Inner Child Work – Heal and Reconnect With Yourself

Before we dive into how to perform inner child work have you ever asked yourself why do you feel suffocated? Why you’re depressed more often than not, even though you ‘shouldn’t’ be?

Why are you afraid of the world, scared of dealing with various people and situations? Nervous about upsetting others? Why is it that you lose your temper after you’ve sworn you will never treat the people you love this way again?

After so many years of working on yourself, why do you still have a distorted sense of self? See yourself as unloved, as if you don’t belong? Why do you still lack self-esteem?

“Shouldn’t I get better about myself?” you ask yourself, and, all too often, you end up feeling bad about your low vibrational state.

Accept The Inner Child – The “Little” You

You must know that it isn’t YOU who is in trouble. It’s that inner child who is crying out for attention, for love, and for all those childhood needs that went unfulfilled.

Your soul is full of bruises that were never taken care of. Until you don’t engage with your wounded inner child, the baggage is not going anywhere. That includes recognize and clear emotional pain.

“But Edith,”, I hear you say, “I am a grownup. I don’t even remember what I went through in childhood. Other people were abused for real! So what if my dad used to yell at me sometimes and my mom ignored me… everyone has their own insecurities. It is true that I am depressed, but it has nothing to do with my childhood trauma.”

You’re right. Others may have had a rougher upbringing, but that does not diminish yours. It doesn’t mean your pain is less severe, or that your inner child is less worth working with.

As a child, your caretakers were your only source of security, your only source of protection. When your core demands were not properly met, it hurt you. And it continues till you today.

The Inner Child Shows You The Environment You Grew Up In

The way we perceive ourselves, our lives, our abilities, and the world around us – these are all a direct result of our inner child conditioning.

Your relationship with your partner, your children, your colleagues, even with money… these are all the products of ideas that were embedded in you starting the day you were born. Or concepts you concluded (falsely or accurately) according to your personal history.

Look, I am not here to blame your parents for everything that is wrong in your life. And I am definitely not a big believer in playing the victim role.

But recognizing the fact that you suffered, acknowledging that you were perhaps mistreated (even if your parents were good people who never meant to harm you) is crucial to healing the inner child.

You owe it to yourself to take responsibility for your life by identifying the roots of your problems.

I fully believe that most of the emotions we may have are the result of our childhood experiences (or of our interpretation of them).

It is no wonder that millions of people suffer from different types of psychological issues. Their inner child speaks to them, ringing the bell of ‘please pay attention to me’. It’s about It is no wonder that people have to drag themselves to work, afraid of what the future holds.

No wonder people are terrified to express who they truly are, frightened to be seen. No wonder people are looking for love and validation from others, sometimes from toxic people. These are merely the results of not working on reparenting the inner child.

You Were Conditioned To Become The Adult You Are Today

What happened in your childhood that so affected your life? What happened to that innocent inner child that has caused you to lose faith in yourself? That leads you to doubt your abilities? Inferiority complex? To think that no one could ever truly love you? To be convinced you are not ok or not good enough? That you should be ashamed of who you are?

Are these examples sound familiar?

“Don’t be stupid”; “Look at what you’ve done”; “Don’t expect anything, because people will only let you down”; “How could you do such a thing?! I will have to punish you for it”; “Do what I say – I am your mother”; “Be quiet”; “Stop being so sensitive, be a man!”

Whatever there was, it is still there – inside your soul, your body cells. And now you have to do the necessary inner child work to release that magnificent child within from its sorrow.

Think of your inner child as a basement you use for storage. You have stored lots of impressions, situations, and emotions in this place.

Slowly, a thick layer of dust has built up over everything. You’ve never cleaned up or organized things, the place is a real mess, and now there is no more room for anything, so things are beginning to peek above the surface.

The Emotional Wounds of The Inner Child Are Not Going Anywhere

You have been ignoring this for as long as you could, but you can no longer turn a blind eye. Your inner child is shouting. It is asking for help.

Now it’s up to you to re-parent it and dedicate yourself to do profound inner child work.

It went through turbulence and now seeks your attention. And what do you do? You ignore it.

Or you suppress it…. dismiss its anguish. Escape from it to alcoholism, drugs, or sleeping around with random people who will never fill your void.

Or you deny just how much damage you’ve been exposed to, “Oh, it wasn’t so bad. My parents always put food on the table and bought me nice clothes to wear.”

So what do you do when distress rears its ugly head? You go to sleep. Or you watch a funny movie until the sadness goes away.

You tell yourself it’s just the weather, that you will feel better when the sun comes out.

Are you overwhelmed by anxiety over what the future holds? No big deal. You take a pill, drink a hot cup of tea, or try not to think about it too much.

Have you lost your temper again? Did you yell at your wife or kids? You convince yourself it will be different next time “I will just try to be more aware of my feelings next time, and count to ten”. But you and your wife both know it’s not going to stop.

And nothing ever changes. It happens over and over and over again. These mood fluctuations, your reactions to certain situations (triggers) – most of it belongs to the inner child inside you.

Your boss criticizes you at work, and out of the blue, the inner child reacts – feeling stupid and worthless. Your husband prefers going out to the local bar with his buddies on Friday night, and the emotional wounds start bleeding again – “You don’t want me anymore.”

Heal The Problems – Don’t Ignore Them

We cannot continue to disregard the inner child because renouncing it is neglecting ourselves.

Running away from the wounded inner child may help you now, but in the long run, that won’t work in your favor.  The pain will not subside as you wish it would and will attack you every time a trigger is tripped and reminds you of past trauma from childhood.

You will need to go through intense work at some point in order to move forward with inner child healing. Let your emotional guidance system be your teacher.

A trigger can be anything at all. It can be a smell, a sound, a familiar face that passes you by on the street, a friend criticizing you, your girlfriend not picking up the phone, not getting a job you want, a rejection from someone you asked out, a certain tone of a friend and so much more.

In fact, anything you face on any given day could wake up the inner child’s wants. And then you will react like a child, instead of rationally and practically like the adult you are.

Returning To The Past to Heal The Inner Child

I understand. I, too, turned a cold shoulder to my inner child for many years. Going back can result in true misery. Living those experiences over and over again really hurts.

But let me tell you something – that’s the way to inner child liberation, too. Going back to that time, re-living those difficult moments through flashbacks, will lead you to break the chains that are holding you in place.

Repeating those memories again, is the key to your release, to your independence, perhaps even a doorway to building your authentic identity.

When you were a young and innocent child, your mind could not grasp those experiences as the awful traumas they were. Why is that? In order to ensure your survival, you had to view your parents as your anchor.

They were the people you relied on for your existence. You had no choice but to suppress your hardship in order to protect yourself. Also, you were too young to tell the difference between good and bad.

As kids, we were not evolved enough to associate our parents’ flaws to them, and not to us. We couldn’t tell ourselves “mom is mad at me because she has negative programming and this is how she reacts to stress.” Instead, we blamed ourselves “mom is mad at me because I am bad”.

Soldiers who come back from deployment sometimes see flashbacks. After reaching safety, they can suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – years after their combat is over. This is because their brain had to store the memories in a secure place so it wouldn’t get in the way while they were fighting.

Deep Cleansing Of The Psyche

Re-entering painful childhood moments has the potential to cure the inner child’s scars. Why?

Because you get to have a real energetic release, not only through your senses but on a cellular level. As if you’re taking out an obstruction in your body.

There are many psychologists who support this method for inner child work, say this process is enabled because it’s going through your subconscious level. This dive inwards and can break open all those stuck places that have accumulated in your psyche.

I have no doubt that conventional long-term psychiatric treatment can help you progress and clear fixed mental blocks and destructive patterns.

At the same time, there is no doubt that any solution must begin at the root of the problem, and that is in the Limbic System impairment. When you work with a professional, any recollections and understandings spring from your conscious self, which does not tap into the real, raw experience that is stored deep within your hippocampus.

Ways to Nurture The Inner Child

First of all, you should read Dr. Jean Jenson’s book, “Reclaiming Your Life: a Step-by-Step Guide to Using Regression Therapy to Overcome the Effects of Childhood Abuse”.

Dr. Jenson specializes in Regression Therapy (sometimes also known as Primal Therapy). This method is a journey into our inner child’s world.

This is a powerful exercise that helps you on the deepest level to connect with the inner child. It does that by cleaning your soul of the fears, anxieties, self-doubt, shame, guilt, anger, abandonment, and all those other negative habits that you carry with you still.

One cautionary note:  fixing the broken parts of your soul and learning to work with our inner child’s needs takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight.

It is entirely possible that you will never break completely free of your ache since it has already left its mark on you. But that’s OK. Imagine you own a shed and all you can do is organize the stuff in there, maybe do some dusting, throwing out things you no longer need and putting things where they belong.

You might not get rid of everything, nor you shouldn’t, but the cleanliness and order will bring you nothing but relief.

After the work you put in, your inner child will finally be able to breathe. As a result, the adult in you finally gets to be happier, relieved, at peace, hopeful, and overall satisfied. It’s like mental detox.

There are many more stages to this process that I will not enumerate here for the simple reason that it is better if you read the book and follow the instructions in it.

Another great recommendation is Dr. Harville Henrdix’s book, ‘keeping the love you find‘. This one will help you understand your development as a child, connect the dots and give you a better understanding of your personality  -why you behave the way you do… the reasons you attract unhealthy partners and so on.

Another Powerful Technique That Works

I created a soothing meditation that will help you release those energy blockages and heal your inner child.

This tool is intended for those of you who have repressed traumatic memories as a defense mechanism, who are unable to deal with the truth of those experiences, or who deny the scope of the transgressions they faced.

Even if you do remember painful moments from your past, you will be able to use my program to allow the empowering suggestions to percolate you and construct new neural connections.

Through inner child work, people can liberate themselves of old stored suffering, purify themselves from hunger for unmet needs, manifest joy, and well-being, and start thriving again.