How To Develop A Genuine Adult Self

In this episode I explore the concept of becoming a genuine adult, 
what it means to develop emotional maturity and a grounded sense of self, what that looks like and feels like, and how we can do it in a way that increases our range of experience and expression.

Often, we equate adulthood with age, assuming that reaching a certain number automatically means we have attained emotional maturity. However, the reality is much more nuanced. 

Many of us find that despite our chronological age, we may still operate from various younger emotional states—those triggered by past experiences, traumas, or disruptions during our formative years. To truly embody a genuine adult self, we must address these emotional fragments and develop our capacity to respond to the present moment with intention and clarity.

What is an Adult Self?

An adult self can be summarised as the energy within us that has little to no emotional charge from the past, and so, therefore, can be present.

This energy, or 'amount' of our consciousness that is present is available to experience situations more as they are now, and make choices as to how to respond.

What are the features of an Adult Self?

Here are some of the main features here, however, they aren't exhaustive, there are so many possibilities! This list is an example.

As a genuine Adult, we're able to:

• Be in the present moment
• Make clear choices taking into account intuition and cognition. 
• Identify when triggered (distressing charge/memories are activated)
• Self-regulate
• Implement consistent self-care
• Take responsibility for our actions, behaviours, thoughts - whole self and impact on others.
• Identify and communicate our own needs
• Play! (play is to opposite of, and antidote to trauma)
• Access, embody and express a range of states of being
• Identify and implement clear boundaries
• Willing to be in love-based, mutual relationships with others

I also explore what 'Leading our System' from our Adult Self means, the relief that comes from un-fusing parts of ourselves that have been mistaken for our personality and reclaiming those qualities that were once buried beneath coping mechanisms. 

Transcript

Welcome And Why Adult Self Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. In this episode, I'm exploring how we develop a genuine adult self. So I'm going to talk through what that is, uh, what it feels like, why we would do that, and the sort of things that happens to us as we consciously develop our presence basically and our ability to respond. So, yes, I know this is probably not one of the more sparkly things about our healing process because it does take uh every every session I do, uh, every group work I do with people, we take account of this energy within us that is becoming more and more present. And it's just very grounded and it's a very steady process. So um, yeah, I'm gonna keep this quite short so that it doesn't get boring and it doesn't become a therapy theory thing. And uh yeah, but as always, I'd love to hear how it lands with you. Leave me a review on Apple, leave me a question on Spotify, and I'll reply. And yeah, I hope it inspires you to take account of this in your healing process anyway. All right, so here we go with how to develop a genuine adult self. So I'm gonna start off with what is an adult self? So just because we are age-wise an adult, it's kind of over about 25, we could be 70, 50, 40, 28. Uh, but it doesn't mean we're actually developmentally or emotionally mature at our kind of body's age, really. So

Adult Age Versus Emotional Maturity

SPEAKER_00 1:54

you'll probably know from your own process and your interaction with others that kind of throughout our process of being on earth, uh, we have attachment disruption and all sorts of things that can happen to us and and with us when we are growing up. And so that means that we our development can get disrupted and our psyching can kind of fragment at certain points. That means we get stuck at those certain points and start operating in life from those certain ages. And it means we can't really see the present moment, we can't really experience ourselves in the present moment or others because we're reading the situation from the point of view of uh an upset two-year-old, a traumatized six-year-old, uh, a very angry teenager. Um, and all those sorts of things can happen. I'm not going to go loads into that, but it happens. We all know that, you'll all recognise that listening. So that's where we're at. That's where we often come to our healing process is that we're all kind of mixed up and operating in different ways and squishing parts of ourselves and amplifying others and not really getting what we want, but somehow at some stage, this way of operating has kind of helped us feel accepted, loved, and safe to some degree. So part of our healing process is to identify the sort of ages we're operating from and separate those out from the energy that's actually present within us. And obviously, as we heal and we we process emotional charge, more and more of our energy or consciousness has little to no charge and so can be present, can experience ourselves in the present, can experience others, can experience worldly events from the now, which is makes it uh a more realistic read and experience of what's happening. So an adult self can be summarized as the energy within us that's little to no emotional charge from the past, and so therefore can be present. And this energy or amount of consciousness that is present is thus available to experience situations more as they are now and make choices as to how to respond. This is really key

A Clear Definition Of Adult Self

SPEAKER_00 4:31

because when we are little and when we're kind of mixed up, we we feel like we don't have choices. And that's really one of the main markers of being an adult, really, is being able to clearly assess what's happening within us, around us, and make choices based on both our intuition and our cognition. Okay, so hopefully that gives you a clear picture of what an adult is. And before I move on to what it is, like the markers of it, I just want to be clear about what it isn't. This is not a dull, sort of flat um state of being where we're just totally sort of present and just making choices, and there's no play, and there's no that's an adult,

Why Adult Self Is Not Rigid

SPEAKER_00 5:28

like an adultified self that's become very rigid and is attempting to be an adult based on societal norms. So an adult has choices and is able to embody a range of different states of being, and it's really quite fun and it feels really good, and I really wanted to bust that myth because when I work with people, that's one of the questions, really. Of is that quite boring? Then I just, you know, I'm not gonna be able to play or anything like that, and that's that's just not the case, it just gives us more choices. But so now I'm gonna just list some qualities of an adult self. So these really aren't exhaustive, there are so many possibilities. This is just an example to get things started, really, and these are like the main ones that come up uh in the work. So an adult self is able to be in the present moment, make clear choices, taking into account intuition

Key Markers Like Boundaries And Play

SPEAKER_00 6:34

and cognition, identify when we're triggered. Triggered means distress in charge or memories that are activated, ability to self-regulate, implement consistent self-care, take responsibility for our actions, behaviors, thoughts, our whole self and the impact on others. An adult self is able to identify and communicate our own needs. Very, very important. Play. We've got to be able to play. Play is the opposite of in the antidote to trauma. When we're adults, genuine adults, we're also available to access, embody, and express a range of different states of being. We're able to identify and implement clear boundaries, and there is a willingness to be in a love-based, mutual relationship with others. So they are the main things we work with. But as I said, there's loads and loads of different uh markers, and they'll be probably quite general off that list, but some very specific ones that are unique to you that really need to be brought to the fore. So yeah, those are the markers, but I also wanted to talk about what it actually feels like when what it feels like day to day is a presence in our bodies that when a child part of us is activated or a teenage or something feels like off, or there's an emotional charge come up, or there's a memory. When we are in our adult state or anchored into the energy that's present within us, then we can take care of those parts of us that you know didn't get their needs met, and we can bring them into the whole of us. We can make choices as to okay, this is what's happening, this is uh seeming to trigger me, I need to take myself away a bit, or the charge is low enough that I can stay present, own my trigger, and and work through it with whoever I'm with. So if you think about the feeling of being really grounded and solid and centered and present, and then going about daily life, and something comes up, some pain comes up, some kind of charge in the body, and we're able to kind of stop, take a pause, slow things down, and get curious about oh, I wonder what this is. This this feels different. There's a tightness in my chest, something different is happening. And that ability to just pause and slow down, that just interrupts any circuits that are running automatically there. So that should have been in my list as well: the ability to pause. So once we've paused and we've taken care of ourselves, that creates a trust in our system. And as you know, we can't expect, or if we do, it doesn't go very well, others to meet our unmet needs. When we're in a really um conscious, healthy relationship, that means that two people are working on themselves and committed to uh growing and growing together, then yeah, we can work through some of those things together. And that's really that's really what the relationship is for. However, uh a lot of relationships aren't like that because we are bringing our unmet needs and we're

Relationships And Meeting Unmet Needs

SPEAKER_00 10:22

expecting somebody else to meet them. However, when we're anchored in our adult self, we can identify those unmet needs, we can meet them, and also if we're in the sort of relationship where we can bring those unmet needs and say, look, this is how I need you to love me for a little bit. Is that possible? This is going to help with my process, but it's not going to be the sole process. So again, that feels really, really lovely and really, really mutual. And you can probably hear that there's lots of choice in there. And that's another main marker of being a genuine adult, and that's the ability to make choices. We do get triggered, we do go offline, we do have all these things, and you might have noticed that our sense of choice gets diminished. And we might use language in like have-to's and shoulds. That's you know, that's not the case, uh most of the time, because we just do have these choices. We just got to be able to be present enough to think and feel our way through whatever life is bringing for us. So being in our adult self-state most of the time just feels really, really good. And all the people I've worked with, we we do a lovely process. We get really grounded and start feeling into all the things that mean they're an adult, and then we separate out these fused beliefs and fused child parts that we we've been running on basically as an adult, and thinking that's part of our personality when actually it's part of our coping mechanism. So the process

Unfusing Coping Mechanisms From Personality

SPEAKER_00 12:14

of becoming uh developing a genuine adult self means that we are really unfusing those things from our personality that we thought were just us that are actually just coping mechanisms. And once we take the charge out, if there's any sort of skill in there, we can keep that skill, incorporate it. But because there's no charge, we can use it with love and choice, and we can direct our life force and direct our energy rather than being taken by it and reacting, which is not actually our true self, but we can think it is because it's you know, we might have been a certain way for a certain time. So, one of the ways it feels is it'll feel like a relief because we won't get that kind of charge spike keep coming up or we won't be in dissociative states, we'll be more present. The last part of this is really having access to a wider range of our self, and that widens our range of expression and experience of life. So when we're operating more from this adult self-place, we're able to lead our system, our maybe younger parts, the trust is increasing. So parts of us that have that we've squashed and put into our shadow now can come more to the forefront. Now, shadow stuff is not just dark stuff, by the way. I mean, we usually hide

Shadow Work And Reparenting Over Time

SPEAKER_00 13:54

qualities, hide our bigness, hide our, you know, whatever it was our parents couldn't tolerate, basically. So we squash all that stuff into the background and it becomes our shadow. And as we operate from our adult self, we basically reparent ourselves. We're we're able to develop that trust as time goes on, as we take more and more care of ourselves and take more and more care when those charges come up, and we're able to really connect with ourselves more deeply. More and more parts of ourselves are going to start to like look over that wall of the shadow we created and start to be like, oh, looks quite nice now. Another part was owned, and everything was okay, and she did that, and everything was okay, and that trust really, really increases. It's really, really lovely. So those parts can come forward and start to be expressed. So that's what we mean by healing is to bring into presence all of our consciousness, all of ourself, whether we like it or not. Uh, we we can really befriend all of ourselves. And then, and then what that does is those parts that have been in the background, it might be anger, it might be brilliance, it might be bigness, it might be sadness. We're able to really expand our range of how we feel, of how we express, of how we experience life. And it again, it feels like we've got more capacity, more choice, more range, and it feels freaking great. So that's not not just from my own experience, that's from loads and loads of people I've worked with. And the real the real magic happens when we're able to feel that difference between, oh yeah, I feel more present. There's little to no charge here, and oh, what a relief that is. And I've now got access to more of myself and more choice and more expression. So if you are interested to do this, I can do this one-to-one with you. If you already have a therapist and just want to come work with me to do this, that is absolutely fine. I really like doing that actually. Or if you want to work together and have this be part of your process every single time in some way, sometimes more focus, sometimes less focus on it, then that

Working Together And Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_00 16:31

is weaved into all the work that I do. Okay. Well, if you are interested, I look forward to hearing from you. And I hope this podcast helps you just on its own to just maybe realize some of those markers of your own healing process, and that it might just be that you see some of those things in yourself already and know that you're doing really well. Okay. All right. Well, I will see you next time.