is often normal and natural.
Imposter Syndrome
Unhealed wounds about belonging and competence can lead to imposter syndrome. Having some imposter syndrome is normal. Getting a new job, you may feel like, wow, am I really up to this? That’s normal. If you feel it all the time, a pervasive fear of being found out, that’s when the inner child is running the show.
How to Reparent Yourself in Business
If you identified with any of these things, you have to reparent yourself in business and in life.
What does that look like? That means self-consideration, taking yourself into consideration in your life for everything. Rest when you’re tired, nourish yourself with good food, care how you feel, and have good boundaries with the people in your life in business.
I want you to make a whole list of where from this list that I’ve been talking about, where do you feel like the inner child is running the show in what areas, and what would reparenting look like.
Sometimes it’s just reassuring ourselves. I feel like even though I’ve had a lot of success in my life when it comes to professionally interacting in these higher education-type places, I feel a little bit like I have imposter syndrome, and I get worried. I’m not worried about what you guys think because I know what you think. I feel like what I’m putting out is helping you. So that’s what I care about.
But if I’m in a professional situation, sometimes I’ll feel a little bit like, oh, I wonder if my colleagues think I’m a hack. You know what I mean? It’s momentary. But I will soothe myself. I will say, Terri, relax. Of course not. Nobody’s judging. People aren’t even thinking about you. Don’t worry about it. I’ll say things, but in a soothing way rather than, why are you thinking that? Don’t be an idiot, in a way that having a father wound, my father didn’t do, and couldn’t do.
When reparenting in business, you have to identify the areas where the inner child is running your work life. And then that is where you start to put your reparenting efforts, really doubling down on it.
When you write down this inventory of where you think your inner child might be running the show in your business life, it will help you be able to recognize when these childhood patterns are driving your decisions. We don’t want a seven-year-old making decisions about our budget for next year, because that does not make any sense.
As you build your business or build your career, continually integrate healing work, because at every level of success that you reach, you will have other comfort zones to reach out of. The things I’m doing now, at one point 20 years ago, this was a dream. We have to think about how far we’ve come. When the child’s in charge, it’s like the little kid forgets all of that and just feels afraid.
To get the guide and everything I just talked about, click here. I want to hear from you. Can you pinpoint the areas of your work life where the little kid might still be running the show? Drop me a comment.
I hope that this gave you an aha moment or some kind of epiphany that will help you lessen your own suffering and elevate your own joy. And as always, my friends, take care of you.
4 FAQ Questions
Q: Why do I overwork but never feel satisfied with my success?
If you have a childhood wound of worthiness, abandonment, or rejection, this fear of not being enough as a child creates a phenomenon at work where we overwork and overdeliver. If you don’t feel accepted and valued in childhood, if there was neglect or criticism, your sense of self can get skewed. You may not have an accurate sense of self, so you might overwork because you don’t feel like you are enough. The problem when the inner child is running the show is that you’re only as good as your last big deal. When you create more self-worth that’s sourced from you and not just from achievements or other people’s approval, you don’t need that kind of success. No amount of working can fill the hole that only self-love and self-validation can fill.
Q: How does childhood trauma affect my ability to run a business?
Childhood wounds show up in multiple ways in your business life. You might be overworking without feeling satisfied, using perfectionism to protect yourself from criticism, having people-pleasing patterns in professional relationships, struggling with money scripts from childhood that affect how you price your services, fearing taking up space or being too visible, or experiencing pervasive imposter syndrome. These are all signs that your inner child is running your business decisions. The work involves identifying where the inner child is running the show in your work life and then starting to reparent yourself by offering self-consideration, rest, nourishment, and good boundaries.
Q: Why do I keep seeking approval through my achievements at work?
You’re looking to quench that underlying need to be seen that may not have been met in childhood. Because of childhood wounds like father wounds or not feeling good enough, you might over-deliver and over-function constantly. You can heal from these things, but those tendencies can persist even after years of therapy. Seeking approval through achievement can be really tiresome because you might just want to be accepted for who you are. When you’re grinding for approval, even when negotiating big deals or achieving success, there’s an achievement high that comes, but it doesn’t last. The shift happens when you create self-worth that’s sourced from you, not just from doing or other people’s approval.
Q: How do I reparent my inner child in my business life?
Reparenting means self-consideration and taking yourself into consideration for everything. Rest when you’re tired, nourish yourself with good food, care how you feel, and have good boundaries with people in your business life. Make a list of where the inner child is running the show in your work life and what reparenting would look like in those areas. Sometimes it’s just reassuring yourself in a soothing way rather than being critical. You have to identify the areas where the inner child is running your work life and then double down on your reparenting efforts
