Rachel GuerreroThe inner child was a concept I was unfamiliar with until recent years of reflecting on my childhood to mend underlining wounds. The inner child is meant to be taken in a figurative sense in which you view your younger self as living “inside” of you. This little you takes her/his experiences and judges your current day decisions. When discovering that your current day issues and mindset is attributed from early childhood memories, you may want to learn more about your inner child. Healing your inner child may vary in practice amongst different people, but the overall goal is to build a loving relationship with him/her and not to just get rid of them. So, what does it mean to heal this relationship?
1. Learn about your inner child
The first step to creating a relationship with your inner child is to simply get curious. What does your inner child like? What is your inner child’s coat beliefs and memories? What does your inner child feel their strengths and weaknesses are? Once you learn about your inner child, then you may grow your relationship with them. Sometimes, trauma may influence our memory in which it’s hard to remember our childhoods. Looking at old photos/videos, reading old journals, and asking the adults in my life to tell me about myself as a child, helps me better understand her. Even without our memories of childhood, we may not realize that the small, inner voice that lives in our heads is our inner child trying to tell us something. Look at these inner thoughts and ask yourself where they came from, you may be surprised to see your current monologue reflects the things you were told and experienced as a child.
2. Give justice and power back to them
Now that we have learned about our inner child, we can give them the justice we so dearly deserve. After becoming curious about some of our inner beliefs caused by childhood, we can work on correcting them in our heads. Disappointingly, we may not always be able to provide the exact justice to our inner child for how they were treated, but rather we can replace our past treatment with much better treatment from our adult-selves. If you are experiencing anger surrounding the unfairness of the inability to punish the adults that treated you wrong, you are valid. Now, as you heal, you must grieve your childhood and treat yourself better than you were treated. If you felt neglected as a child and wanted to be validated/listened to, you may do that for yourself. If you felt a lot of anxiety surrounding sickness/needing to be taken care of, then go out of your way to pamper/give yourself a break now. Don’t shut out your inner needs, instead listen and honor them. By respecting your inner child’s needs, you give them power. If you can remember childhood memories, then share your story, write about it, and give justice to little you.
3. Express freely
Something I found useful in my inner child work, is implementing fun into my relationship with little me. A lot of inner child work is going to be digging deep to figure out what the inner child may lack, but another important part is flaunting what the inner child holds. Some of my work is providing my inner child with love and support that fulfills their inner needs, but some of these needs are simply to have fun. What does your inner child love? If there weren’t restrictions put on your inner child by the outside world, what would your inner child be doing? If you can name a couple, regardless of the restriction, you can now do those things. My inner child loves to feel free and adventurous. Growing up, I often felt consumed by anxiety as a result of illness and life inside my home, this kept me from confidently doing sports. Now, I find an adventure everywhere I can and whether I’m good at an activity or not (most things I’m bad at), I still preform them because they make me feel free and happy. Another thing my inner child loves is creative expression through fashion. To honor my inner child, I sometimes wear outlandish outfits regardless of what others may think/feel about these decisions.
4. Providing patience and compassion: fixing your inner critic
Most of the time, our negative inner thoughts aren’t our inner child, but rather our inner child asking if the things they were told to them are true. Your inner critic may say “you don’t deserve this” and in response your inner child believes it. To fix this, we must start eliminating the inner critic. By using affirmations and choosing to talk back at this critic, we are taking away its power. Instead, remind your inner child that he/she is loved and safe. That these thoughts regarding your inner child are in fact not true. This healing process can take a long time, but the key is to maintain both patience and compassion for your inner child through it. You won’t always have complete control over your inner child and may have not yet mastered your higher, more mature self-voice, but this doesn’t mean you aren’t making progress. We may slip up sometimes, but by replacing shame with compassion, we can feel more motivated in continuing our healing process and growing our trust with our inner child.
With Love,
Miss Rachel