Welcome to the closed the chapter podcast. I am Kristin Boice, a licensed marriage and family therapist with a private practice pathways to healing counseling through conversations, education strategies and shared stories. We will be closing the chapter on all the thoughts, feelings, people and circumstances that don't serve you anymore and open the door to possibilities and the real you you won't want to miss an episode so be sure to subscribe. Welcome to this week's close the chapter podcast. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey of self discovery, empowerment, transformation and healing. I am hopeful and prayerful that this podcast is one that makes a huge difference for you in your life that helps you to look at the world and yourself differently that expand you. That opens you up to look at things just in a whole different light than you might have before.

Those are the podcast that I love to listen to is they help me look at things in a way that I never did before and they challenge me to deconstruct my beliefs, emotions and kind of where they come from. How did I get to be who I am, what is the conditioned me versus what is the authentic Real me. So we are on this path together and I cannot thank you enough for rating and reviewing and subscribing to the podcast. I love it when you tag me on social at kristen de Boice on instagram and facebook, I love that it helps me know that this is landing and impactful for you and we're in this together that we're building a community of people that want to do this work, this deeper work that is liberating and lead you to freedom and finding out who you really are.

A lot of people come into therapy and they're like, I don't even know who I am, I'm like that's okay because we're going to find out, we're going to take a look and connect to how you really feel and work on your defense mechanisms, your emotions and deciphering. Is that really your belief or someone else's belief that you just ingested and that's what we're gonna be talking about today. We're gonna be talking about what what has been coined by Freud is introductions and I'm going to try to take this concept and make it more digestible and invite you into some other ways to explore your own belief systems in ways that you show up that you might not have looked at before. So I really encourage you to get a pen and paper out as I'm going to give you some key prompting questions that are going to be important for you to explore and go back to on a continual basis because a lot of what we have, we believe we were maybe told implicitly directly and then, which is explicitly directly and then implicitly might be just how the look you are given or how you were verbally or nonverbally given information and so we want to look at this because it impacts how you're showing up in your relationships and how you feel about yourself.

These are really important, unconscious components to doing your own work. And each day I'm looking at, where did this belief come from? Is this my belief? Is this a belief I just absorbed? Is this a way that I saw my parents show up in a relationship? Perhaps you haven't had a healthy model of what a relationship looks like with yourself or someone else and you're unconsciously recreating it, which we don't want to do. We don't wanna we don't wanna unconsciously recreate a a way that didn't work for you of showing up and then you're repeating that pattern. So let's dive into what is an interject exactly because if we don't understand that, this is going to kind of be way too much information and I don't want that to be, I want this to be digestible for you. I think it's important to understand the difference between intra ejection and projection. I did an episode on projection.

Go back and find that you can just type in projection and search that in itunes and it will come up so close the chapter projection. You'll definitely want to listen to that one as well because we do a lot of projecting onto other people what we think they feel. Believe those are a lot of shame stories. Interjection is the opposite of projection. Where projection occurs when a person projects feelings or characteristics onto another person introduction, which is common among between Children and parents occurs when a person internalizes the beliefs of other people. A child might take on elements of a parent's personality or beliefs by adopting their political ideology. Concept of right or wrong. Yeah. Ideas about sex, the way you should function in a relationship, how you need to look at work clay. Those are all introductions.

When people interject, they identify with a person or an object so strongly that they cannot separate that personal object from themselves. Well, everyone learns from the external world and takes on elements of other people's beliefs and ideas. Introduction occurs with minimal thought. So as somebody who adopts her, his or her friend views after they've been carefully explained or considered is not introducing acting. You're actually thinking through what the other person is saying and you're deciding how you feel about that or what you believe. But a child who reflectively adopts a parent's views without thought can be said to be in trajectory. So if you run into a child and this happened in my with my daughter or one of my daughters said someone in their class said that emotions are for a week for the week that it's a weakness to show emotion.

And she asked, where did you hear that? And the child said my parents that would be an introduction, he got the message that it's not okay to have feelings and that's weak and the parents probably got that same message and so on and so forth. It was probably passed down generationally and it doesn't make the parents right or wrong, good or bad. It just shows how important our own work is to transformation of generational trauma. And so that was the belief that it was weak and not okay to show emotion. That would be a great example of an introduction because introductions involve attitudes, behaviors, emotions and perceptions that are usually obtained from influential or authority of people in one's life. It doesn't always have to be a parent. They are neither digested or analyzed. This is really important.

They are neither digested or analyzed. Children absorb, They don't have the prefrontal cortex fully developed until 25 research indicates now which is the part of the brain as critical thinking, rational thought helps us self regulate. They are simply adopted as part of one's personality as concepts that are one considers it should be believed or behaviors that one thinks ought to be followed. Introductions do not involve an individual's personal integrity or morality. So it's really important when we look at introductions, they're so subtle and their splits, they're split. They're splits from our authentic self. We don't even know. We're splitting off. We want to belong to the family system, we want love, we want to feel safe and secure in that system. So we unconsciously absorb the parents personality characteristics, their belief systems, what they consider right wrong, good, bad without even digesting it, but that means without processing it without looking at it from different angles and asking yourself, do I really believe this?

Does this make sense to me? Were little Children? We don't even know we believe that to be true. And I'm seeing this very strongly right now in the world where Children are coming to school at very right, wrong, good, bad, all nothing. There's not an end in a both. So I can love and care about you and we don't have to believe the same things. I can hold both. And when a parent or a caregiver or a teacher or coach, it doesn't matter whom that has influence in your life, a pastor, a preacher that can't hold both. The child doesn't learn that it's okay to hold both. The child doesn't learn that it's okay for me to love you and we can disagree. It's okay that I can accept you for who you are and I can be who I am? And it's okay that we're different. We did not get the option. Oftentimes as Children to say, what do you believe? How do you feel?

Do you agree with that or not? And even if it's an intellectual debate. So some families love to debate. There's still an underpinning of right wrong, good, bad in it. They're still okay. You can have that. But that's wrong. So in my husband's family system. This is very interesting in their wonderful people. This isn't to pick on them. They literally will say out loud, that's wrong. But okay, that's wrong. That will be the words coming out of their mouth. That's wrong. But okay. It's not really okay. It's sort of OK. And you believe that it's a judgment that that is wrong and there's a right and a wrong and there's and what I'm going to debate whether it's right or wrong. The point being is then we in order to have connection and belonging, the child would then feel like, well, I don't want to be wrong. I don't want to be bad. The interpreters that I am bad. If I'm wrong, that's bad.

I want connection in the family system. So I go along with it. I don't even know if I even a thought to think something differently oftentimes and that's taken into adulthood. This is what I see in relationships coming up now and then they get into these relationships where it's the same feeling that they just unconsciously didn't even realize that. Mhm. Let's say they weren't allowed to feel emotion that that was wrong and weak. And guess what happens. It's maladaptive in a relationship because the partner once emotional connection, they need emotional connection that's healthy and all relationships to have emotional connection if I split off from those emotions and that was deemed wrong or bad. I have a hard time then showing up emotionally in a relationship and what does this partner want more than anything emotional availability. So in couples therapy and then working with one that is feeling anxious and anxious attachment, one that feels very avoidant attachment and they come together and meet because that was how their family systems weren't ran and now you've got the anxious attachment person wanting emotional connection and the avoidant attachment person just wants to keep the peace and isn't connecting to emotion because then it can upset the apple cart and they don't learn how to connect.

They've Intra jek did concepts, we've interjected personality traits from from parents and that's some people's worst fears. I'm going to end up like my mother or my father or my adoptive mother or father, whoever it is, they're afraid they're going to turn out to be that person. And what I want to say is you are not going to be that person because you're doing this deeper work to explore. Is that your authentic self or is that a conditioned part of you? Is that an interjected part of you that unconsciously got placed on you that you never really explored because it wasn't safe enough to explore. So those are really important how a person's environment affects how you will function in the world. So if you saw a very disconnected marriage and you get married and you have a very disconnected marriage, it might not feel, it might not feel so different until you start doing your own work and you start integrating parts of yourself.

You start exploring where did this belief come from? You start exploring is this really my authentic self or my condition self? And then you start growing and evolving and what happens is the person you married was at the same developmental level you were and then you start doing a whole bunch of work and the other person doesn't, this isn't making judgment on any part. I'm just saying the reality then is you're feeling lonely and disconnected because you want that person to grow along with you. Yes your you don't want to go along with how it functioned in the family system you grew up in, you want to you want a different healthier system and so you start doing your own work and you want your partner to do their own work and so share this with your partner, this is the case or a family member. Because when you all decide which is my last podcast on radical ownership that you're going to do this work. You create the life you want. Is it hard at times? Absolutely. You can't go back then once you start this growth journey you start deconstructing.

Where did that belief come from? How did I show up in this relationship? Oh I married someone at the same developmental level. Oh I picked a partner that had the same characteristics as my parental caregivers. That's all dr Harville Hendrix theory the imago which I'm also trained in imago therapy highly recommend as a part of couples modality imago therapy, you can look that up. I'm not going to do a whole episode today on that, but we're looking at introductions and how those introductions impact you today. They do they impact how you feel. So let's continue on on how the environment impacts how you feel. So a person may absorb the characteristics or attitudes of subjects in your immediate surroundings as a child, while caregivers are usually the first people whose attitudes a young child may adopt the moral code and behaviors of teachers and peers may also significantly influence a child's value system.

These influences may conflict with the values that caregivers wish to promote at home and they be particularly strong in the period before the child learns to self govern and develop individual beliefs and personality. So let's say you're getting conflicting messages, one in the school system, one at church, one at home, you'll start feeling very confused. It'll start being very confusing and you want to conform to the home life because you want connection with your parents even if it wasn't a healthy environment. So Freud really characterized. Introduction is a mature defense mechanism and really what we've now as a as mental health professionals have really learned about interjections. Is that their protective strategy If you really think about it. If you're believing in internalizing without. Great. This isn't conscious. Again, the parents personality or beliefs, you're coping with the unavailable parent, you're coping with the disconnection.

You feel you're trying to cope with this unavailable parent potentially. So by unconsciously unconsciously absorbing the characteristics of your parents, the Children reassure themselves that some aspect of the parent is present even if the parent is physically absent. So let's say you absorb some good characteristics of your parents. So introductions aren't always I don't like the word always good, bad. We can have some positive introductions from our parents. Let's say you have a very empathic parent. You have a very compassionate parent that those can be very helpful in creating healthy relationships. And those are characteristics that don't feel threatening. They feel empowering. They feel helpful to you. Those are characteristics that might help you in your life. Let's say let's look at some of the negative impacts of introductions which I see a lot of as well.

Those are if you're consistently negatively parented bye criticisms what you're doing wrong, shame, they're shaming you and shame turns into him bad. It was my fault because I caused this Children often will say that and it's like let's and they don't know that that's their parents trauma, that that comes from their parents unmet needs and so you may constantly feel worthless, Incompetent, guilty, unable to freely express emotion. Find it difficult to identify our your sense of self, you don't even know who you are. So you may lose confidence, you may be self critical because interjection May lead individuals to pain or or intern eight amount of attention to the beliefs of others rather than their own personal needs because that was threatening to the system.

If you think about it in order to maintain relationships, you couldn't go outside and have a different thought or belief because that would have been threatening to the system you belonging to the system. And so oftentimes introduction may lead individuals to pay pay close amount of attention to what someone else says. So some teenagers may focus entirely on upholding parental beliefs of the filling expectations rather than making their own decisions about the future. You'll see this a lot because it's too threatening to have the disapproval, the judgment of a parent, the shaming from the parent. So they'll just be like, okay, I'm just going to go along with this because it's too painful to have the parent judging and shaming their beliefs or their decision. A person in a relationship may internalize the other partners, comments about appearance and behavior and begin to act in that manner. They split off from their authentic self and then it can be a part of a negative cycle of abuse.

Also, a person in an abusive relationship, for example, might begin to believe the claims of a partner who is abusive and internalized feelings of worthlessness or failure. In some cases, the person might interject the abusers personality so strongly that the victim then becomes an abuser. I've seen this happen in generational trauma and this is where it's so important to have the support of a good trauma therapist, an E. M. D. R. Or brain spotting trained therapist that does deeper work. Because what we're doing is we're looking at deconstructing where did this belief come from? And we start looking at the emotional trigger. So here's what I want you to write down when you're triggered. You're going to look at what are you believing about yourself? So for example, I might, if I am triggered by uh one of my Children, let's say they're not triggering me.

It's a trigger inside of me that that's the distinction I want to make. They're not doing it? We think they are. It's a trigger inside of me that was already there. So if we are getting ready and we're running late, that's a trigger for me. That is a belief that running late is rude running late. I'm worried about what the other people think. I'm worried we're gonna miss something. I'm worried that it's gonna be too late. Whatever the fear is. Okay, I need to look at, when did that belief about running late begin that my parents were divorced and when I deconstructed it. I looked at, oh, when we were were they had joint custody and we went every other day sometimes back and forth to houses and we had to drive to school then. Mhm. And it was stressful because I remember there was traffic and my parents would get upset or triggered one time we had a flat tire on the side of the road and we were late then to school and that anxiety that fear being late.

So I had to do a lot of deeper deconstruction work on where did this come from? And my parents anxiety about being late definitely played a role. Their parents anxiety about being late and so on and so forth. And this isn't to blame my parents at all. This is to help me understand why is this a trigger and take responsibility for the trigger? So when I looked at the introduction, the introduction was how my parents reacted to being late. I was I was just internalizing their same reaction without taking a look at my own reactivity. So where did this come from? This trigger point? Right. Where did the belief about even being late? So I had to look at the messages I got about being late again, not to blame anybody to go, oh okay, how can I now deal with that? So what is the emotion? I feel fear? Sometimes I can that fear can look like anger or intensity or discussed when really I'm afraid and I'm not self regulating, I'm not self soothing through that I'm putting that on my Children.

I'm not taking a deep breath, grounding myself in my feet breathing through the fear. Talk, nurturing my inner child, which is all inner child work, nurturing my little girl saying it's okay, it's not life or death were all right. Um and sometimes it is a matter of life or death. So I don't want to minimize that. We're talking about being late in this trigger, You've had something associated with that, That's where the MDR can come into play. So I'm looking at, what am I feeling? What is the belief? When did the belief start? Where do I feel that fear in my body? So I could feel it, my belly. I feel at my chest. I then need to self soothe to deal with that. Then I then I'm looking at, how do I typically handle that? What is my typical way to cope with that? Oh, I would get more demanding, I would get more um controlling, I would get more intense. Okay, that's not really a healthy way to cope with it. I need to look at my historical coping strategies.

How did my parents grow up, deal with that to blame them to go, oh, this is some introductions that I never looked at now. It's time for me to own it, deconstruct it and take responsibility for it and do something differently. So how do I want to cope with it is the next question I want to cope with it by taking my deep breaths, talking myself through it. Self regulating. That's how I want to cope with it. So walking yourself through these important steps is one of the most important parts of working through introductions. Is this a belief? Is this your belief? Is this your personality trait? Is this someone else's? Is this was a survival mechanism? Now, as an adult, we can do this reflection. Is this something you believe now? What are you afraid if you decide that's not a belief you have or that's not a personality trait that you really want to continue on with?

And maybe it is a personality trait like empathy, compassion, perseverance, whatever that looks like for you that you do want to continue with fantastic. You know, at least the roots of it. And maybe this is something you developed on your own. Great. Now, you know, it's not an interject, you know, it's really an authentic part of your personality. That's what we're looking at. We're looking at what was conditioned, what was programmed and what is authentically you so your soul gets to be free and be who you are now. Is everybody going to love this? This is what everybody is afraid of? Possibly not. Now that your adult, you can handle it, you might have to go through grief, You might have to process that sadness and that fear. Light therapy can be so important and MDR is wonderful when we're looking at interjects, you can process the trauma uh freeing yourself from the shackles of functioning the same way or believing the same thing that you no longer believe.

You don't have to be tethered to that. You can go. It's okay and healthy for me to have my own beliefs, my own thoughts and I can still love my parents. At the same time, there may be fallout, there may be grief, there might be lost and you need support in that it's important. You have support to walk you through the pain because if you don't face the pain of being who you are potentially of losing, let's say there is fallout that doesn't always isn't always the case. But if there is fallout, you really do need support in that because when you change the system changes and that can be positive and that can be some pain points. And when you decide you're going to do this growth work, I guarantee you you will find a re connection to your soul, you'll rediscover who you are, you will find the freedom to be free and know that it's okay.

That's part of the process of all this is re parenting that inner child part and that's connected to these interjections. So discover who you are by asking where did this belief come from? How did it become part of my daily life? Do I want to change it? Do I want to take the time to float back and discover where it came from. So, you can free yourself. You get to decide ultimately this is the beauty beautiful part of doing work. You get to decide if you want to do this work or not. You get to decide if you want to face the pain. Now, I recommend you do because that's what keeps you moving in the direction of transformation and healing and authenticity and breaking generational trauma. So, I hope this was helpful in understanding introductions as part of family systems and where they come from and how they can quickly be absorbed into you and you don't even know if this is an authentic part or conditioned part.

So, my invitation for you today is looking at those beliefs when they come up, looking at your emotional triggers processing through them to feel more self empowered to break the chains of patterns that have been established for decades upon decades. And I'm cheering you on in the process and I hope this podcast is supportive to you in your healing journey, find a fair a trauma therapist that is helpful to you. If that's something that would you would find beneficial, which I think you would, I think if everybody had a year of therapy, it would change the world. So, may this be supportive in your healing journey and your process share that share this episode with somebody that you want to start doing this deconstruction work of what you believe and and the fears you have around it, and you will be on a journey with these other folks that really are on the same path of liberation.

So thank you so much for joining me today. I am so grateful for you and I can't wait to see how your life shifts as a part of this process. We'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to the closed the chapter podcast. My hope is that you took home some actionable steps along with motivation, inspiration, and hope for making sustainable change in your life. If you enjoyed this episode, click the subscribe button to be sure to get the updated episodes every week and share with a friend or a family member for more information about how to get connected, visit Kristin. K R I S T E N D B O I C E dot com. Thanks and have a great day.