Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kaggy Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt.

If you speak up and you say what you want and what you don't want,

you cannot expect in the same time that everybody agrees with you.

My guest today is Stephanie Stahl, a clinical psychologist from Germany and the author of more than 10 books, including

The Child in You, The Breakthrough Method for Bringing Out Your Authentic Self, which came out in the

UK in early 2021.

Now for those of you who aren't familiar with Shadow or Inner Child Work,

it is a psychological term that centers around your learnt behavior

triggers and traumas from childhood, the negative imprints, if you will,

which we often internalise and they can hold us back in adulthood, unconsciously shaping

and determining who we become.

For instance, if a person's need for connection was denied as a child,

this can result in the belief that I'm alone.

They may grow up to be clingy in relationships or protect themselves by avoiding close relationships altogether.

These coping mechanisms or self-preservation strategies we pick up in childhood serve a purpose,

and it's important as a caveat to say that.

But as we become adults, they can become counterproductive or counterintuitive and like I said often hold us back

But we often lack the awareness to know when the child is actually at play, when the child is the one that's grabbed the steering wheel.

So to help us understand the inner child, Stephanie uses the concepts of the shadow child,

which is our negative beliefs and emotions and our son child are more positive beliefs.

Stephanie's work really helps you acquire useful new techniques on how we can differentiate

between the child within and our adult selves. I wanted to speak to Stephanie because

...