A person’s inner child includes sources of strength, lightheartedness, and/or skills that they have learned throughout their stages of growth. However, it also includes wounds and traumas that have been experienced throughout development. Healing these traumas within your inner child may take some time, but it is possible.
What Is an Inner Child?
The inner child is our collection of memories and developmental stages from childhood. Some individuals may be more in touch with a carefree side of themselves. As adults, these individuals may be more playful and act in a more child-like manner. On the other hand, adults with a wounded inner child may tend to exhibit intense (and even extreme) emotional reactions which are often triggered by memories from the past.
What Does it Mean to Heal Your Inner Child?
People often carry difficult memories from childhood into their adult lives. The pain experienced in childhood often resurfaces later in life as difficulties in interpersonal relationships, particularly romantic relationships and relationships with children; but, trouble can also arise in friendships and at work.
When these maladaptive patterns of behavior surface in our adult relationships, we often repeat many of the same patterns of behavior that we experienced in our childhood. The neglected and wounded inner child surfaces and as adults, we end up in chaotic relationships; resort to negative coping skills to handle stress (drugs, alcohol, binge eating, etc.); and react in impulsive and selfish ways.1
Many adults turn to childlike behavior when they feel threatened or when they are upset. This may look like stomping feet or slamming doors during an argument; stonewalling or refusing to communicate with someone; and storming away to avoid a discussion.
It’s important and valuable to accept your inner child, and acknowledge that healing can begin from a place of curiosity about what happened and reconnecting with your emotions.
Healing your inner child can be helpful in addressing:
- Transgenerational trauma: Transgenerational trauma occurs across family generations. Children carry on patterns of maladaptive behavior (learning at an early age about people pleasing, trust issues, and codependency.) Through inner child work and reparenting, these wounds can start to be healed, and the transgenerational trauma can be stopped.
- Attachment issues: When one’s attachment styles are insecure, they are providing evidence that as a child, they felt the need to take care of/protect themselves for one reason or another. These mechanisms that were protective in childhood become detrimental coping mechanisms that hold a person back in adulthood. Inner child work helps you learn more adaptive techniques to care for yourself and your own needs
- Perfectionism: Perfectionism in adulthood may stem from a desire to keep a caregiver happy or receive praise from a caregiver in childhood. It’s important to separate what previously worked in childhood from what is happening in the present. Oftentimes, the behaviors we carry with us from childhood are not effective in adult life.
- Low self-esteem: As we grow, we experience the world through our caregivers. If they use harsh or abusive language toward us, that critical voice will be adopted as our own internal dialogue. Through learning about your inner child’s experiences, emotions, and needs, you are better able to understand the person you are in the present moment.
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How to Heal Your Inner Child
To begin the healing work with your inner child, it is important to first understand that this work will take time. There is no quick fix or magic solution to alleviate the pains of childhood trauma or distress. In truth, inner child work is an ongoing, deliberate dialogue between the inner child and adult self.
Here are eight ways to heal your inner child:
1. Recognize & Accept Your Inner Child
Even if you’re unable to recall many memories from your childhood, you know that at one point, you were a child and that time in your life has had an impact on you. Recognizing your inner child can begin with looking at photographs from your childhood. It may feel difficult at first, but taking time to recall memories from the past and accept that there were challenging times in your childhood is important.
2. Listen to Your Inner Child
Listen and acknowledge that your inner child has wounds. This is a perfect time to pay attention to your own adult reactions and try to recognize what they are trying to tell you. Question what your inner child needs from you as an adult by offering love and compassion.
Some other questions that you can ask your inner child are:
- What are you judging or blaming yourself for?
- How are you feeling?
- How can I best support you?
Listening to your inner child and experiencing the feelings and emotions that may arise is a valuable way to grow and work through the past.
3. Write a Letter
Writing a letter to your inner child from your adult self can be a very powerful and compassionate exercise. It provides your inner child with the wisdom of your adult self, while also releasing some of the responsibility the inner child may have always felt. This letter can begin with, “Dear Younger Me”.
Another exercise that can be helpful is writing a letter from the inner child’s perspective. In this letter, the inner child can write with crayons or markers and say anything that comes to mind. It would begin with, “Dear Big Me”.
4. Try Meditation
In the practice of meditation, we become still and are able to focus our attention and direct our thoughts. Often when working through inner child wounds, we can become distracted, and are therefore unable to clearly focus on what happened in the past. An inner child meditation is a guided and direct path to help you access feelings from the past.1
5. Try Journaling
Journaling is an active therapeutic technique which helps you clarify your thoughts and feelings by getting them out through writing, in audio form, in an artistic way, through an app, or by video. Being able to recognize and release these thoughts, feelings, and behavioral patterns as an adult can help you alter maladaptive coping skills and set new life goals.
Another approach is journaling from the point of view of the inner child. This will allow the inner child to express him/herself, rather than keep the emotions bottled up inside.
6. Practice Reparenting
When reparenting, we start by learning how to identify our own physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, and how we have historically attempted to get those needs met.1 Through kindness and self-compassion, we are able to validate our needs, rather than judging or choosing to ignore them. Try asking your inner child, “What are you feeling right now?” or “What do you need right now?”. It will also be important to validate your inner child by attending to the feelings that come up by offering love and compassion.
7. Care for Your Inner Child
Caring for your inner child is also an important step in healing. This may look like indulging in some of your favorite foods from childhood, seeking out more fun, laughter, and joy in your life, keeping a photo of “younger you” in an accessible place, and using an affirmation to remind your inner child that adult you is there for them.
8. Check in Daily with Your Inner Child’s Needs
When you’re tuned in and aware of your inner child, you will become aware of when things start to feel “off”. Through daily check-ins, inquiring, “How are you feeling today?”, you are providing your inner child with love, structure, and connection. This will also enable the adult self to distinguish when feelings are rearing up from childhood, and allow themselves to plan for how to handle these in the best way.2
Signs That Your Inner Child Is Healing
As you begin to heal your inner child, life will start to feel lighter. You will no longer feel as burdened by the crippling pains of the traumas from your childhood. Most importantly, the adult version of yourself will be in control and will be making the decisions.1
Below are signs that your inner child is healing:
- You’ve learned healthy coping mechanisms
- You’ve broken patterns of avoidance
- You offer yourself compassion
- You can tune into what you need
- You’re able to set boundaries
- You’re better able to regulate your emotions
- You’re able to develop daily rituals and routines
- You are able to clearly express your own needs
- You are able to take care of yourself and tune into what you need
- You allow yourself to play and be spontaneous
When to Seek Professional Help
Inner child work can be very painful and unsettling, because it often leads back to difficult and/or traumatic childhood experiences. As a result, it may be beneficial to find a therapist who has experience with providing inner child work. This can be done through in-person or online therapy, as long as it is offered in a safe, structured, and trusting therapeutic environment. If you are in early recovery from substance abuse, in active psychosis, or in an on-going trauma situation, I encourage you to first speak with a mental health provider before pursuing any inner child work.
Final Thoughts
When physical, emotional, and/or spiritual needs are unmet in childhood, those traumas can also lead to poor patterns of coping in adulthood. Fortunately, healing the inner child is possible by offering yourself love and compassion, and engaging in activities that foster emotional growth. Often, this work can be done independently, but may be more effective when completed with the assistance of a trained and licensed therapist.
Healing Your Inner Child Infographics
