How to Begin Healing Your Inner Child

Hello, everyone! I’m Doctor Michelle Border and I’m so glad you are joining me again this week. In today’s episode I will discuss the concept of our Inner Child. The "inner child" is a metaphor for the part of the brain that retains the emotions, memories, and beliefs formed during childhood. These emotions, memories, and beliefs can have a huge impact on our adulthood. Let’s get started talking about that impact right now.

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Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Michelle Border, and I'm so glad you are joining me again this week. In today's episode, I will discuss the concept of our inner child. The inner child is a metaphor for the part of the brain that retains the emotions, memories, and beliefs formed during childhood. These emotions, memories, and beliefs can have a huge impact on our adulthood. So let's get started talking about that impact right now. Even though you are an adult, the younger version of yourself remains active in your mind. When you experience stress, triggers, or intense emotions in your daily life, your inner child can take the wheel, sometimes causing you to react with the emotional maturity or defense mechanisms you developed as a child. The behaviors we develop as children may not always be the healthiest choice for ourselves. In past episodes, I have talked about how our childhood experiences influence the development of our thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs. Positive experiences produce positive thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs. Negative experiences produce negative thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs. These experiences can be the truth we believe about ourselves and can seem like a norm in life. Without knowledge of other thoughts, behaviors, or beliefs, our inner child carries these into adulthood, continuing to live this way without knowing of a different way. I often refer to these thoughts as the borders created in our mind, a type of building block that forms boundaries around the thoughts that we are presented with during childhood. Examples of some of these ideals are religious beliefs, acceptable behaviors, and thoughts about our self-worth. In her book, A Woman's Guide to Inner Child Healing, Gloria Zhang says that our inner child is the authentic aspect of us that captures our soul's essence, that it is who we were before the trauma happened to us. However, for some of us, the trauma started the day we were born, so we didn't have a chance to become our authentic self. In this case, we need to reparent our inner child to become the authentic person that we want to be. Our inner child will stay with us forever. But we can change that child's thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors so that we can be our authentic, happiest, and healthiest version of ourselves. The concept of the inner child was first introduced by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. He believed that the experiences during childhood were carried into adulthood, and patterns from childhood returned during adulthood when dealing with life situations. Jung described the inner child as having two forms. The wounded child carries the emotional scars of early adversity, neglect, or trauma. When adults experience intense triggers, overreactions, or sudden feelings of unworthiness, it is often an emotional flashback to this wounded state from childhood. Then there is the joyful, playful child. This represents natural curiosity, creativity, awe, joy, and spontaneity. Reconnecting with this part promotes resilience and brings vitality to adult life. When a child experiences abuse or neglect, chances are that they are not provided with positive parenting, examples of positive emotional support, or a feeling of safety. Their world is filled with emotional and physical pain, confusing thoughts, and a constant sense of danger. Again, these patterns are what is carried into adulthood as normal experiences, and referred to when making adult decisions. In adulthood, these old habits can cause unexpected conflict and emotional dysregulation. Unfortunately, our wounded inner child somewhat overpowers the joyful one. When a child experiences abuse, neglect, or trauma, their brain is on hyper alert for more negative experiences. This is called hypervigilance. Hypervigilance keeps the brain in the fight or flight mode to prepare for danger. This builds borders in how the brain functions on a regular basis, affecting thoughts, behaviors, and how the person handles life situations. Since this brain functioning is developed during childhood, it becomes the normal pattern and used in adulthood. As a part of the healing journey, many professionals are teaching about looking at your inner child to change those old patterns and thoughts from childhood by reparenting that inner child. If your childhood led to you learning unhealthy thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs, then you may need to reparent your inner child to learn healthier ways. Typical patterns that childhood trauma survivors experience and hold in the inner child's mind are people pleasing, hypervigilance, perfectionism, shame or guilt, low self-esteem or worth, anxiety, emotional deregulation, and dissociation, among many other unhealthy behaviors. Many stay stuck in these patterns due to a lack of knowledge that this is not normal healthy behavior. Some signs that your inner child needs attention could be experiencing intense emotional reactions to feel extreme for the situation, like panicking over mild criticism, feeling like your partner is going to leave you after a small disagreement, or thinking you are a complete failure after a small mistake. People pleasing, where you are ignoring your needs to keep the peace and earn validation, acceptance, and love from others is another sign. Avoidant behaviors like shutting down or pushing people away to prevent getting hurt or avoiding social situations is another sign your inner child is hurting. Your inner child could be hurting if you believe things about yourself like I am not enough or I have to earn love. And experiencing perfectionism or control issues over life situations is another sign. Feeling that everything has to be perfect, or everything you do has to be done perfectly, or needing to have control over all situations and others to ensure that things turn out a certain way shows that you are holding on to unhealthy coping mechanisms from your past. If you are still feeling these types of feelings that form during your childhood, you may need to work on reparenting your inner child. So why should we change our inner child? Humans gravitate towards what is familiar to us, even if it is bad for us. If we have been fed unhealthy things during childhood, we will still gravitate towards that in adulthood. This is what happened to me in my first marriage. I gravitated towards what was familiar to me and married someone that was similar to my parents. Our brains prefer predictable chaos over uncertain peace. We have to teach our brains that the uncertain peace is better for us than the known chaos. I don't think any parents have ever known exactly what to do to raise their child perfectly, and most of us do the best we can at raising our children. Some parents didn't provide a few things their child needed, but provided love and mostly healthy parenting, while other parents were abusive or neglectful, causing trauma for their child. And there are all types of parenting styles in between. Some of us have a little reparenting to do, others of us have a lot. Inner child healing involves us becoming our own parent to give our younger self the compassion, love, and safety we needed as a child, but didn't receive from our parents. To reparent yourself, you need to first identify your unmet needs. Take time to explore what you missed in childhood. Think about what kind of encouragement, emotional safety, or structure you did not get when growing up. Think back to a time when you felt unsafe, unloved, or hurt by your parents' actions. What did you need in that moment? An example for me is when I was honored in high school for having high grades at a banquet. My father wouldn't come because he lived about 45 minutes away from my school and didn't want to drive that far on a weeknight. And my mother suddenly had a bad headache and couldn't take me. So I ended up going with a friend and her mom. No one was there to support me in my accomplishment. That made me feel unimportant, like my achievement was worthless and that I didn't matter to anyone. It is hard now for me to feel pride in myself as an adult, so I have to work on reparenting that part of me that missed out on emotional support, encouragement, and pride from my parents. Your next step is to connect with your inner child. Now, this doesn't mean you become childlike or that you have to behave like a child, but think about yourself when you were a child. Visualize yourself at a young age and think about what the younger version of you needed to feel safe and loved. Perhaps find a picture of yourself when you were experiencing trauma. If that child was with you right now, how would you talk to them, treat them, or react to them? When you are triggered by emotional distress from your childhood trauma as an adult, envision your inner child. What are they feeling in that situation? How would you help a child with those feelings? What would you say to that child? Give yourself that grace, patience, and love that you would give a child when dealing with adult triggers. Next, you need to start taking care of yourself. Sometimes this is called self-care. Think about things you could do to take better care of yourself, like drinking more water, exercising, eating healthier, having better sleeping habits, or taking time to enjoy your favorite activities. What are things you need or want to do for yourself? Then make a promise to do that for yourself. You would make sure a child has the right nutrients, sleep, and playtime. So allow yourself to be given those things too. Another thing to do when reparenting yourself is to practice saying no without guilt and protecting your energy. Oftentimes, survivors of childhood trauma become people pleasers, perfectionists, and overachievers. Allow yourself to say no to these behaviors if it means you are giving of yourself when you don't really want to. People will still like, love, and accept you, even if you say no sometimes. They are attracted to who you are, not what you do for them. Part of reparenting means we have to manage self-talk. Actively notice when your inner critic sounds like your parents and gently reframe those thoughts into compassionate, reassuring statements. I have mentioned before that my mother often called me a selfish, inconsiderate bitch. I've had to stop that thought and reword it so that I recognize that is not who I am. I tell myself that was her projection of her pain, not my truth. Then I think about all the ways I am not selfish, inconsiderate, or a bitch. It is helpful to make a list of evidence that proves you are not the lies your parents made you believe you were. Having this proof helps you rewire your thinking of yourself. As you are reparenting your inner child, acknowledge and validate whatever feelings you have that may be triggered from your past. Notice when you feel upset and ask yourself, how do I feel right now? And is this caused by my trigger from the past? An example of this for me is that whenever my husband gets quiet, I wonder what I have done to upset or anger him. In my past, the silent treatment was dished out when I did or didn't do something that pleased my mother. I never really knew what I had done or what upset her, but I knew that her silence was not good. When I start to worry that I have upset my husband, I ask myself if I am worried because of a trigger, and what have I really done that could have upset him? Now I am comfortable asking him if I did anything that bothered him. And his typical answer is no, that he was just thinking about something else and was distracted. But sometimes I allow my triggers of my mother's behavior to affect my emotions in my current relationship. I have learned to stop that and reassure my inner child that I didn't do anything wrong. Childhood trauma survivors often think everything is their fault or something they did is wrong, when typically it is just a trigger from their past. One thing you can do to connect with your inner child is to write letters directly to your younger self, offering reassurance, or write from the perspective of your inner child to give voice to your pain. You could think about a time when your needs were not met as a child and write a letter telling your younger self that you now recognize what they needed, can label the feelings they had, and if you were their parent, you would have done things differently than your parents did. If you're not into writing, just think about those times and what you would say or do for your younger self in that moment. When reparenting your inner child, also take time to revisit childhood joys. Think about things you enjoyed as a child, activities you like to do or places you like to go. Then make time for some joy in your life as an adult as well. Find time to engage in hobbies or activities that brought you pure happiness when you were young, like drawing, playing, or exploring, and incorporate that in activities that bring you joy as an adult. The healing journey is not always easy and can be hard to figure out if you are not given a voice or allowed to process emotions as a child. You may need to seek professional support from a therapist that specializes in childhood trauma to help you work through the experiences, emotions, and behaviors you have due to the trauma. I've talked with a therapist off and on now for about 15 years. Sometimes I do well on my healing journey on my own, but sometimes I get stuck and don't know what to do to continue down the healing path. During these times I talk with my counselor again or with someone that I trust that is supportive to me and my journey. Some people may say, I'm fine now, so why bring up the past? And that is because it isn't still in the past. It is still a part of you, a cause to your behaviors, and the reason for your adult decisions and reactions. The process of acknowledging your inner child mostly involves recognizing and accepting things that caused you pain in childhood. Bringing these hurts into your awareness can help you begin to understand their impact and change that impact into a healthy one. If you can trace these feelings back to specific childhood events, you may realize similar situations in your adult life that trigger the same responses. Trauma halts emotional development, causing the inner child to become frozen at the ages that the trauma occurred. As adults, we may react to triggers with these childhood defense mechanisms, leading to emotional dysregulation, self-sabotage, and deep-seated core beliefs like I am not safe. If we work to heal the inner child, then we can control the pain, our behaviors, and thoughts from our past, and mold them into happier and healthier ways. Healing your inner child can affect your adult life by improving emotional regulation, eliminating negative self-talk, and fostering healthier, more secure relationships with yourself and others. We can begin to feel greater joy, better control over our emotions and behaviors, and create the life we want without it being overshadowed by the pain of our trauma. I'm going to add the book by Gloria Zhang to my suggested reading list on my website, breakingarborders.com. She wrote it for women, but I feel it's beneficial for men as well. I'm also going to add a journal prompt with charts to my website that can help you think about situations your inner child experienced, the feelings you had then, and what you can do to reparent those feelings now. Thank you for listening today, and I hope you will join me again next week. I hope you have a wonderful week, and I hope you can find a way to connect with your inner children.