We were all children once, so it is not strange that a part of that little one still lives inside us. However, the lack of conscious connection to those experiences and the meaning we gave them often prevents us from healing our emotional wounds or even becomes the cause of new difficulties in the relationship with ourselves and the others.
Our inner child brings together all those significant experiences that we experience during the first years of life, both positive and negative. He is a part of us that maintains childhood curiosity and joy but also its insecurities and fears.
A wounded inner child can self-sabotage us in different ways. He can push us into self-destructive behaviors, cause us to assume self-centered stances that affect our relationships, or make us extremely dependent out of fear of abandonment. In these cases, it is not an “adult self” that runs our lives, but an emotionally wounded inner child.
Growing up means making peace with that scared, angry, anxious or sad inner child. It means understanding how those early experiences – and the psychological meaning we attach to them – are shaping our lives as adults. Ultimately, it means healing our inner child in order to tap into its most brilliant creative potential.
How to heal the inner child that lives in you and take advantage of its potential?
1. Recognize your inner child
The inner child is not a childish personality but rather the part of your unconscious mind that remembers the good and bad times of past ages. You can understand it as a “self” that has built its own image of the world based on those experiences.
However, as many of these experiences date from childhood and adolescence, when you were not mature enough to understand them in all their magnitude and complexity, it is likely that that inner child has given them a biased meaning or has assumed the beliefs and words of his parents as his own without passing them through the sieve of criticism.
It is important to recognize that there is a part within you that continues to influence your current life based on that outdated psychological content. Therefore, recognizing your inner child implies identifying those harmful beliefs that have been instilled in you but that weigh down your life, as well as the emotional wounds that have not yet healed.
2. Listen to your inner child
When you ignore your inner child, it will try to get your attention in every possible way. Taking a little time to listen to what he wants to tell you will help you heal the wounds. Listening to him will allow you to understand how he feels, what his aspirations and fears are, as well as what he needs from you here and now.
To listen to it, you just have to silence the mental noise generated by constant worries and the daily hustle and bustle. Listen to the voice in your head without trying to suppress or judge it. Also pay attention to the emotions that these thoughts generate.
You can also ask him: How are you feeling? Why do you judge or blame yourself? Why are you angry? Why do you react like this? The key is not to stop at the first answer but to keep digging deeper. Listening to your inner child and experiencing the feelings and emotions that arise from that encounter is a valuable way to grow and move past the past.
3. Embrace your inner child
Therefore, a simple strategy to connect with that part of you is to hug yourself often. It may sound strange, but it is a psychological technique worth practicing.
When you feel bad, either because anxiety, anguish or sadness invades you, give yourself the “butterfly hug”. It is an eye movement desensitization and reprogramming (EMDR) therapy technique that helps process trauma.
There are two options, cross the thumbs on the chest, more or less at the level of the clavicle or cross the hands slightly below the shoulders. Then you just have to pat yourself starting with your left hand and then with your right hand, to alternate them. As you do this, breathe slowly and deeply paying attention to your thoughts and emotions without judging them. This technique has enormous self-soothing power as it calms the scared child in you.
4. Write a letter to your inner child
Writing a therapeutic diary is very beneficial for mental health. It will not only help you to make catharsis by releasing emotions but also to get to know yourself better. Writing a letter to your inner child is another strategy to make peace with that past and offer you the support or comfort that you did not receive at the time when you most needed it.
You can write about those moments that marked you and that you have not been able to overcome. This exercise will help you see what happened from another perspective, so that your inner child can heal and free itself from resentment, fear or frustration.
A little trick is to write with the opposite hand: That is, if you are left-handed, write with your right and if you are right-handed, use your left. In this way you will let your inner child express itself better because you will be activating an area of the brain that you do not usually use, which can allow you to access your subconscious.
5. Treat yourself with kindness
The often frustrated primary needs of a child seeking love, acceptance, protection, and understanding remain the same in adulthood as they were in childhood. However, if you ignore them and continue to treat yourself as harshly as your parents or other adults, you will not be able to heal the wounds of your inner child.
Therefore, it is important that you treat yourself with kindness, compassion and love. In fact, self-empathy has been shown to reduce anxiety, stress, and depression. You need to stop judging yourself too harshly, berating yourself for everything, or constantly punishing yourself. Those attitudes don’t help your inner child feel better.
Instead, you should tell yourself more often what you would have liked to hear as a child: “I’m here for you.” “I love you”. “With me you are safe”… It may seem a bit silly, but these words of reassurance and validation can bring you a lot of comfort and inner peace.
6. Remember the happy moments of your childhood
When balanced, your inner child also has enormous potential. In fact, it can be a source of comfort in difficult times. For that reason, when you feel overwhelmed, anguished or stressed by a situation, you can activate it by returning to those happy, safe and calm memories.
Those memories will also serve to reinforce the healing power of your inner child since it will not focus only on negative events. You can remember that great trip that made you so happy, the comforting hug from your mother or grandfather, or the feeling of pride when you reached a goal.
Spend a few minutes remembering how you felt trying to recreate those sights, sounds, smells, and sensations. Pay attention to how your body reacts to experiencing that feeling of security, fulfillment and happiness again. If you can’t remember a happy moment, it can also be effective to imagine one. What would you have liked to experience? Take your inner child by the hand and experience it together.
7. Enjoy playing again
Your inner child is an inexhaustible source of creativity, imagination, spontaneity and joie de vivre. However, adulthood may have taken many of those things away from you. To recover them, you just have to reconnect with that part of you that you have neglected.
A simple strategy, as far-fetched as it may seem, is to go back to doing what you loved as a child. Get out the coloring books, play with play dough, write a story, run barefoot through the grass again, or reread your old comics.
Playful activities are just as important in adulthood as they are in childhood. Not only will they bring you joy, but they will also help you to disconnect, explore your most creative side and, above all, immerse yourself in an activity without any objective, just for the pleasure it brings in itself, just like when you were a child.
You will realize that your inner child is healing when you feel better about yourself. When you rediscover spontaneity and joy. When you are able to tune in to your needs. Manage your emotions better and treat yourself with kindness and respect. Healing your inner child can be a long process, especially if you have neglected it for many years. But remember that sometimes, to heal, all it takes is feeling heard and taken into account. Recognize and accept that part of you that makes you more vulnerable but is also more authentic, full of illusions and dreams.
Sources:
Neff, K. D. (2023) Self-Compassion: Theory, Method, Research, and Intervention Kristin D. Neff. Annu Rev Psychol; 18;74: 193-218.
Carr, S. & Hancock, S. (2016) Healing the inner child through portrait therapy: Illness, identity and childhood trauma. International Journal of Art Therapy; 22(1): 8-21.
Ren, C. (1991) Healing the Wounded, Neglected Inner Child of the Past. Nursing Clinics of North America; 26(3): 745-755.
