The Little BOY In Me

Your body often remembers before your mind does. That’s where today’s story begins: with the tight chest, quick thoughts, and sudden urge to act that signal an old survival pattern trying to protect the present. We talk about what happens when the “little boy” inside shows up at 38, not as sabotage, but as learned safety—and how a few seconds of awareness can change the ending.

I share a simple day at the grocery store that turned into a masterclass in triggers. Crowds build, my wife reaches for space, her hand slips from mine, and that tiny moment lights up a familiar story of abandonment. Instead of shutting down or storming out, I caught the quiet gap before reaction and asked one question: Why did you leave me? Her answer reframed everything—she needed safety, and I needed to lead with presence. From there, we break down practical steps: notice body cues, name the trigger, reassure the younger self, and move with your partner’s signals.

We also unpack why isolation isn’t strength, how survival strategies formed in childhood can keep us disconnected, and why loving mirrors matter. Feedback from people who want you to grow can be the difference between repeating a pattern and rewriting it. This is a space for Scarred Sons and anyone who loves them—men learning to coach the child within, partners learning to read each other better, and a community committed to growth over perfection.

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Transcript

Welcome And Intentions

Ty 0:00

As a thirty eight year old scar son, I try my best to coach the little boy in me, instead of going back into his body. Because when I go back into his body, my nervous system reacts before my mind. Although this is not who I am today, it's a journey, and it's who I've learned to be. Let's talk about it. Welcome to the Scarred Sons Podcast, where we dive into scars of life and the outcomes they shape. This podcast is a space for honest conversations about my journey, the lessons learned, the struggles endured, and the growth that followed. Geared towards helping other sons with scars. We'll explore topics like personal development, mental and spiritual health, and the path to becoming the best version of yourself. Let's navigate these challenges together, one story at a time. Let's dive in. The views expressed on this podcast are based on my personal experiences and insights. I am not a licensed therapist, counselor, or medical professional, and the content shared is not intended as a substitute for professional advice or guidance. Please consult a qualified professional for advice tailored to your specific needs. I am not responsible for any decisions or outcomes resulting from the use of this content.

Safe Space And Core Message

Ty 1:11

What's up to all my scarsons out there? I'm your host Ty. Before we dive in, I want you to know this is a safe space. I'm not here as someone who has it all figured out, just a man willing to speak his truth. And if you carry any scars, welcome home. This episode isn't about reliving the past. It's about noticing what shows up in the present. The little boy in me still tries to come out sometimes, not to sabotage my life, but to protect me the only way he learned how. The work now isn't to silence him, it's to calm him and remind him that I can take things from here. The hardest part isn't understanding why I'm triggered, it's catching myself while it's happening. When my chest tightens up, when my thoughts speed up, my heart starts racing, when my body feels like it needs to act fast. You might notice it differently. Maybe in your jaw, your shoulders, or the sudden urge to just shut down. In those moments, I'm learning that the little boy in me doesn't need to be corrected, he needs reassurance.

Triggers And Body Cues

Ty 2:25

He needs to know that what he's sensing isn't happening right now, even if it feels familiar. There's a couple of things that I still do, a couple of things that trigger me, and essentially all of what's really happening is my body is going through my past experience with this scenario. So I'll give you a few so that you can understand a little bit better. For me, I get startled when my name is called from my sleep. I isolate when I feel abandoned. I become passive aggressive when I'm hurt emotionally. I storm out when I feel unheard or misunderstood, and I seek approval for my work and ideas. Although I appear to you as a 38-year-old man, in these scenarios you're looking at the Scarred Sun at the age that the original scenario happened. There's so many different versions of ourselves that we become because that's where our skill level ends, depending on what the interaction or the experience may be. For me, the moment before I react usually isn't loud. It's pretty quiet. Almost like my body deciding before I'm fully caught up. That's usually where the choice lives. There's usually a brief moment, sometimes only a few seconds, where I get to choose. Do I go back into this body and react from fear or do I stay present and coach him from the sidelines? Coaching him doesn't mean suppressing emotion, it means reminding myself I'm safe right now. I have options, I don't have to react to survive. Some days I catch it, some days I don't. And neither one defines me. Just recently I noticed myself wanting to pull away. Not because anyone did anything wrong, but because something felt familiar. That awareness alone changed how the moment ended. In this moment, this was a normal day with me and my wife. I'm gonna share a little bit more about this moment so you have an example. We go grocery shopping typically on Saturdays.

Patterns That Still Show Up

Ty 4:55

I haven't been able to find one great time to go grocery shopping where we live because the population is consistently growing at a rapid rate. So when we go, it's typically people all around, everywhere. My wife doesn't do the best with crowds. I don't do the best with crowds. When my wife gets overwhelmed in certain spaces, she tries to protect herself by getting out of the crowd or retreating to an area that feels safe. On this day when we were grocery shopping, I feel like we were leaving. I don't know if we were leaving or going to a certain area of the store or what the case was, but it came about in my wife that she needed to get to a safe space because her space was cluttered. Too many people were around her, too many people were on top of her. And mind you, I'm right here. So it doesn't really mean the equation does nothing really. And on the flip side, you have me. I'm together with you in this fight. None of these people really matter because I know I have you. But as my wife starts to break away, I'm no longer moving fast enough to keep her feeling safe. So now she doesn't feel safe, even though I'm right here with her. I'm not moving at the same rate of speed to keep up with her, to get to the retreat spot, the safe place. And in that event, she releases my hand to get to safety. In the moment of her releasing her hand from me, it triggered me to feel a sense of abandonment. The little boy showed up. Not thinking about my wife, what she's dealing with, what her current experience is. It was more of the little boy that quickly, in these moments, don't really take a lot. It's just a little slight something that reminds you of your past or a past situation. It's just just and it just came over me, and

The Choice Point

Ty 6:57

I went directly to that little boy, and I was like, yo, you're leaving me. I feel abandoned because you left me, this person left me, that person left me. Now you now you now why you you doing it too? Like you gonna be with them. And it's this example that can be duplicated in so many different scenarios, so many different ways. It's so such a small, minute thing, but it's hard to catch yourself if you don't have any other skills to help you first become aware that this is what you do, or this is what I do, to being able to quickly tap into the oh, this is just a trigger. I'm safe, I'm not really in harm's way. I really should probably be trying to help my honey get help her get to the safe space because that's gonna lead me to the safe space, and then we go together. That's something you know we still have to work on of learning each other as we grow in life. You know, you learn more about the person that you're with, you become more in tune, and hopefully that person is also on a health journey or growth journey or in some type of therapy to be able to also be aware of what their triggers are. So then we can talk about which it turned out to be an extremely beautiful moment because yes, I did get I did get frustrated because I felt abandoned. I allowed the little boy to show up, but I did was able to quickly or quickly result to asking a question, hey honey, why did you leave me? And then that's how we got into the dialogue. Hey, I didn't feel safe. It was too many people around me. I was just trying to get to safety. Wasn't really about you, it was about me trying to get to safety. You weren't moving

The Grocery Store Trigger

Ty 8:50

as quickly as I needed you to so that I could remain safe or I can feel safe. And so I retreated. Got it. So now when we in these moments and I feel you picking up speed, I need to be in tune with not only the surrounding, but also how the your body, your body language that you're giving off, I should quickly be able to tap into, which will quickly diffuse or be or enable me to go and directly calm the little boy quick, fast in a hurry. Hey, hey, little T. Hey, little Ty. You good, man? You straight, you safe. Don't overreact. You don't need to jump out, you don't need to call for help. I got you. We good. I'm gonna take care of my wife, which is in tune, gonna take care of me. We're gonna be safe. We're gonna get to where we need to go. Everything's gonna be cool. Copasthetic, everything's straight. And so these are just the little, this is just one example. I got plenty, but this I don't want to be too long-winded, but this is one example of how the little boy can can show up, right? And so when I'm triggered, isolation still feels like the fastest exit. So, in this same example, as quickly as she wanted to release my hand, the quicker I wanted to isolate because whoa, I don't know if I can trust this because it seemed like you might be able to leave or might be willing to leave me at any given moment. Not sure if I can handle that. Pulling away, going quiet, keeping things to myself for a long time. This all worked out, right? For me. But I'm learning that what once protected me can also keep me disconnected. Isolation isn't always strength. Sometimes it's just an old response that hasn't been updated yet. And so I could have easily isolated, could have easily not said something like I normally in the past before I started going into therapy and diving in and understanding my triggers and becoming aware of myself. I would have never told my wife, honey, why did you leave me? Like, what is going on here? I would never have tried to gather some understanding. I would have compartmentalized, compressed it, packed that thing away, and kept my guard up for when it happened again because that one's safe. And now I feel like you can leave any given time. And so now I have to protect myself. I'm going to keep this information internally. You never gonna know about it because I'm not gonna give off that I'm frustrated. I'm gonna try not to. That's not always successful in that department, but I'm gonna try my hardest to not tell you or to not explain to you what happened. Now you may have an idea, but I'm just never gonna speak about it. Unhealthy, completely unhealthy. A lot of what I've called survival as a man started as protection as a boy. And that's something I want to sit with next, not with judgment, but with understanding. I'm sure you may have gone through something where you can see the little boy just jumping out in rage. It's so easy, man, to override it. It's so easy to just not pay any attention to it because we literally went back. We're not even in our adult body when we're going through our moods or when we're choosing how to react in certain situations. We just go straight to little boy, straight to the younger version of us. So we kind of forget and lose any type of new way or any type of like growth way. It especially if you never had a tool or was never given any way differently to

From Reacting To Asking

Ty 12:45

navigate these situations that occur. Another thing I used to do is completely shut down. I used to completely shut down on people. I used to completely isolate. That don't make you no stronger, man. It don't help you in the long run. Feels good for the for the moment. But like, who are we fooling? Like the little boy in us needs to be reassured that he is okay and that he is safe. When you are triggered, you need to be able to, or I'm not gonna tell you what you need to do, but it would be beneficial if you could navigate through these scenarios with patience, with curiosity, and from a healing and growth aspect of life. I want to learn more about myself because I notice these are the things that I'm doing in these moments, which I can now tie back to the child, because this is why I've always done it this way, because this is what was always done to me. A lot of times it's just that awareness that helps us get over the bridge, that helps us become more in tune with our own actions. And like I said in episode eight, and I believe episode seven, we need people around us with mirrors. We need people in our lives that hold up mirrors. Not to make us feel bad about ourselves, but when you get to the point that you really want to grow, you want to get into an evolved version of yourself, you will want some kind of feedback. Now, I'm not saying you need to go and ask for feedback for every little thing, but especially the things you know you don't do well. The situations you haven't done made the best decisions in. We're not trying to change our whole makeup, we're not trying to change ourselves overnight. None of this is gonna happen in a day, hours. It takes time and it takes practice, but it all starts with awareness. It's great if you can pick up on these things by yourself and fine-tune and self-correct. Perfect. However, it's even better when you have people in your life that love you and care for you that will hold up a mirror because they love and care for you and show you what exactly you're doing. It's to help you, not to hurt you, and don't get that confused. Because some people can show you a mirror just to show you a mirror, not to promote growth, not to do anything. Some people just want to point a finger at you. Talking about the people that want to see you excel in life, they want to see you exceed, and they love you so much to stop, correct you, and give you feedback because they know how beneficial it will be to you. So take heed, man. That's all I'm saying. Just take heed and get around some people if you're not already around them and listen. Now, it's one thing to receive this feedback. If you don't agree, you don't have to.

Isolation Isn’t Strength

Ty 16:00

But at least listen to it. Mull over it, think over it, brainstorm over it, figure out if there's a connection. If there is a connection, there's work to be done. If not, no harm, no foul. Thank you for sharing that information. Move on. If you're listening to this and you recognize that younger version of yourself, you're not broken, you adapted early. And now as an adult, you're allowed to pause long enough to decide who gets to lead in these moments. We don't abandon the boy, we reassure him and we stay present. If you've listened this far in the pod, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for coming back and spending some time with me. I hope this has been valuable to you. I hope you can use this, I hope you can share this, and I hope this community of Scarred Sons continues to grow. And I also want to note that Scarred Sons podcast, yes, it is for Scarred Sons. But if you're a woman, if you're a young lady, we welcome you too. We know everyone is around Scarred Sons. So whomever can listen and gain information to help a Scarred Son in your life, that's the goal. That's what I'm here for. I don't have all the answers. I don't do everything correct. I am completely human. With that being said, I just wanted to truly thank you and let you know I'm appreciative of you listening to the podcast. Appreciate you listening to my story. And again, I hope God blesses you in some form or fashion with some information that I've shared. Until next time, peace and love, y'all. Thank you for joining me on the Scarred Sons podcast. Remember, every Scar tells a story, and every story has the power to inspire growth. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to reach out and share your journey. Don't forget to stay up to date with the podcast by liking, commenting, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also follow us on Instagram at ScarredPeriodSons for more content and updates. Until next time, keep moving forward, keep healing, and remember scars don't define you, they shape you. Stay strong, and I'll see you in the next episode. Peace.