8 Ways to Start Healing Your Inner Child
When childhood trauma remains unaddressed, it has the potential to resurface in different ways during adulthood. Nevertheless, it is never too late to embark on a journey of healing.
Everyone possesses an inner child, a concept that can be interpreted in various ways. This inner child might represent your younger self, encapsulating the stages of development you’ve undergone, or symbolize your youthful aspirations and sense of playfulness.
Recognizing your inner child has its benefits, allowing you to reconnect with the carefree moments of your childhood. Dr. Diana Raab, an author and research psychologist, suggests that embracing the joys of your past can serve as a coping mechanism during challenging periods.
However, not everyone associates childhood solely with happiness. For those who have endured neglect, trauma, or emotional pain, their inner child might appear fragile and in need of protection. Often, the impulse is to bury this pain deep within, safeguarding both the present self and the child they once were.
Concealing such pain doesn’t facilitate healing; instead, it frequently resurfaces in adulthood. This may manifest as relational difficulties or struggles in meeting personal needs. Engaging in the process of healing your inner child can aid in addressing these issues.
Although healing your inner child demands time, these eight tips offer a solid starting point to initiate the journey.
1. Begin the Journey
Begin the journey of healing by acknowledging the presence of your inner child. This crucial step, as highlighted by therapist Kim Egel from Cardiff, California, is fundamental to initiating the healing process. However, embracing your inner child requires an open attitude towards exploring this intricate relationship. Overcoming doubts or resistance related to delving into the past is vital, as such hesitations can impede the healing process.
If the idea of connecting with your inner child seems unfamiliar or uncomfortable, consider approaching inner child work as a path to self-discovery. Temporarily set aside the concept of your inner child and reflect on significant experiences from your childhood. While some memories might evoke positive emotions, others might still carry the weight of emotional pain from that time.
Acknowledging your inner child entails acknowledging and accepting the experiences that caused you distress during childhood. Shedding light on these emotional wounds can lead to a deeper understanding of their lasting impact on your life. Many individuals find solace in addressing their inner child as they would a living person, so experimenting with this approach can be rewarding and comforting.
2. Listen to What Your Inner Child Has to Say
Once you’ve established a connection with your inner child, it becomes crucial to pay heed to the emotions that arise. Therapist Kim Egel underscores the significance of this, explaining that these emotions often surface in situations triggering intense feelings, discomfort, or past wounds.
You may observe emotions such as:
- Anger stemming from unmet needs
- Feelings of abandonment or rejection
- Insecurity
- Vulnerability
- Guilt or shame
- Anxiety
If you’re able to trace these emotions back to specific events during your childhood, you might notice that similar situations in your adult life evoke comparable reactions.
Consider this example: Your partner suddenly becomes engrossed in work and cancels the elaborate evening plans you had. Despite understanding their workload, you still feel rejected and frustrated. This disappointment manifests in a manner reminiscent of your childhood self – you storm off to your room and slam the door.
Viewing the scenario through the lens of your inner child can provide valuable insights. You recognize that your partner’s abrupt work commitment triggered feelings akin to those you experienced when your parents would cancel plans, playdates, or even your birthday festivities due to their busy schedules.
In this manner, attuning to your inner child’s emotions and allowing yourself to experience them rather than suppressing them can aid in identifying and validating the distress you’ve encountered. This constitutes a pivotal initial step towards addressing and working through such emotions.
3. Write a Letter
To initiate a conversation and initiate the healing process, Raab suggests composing a letter addressed to your inner child.
In this letter, you might delve into childhood memories from your current adult perspective, shedding light on or providing explanations for distressing situations that might have puzzled you during your early years.
For instance, perhaps you didn’t understand why your brother constantly yelled at you and destroyed your toys, but you grew to fear his actions regardless. If you’ve come to realize that he endured years of bullying and abuse, his outbursts could start to make more sense. Sharing this newfound insight with your inner child can offer solace for some of the enduring pain.
Such a letter provides an opportunity to extend messages of reassurance and consolation as well.
Furthermore, a few pointed inquiries can help maintain the flow of the dialogue:
- “How are you feeling?”
- “How can I provide support?”
- “What do you require from me?”
Engaging with these queries often leads to responses, although it may take time before your inner child feels sufficiently safe and protected to openly respond.
4. Give Meditation a Try
Those questions you asked your inner child? Meditation can be a great method of opening yourself up for answers.
Meditation has plenty of benefits for physical and mental health, but a few of these relate directly to inner child work.
For one, meditation boosts mindful self-awareness, teaching you to pay more attention to feelings that come up in daily life. Greater mindfulness around your emotions makes it easier to notice when specific situations trigger unhelpful reactions.
Meditation also helps you get more comfortable with unwanted emotions.
Children often have a hard time naming uncomfortable emotions, especially when they aren’t encouraged to express themselves. They may repress or bury these feelings to avoid punishment or earn praise from caregivers for being “good” or maintaining control.
Emotions, positive or negative, are meant to be experienced and expressed. Repressed emotions usually just show up somewhere down the line, often in unhelpful, even harmful ways.
Meditation helps you practice acknowledging and sitting with any feelings that come up in your life. When you get used to accepting emotions as they come, you’ll find it easier to express them in healthy ways. This helps validate your inner child’s feelings by sending the message that it’s OK to have emotions and let them out.
You can also try loving-kindness meditation to send feelings of love to your child self. Egel also recommends visualization meditation as a useful tool for picturing your inner child, or even “visiting” them as your adult self.
5. Journal as Your Inner Child
Many people find journaling a great way to sort through challenging or confusing experiences and emotional turmoil. If you keep a journal, you might already get a lot of benefit from this coping strategy.
Just as journaling can help you recognize patterns in your adult life that you want to change, journaling from the perspective of your inner child can help you recognize unhelpful patterns that began in childhood.
For this journaling exercise, set your present self aside for the moment and channel your child self. Try photos or a brief visualization exercise to help recall how you felt at the specific age you’re intending to explore.
Once you’re in the right mindset, write down a few memories and any emotions you associate with those events. Try not to think too carefully about what you’re writing. Just let the thoughts flow onto the paper as they come up. Expressing them in an unchecked way can help you get to the heart of your inner child’s pain.
6. Bring Back the Joys of Childhood
Adulthood certainly comes with plenty of responsibilities, but relaxation and playfulness are both essential components of good mental health.
If your childhood lacked positive experiences, getting back in touch with your playful side and making time for fun can help heal the pain of missing out on what you needed as a child.
It’s also important to enjoy small pleasures, like ice cream after a walk, games with your partner or children, and laughter with friends.
Whatever you do, making regular time for fun and lightheartedness in your life can help rekindle the positive emotions of youth.
7. Leave the Door Open
Healing doesn’t always have a definite end. It’s often more of an open-ended journey.
You’ve started the process by reaching out to your inner child. Now you can cultivate this newfound awareness and continue listening for your child self’s guidance as you move forward.
Your child self may have more to reveal about challenges from the past. But you can also learn to become more spontaneous and playful and consider what life has to offer with a greater sense of wonder.
Staying in tune with your inner child can lead to a more complete sense of self and boost confidence and motivation. Reinforce the connection you’ve opened by affirming your intent to continue listening, offering love and compassion, and working to heal any wounds that remain open.
8. Talk to a Therapist
Past trauma can cause a lot of distress. Therapists attempt to create a safe space for you to begin navigating this emotional turmoil and learn helpful strategies for healing your inner child.
Therapists typically recognize how childhood experiences and other past events can affect your life, relationships, and overall well-being. But not all types of therapy prioritize exploration of past events or related concepts, such as the inner child.
Cognitive behavioral therapy, for example, is considered a highly effective treatment approach, but it generally focuses on your experiences in the present.
If you’re interested in doing some exploration of your past and getting to know your inner child, look for a therapist who has experience in this area. Typically, psychodynamically oriented psychotherapy can be a good fit.
Inner child therapy, also called inner child work, specifically focuses on this process, but other types of therapists can also offer support. It always helps to let potential therapists know the specific concerns you’d like to explore.
The Bottom Line
When needs for love, recognition, praise, and other types of emotional support go unmet in childhood, the trauma that results can last well into your adult life.
But it’s never too late to heal. By learning to nurture your inner child, you can validate these needs, learn to express emotions in healthy ways, and increase self-compassion and self-love.