Episode 13: Soothing the Inner-Toddler

One Heart One Mind

Thomas McConkie

Meditation, Spirituality, Mindfulness, Contemplation, Psychology, Buddhism, Development, Thomasmcconkie, Religion & Spirituality

5 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When we are children, we get upset countless times a day. If we don’t get to play with the toy we want, if we don’t get to have a sugary snack on demand, we cry, we protest, we pout, we mope. In these moments, we need soothing from our caregivers to help our bodies reset. It turns out, we’re not so different as adults. We also get upset many times a day. The difference is that as adults, we often disconnect from the body through various avoidance strategies rather than just hold our “inner-toddler” through the pain. But we can change! We can learn to hold ourselves, to soothe ourselves during these emotional storms. And when the storm breaks, which it always does, we find a new degree of mastery over ourselves and all of life.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to another episode of Mindfulness Plus.
0:07.0	I'm your host Thomas Mekonky. Thanks so much for listening today.
0:12.0	I have been observing my three-year-old very closely for the last three years.
0:19.0	And he's teaching me a lot of things, and I got, I think, a good one here for you.
0:24.3	It's related to the way we develop as human beings, which is an interest of ours on Mindfulness Plus.
0:30.9	And it's also a great opportunity for a contemplative practice that I'll share with you after just a little bit of
0:38.4	storytelling here. Starting with as early as this morning, I've been out of town and I hadn't
0:46.3	seen my son for a few days. I came back and he was excited to see me. It was so sweet. 6.30
0:54.0	in the morning. He loves to go into the living room, play with all his toys.
0:58.0	We go into the living room and he says, I want to build a tunnel, Papa.
1:03.0	And what that used to mean was, you know, we get the cushions and we stack them in a way that he can crawl through them.
1:10.0	And I build this cushion, kind of put cushion tunnel and set it up, and he immediately
1:16.0	gets really upset.
1:17.5	And he, you know, starts to kind of cry and whine and like, no, that's not what I'm saying.
1:22.1	That's not what I meant.
1:23.1	And I'm totally confused because we do the tunnel thing all the time.
1:28.7	He is a bit inconsolable in that moment.
1:32.7	He couldn't hit reset.
1:33.9	He couldn't explain to me what kind of tunnel he meant.
1:36.4	He just was kind of having a breakdown.
1:39.5	You know, I'd just seen him.
1:40.5	I hadn't seen him in a few days.
	...

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