Healing Your Inner Child (Part 1)

“Our soul is nothing but the kid that refuses to grow. Listen to it when in doubt,” suggests Anne Lamott.

Children are born happy. If you observe babies of any nation, any culture, any race, or ethnicity, they are happy. Babies only cry when they need something like food, a fresh diaper, or to sleep. Most babies lay on their backs, wave their arms and feet in the air, and are at peace being new in a new world. It is the difficulties of life that slowly change the happiness we are born with as children. The difficulty can be a dysfunctional family, distressed community, or chaotic environment such as a shortage of food. Eventually, as an adult, we must address the large and small traumas from our childhoods. This is what is means to revisit and heal the inner child.

Why is there a need to heal the inner child? Inner child wounds cause you to develop unhealthy patterns in life that affect your work, love, or life in general. For example, if you mistrust everybody and believe everybody is out to harm you, this might be a childhood wound. If you believe you must jump through hoops to earn the love of a partner or acceptance on the job, this might be a childhood wound. If you believe you will be abandoned for having boundaries or saying “no” occasionally, this might be a childhood wound. At times, you have unhealthy patterns and behaviors in life that last a lifetime, and you never examine when and how it started. Perhaps it is a childhood wound.

Healing the inner child is developing a strategy or strategies to heal an unmet need from childhood that has negatively affected you as an adult. You can choose to heal the inner child alone or with a professional such as a therapist. If you want to try alone before speaking with a professional, some of the strategies include but are not limited to reparenting, visualization, self-reflection, and journaling.

Reparenting is where you develop a self-care routine to give yourself the support and nurturing you missed in your childhood. This might be saying mantras around self-love every day. This might be saying affirmations around self-confidence every day. This might be having an ice cream treat once a month because you can afford it.

Visualization is where you imagine yourself to be a child again and finally receiving the care you missed. This can be part of meditation practice. You find a quiet space. You dedicate a set amount of time. You might lay down or sit comfortable in one spot. You may even close your eyes and begin with deep breathing. Then, you imagine yourself as a small child and finally receiving the care, the words, the attention you missed that wounded you so deeply. Do not expect visualization to work in one session. You might need to practice over a period of time to have a lasting effect.

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