3 Steps To Understanding Your Childhood TRIGGERS And How To Repair Them | The Mel Robbins Podcast

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  You wired early, and it's never too late to rewire

  Clinical psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy, author of Good Inside, says her adult clients arrived with different labels (anxiety, reactivity, imposter syndrome, depression) but shared one core story. As kids they adapted to thrive in their earliest environment, and those once-clever adaptations now hold them back. She calls the 'double truth' empowering, not a reason to panic about the past.

• 02

  Your body is the same one you were born with

  Kennedy points out that we never get a new body. It has lived through everything since infancy. We define memory narrowly as events we can retell, but we can only retell what adults helped us make sense of. The hardest moments were often the ones we were left alone with, so the body holds them without a story.

• 03

  Babies wire how caregivers respond to their distress

  Using a moment Mel witnessed in an airport lounge, where a mother screamed at her baby in a bathroom, Kennedy explains the sequence. She stresses that it is one moment within a repeated pattern. The baby feels overwhelmed, then encodes the caregiver's added fear and anger. The lesson becomes 'when I get upset, my relationships are threatened.' Years later that adult may tell a caring partner 'all good,' then pull away or drink rather than seek comfort.

• 04

  Triggers are stories from your past acting out in the present

  A father who knew all the right tantrum strategies still yelled awful things when his child melted down, and he said he had no memory of how his own parents handled his emotions. Kennedy told him his body was acting out that memory every time. Strategies sit behind a door you can't open while triggered, so you have to work on yourself too. As she puts it, we respond to the circuit activated in our own body rather than to our kids.

• 05

  A protector part shuts down what wasn't allowed

  Drawing on Richard Schwartz's Internal Family Systems model, Kennedy explains that when a child's overwhelm brought yelling instead of compassion, the child developed a harsh inner voice ('you ungrateful kid, you're too much'). It shamed them first to avoid punishment or abandonment. As adults, that part takes over the 'boardroom' and does to others what it learned to do to us.

• 06

  Ask what someone else's behavior invites you to grow

  Rather than trying to make a whining child or coworker more like you, ask what part you were forced to shut down and might need to develop. Start with the most generous interpretation of their behavior, and move from sitting across the table from someone to sitting beside them, facing the problem together.

• 07

  Tantrums are explosions of desire

  Kennedy believes many women learned to 'be a good girl,' which meant tracking others' wants over their own. That can surface as people-pleasing, perfectionism, overthinking and fear of speaking up, asking for a raise or wanting things for themselves. In the toy-store meltdown, shaming the child ('can you ever focus on someone else?') teaches that wanting is bad. Caving teaches that their wants topple a sturdy leader. The middle path names the want, maybe photographs the Lego, and holds the no.

• 08

  Thank your old patterns for their years of service

  Kennedy dislikes calling adaptations 'symptoms.' With a hand on your heart, she suggests telling a pattern that it kept you safe for perhaps 18 years, then running small experiments while it protests. Tears are normal. Shame was adaptive in childhood but it is a freeze state, and change requires movement. Self-blame doesn't hold you accountable; it makes change impossible.

• 09

  Say 'I am a good person who…'

  We collapse behavior into identity: I did a bad thing, so I'm bad. Saying 'I'm a good parent who yelled at my kid' or 'a good person who hasn't worked out this week' separates who you are from an action that doesn't match your values, and frees energy for curiosity and repair. The same applies to kids: 'I have a good kid who is saying I hate you.'