Embrace your inner child
Healing your inner child is one of the most important things you can do for yourself. Almost every one of us experienced some aspect of trauma as a child. Trauma’s vary from having your favorite doll being taken to the trash without your consent, to your best friend moving away when you were five, to being told to shut-up, or to being physically, emotionally, spiritually, or sexually abused.
Inner child work is so important as it the way for us to reconnect with those wounded parts of ourselves: the child within at all the ages the traumas happened. As we reconnect with those wounded, fragmented parts of ourselves, we are able to begin to see the basis of so many of our fears, insecurities, and so many areas where we are self-sabotaging our lives. Meeting and healing our inner children is when and where true healing begins.
Examples of childhood trauma:
• Having an emotionally unavailable parent (withholds affection, parents work seems more important than the child, child doesn’t feel heard or seen).
• Being ‘punished’ by shaking, biting back, burning, hair pulling, pinching, washing out the mouth with soap or smacking.
• Having been molested, shown pornography or any other type of sexual contact from a parent, relative or friend
• Death of a parent or close family member
• An absent parent
• Inappropriate or burdensome responsibilities (caretaking for a parent when you are a child)
• Emotional neglect, i.e., lack of nurturing, encouragement or support
• Being verbally insulted or being called names
• Auto accidents or other spontaneous traumatic events
• Humiliation
• Destruction of your personal stuff
There are so many examples of childhood trauma in addition to the above, but these will begin to give you an idea of what inner child work encompasses. It is also helpful to remember that these trauma’s may have occurred by parents, grandparents, brother, sisters, other relatives, family friends, teachers, childhood friends or others left to caretaker us.
Inner child work is making contact, embracing, understanding and healing our inner child. Your inner child is the original you that entered this world, full of wonder, joy, innocence, sensitivity, playfulness, trust and unconditional love.
The truth is once we are born, our families and society begin pushing us to “grow up” and we repress our inner child. The sad truth is, that while we do ‘grow up’, our emotional and psychological wounding began, and we remain stunted/wounded until we heal our inner child. All we have to do is look around and see all the grown adults in various states of anger, fears, phobias, rage, loneliness, addictions, inability to trust, and numerous broken relationships to see how vast the effects of childhood trauma are.
When as children our needs and voices are denied, the child within each of us begins to hold or accumulate all the emotional, psychological, spiritual and physical baggage. This repressed, unexplored baggage will continue to build and causes us to experience problems such as relationship difficulties, employment difficulties, depression, anger, anxiety, panic attacks and other mental illnesses, physical ailments (headaches, back pain, autoimmune illnesses, diabetes, respiratory illnesses, kidney/bladder or cancer).
Truthfully, our lack of understanding our inner child, the lack of connection is a major cause of the issues we see in society today. When we have not healed our inner child, that wounded being is what is driving our adulthood. We become disconnected or totally separated from our original self and all our innocence.
It is important to heal our inner child. It is adding in components to our life that give us permission to be childlike again, where we can experience our original innocence; that time in our lives when we saw the world with wonder, freedom, and openness.
We want to remove the shame, fear, self-loathing, anger, rage, guilt, hatred and blame that we carry with us, sometimes not understanding that it is all held by our inner child. To do this, we have to gain the trust of our inner child through self-care, self-nurturing and unconditional love. We want to speak to our inner child with kindness, respect, love, playfulness and joy and also let your inner child know that you are there for them. It is also important- vital actually that you honor your word. If you tell the inner child you will be there for them and then do something that injured them prior, you will have undone all that healing you had been doing.
Talk to your inner child every day. Tell him/her that you love them, that you hear them, that your are sorry for what they experienced, thank them for being resilient, for living, for giving you the chance to heal, and forgive.
Other ways to work with your inner child is through journal work, asking your inner child a question with your dominate hand and writing the response with your non-dominant hand, color, draw or paint with your inner child letting them lead the way. If using all one color is what they want, great, if they want to color outside the line, great. Sometimes looking at old pictures of yourself as a child is helpful. See what your younger self looked like. Look at them, what do you see today?
As you reconnect, begin remembering what you loved to do as a child. Did you like sledding, building with blocks, dancing, playing board games, reading favorite books or maybe you enjoyed cooking? Whatever those activities were, do what you can to reintroduce them into your life today.
As you do inner child work, you may be amazed at all the different parts of you that become awakened. The discover can be life-changing. It is so important to make time for play and learn to let all the judgments and expectations go. Yes, it may feel silly at first to be in your 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and beyond and may even feel a bit funny or foolish at playing ‘like’ a child, but this is about your healing and truthfully, consider this, who cares, healing yourself is what you are here for.
As you become more comfortable doing deeper work for many is important. That may include work with a therapist, someone with experience in inner child work, or a Shaman. Inner journeys, visualization journeys, or soul retrievals may be helpful.
I have been contemplating putting together a support group for inner child work. If you are interested let me know.