Why Inner Child Trauma Work DOESN'T Work

The Awakened Man

1. Inner child work, popularized by coaches and gurus, is a recycled concept from 190 years of psychology that has limitations and may not be the most effective approach to personal growth.

2. Focusing on inner child work and personal development may not lead to worldly success, and true growth requires engagement with the present.

3. Past experiences and theories can be misleading when analyzing current issues due to imperfect memory, cherry-picking data, and overapplication of single theories.

4. Understanding the cause of pain isn't enough to alleviate it, taking action is.

5. Mental health diagnoses often lack clear causes and scientific basis, leading to vague labels and over-pathologization of common issues.

6. ADHD is not a proven medical condition, but rather a label used to justify medicating millions of American children, lacking evidence linking it to a specific brain disease.

7. Focusing on the present, not the past, is key to solving problems and achieving lasting solutions.

8. To achieve a lasting solution to personal problems, one must work on resolving them in the present, learn from them, and apply those lessons to the future.

Here are the 2 categories to sort the insights:

Looking backwards to childhood experiences can be problematic, as it focuses attention on the past rather than the present and future.

⚠️ "We have no work excavating the past because when we do inner child work, we're literally blocking ourselves from engaging with the present."

There's a fallacy in social science research called "post hoc ergo propter hoc," which means assuming that because one event happened before another, the early event caused the later one.

Every ingredient from our past may have a bearing on our current issues, but it's essential to question whether they truly have an impact or are just coincidental.

⚠️ The danger is that once you have a theory, you can just pick out the items that fit your theory and disregard the rest.

The only way to have a true lasting solution to current personal problems is to work at it in the present, resolve it in the present, and apply what's learned to the future.

Knowing the cause of pain doesn't stop the pain, but taking action to address it does.

Knowing the cause of our psychic pain but having no Avenue to reduce it will actually make some of us feel even worse.

"The difference between literal and metaphoric illness has been blurred by too many coaches and gurus who read a book or two."

Refusing treatment for a DSM diagnosis can lead to another diagnosis, "non-compliance with treatment disorder", as pointed out by Jord Peterson.

There isn't one shred of medical evidence that ADHD is caused by any specific brain disease.