Healing and Working with your Incredible Inner Child
There are gifts waiting to be discovered by you!
Did you experience trauma as a child? Was the world scary or overwhelming for you growing up? Did you struggle to express yourself, or perhaps you felt invisible, or ignored. If you have experienced these situations it is likely you could benefit from Inner Child work.
How is inner child work helpful?
When we are children, we experience the most fear. Everything is new to us and we are constantly learning what’s ‘good’ or what is dangerous. We are sponges absorbing the world around us, especially from birth to age seven. Those are crucial learning and experiencing years. Our unconscious brain is storing information and creating stories that will affect us for the remainder of our lives. The stories our brains create shape our experience of the world.
When we experience trauma, the memory gets stuck within our body. Each time we recall the memory, we can experience a flood of the same emotions and sensations we felt during that traumatic event. Our brain registers this as if it’s happening again in the present moment, thus retraumatizing a person, and constantly reliving the event. This keeps our systems activated in a triggered fear response. This keeps a person drained, feeling heavy, and overwhelmed, and believing the world is a dangerous place.
When we are adults and become afraid, it is our Inner Child who gets triggered. It is our Inner Child who responds to the fear. This is why sometimes when you calm back down you can’t understand why you behaved a certain way during a fear state. It’s why you might not recognize your behavior, because it was a different part of you that acted in that moment.
If you experienced pain and trauma during those years it’s likely those events are impacting you to this day. This is where inner child work comes in. Doing this work is about connecting to the wounded child within you who experienced those things in effort to heal them in the present moment.
What does Inner Child healing look like?
When we work with the Inner Child, we go back to the root of these wounds. We explore these memories and experiences from a place of safety. We focus on staying in the present moment. When I’m doing Inner Child work with a client, I remind them who they are today would’ve handled that situation differently. I remind them the child they were then didn’t have the resources they have today. We identify and use these resources, and bring them into the work.
I might have a client recall a specific memory. I will have them imagine themselves as they are today joining in this memory. How would they interject themselves in this experience? How can they play the role of the hero or the parent they needed then? How can they comfort their younger self in that memory? What might they say to their younger self to help them feel safe again? I encourage them to express these sentiments out loud and explore them with me.
In this way the Inner child, the one who experienced those wounds, can now experience love, protection, and compassion. Giving the Inner Child space to express themselves is crucial in healing from those events. This can be the first time they were given the space and compassion they needed, especially if parents or caretakers were the perpetrators of pain and/or neglect. When a client, from their present self, can connect to their wounded Inner Child, they allow them to be seen and heard. This alone is healing for us.
Inner Child work can also include work around reparenting yourself, especially if parents or caregivers caused trauma and pain. I’ll save that discussion though for another post, another time, as it has its own nuances and deserves its own explanation. Our Inner Child is likely afraid of adults, as they were often the ones causing the pain to our younger selves. As a result, your Inner Child may even be weary of trusting you! They may need you to go slowly with them and earn their trust.
Ways to connect to your inner child:
Watching your favorite movies from childhood. **Bonus if you build a fort to watch your movies**
Eating your favorite candy or favorite sweet food from when you were a kid
Incorporating more play into your life by having friends over for a board game, or play a video game
Get and build a lego set, rocket, or a model car
Play around with art and do some finger painting. Make something for yourself or a friend
Cook or go our for your favorite meal as a kid
After a session introducing or using Inner Child work with a client, I always encourage them to keep the connection open and revisit their Inner Child on a regular basis. Imagine a home for your Inner Child in your mind, someplace they can be safe and you can visit them whenever you need to. I like to imagine my inner child living in a beautiful house on the beach. She gets to walk outside and build sandcastles and play in the waves. I go to visit her there when I’m doing this work on myself
Find a mental image that works for you! Know that you can go to this place in your mind to connect with your Inner Child anytime you want. I’ve even encouraged Clients to hold on to or squeeze a teddy bear when they are doing this work, as a way to deepen the sense of holding your Inner Child tenderly.
Remember to talk kindly to your Inner Child. Remember they might be used to people abandoning or neglecting them, so you need to show your Inner Child that you’re not leaving them again. Show them you can and will protect them now, even if you couldn’t protect yourself then. You were a child and didn’t know better or have a fully developed brain to know what to do. Let go of your shame and guilt by reestablishing a relationship with your Inner child and giving them the space to express themselves. This is a courageous healing process! Commend yourself for taking steps towards reintegrating this wounded part!
I would love to support your inner child and their healing journey. Learn more about working with me by clicking here.
Sarah Seraphina is a Spiritual Activator and Liberation Guide. She is the owner of Nurtured Essence, a healing space, aimed at helping women overcome their past patterns and fears, so they may thrive and live with more power, purpose, ease, and joy. She specializes in working with healers, recovering empaths and “Damsels in Distress”, highly-sensitive women, lightworkers, and women with a sacred mission.
