Understanding and Healing Your Inner Child
As adults, we all have our own “inner child” that lives within our minds and influences our thoughts and emotions. This inner child is the part of ourselves that has an instinctual need to feel safe, loved, accepted, reassured, and nurtured. Our inner child is the part of us that needs to have fun in life to counteract the mundane or deal with the stressors we face. The inner child contributes to our emotional responses and behaviors that we have as adults. While we may mature mentally, physically, and emotionally, there can be times that we still respond out of our inner child, which can indicate that the inner child is in need of attention.
Understanding The Inner Child Through Child Development
As a child, we each have physical and emotional needs that need to be met by our caretakers. As an infant, the concept of trust is developed if the caretaker continually responds to the childs’ needs. This is the foundation for healthy relationships later on in life as the child is able to trust others, have healthy attachments, and feel secure with others.
During the toddler age, a child becomes more independent. Depending on the type of parenting the child receives, the child can become confident in his or her ability to do things on their own, such as getting a snack. If the parent is encouraging and supportive, the child will feel more confident in their autonomy. If the parent is controlling or critical, the child can develop self-doubt in his or her abilities.
As children get older, a common characteristic is egocentric thinking. Many parents will say, “She is so self-centered”, and confuse this developmental marker as a behavioral issue of selfishness. However, egocentric thinking in children is where the child cannot think or envision something from someone else’s point of view. For example, if a child is playing in the living room and looks up and notices her mother frowning, it is common that the child will internalize that frown to mean something about herself. The child may think, “Mommy must be mad at me” and cannot rationalize that perhaps her mother is frowning for a completely different reason. This is an important characteristic of child development that can contribute to the formation of schemas, which are the beliefs about how we view ourselves and the world around us. In our egocentric thinking as children, we can develop both negative and positive beliefs about ourselves and our worlds, such as, “People don’t like me”, or “Most people like me”. Children who are going through the developmental stage of egocentric thinking need a lot of validation, reassurance, and affirmation.
Reflecting On Your Inner Child
So let’s pause there: now that you know more about some of the important aspects of child development, where did your childhood fall? Did you have a good, secure bond with your caretaker(s) as an infant? Did you receive praise and encouragement as a young child, or were your parents more critical or controlling? When you noticed a reaction or a response from someone as a child, did you internalize it to mean something about you?
Helping Your Inner Child In Therapy
Often in therapy, we go back to moments in childhood that stand out to you. It may have been a positive memory, or it may have been a painful memory. These memories can serve as clues as to why we feel the way we do at times in adulthood. When something painful or traumatic happens in childhood, and it is not resolved in a healing way as a child, this can continue to affect you into adulthood. It is possible that the age you were when the trauma or painful memory occurred was never healed and you are still acting out of your 5 or 7 or 13 year old self as an adult. This is the inner child that needs attention. The age that you were wounded needs to be revisited and healed so that you can resolve the emotional pain from the past.
Healing The Inner Child
There are many techniques that can address the pain from childhood and heal and restore the wounds from the past. Most of these techniques are best used in therapy with a professional counselor to help guide you through the emotional process. However, it is beneficial to begin acknowledging your inner child in order to become aware of behaviors and emotions. To establish that awareness, take note of times that you become more emotional, whether it be angry, irritated, anxious, sad, disappointed, etc. Then ask yourself, “Was there a time in my childhood that I felt this way?”. Set aside some time to reflect on your memories from childhood. Perhaps you can write the scene out, visualize it in your mind, talk with a trusted friend about it, or think about the memory while on a walk. As you identify that scene or memory, take note of how you felt in that memory. Did you feel alone? Disregarded? Unimportant? Afraid? Nervous? Rejected? It may be difficult to bring up some of these memories of feeling sad or alone as a child. It is important that you start to affirm your inner child in these memories. You can practice this by visualizing your adult, present-day self speaking and interacting with your younger self. Imagine your adult self giving your younger self a hug, or saying something like, “You are okay, I am with you”. Talk to your inner child in a compassionate way. Affirm your inner child as you would a child who needs love or reassurance from a trusted adult. It is important to give yourself the love, affection, reassurance, and nurturing that you may not have received when you needed it as a child. By healing the wounded child within, one can find resolution of unresolved emotions including grief, anger, depression, or anxiety. By continuing to nurture the inner child, one may begin to help ease symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Continuing The Work
By starting to become more aware of your inner child, you can begin the process to heal some of the psychological or emotional wounds inflicted in childhood. If you find that you’re in need of more tools for healing your inner child and resolving pain from the past, please reach out to me by clicking the Contact Me button.
