Reparenting the Inner Child: An Alchemy

About Megan:

Megan Owen: 

Fully certified since 2012 as a crisis pastoral counselor, Megan has been successfully companioning clients all over the country while facilitating their self-growth. She offers crisis & spiritual process groups and individual christian therapy, specializing in abuse, trauma, and dissociative disorders, utilizing therapeutic models such as Development Needs Meeting Strategy (DNMS), Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR).

Megan has written curriculum for a domestic violence non-profit advocacy program, spiritual processing groups & identity based therapeutic course. She has also been featured on many podcasts & conferences, such as Courage 365 with Ashley Easter, etc.
Megan resides in Denver, CO, with her four adored and adoring children. She loves her job and will walk through the fire to help a client find healing.

 Episode Summary:

On this episode of Pretty Psych, join us as we discuss the Inner Child and the modalities that MCCC uses to help heal it. This week, Karen and Megan dig deep and teach about DNMS, or Developmental Needs Meeting Strategy, a modality. Karen shares her deep, enriched experience that happened recently. 

Key Takeaways:

• Karen discusses her spiritual experience that happened during a session of Sacred Circles
• Megan explains where these occurrences come from and how we help to manage the emotions that come with it. 
• Megan and Karen both work together to explain the significance and complexity behind DMNS.

Notable Quotes:

• "I'm not sure there are bad emotions. I've heard it said, [that] we have good emotions [and] bad emotions. Our emotions are not good. They're just our emotions." — Karen DeArmond Gardner
• "The other thing that we do right at the onset is we invite resources that seem to be inside the client there to help guide, protect, supervise, and unconditionally love the wounded parts." — Megan Owen
• "It's so freeing that God loves me so much that He's willing to take me to places I never thought I could ever go and that He's so aware of my capacity and that He knows when I am ready to face something that I haven't been able to face." — Karen DeArmond Gardner
• "Ego state theory is basically the idea that we all have different sub-personalities or parts of ourselves or ego states with different views of reality. Now, I'm not talking about dissociative disorders. That's an extreme but everybody has what we call an internal family system." — Megan Owen

Resources:

• Mountain City Christian Counseling: mountaincitychristiancounseling.com
• Shirley Jean Schmidt course: "The Developmental Needs Meeting Strategy": DNMS Institute, LLC

Dive into this episode for insights into Inner Child Healing through DNMS, and stay tuned for more empowering discussions on Pretty Psych.

Episode Transcript

(0:03) Megan: This is Pretty Psych, the podcast where we discuss and deconstruct the impact of evangelical Christianity and cultural phenomena on the psyche, the deep and sometimes uncharted territory of the mind. We venture into raw, rough, and sometimes triggering moments, but we know that through this what we will find will be pretty fascinating, amazing, and pretty intelligent. My name is Megan Owen. I'm a pastoral trauma counselor, and I have spent decades studying the science of human behavior. I draw parallels between therapy and connection to God, self, and others. I love what I do, and I will walk hand in hand with you through the fire to help you find healing and rest. Most importantly, I want to bring you home to yourself. 

(1:07) Megan: Good morning, Karen. 

Karen: Good morning, Megan.

(1:13) Megan: I'm so excited that we are going to have another podcast on Pretty Psych. Karen and I, we love to talk to each other. Wouldn't you agree? In fact, I have to say, wait, stop.

We need to record this because it's so good, right? 

(1:30) Karen: Yes, a 15-minute conversation could turn into two hours. 

(1:34) Megan: Well, Karen, I stopped you mid-sentence because you were telling me something so exciting that happened at Sacred Circles this past Sunday. 

(1:42) Karen: Yes, I was surprised because this is an event in my life that I have visited many, many times in many, many different ways. When I was 10 years old, I was sexually assaulted by a man that went to our church. I did not grow up in church, so this was a church that my sister found. 

(2:02) Karen: We went to Sunday school, and he was the friendly grandpa to everybody.

Then he would watch us on Saturdays when my mom had to work. She was a single mom. What I didn't realize is he had been grooming me all along, even with my sister and brother there. One day, he sent them out to play and kept me behind. I have dealt with the emotional part of this, but Sunday night as we were engaging our younger selves, the Lord took me back to this little girl. I was kind of surprised and at first thought, maybe I don't want to go here, but yet I did because after it happened, when I was 10, my mom asked me, she needed a babysitter, and she asked me if I wanted to go to his house. I was like, no, I did not want to go back there, but she never asked why. 

(3:01) Karen: She saw a change in me. I wasn't the same little girl that she knew, but it never occurred to her to even ask like, what's wrong with you? Did something happen? Why don't you want to go to his house? To engage this little girl as my 71-year-old self, this was 61 years ago, that I could talk to her and tell her all the things that my mother didn't, that I could hold her hand while we were actually watching what happened. Not everything because I don't remember everything and I don't need to. I'm an adult, kind of know what happened, but to be able to, for the two of us to stand there and hold each other's hand and comfort her and mother her in a way that I didn't even know I had within me and to talk to her and tell her all the things she needed to hear. It was so powerful and I couldn't even share it that night on Sunday night.

 (4:04) Karen: I couldn't share it because it was still so kind of raw and I wanted to keep it to myself for the time being, but it was so necessary. I have visited this moment in my life so many times. It's like when you think that you have something that you have dealt with and you think it's one and done, oh, it's not because the Lord went and took it into a whole different way and it wasn't scary. It wasn't traumatizing. It was a needed moment for this little girl and for adult me to experience.

(4:45) Megan: Wow, Karen. 

(4:47) Karen: I know, I know. 

(4:49) Megan: Oh my goodness.

(4:51) Karen: To say it out loud now, it's so freeing that God loves me so much that He's willing to take me to places I never thought I could ever go and that He's so aware of my capacity and that He knows when I am ready to face something that I haven't been able to face. That's what's really the most powerful thing of all. 

(5:16) Megan: Thank you so much for sharing this. I'm overwhelmed and a little verklempt, I have to say. I had no idea, of course, that this was going on and I think that that is the beauty of what we do with different modalities. It's, we open that up and then God, you and God do what you and God need to do, you know, and I've heard you say more than once, you know, I don't need to remember all the details and we don't.

(5:47) Megan: I think it can be frustrating for our clients sometimes because they have symptoms of something they don't understand. We are always working on these things and we're always allowing the Holy Spirit to work on these things and you give me hope and all of us hope that we'll keep doing it. At 71 years old, we will maybe even grow in capacity to manage these things that have been so painful and you're such a beautiful healer and we have to keep healing in order to be able to help others to heal as well. So, thank you for that. 

(6:23) Karen: Yeah, you're welcome. Absolutely and the thing of it is with memories, you and I have talked about this before, is there is a part of me that has held those memories that I could not as a 10-year-old comprehend and as an adult, I can use my own imagination that I didn't have to hold the memory of what actually happened. This other part of me held that memory and I had a recent experience where Jesus told that part, you don't even have to hold this memory anymore. I can hold that for you and that was also a very healing moment that the part that was holding it doesn't have to do that anymore, that it can actually relinquish that and the strength of that part of me that could hold that memory is powerful. 

(7:18) Megan: Yes, yes. I saw that at our retreat also. This is part of DNMS. It sounds a little bit like shadow work. There's also an IFS component to it. We're delving into all the abbreviations today. That's what we decided we were going to do and that part that holds the memories. I see that part all the time in the work that I do with developmental needs meeting strategy and I just ran into one recently as I was doing this work with a client and the client asked this part, are you tired of holding these memories and the part said, yes, I'm tired and it was a very young part. (7:58) Megan: Let's go ahead and jump in, Karen. Karen and I, of course, we use different modalities and we have therapist friends who use other modalities but at Mountain City, one of the main modalities we use is called developmental needs meeting strategy or DNMS and this is an ego state therapy.

(8:20) Karen: And you take that and simplify that for us to be able to understand how it works. 

(8:28) Megan: Absolutely. So the DNMS, developmental needs meeting strategy, is one of many therapy approaches based on this ego state theory. So let's talk about ego state theory. Ego state theory is basically the idea that we all have different sub-personalities or parts of ourselves or ego states with different views of reality. Now, I'm not talking about dissociative disorders. That's an extreme but everybody has what we call an internal family system. So maybe another way to approach that would be that we all have different states of mind, okay? So a state of mind is just simply the behaviors, beliefs, emotions, and sensations present at a single moment in time. For example, you might be in the state of mind of being a mama in that moment or you might be in a state of mind while you're reading a book and you might be calm and maybe relaxed.

(9:44) Megan: Maybe you have other times where you're in a state of mind where you are alert, worried, anxious, or maybe tired. We all have these different states of mind. Now to take that further, these states of mind, and I'm using kind of quotes here, those can also be parts of us like a younger part. So we are whole, but say we can be sort of sliced up into different parts. (10:13) Megan: Here's four-year-old, here's six-year-old, here's 10-year-old, here's 22-year-old. So they can have ages or they can be angry parts or defender parts and guardian parts or protector parts. So they don't have to be an age. And everybody has these because we are complex humans. And the reason I'm comfortable pulling out a younger part like we did on Sunday night is because God is outside of time and we are in time. And so God can see all of us. God can see baby Megan, God can see Megan now, God can see older Megan, Grandma Megan, you know, God can see all those different parts of us. And so if God can see all those different parts of us as a whole, God can heal those different parts of us.

(11:05) Megan: And we don't need to really be afraid of going back because sometimes those parts get stuck, right? 

(11:10) Karen: Yes. 

(11:11) Megan: Okay, so I'm well aware of the fact that I'm trying to explain a very complex story here. It's really hard. It's kind of like, once you start talking about it, you run the risk of losing the essence of it, kind of like our soul, once we start trying to define it, you know. So ego state therapies, they aim to help wounded ego states heal. Oh, here's another way I could say it, Karen.

(11:41) Megan: So when I do EMDR, we take a traumatic memory, just one memory, and we reprocess it over and over, bring in different perspectives, connect the brain hemispheres, and then it sort of files itself where it needs to be. That's great. So maybe a client comes with six or eight traumatic memories, and we can do these amazing healing sessions. But what about the humans who have traumatized seasons in life, like their whole childhood? You can't do 8,000 EMDRs for that childhood. So instead of doing EMDR for traumatic memories, we work on helping the ego state to heal, the child inside to heal with reparenting. 

(12:31) Karen: Yes, that makes so much sense, because I think sometimes we make our healing so complicated that we have to follow a certain path. That's why I think there's so many modalities that we can kind of mix them, that we can use them. Because you're right, if you have someone who had a really traumatic childhood, they all come clumped together, because our emotions and our memories kind of stockpile those and see them as one giant event versus individual events, because our emotions doesn't track time, memories. It's all clumped into that one place, because there's no sequence of time.

(13:21) Karen: It's why we get triggered, because it keeps activating and compiling, and it goes bigger and bigger. And if you imagine a cup holding all those memories and emotions tied to that, and then we never know which drop is going to go and overflow that cup, and it spills over. And so then you don't have to necessarily go into every single event, because your brain doesn't know there's a hundred events.

It just thinks it's one big, giant event. 

(13:57) Megan: Yes, Karen, exactly. Exactly. And there's your ego state. And so it also works really well with attachment trauma, because of what you just said, it's the wounded ego state. And I have this great big thick book by Shirley Jean Schmidt, who developed the DNMS, Ego State Therapy Interventions, Prepare Attachment Wounded Adults for EMDR. So it's gentler than EMDR, because as you and I have talked about before, EMDR can be kind of brutal, and it can undo you. Maybe you're not ready for it. 

(14:40) Karen: I agree, because when we step into a memory, and we're not ready, we're just re-traumatized.

(14:50) Megan: Exactly, exactly. So it's a really good prep. And sometimes I never get to EMDR, and that's fine. Let me tell you a little bit about how I set the stage. So even with this great big book and all the training that I've done on it, like you said, we pull in what we know, we've done this long enough to understand the nuances, we're not afraid to veer off a little bit. And so it's kind of turned from a pretty strident, procedural modality into Megan style.

(15:28) Megan: So I lean heavily into the Holy Spirit and into intuition. And I listen to the client, I'm following our client's lead. And so the first thing that we do is we create a safe space. And this is where we use that divine imagination that you talk about, the power of the imagination that God has given us. And the client will create a safe, wonderful, fun place for all of the wounded parts to hang out. Not to tuck them away or get them out of the way, but almost like a fun waiting room, but with a lot more fun things than a pediatrician's waiting room. So there might be like a beach, and nobody's allowed there except the client, the parts, and the resources, which I'll get to in just a minute. So all of the wounded parts come into this place, and so say it's a beach, so maybe the beach has a swimming pool, or horse stables, or a big kitchen with lots of food, or sleeping rooms, or tree houses, that's popular, or maybe like a little place to hide out and read, or forts, you know, those sorts of things, and we invite all of the parts into it. The other thing that we do right at the onset is we invite resources that seem to be inside the client there to help guide, protect, supervise, and unconditionally love the wounded parts.

So these resources could be parts of self, like the mom part of me, when I had to go through this in order to do the training several years ago. I had a grandma version of myself that came in to help reparent the kids that were wounded. It can be parts of self.

(1:02) Megan: It can be people we've known from the past that are stored into our neurons. We're not, you know, inviting in a foreign something into our minds. It's memories that are stored in our neurons. It can be like a loving teacher, or an aunt, or just, it's basically, if it were me, it would be Team Megan, here to love all of these parts unconditionally, support, guide, help answer any hard questions. And the reason that I do that, Karen, is so that I'm not inserting anything. We end up talking to the part, which I know you do in the Part Sync also. Once everybody's very, very stable, comfortable, which the whole first session is just setting this up. And then we start with the next, which is talking, maybe talking to one of the wounded parts. Again, very carefully, very gently, depending on where the client is.

(18:13) Megan: So, say a wounded part presents that's a seven-year-old. Well, we will make sure that seven-year-old is connected to the resources so that I can say, well, what I see in front of me is a beautiful child made in God's image, but don't take my word for it. I want you to check in with your resources and see what they say, too. Now, a lot of times our clients want Jesus in there. 

(18:38) Megan: Sometimes they want Jesus from the Chosen or Jesus from the shack. You know, there's a specific Jesus, but not always because there's been so much religious abuse.

But when the client goes in and says, hey, resources, you know, mama version of me or Jesus or whomever, what do you see when you look at me? Now they're drawing from inside of themselves and that's how they learn to take care of themselves. And that's why it's called needs meeting because I teach our clients how to meet their own needs because they have everything in them that they need. 

(19:27) Karen: Wow. That is really powerful when you think about it. It's so powerful that we can engage with those parts of ourselves. Because honestly, throughout life, we create these defense mechanisms, which is a really terrible word, I think. I think it's more that these parts of us, as they take that mechanism as self-protection, because as children, we don't know how to protect ourselves. But I see how God has created the ability for us to have these parts that hold these. And they often work very unhealthy because they're wounded parts, very wounded. And by DNMS, these modalities allows us to engage with that part, not because they're bad or they need to disappear, but so they can work in a healthy way versus an unhealthy way. 

(20:25) Exactly. We don't ever want to exile. We have what we call the exiled parts. They're still there, but we just don't want to look at them or maybe they're carrying some of the bad memories. And that's a lot of the work again, what we did at the retreat. And sometimes we do that in sacred circles where we just try to bring in those parts that we don't necessarily like or that we've relegated. And I've talked about this before. I think the last year's retreat, the retreat before this one, we want all of the parts to come to the table because that's how Jesus is. Jesus wants everyone at the table. Everybody gets a seat at the table. And so I use that example when I'm working with clients.

(21:12) Megan: We don't abandon our parts. We don't turn our back on our parts, on even the meanest protector parts out there. They are doing their job. They think that they're helping. The inner critic thinks that it's helping, you know? And so one of the things I say often, it's you've had enough abandonment. You're not going to do it to yourself anymore. And so it really is an extreme act of love to bring in the parts that we don't like or that we've been told aren't likable or that have become adept guardians because we needed that at some point. 

(21:57) Megan: It's actually really smart that we've developed those parts. And I'll say to those parts, I'll say, you're very smart, you know? 

(22:05) Karen: Yes, because think about that inner critic, those parts think that they're their own individual. They have no idea that they're actually mimicking what they've been told about themselves. They don't know that it's not them. It's the critical voices from people that parents, bullies, even well-meaning people who said the wrong thing, you know, it's someone, they don't have to necessarily be abusive, but what they said made such a mark on us at that age.

And then they mimic that. They repeat it throughout their lives and they don't know it's them. 

(22:50) Megan: Right. That's what, and that's exactly what Shirley Schmidt says in some of the training is that we switch the dominance. So there's a dominant, maybe there's a dominant inner critic that thinks it's helping. And we need to bring that part understanding. This is why you're doing what you're doing. We know you're trying to help. You think you're helping and you did help at one point, but we don't need to do this anymore because that person's not in our lives anymore.

(23:20) Megan: You know, that sort of thing. And then we switch the dominance and we do that through the DNMS. So when we have maybe some sort of a breakthrough, such as just to use my example earlier, you know, I see a beautiful child of God when I look at you. And then that seven-year-old will ask the resources, well, what do you say? And they share in, in that person's imagination, what they see, then I'll say, does that feel good? And they say, yes. And that's when we use the alternating bilateral stimulation now, which is the light bar going back and forth. And I will say, let's let that grow. Let's let that grow. And we just keep switching the dominance. 

(24:01) And that's the difference between IFS and the DNMS. The DNMS is about the business of reparenting with what you have inside of you. That's the big difference. So IFS is, it's unburdening the wounded parts of yourself. The DNMS has an emphasis on reparenting through loving connection and needs meeting. So we clear up the misunderstandings, just like you just said with the inner critic. So many times, Karen, I've had clients thinking the inner critic is like a voice of a demon or something like that. And they're just trying to shut it down. And that just makes it louder and worse because it's not demonic. It's a part of you.

(24:48) Karen: It's rarely demonic and that it's, but we've been taught that in some circles, Christian circles, we, everything's a demon and we're giving the enemy way more credit than they deserve. It deserves, he deserves or whatever. We're told that we should ignore our emotions, that they're bad. And it's like, I'm not sure there are bad emotions. I've heard that said, we have good emotions, bad emotions. Our emotions are not good. They're just our emotions. 

(25:24) Karen: And they're a barometer for whatever's going on in our life that we can't even put words to yet. Because again, our emotions doesn't have words. It doesn't understand words. Our emotions understand tone and melody and vibration. It reads body language. And so we have to like, put that together with the part of us that has all the words because that part doesn't have an experience, doesn't have the emotion. So it's why we want to use those other parts to be able to come together, to put words to those emotions. 

(26:02) Megan: Yes, yes, yes. I love all of that. Exactly. Exactly. So that's what we're doing over here. And that is, it's a big part of what I do and I love it. I love to get to see just what you described. I talked to that child. I let that child know who they are and that it wasn't their fault. And that's so powerful. It changes everything for us. 

(26:30) Karen: It does. And then even for those that are ready to be able to have that part engaged with Jesus, to connect with Jesus, because we think because we know Jesus and that we classify as as a Christian or a believer, that every part of us knows Jesus. And that's not the case. There are parts of us that are afraid of Jesus because we were taught to be afraid of him because God is angry. I read something or I saw something today. I didn't read all of it, but that some of us believe God's abusive, because we grew up with this God who had all these rules and was angry. And that if you violate them and a God of judgment, and not that he doesn't judge, but it's not the whole picture. And so we make him as cruel as those who harmed us. And the opposite is true. And to be able to break that belief, to strip it away and see that Jesus just loves us. He sees the beauty in us. He sees the darkness. He sees the ugliness, not that we have ugly, but those parts of us that believe that they are ugly, that if actually someone were to look inside of us, they would be repulsed by us. And the opposite is true.

(28:09) Megan: Yeah, that's right. It's so heartbreaking when I hear people describing God as though God is a narcissist, right? It needs some sort of supply from us. You, Karen, you're so wonderful about speaking of God as love, because He is just love. So thank you for that. Okay, let's end with just a little exercise that our listeners can do on their own. You want to do it with me, Karen? 

(28:39) Karen: Okay.

(28:40) Megan: Okay. All right. So we're going to close our eyes for a minute. Take some deep breaths. Do that a couple more times. And now I'm just going to ask our listeners to picture before them, in their mind's eye, that little version of you, any age. Usually what pops up first is what we need to work on. Don't edit. And we close our eyes so we can access our subconscious.

(29:26) Megan: God is working in that subconscious of yours. And as you hold that view in your mind of that little one, go ahead and take your hands and cup your cheeks like you would a little child. And I want you to feel the pressure of your hands on your little face, each finger as an act of love for this little one. And I just want you to remind that child that they are loved. And I want you to speak these words, I see you. And I hear you. And it's okay to be human. And it makes so much sense that you're feeling. And then you finish the sentence. And I just want you to tell this little part that they are safe now, that you're going to take care of them going forward, and that it wasn't their fault. And now I want you to tell that little part that you are going to be the greatest protector and nurturer of that part from now on. And then I want you to go ahead and in  your mind, just wrap that little one up in your arms and hold them. Feel their little bodies relax against yours. Because healing is coming. And when you're ready, you can come back.

(31:59) Karen: Oh, wow. 

(32:02) Megan: Karen. 

(32:04) Karen: Went to an age that I've never been. Five-year-old me. And but all I could see was darkness. I couldn't see her. Because I have so few memories of that time. Yes. And to be able to kind of know because I know where we lived at the time on Camp Pendleton. And, and even though I don't have the memory of it, I am pretty sure it was probably from an episode after my father was probably angry. You know, he would go into a rage and be physical and yell, even though I have no memories of this. My brother who's two years younger remembers the yelling, I have no memories of it. But I think that's why she's in the dark. I just kind of wonder if she went into the closet and hid in the dark. 

(32:57) Megan: Oh, wow.

(32:59) Karen: Which is why I couldn't see anything because she's probably, you know, her hands over her ears and huddled in a closet is all I can think of is. But I have never engaged with this part before. 

(33:17) Megan: Karen, I'm so glad we did that. Now, if you're listening, and Karen already knows this. And if you did that exercise, and you had a profound experience like Karen just had, you can find a photo of that child, maybe if you have one. And you can write her a letter or him a letter and just go from there. You know, wow, Karen, there's so much there. Karen, thank you for your curiosity about DNMS. And I just want to thank our listeners for taking this journey with us. As always, we're so happy to have you here on Pretty Psych. Thank you, Karen. 

(33:58) Karen: Thank you, Megan.

(34:01) Megan: I hope this conversation has encouraged deep thought, as well as helped you draw parallels between therapy and your connection to God self and others. If you'd like someone on one time with me unpacking some of your most precious life stories to find healing and rest, contact me on mountaincitychristiancounseling.com. To help this podcast reach more people, do subscribe and review this podcast and share it with someone who would benefit from healing and rest. My name is Megan Owen, and thank you for listening to this episode of Pretty Psych. Catch you next episode. And in the meantime, do find healing and do find rest.