Why Childhood Pain Shows Up in Adult Life

This week on ShrinkChicks, Em and Jen explore healing your inner child and advice to give to the kid who lives within your adult self. They talk about why revisiting younger versions of ourselves can bring both compassion and anger, and how learning to care for your inner child can help break patterns that still show up in adult relationships. Listener questions dive into projection and unresolved childhood pain, how to hold empathy for your parents while still honoring anger or grief, and why becoming a parent can suddenly activate deeper feelings about how you were raised. Em and Jen also discuss the concept of the “adaptive child,” how childhood survival strategies show up in adulthood, and what it looks like to reparent yourself by identifying and meeting your own needs. Tune in to gain insight, awareness, and action! PS: Fast forward to around 5:15 to skip the intro and get straight to today’s content. ⁠ Get Matched With One of Our Therapists ⁠ at The Therapy Group! ⁠ShrinkChicks on Instagram⁠ Our ⁠Know Yourself Grow Yourself Journal⁠ !! Check out ShrinkChicks on YouTube by subscribing here! ⁠ A special thank you to this week's sponsors for supporting ShrinkChicks! We have these exclusive offers for our listeners: Skims: Shop Everyday Cotton, and all of our favorite bras and underwear at Air Doctor: Head to AirDoctorPro.com and use promo code SHRINKCHICKS to get UP TO $300 off today Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at Shopify.com/shrinkchicks Perelel: New customers can use code SHRINKCHICKS to get 20% off their first order at perelelhealth.com/shrinkchicks . Quince : Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠quince.com/shrinkchicks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping and 365-day returns on your next order GreenChef: Head to Greenchef.com/50shrinkchicks and use code 50shrinkchicks to get 50% off your first month, then 20% off for two months with free shipping See Privacy Policy at and California Privacy Notice at .

You can listen to Why Childhood Pain Shows Up in Adult Life online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Why Childhood Pain Shows Up in Adult Life is an episode from ShrinkChicks by Jennifer Chaiken, LMFT and Emmalee Bierly, LMFT.

This episode is 00:39:46 long.

This episode was published on Apr 13, 2026.

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