Healing Your Inner Child: Reconnecting with the Past for Emotional Freedom

Introduction

The inner child is considered to be a component of the inner psyche. It is present since birth, and develops during the tender years of our lives. As we go through babyhood, toddlerhood, and right through the primary school years.

The inner child remembers the good experiences as well as the negative experiences, like fear, trauma, neglect, and so on. This makes it very important to psychotherapy, as it helps uncover the past and seeks to explain how it affects the present. Especially in terms of any unwanted emotional and behavioral patterns.

What Is An Inner Child?

The concept of an inner child was introduced by Carl Jung. It is a crucial aspect of psychoanalysis. Jung believed that the inner child was the source of many emotions in life. It drives a lot of aspects of the present life. However, over time, it is possible that we lose conscious awareness of our inner child. So, it becomes difficult to understand and control some emotions. For instance, sometimes as a grown-up, you might behave like a child. Remember when you felt the urge to or actually yelled out loud after a trying day? This is your inner child at play.

Jung believed that getting in touch with your inner child helps achieve balance and healing in life. Hence, it is a very crucial tool in psychotherapy.

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Why Is the Inner Child Important?

The inner child is the key to reconnecting with a lost part of yourself, which seemingly disappeared somewhere between childhood and adulthood. For many, this can be difficult, as it requires navigating complicated emotions and experiences. 

The inner child is a significant component of the subconscious and contains beliefs, emotions, memories of the past, and expectations from the future. Connecting with the inner child is not just a way of reconnecting with the lost innocence of childhood or the doe-eyed dreams of adolescence, but it is an important part of healing especially where unwanted behaviors are concerned.

Some of the ways in which the inner child becomes important in therapy are as follows:

It helps in uncovering and shedding light on how past experiences, especially negative experiences like abuse, neglect, or trauma, affect present maladaptive behaviors and coping mechanisms.

It reconnects you with passions or dreams you may have moved past or set aside, and makes you feel empowered.

It helps in regulating your emotions in a better, healthy manner.

It helps in developing healthy and productive coping mechanisms.

It increases self-awareness, self-esteem, and allows you to become more empathetic to others.

Understanding Inner Child Wounds

Inner child meaning changes from person to person, and from context to context. While the inner child may be a reservoir of passion and dreams, it can also be a reservoir of negative and/or repeated experiences a person may have lived through during their childhood. These damaging and repeated experiences are what are known as inner child wounds.

Inner child wounds can otherwise be known as adverse childhood experiences. These range from abuse, neglect, loss of a loved one, parental separation or divorce, a history of substance use in the family, and so on.

Inner child wounds often lead to unresolved trauma, which can then negatively impact people even during their adulthood years. For instance, maladaptive behavioral patterns that cannot be explained by any other reason can actually result from an inner child wound.

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The Importance of Healing the Inner Child

There is a very significant need to heal the inner child. Inner child wounds can give rise to a wide range of maladaptive emotional and behavioral patterns, like low self-esteem, childish outbursts, temper tantrums, fear of abandonment and/or commitment, self-destructive behaviors, and so on.

These emotions and behaviors can adversely impact day-to-day life and relationships. If you or a loved one experience any of these signs, then it might be an indication that the inner child needs to be healed. Healing the inner child helps resolve these maladaptive patterns and lead a healthy, fulfilling life.

At the NuView Treatment Center, our medical and clinical team offers a personalized treatment approach for you to connect with and heal your inner child. Psychodynamic therapy and internal family systems therapy are some widely used psychotherapies that will heal these wounds, help you better understand yourself, and take you forward in your journey of balance and healing.

What Triggers The Inner Child?

Inner child triggers are triggers that can lead to disturbances in daily life. For instance, imagine a very small incident that embarrassed you at work. The reaction to that would be highly disproportionate – like hysterical crying. This is because the inner child got triggered and connected this incident with being shamed or rejected by a parent. So, generally speaking, inner child triggers are not really unlike any other triggers. They can be mundane, minor disruptions.

However, on the positive side, inner child triggers are not all down-and-out kinds of triggers. They can even range from excitement to joy, something you might have experienced as a child as well.

Can You Heal Your Inner Child?

When the inner child is wounded, it needs healing. And yes, the inner child can be healed. Inner child healing requires inner child work, and it involves recognizing the signs of the inner child and working with it.

If you think your inner child needs healing, some ways you can start with connecting and healing your inner child are as follows:

1. Connect With Yourself – This involves really listening to yourself. When you are upset or disturbed, what is happening to you? What are the behaviors you are engaging in? Paying attention to these things is the beginning of identifying your inner child. Recognizing that it is there.
2. Self-Care – Begin by following steady patterns of self-care, which involves hygiene, eating, sleeping, and so on. Moreover, incorporate other healthy habits in your life, like meditation and mindfulness. These practices are highly beneficial as they allow you to experience emotions as they are, even if they are difficult, which allows you to begin working with your inner child and heal it.
3. Social Support System – Begin by developing healthy relationships that help you feel safe and secure in the world. Sometimes, this needs to look past parents and other family members as they can only exacerbate inner child wounds, especially if they are the ones responsible for it.
4. Bring out the child – The inner child also clings to happy experiences and memories. Those passions you had when you were a child, those hopes and dreams you had for your future? Yes, maybe life has made you put those aside. But reconnecting with your inner child allows you to tap into these positive feelings as well.
5. Psychotherapy – With healing, it is not always possible to achieve on your own. If you think your inner child would benefit from professional support, then seeking professional help is one of the best ways to start with inner child therapy and heal the inner child within you.

How Do You Release Your Inner Child?

To release your inner child, you will have to,

• First, begin by acknowledging the inner child. It resides deep within you and is as much a part of you as let us say your eyes are. Acknowledge it exists.

• Listen to your inner child, what is it saying to you? You might notice positive and negative experiences and memories.

• Dialogue with your inner child. Write a letter to it, perhaps. Ask questions of your inner child, what is it feeling, what it needs from you, and so on. Then, start journaling these dialogues and experiences.

• Meditation and mindfulness. These are tools that boost self-awareness and allow you to connect with your inner child.

Now, it is also very important to remember that the journey to releasing your inner child is not always a smooth one. It can be tedious and emotionally draining, especially when you have to navigate challenging, traumatic experiences and memories. In that case, it is not suggestible to try and release your inner child on your own. You should seek professional help and have a psychotherapist facilitate this journey for you, with you.

Rebuilding Trust with Your Inner Child

Rebuilding trust with your inner child, especially in cases of traumatic experiences, it is known as reparenting your inner child.

Reparenting your inner child requires time and work, and it is best done with a licensed and skilled psychotherapist. The goal of reparenting is to begin rebuilding trust with your inner child by giving it time, love, and validation. It also requires to be nurtured, just as you would with a child.

There are 4 levels of reparenting your inner child:

• Discipline – It involves creating a structured and conducive framework for personal growth and development. It involves establishing boundaries and maintaining consistency with growth.

• Joy – It involves rediscovering childlike wonder and playfulness to enjoy life and the world.

• Emotional Regulation – It involves identifying and managing emotions with mindfulness and resilience.

• Self-Care – It involves focusing on the self, especially in terms of its overall well-being as a way of nurturing it.

Overcoming Common Obstacles in Inner Child Healing

Hurting the inner child is something that is common among us all. Therefore, there are bound to be some obstacles in inner child healing:

• The inner child is buried deep within the subconscious and can be difficult to reach out to and access.
• Emotions are phased out and a wall is built to protect from negative childhood experiences.
• Protector parts, which are parts of the mind that develop as a defensive system and prevent access to the inner child.
• Social masks, which are usually masks that lead to inauthenticity and curtain self-expression.
• Resistance to change, especially given the fear and uncertainty that comes with tapping into the inner child.

While these are common obstacles to healing the inner child, they can be overcome with:

• Emotional Intelligence – Building emotional intelligence allows you to recognize your own emotions and manage them. It builds control and resilience needed to tap into and deal with the inner child.
• Motivation – Self-motivation, which can be built with positive self-affirmations, unconditional positive regard, and goal setting. These factors can drive you to overcome the common obstacles in healing the inner child.
• Personal Responsibility – Taking ownership of the journey of connecting with and reparenting the inner child can make you more focused on the inner child and dealing with challenges on the way.
• Personal Growth – It can take place in individual settings and also in group settings, and it involves building personal and social awareness.