What is your Inner Child?
The Inner Child is all about healing from psychological trauma. It relates to dysfunctional patterns or even self-harming behaviours that you may have acquired as a child. Self-harming is not necessarily physical, it could be self-sabotage, where you're putting yourself down, you don't believe in yourself, or where you stop yourself from doing certain things because of your belief system.
The Inner Child isn't a separate part of you, it's not literally a child, it's the psyche inside of you that is childlike. It's your little you, the innocent side of you before you became old enough to understand things that you still have within you. All of your memories, feelings, or emotions from when you were little are stored within you and that doesn't go away.
People say that time is a great healer, but it doesn't make these feelings any easier. If it's a pain or a wound that you've got, it's always going to be there unless you heal it and deal with it. You just think about it less often, it becomes less present because other things push it down. You have more recent issues that surface so your inner child just gets suppressed further down into your emotional baggage.
You may think that it doesn't bother you anymore, that it has gone away but it hasn't, you've just suppressed it and it will likely re-surface when something triggers it again in the future. That is why we need to deal with it and work with it.
People often think it's got to be something significant that happened in your life that wounds your inner child, but it can just be comments made to you at school or by parents. If someone said you were stupid, ugly, or untidy you may have picked up on these and now stored them as your belief. You've been wounded by the words so much that they have become your limiting belief into adulthood.
Up to the age of six, your brain functions at quite a slow pace with a brainwave frequency of four to seven cycles per second, which is a very receptive brainwave. At this age, you are like a sponge absorbing everything. Whatever happened to you before you were six, you didn't question it or even think about it and that is in your brain now stored as fact. That is unless you've done some work to release it or unpick it and rewire your belief systems, which most of us don't do because we don't know how to do it or that we can do it.
You will have made decisions at a subconscious level, on how things should be done and what is acceptable to the outside world. This gets reinforced by parents, teachers, peers, and family members. This programming evolves and we are only products of our past, so what we are taught we absorb, and that's what makes us who we are today.
Our later experiences in life will then reinforce those beliefs. We create our own scripts on how our life should be, how we should behave, and how other people should behave and this could be completely wrong. So we need to be careful of how we judge people, what we think about other people's actions, their behaviours, and what they're doing, because of what we've been taught.
We carry these immature scripts and decisions into adulthood. 90% of our decisions and our actions are based on those scripts. It is so profound to think that the things I was taught as a kid affect how I think, feel, behave and react to people now. So have a real assessment about your thought process and where they came from, and whether they are your thoughts, and whether you believe in them anymore. It is a powerful thing, and if they are your belief system still and you think they are true, no problem, but when you start unpicking them, you often realise that they don't resonate with you anymore. So let them go.
If we don't examine our scripts then whatever it is that we are dealing with in our lives, we will keep repeating it, we will keep on playing out the same script day in day out. So if you think that you're not good enough, that you don't have confidence, that you're stupid, not pretty enough, or whatever you've been taught as a kid it's going to hold you back. So we need to unpick what it is we've been taught and told.
A lot of the time we are living life like a child inside the body of a grown-up. When adults do behave like children that's because their inner child is coming out and as we know children yearn for attention. They yearn for understanding for care and support. Have a look at that and see if someone has behaved that way. What it is that they're craving and what gap they want to fill? We all do it, we all want attention, we all want to feel loved, we all want to feel needed and feel worthy it's still part of the inner child that is coming out. If that's quite important for you to feel wanted or to feel needed or to feel cared for, that's probably a wound from your childhood that needs healing and working on.
People often try and silence a lot of these issues by alcohol, drugs, or by being promiscuous. That obviously doesn't fill the gap and you may feel empty afterwards. People who want to feel successful often turn to gambling and then lose lots of money and it makes the feeling worse. Overspending, overeating being a workaholic, self-harming are other ways to try and get those childhood needs met but these don't get met using these methods, it just makes the wounds deeper.
Don't mask over the problems. Let's unpick the wounds, who said it to you? Why do they say it? Is it a belief that everyone has, is it genuine or not?
We've all been influenced by the environment since we were little fetuses inside our mum's as a baby. We were affected by her wellbeing, the environment she was in, her stress levels, hormones, nourishment, any complications she might have had. Then we have the birth experience which can be difficult and there is early infant care. Did our mums struggle to bond with us? Was the dad present? If you went to nursery did you feel unwanted by the parents? Whatever happened to us as babies and young children can really affect us as adults. None of this healing journey is about blaming, because we are all in our own spiritual journeys. It's about understanding that they did the best that they could in their stage of their journey.
We absorb everything from everyone around us from neighbours, caregivers, to parents, friends, girl guides, or other organisations. All those experiences are logged in your subconscious mind from all of these different areas.
All of this emotion and programming and views create a pool around you and all the negative things that are coming your way is making your pool murkier and murkier. So it starts as quite a clear pool. If your mum took drugs or alcohol or had an abusive relationship when she was pregnant or had a difficult birth, you might come out in a bit of a murky pool because you've had a bit of trauma already. But as your life goes on, and you pick up arguments at home or bullying at school, your pool gets murkier and thicker. Contained within this pool are all your self-esteem issues, your body image, your family trauma, or secrets. If you can imagine you are sat within all of this negative energy in your pool even now and it's circulating all the time.
That isn't going away, because you've got older, it's still sat there because you haven't resolved the issues. Unless you do that it's going to keep on being in your pool and keep on circulating and keep stinging you now and again and remind you that's an issue you've got to deal with.
We all have days where sometimes we get engulfed by the pool, there are days when we just get bogged down by stuff, by emotions, and by feelings. Some days we are up and feel ok but other days we feel bogged down because we are in this pool of stuff going around. So it's time for you to take hold of your emotions, take hold of your issues and your traumas and your past stuff and start to deal with it, unpick it and release it.
Inner Child Healing Journey
If you've got a wounded inner child it will show up in things like low self-esteem, poor body image, low mood, emotional imbalances, and problems with boundaries.
We can have multiple inner child wounds and you're not going to heal everything right away it's about taking small steps little by little. If you just get some inner child work in once a week or month then this time next year you could be well on the way to healing many inner child wounds!
You are the only one that will never leave your inner child because it's you. So you need to give your inner child some love and some reassurance. Here are 9 methods you can use to start to use to heal your inner child.
Mediation
Inner Child meditation is amazing, I did one and oh my goodness, I met my five-year-old self in my meditation, and I'm getting goosebumps now. It was super powerful. Someditation is a really good way to connect with your inner child.
Talking Therapy
If you've got photographs of yourself as a child, have a look through them and remember how you felt then and, and sometimes you'll see things that you forgot about. Reconnect with it and talk to the photograph it really helps to reinforce your thought process and programmes.
Talking therapy is reinforcing how you feel about yourself as a child. Were you fat? Were you ugly? Were you rubbish? No, you weren't you were a child that was just growing and going through what children go through.
Reach out, give your inner child compassion, give it absolute love, and treat yourself. Whatever it was that you lacked as a child, try and give yourself that now. It might be laughter, spontaneity, holidays, hugs, and authenticity.
Write to your Inner Child
So if you've got a trauma that you've been through write a letter about it to your inner child. Write down what happened and apologise for it. Set your boundaries and don't allow it to happen again. It can also provide an opportunity to provide reassurance and comfort to your inner child.
Affirmations
Be proud of yourself every day. Be proud of where you've come from, where you are right now, what you're doing, or how you react today. Tell yourself, I am so proud of myself, for how I behaved today or considering what has happened in my life, or what I have achieved today. We don't reflect enough on what we've done, we just take it for granted. So be present in the moment, reflect on what you've done that day or that week and be proud of yourself. That is a massive thing for healing your inner child, it reinforces on all levels that you are good enough.
Reinforce that you are going to put yourself first and you will never let any harm come to you now you are in your power, you are in charge now. So many inner child issues come from not being safe and secure, be authentic in your power, and that you are now going to look after yourself. That also includes nourishing your body with good food and lots of water and exercise.
Self Love Work
Love yourself, do some self-esteem work. Look after yourself, get your nails done or your hair, and go and have a lovely back massage. Having some time out for you is important if you have some self-love issues.
Talk nicely about yourself as that is healing your inner child. Words are like spells, they can be so powerful so don't talk yourself down. You also don't have to prove yourself to anybody anymore. As long as you are happy, and what you are doing feels authentic that's good enough.
Apologise
Apologising to our inner child is another good powerful method.
We do push ourselves very hard sometimes to impress people to do the right thing to be the perfect kid, to be on the netball team, or to be top of the class. So if you feel you need to apologise to your inner child for this then do that. Sometimes an apology is needed, let them know it would never happen again. Remember to thank your inner child for where you are today. Without them, you wouldn't be where you are right now.
Release Your Emotions
If you get emotional then cry, just let it out. If you are talking to your inner child through meditation and something comes up and you become emotional then crying is a good relief and a way of letting go. If you need to shout and get emotional and be angry, do it, you know, do what you need to do. You're in charge, it's your body, it's your life, you are in charge. And no one can judge you because it's up to you. It's really important to align ourselves with what we want and what feels right for us and disregard how people view, judge, and look at us. That is their issue. It's not our issue, if it feels right for you, it's right for you.
Bring Joy Back into Life
Kids are so innocent and joyful especially around Christmas and all that goes with it so try to bring some of that joy and magic back into your own life as an adult.
Build sandcastles, go on Ferris Wheels or Dodgems, when walking jump in puddles, do forward rolls on or cartwheels on the grass. Don't care if people look at you, if it made you feel good as a kid, give it a bash now. Try and do things that transport you back to your childhood that you haven't done for a long time, it's great fun and can create a lot of laughs. Just bring back that joy in your life a little bit. As adults we're so serious and responsible that we forget the fun side of life.
Forgive
Forgive yourself, forgive your parents, forgive your teachers forgive anyone that you've picked up any wounds from. It wasn't their fault. It's not a blame game. We are not in this to blame anybody else. Forgive them, let it go. That is the best thing that you absolutely can do. Forgiveness is so powerful it sets you free and no longer holds you back.
There is always something to work on and that's the beauty of this journey. It's never too late to start to heal the wounds of your inner child and small steps today can lead to better emotional and physical wellbeing in the future.