Wounded Helper, Heal Thyself: Inner Child Work for Professionals

Feeling like you're constantly battling self-doubt in your professional life? The roots might be deeper than you realize. This transformative episode dives into the powerful connection between inner child work and developing unshakable self-trust—especially for those of us in helping professions.

As professional helpers, we're experts at guiding clients through their wounds and struggles, yet often neglect how our own childhood experiences shape our professional identities. Your inner child—those aspects of yourself that developed during your early years—remains active within your psyche, influencing your reactions, beliefs, and emotional responses as an adult professional. When unacknowledged, these patterns can manifest as counter-transference, boundary issues, and the constant need to be needed that drives so many of us to burnout.

The journey toward healing begins with simple acknowledgment—recognizing that your inner child exists and has a voice that manifests in your emotional reactions and professional patterns. Through compassionate reparenting, you can offer your younger self the validation, safety, and love that may have been missing. This isn't just feel-good work; it's a critical professional development tool that transforms the root causes of imposter syndrome, people-pleasing tendencies, and fear of setting boundaries.

Through practical exercises like visualization, journaling dialogues, and reconnecting with playfulness, you can build a relationship with your inner child that fundamentally shifts how you show up professionally. When your inner world integrates rather than remains fragmented by unaddressed childhood issues, your professional intuition becomes clearer and more reliable. You develop robust internal resources instead of constantly seeking external validation, allowing you to trust yourself unconditionally.

Ready to transform old patterns of self-doubt into deep self-trust? Subscribe to receive the accompanying workbook that walks you through a powerful inner child healing practice designed specifically for helping professionals. Your journey toward authentic professional presence starts with healing the child within who still influences your every professional move.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Inner Child Work
• 5:28 Why Inner Child Work Matters for Helpers
• 9:07 How Inner Child Work Builds Self-Trust
• 15:04 Beginning Your Inner Child Journey
• 21:33 Practical Activity and Resources
• 29:29 Final Reflections and Next Steps

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey y'all, I'm Dr Julie Merriman and welcome to SoulJoy. Today we're still exploring the third eye chakra and venturing into deeply personal yet professionally transformative territory inner child work and its profound connection to building unwavering self-trust. Because, y'all this is a very necessary component of holistic, sustainable self-care, known as wellness. All right, all right. All right, all right. How is everyone doing today? I hope y'all are groovy great. Thank you so much for hanging out with me for a minute on this podcast. So yay, thank you. So let's see. I like to start off with just a hot little minute of self-talk about what's going on at the house and right now. I mean it's pretty, I don't know, it's pretty chill at the house. The hubby's getting ready to medically retire from being a state trooper. He's a little bit sad about that. The brain tumor the last surgery led to a brain infection and that really impacted his ability to see and out of his right eye I mean he could see. But it's interesting, brain, it's like a traumatic brain injury. It's impacted his ability to code, encode as he's trying to read. So long story short, he's going to medically retire at the end of the month and we're getting ready for that. How quickly, I mean, we're just talking. The other day, you know, we were young and planning our life and what all we're going to do and my lanta, you shut your, you blink and you're at the other side of things, um, retiring. So, anyway, that's what the Merrimans are working on right now. Um, so it's, and it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. So, okay, professional helpers, this podcast is dedicated to preventing and overcoming the occupational hazards of the career we chose, and those hazards are burnout, compassion, fatigue and vicarious trauma. But please know, I welcome everyone into this community. If you're not a professional helper, I feel confident there'll be something here for you as well.

Speaker 1: 2:19

But y'all, as helping professionals, we are masters at understanding human development, attachment and the impact of early experiences on adult functioning. Right, we compassionately guide our clients through their own past wounds and present struggles. Yet funny. Yet when it comes to our own stuff, particularly the echoes of our younger selves, we often shy away or perhaps don't even realize how much those early experiences still shape our present day professional lives, especially our capacity for self-trust, especially our capacity for self-trust. So I want you to think about. Think about how much of our self-doubt, our imposter syndrome, our people-pleasing tendencies, or even our struggle with boundaries, stem from old messages, perhaps unmet needs or protective patterns formed long ago that no longer serve us. Our inner child carries these imprints and y'all. When that inner child within feels unheard or unsafe or untrusted, it inevitably impacts our adult ability to trust ourselves, to trust our judgment, our intuition, our boundaries, even our worth. So today we'll explore what inner child work entails and why it's especially critical for us as helpers, and how intentionally engaging with it can unlock a deeper, more resilient sense of self-trust, allowing us to show up more authentically and effectively in our work, in our life, both our private life and our professional life.

Speaker 1: 4:30

Okay, so what exactly is inner child work? And I, you know I love doing it with my clients, I love doing it for myself. Perhaps y'all have lots of practice, but I think sometimes it's good to just kind of take a step back and go. What the hell is this? What really is inner child work, and what am I trying to accomplish through this? So, at its core, inner child work is about acknowledging, validating and nurturing the parts of ourselves that develop during childhood and may still carry some unhealed wounds, that developed during childhood and may still carry some unhealed wounds, maybe some unmet needs or unintegrated experiences, and y'all it's recognizing that those younger versions of us are still active within our psyche. They still influence our automatic reactions, beliefs and emotional responses as adults. How crazy is that, how powerful is that? I've seen it. I've seen clients do that inner child work and really have a great epiphany and restructuring cognitions and becoming more comfortable in their skin, and I've seen it for myself. So, y'all, as professional helpers, this work is not just self-care. It's a critical ethical and professional development tool ethical and professional development tool.

Speaker 1: 6:05

So first let's talk about how it can help. When we do this work, it's going to help prevent counter-transference and projection Because, y'all, when we're unaware of our own inner child's needs or wounds, we risk projecting them onto our clients, our kids, our spouse. We risk projecting them onto our clients, our kids, our spouse, or reacting to client situations or personal life situations in ways that are more about our past than the present. Healing our inner child helps us maintain clearer boundaries and more objective empathy. So next, let's consider addressing burnout and compassion fatigue.

Speaker 1: 6:55

Many of us are driven by an unacknowledged inner child's need to be fixed or be needed. This can lead to chronic overextension and depletion. Inner child work helps us meet those needs internally and it helps foster healthier motivation. And I don't know, I know when, with my supervisees and my students, I'm training to be counselors. I've discussed this a lot. A lot of us are drawn to this profession because we have a need to be needed, and that's not judging it or being ugly, it's just being self-aware and understanding why we're doing what we do. Inner child work helps us get to that. Inner child work is also going to help strengthen boundaries, which we talk about a lot on the show. A wounded or neglected inner child often struggles to say no. This inner child can fear abandonment or rejection and by reparenting that child and teaching it self-worth, we empower our adult selves to set firm, compassionate boundaries.

Speaker 1: 8:10

Inner child work enhances our intuition, which we're talking about third eye, and it's all about intuition, right. When our inner world is fragmented or chaotic due to unaddressed childhood issues, it's hard to hear the clear, calm voice of our professional intuition. Inner child work brings integration, allowing that intuitive wisdom to surface. How cool is that? I mean, all those are yummy things to work towards, right. All of those are great. Preventing counter-transference and projection that helps our clients and our relationships, addressing burnout and compassion fatigue. That is what my life's mission is about. Check out Soul Joy, my book. Strengthening boundaries and enhancing intuition. All of that can happen for us by doing our inner child work.

Speaker 1: 9:12

So let's bridge this to self-trust, okay, how does inner child work directly impact our ability to trust ourselves unconditionally? Well, I'm going to tell you. First, it's going to help heal the root of doubt. Many of our self-doubt patterns originate in childhood. Perhaps we were told we weren't good enough or our feelings were just dismissed. The inner child learned not to trust its own perceptions or capabilities. And by reparenting this child with validation and belief, we fundamentally shift that core belief, allowing our adult self the ability for self-trust and for this self-trust to flourish. Next, it helps us reclaim authenticity. Our inner child often learn to mask true feelings or needs to gain approval or avoid punishment. When we connect with and y'all, when we affirm that authentic child, then we begin to trust our own desires, values and genuine self-expression as our adult selves. This means trusting our gut feelings about what's right for us, for our families and for our clients, for our families and for our clients. Next, y'all, it's going to help develop internal resources, this inner child work, instead of constantly looking externally for validation or solutions. Inner child work helps us build robust internal resources. We become our own secure attachment figure. We learn to soothe ourselves, we learn to make healthy choices and, beautifully, we learn to rely on our own inner wisdom. Y'all this is the essence of unconditional self-trust, and if you want to know more about that, check out episode 17. I did a whole episode on that.

Speaker 1: 11:31

The next thing inner child work helps with is to transform shame and guilt. Childhood experiences can leave deep imprints of shame or guilt. These emotions are potent self-trust destroyers. Through inner child work, we offer compassion to those shamed parts and this helps integrate them rather than allowing them to silently sabotage our confidence. And finally, inner child work is going to help us embrace our imperfections with compassion, which I talk about that a lot, because we are perfectly imperfect.

Speaker 1: 12:15

A healthy inner child understands that mistakes are part of learning right. Think about your best learning. I know for me it was. I have made mistakes and I have learned great lessons. By showing compassion to our younger selves who inevitably stumbled, we learn to trust our adult ability to learn from errors rather than being paralyzed by fear of them. And that's a yucky place to be fear of making a mistake, embrace those mistakes. In my book I talk quite a bit about that. I just posted a social media quote about making friends with our weaknesses. Only through that making friends and acceptance can we release them, and that's part of this inner child work as well.

Speaker 1: 13:08

So how do we begin this powerful journey of inner child work to cultivate this unconditional self-trust? Y'all? It's a process. It's not a one-time fix and often benefits from professional guidance, meaning if you've got a good therapist book, yourself an appointment. But here are some accessible starting points for you and, as always, I will wrap up the podcast with an activity for you. That does come with a PDF, because sometimes I know the activities are a bit involved in. Trying to just listen to the podcast and do them may not be fruitful, but I do provide you a PDF and we'll talk about that in a hot sec. So okay, first you can acknowledge and listen. That's a starting point.

Speaker 1: 14:00

The first step is to simply acknowledge that your inner child exists and has a voice. Pay attention to sudden strong emotional reactions. Strong emotional reactions, repetitive unhelpful patterns or intense self-doubt. These are often cues from your inner child and I invite you to listen to these without judgment, just curiosity, loving curiosity. Second, you want to identify your core needs. What did that younger version of you truly need but didn't receive? Was it validation, safety, unconditional love, freedom to express, maybe permission to go big, permission to be heard? Just jot these things down, again with loving curiosity.

Speaker 1: 14:56

And next, you want to practice compassionate reparenting. So this requires visualization, where I'm going to have you close your eyes and imagine your younger self. I even encourage my clients to go find a picture of your younger self, wherever whatever pain you're trying to heal might have started, and talk to that picture, honor that picture, write a letter to that picture. But you can also, as I'm inviting here, just close your eyes and imagine your younger self. What do you look like? How do you feel? You want to be able to offer yourself words of comfort, validation and reassurance that you are loved, you are safe and you are enough. Then you offer that inner child affirmations.

Speaker 1: 15:55

Speak directly to your inner child, visualize he or her and tell her or him you are worthy of love. It's safe to feel your emotions. I am here for you now. We can't go back. I mean, I truly believe our parents did the best they could with what they have, and I'm a parent. I'm an imperfect parent with what they have, and I'm a parent. I'm an imperfect parent and I never want to beat up a parent, and that's not what I'm inviting here. But I do want us as adults to realize we can't go back and be reparented by our parents. I mean, that's just impossible. But we can invite this for ourselves through ourselves, through our work. The next thing in reparenting is action, and this is for you to consider what small action you can take in your adult life that would meet a childhood need. Perhaps it's setting a boundary you couldn't have set as a child, or allowing yourself rest that was denied to you as a child. It could be a plethora of things, but be sure you have to take action. Okay, and then we move to journaling for dialogue, and I mentioned this briefly earlier.

Speaker 1: 17:12

You want to write letters to your inner child and then write responses from your inner child. So, as your adult self, you write a letter of love to your inner child and then you read that letter aloud to yourself. There's something very powerful. I even have my clients bring those letters into session and we read them, because it's powerful to be witnessed as well, but you read that letter out loud and then you write a response from your inner child. It can be a profound way to uncover some hidden feelings and needs that, as you know, as professional helpers they're messing with you if they're in your subconscious or in your consciousness. But it's very powerful to bring that from the subconscious forward and then you can deal with it.

Speaker 1: 18:00

Next I want to invite you to connect with play and joy with this inner child. I will have clients go out and buy toys for their inner child. I remember I had a raggedy Ann. Of course I'm a child of 63,. Remember I had a Raggedy Ann. Of course I'm a child of 63. So I had a Raggedy Ann. That was just my pride and joy and I have gone out and bought myself a Raggedy Ann. Just you know, through the years, I don't know, toys go away, but anyway it's. We need to play as adults and we need to provide things for us to play. We need to play as adults and we need to provide things for us to play and that's a nice way to heal our inner child. So y'all children thrive on play and for us to reconnect with activities that brought you pure joy as a child is powerful. Maybe it's drawing or building or dancing, spending time with nature, buying yourself some Play-Doh it's not frivolous, it's a direct way to nurture your inner child and tap into your authentic self-expression.

Speaker 1: 19:03

And, as I mentioned, seeking professional support. I've got a great therapist who has done inner child work with me. I think it's very powerful. Inner child work with me. I think it's very powerful. But, given the depth of this work, engaging with your own therapist who is experienced in inner child work or trauma-informed work can provide you a very safe and guided space for healing and integration. Because it's really important we have to integrate all these parts. Because it's really important we have to integrate all these parts For helping professionals doing your own inner child work, y'all. It's not an indulgence, it's imperative. You deserve a thriving professional life. You deserve a thriving private life. Inner child work is going to get you on that road. It allows you to transform old patterns of self-doubt into deep, unconditional self-trust. When you heal and integrate your past, you become more present, you become more authentic and, most beautifully, you become more powerfully resilient in your current role. You learn to trust your own inner compass, not just because you've learned a technique, but because you've nurtured the very core of who you are, and that's a really, really beautiful gift to give yourself.

Speaker 1: 20:32

Okay, so we're segueing into the activity and I just want to remind you to subscribe to my email list to get the weekly email. I'll send you the podcast, as well as the PDF I create for you each week, and these are pretty detailed. I mean, they're little workbooks I put together for you absolutely free. All you have to do is hop over to my website, wwwjuliemerrymanphdcom and sign up on my email list. You can also do my seven day self-care challenge, which I think has a lot of yummy things to help us practice self-care. Things to help us practice self-care. I also have my book for sale on the web and I have my page where I offer a coaching program, a six-week coaching program for helping professionals, and I also am a therapist for helping professionals. So, okay, there's my commercial moving on, all right.

Speaker 1: 21:31

So the activity for today I have named Healing the Past, trusting the Present, inner Child Work and Self-Trust, and this activity I've designed for you is to help you actively engage with the concepts of this episode. Through self-reflection and practical exercises, you're going to explore your inner child and how it impacts your ability to trust yourself in both your professional and private life. Okay, so step one. You know this is something you can do as you're listening to the podcast. Maybe it's something you want to re-listen to the podcast and go through the activity again, but I do invite you to find a quiet space where you can focus without interruption and pay close attention to the ways in which childhood experiences can impact self-trust in helping professionals. So what we're doing here at step one is identifying patterns. So you want to identify two to three specific patterns, beliefs or reactions you notice in your professional life that might be linked to your inner child. Be as concrete as possible.

Speaker 1: 22:52

I know for me shame and you know, I know my parents did the best they could. I'm not land blasting my parents or my siblings I'm the youngest of three by five or six years. So you know there was quite a bit of developmental difference in us, but shame was really big. I remember a specific time when my brother and sister were supposed to be babysitting me and they locked me out of the house. And you know, I don't know I was five or six, I don't know I was little, and you know I'm crying. I went back in the house and they had locked me out and I was beating. This back door had about 12 little window panes and I'm beating on a window pane of short, so it's the closest one. Anyway, long story short, I broke the window pane and of course I was bleeding and it freaked my brother and sister out and they were like you're going to be in so much trouble, you better run away. So I packed my little raggedy and suitcase and get my little raggedy in and I go and hide in my little fort there in the backyard and mom and dad get home and I'm thinking what I really needed was a hug because I was scared. Yeah, I mean, you can imagine a five or six-year-old, the emotions going through me at the time. And when mom and dad got home, they laughed at me, they made fun of me. Really I felt shamed. They made fun of me. Really I felt shamed and that's you know, when I did my inner child work, I really had to work on that shame piece. I mean I could.

Speaker 1: 24:20

There's a plethora of other examples. That's just one that popped in my head, but that's a pattern that I would work on if I'm identifying my patterns but other examples might be. I tend to overwork and struggle to say no, fearing I'll disappoint others. Or maybe I downplay my accomplishments, feeling like I don't deserve recognition, it's a big one for me. Or I get easily triggered by criticism. Even constructive feedback I mean, those are just a few examples. So that's step one, identifying your patterns. Feedback I mean, those are just a few examples. So that's step one, identifying your patterns.

Speaker 1: 24:55

Step two in this inner child work is exploring the inner child connection. So for each pattern and I've invited you to identify two or three, don't want to overwhelm yourself but for each pattern you identify, you need to explore the potential connection to your inner child. And you do this by considering these pieces. What unmet needs from my childhood might be contributing to this pattern? Maybe it was a need for validation, safety, autonomy.

Speaker 1: 25:37

Next, you ask yourself what messages did you receive as a child that might be influencing this pattern? Maybe the message you received was you're not good enough. Maybe you received a message of your feelings don't matter, any of y'all, I'll give you something to cry about. Or maybe you you received a message that you have to earn love. I mean, all those, those are not bizarre out there things. These are pretty common issues for lack of a better word that we arrive to adulthood with that are impacting our inner child, that we can work on. The last thing you want to ask yourself in this section is what emotion does this pattern evoke in you? Now? What emotions might your inner child have felt in a similar situation? Okay, so you're trying to make that inner child connection to those patterns and then once you've done that excuse me, it's we've got allergies in the air here in Texas, or pollen rather.

Speaker 1: 26:45

But so then you move to step three compassionate reparenting and affirmations. So you choose the one to two patterns or two to three patterns from step two that feel most impactful or relevant, and for each chosen pattern you write a compassionate letter to your inner child. Imagine you're offering the love, validation and support they needed. You needed then and still need now, and you want to include these points. First, you want to acknowledge your inner child's feelings and experiences. Be as specific as possible. You want to reassure your inner child that he or she is safe and worthy and you want to offer your inner child the specific support or validation you needed at that point in your life. Also, write two to three affirmations you might could use in your daily life to counter the negative message or unmet needs, and you want to do this by speaking directly to your inner child. So this might sound like it is safe for you to say no, your needs matter. You are worthy of recognition and praise, your accomplishments are valid, your feelings are important and it's okay and it's safe for you to express them. And then you move to step four and this is your action plan.

Speaker 1: 28:27

Last week, we wound things up with an action plan. If you read my book, the last chapter of my book is an action plan. I believe it's very important. We can have dreams and beliefs and thoughts, but we've got to put those down. Write those down, however. You choose to write those down and put them down also as an action plan so you can integrate these things.

Speaker 1: 28:49

So you choose one action from step three that you're willing to commit to implement in the next week and you write down your specific action plan and in this you include the specific action I will practice saying no to one non-essential request this week, for example. And you write down how often you will do it, when you will do it and any resources or support you might need to do it when you will do it and any resources or support you might need to do it. And then you also identify one potential obstacle to carrying out your action plan and your strategy for overcoming that obstacle, because there's going to be obstacles and it's good to forward, think on that and have a plan. And then you wrap all this up with some reflection questions what was the most challenging part of this activity for you and why? And remember, we're on the third eye chakra this week, so that's, we're trying to get that third eye chakra balanced. We're trying to get you to really unconditionally trust yourself, trust your intuition and move as big as you need to move in your life. So, in that, this activity helps to balance and here's some reflection questions, as we're helping to balance as well what was the most challenging part of this activity for you? Why?

Speaker 1: 30:20

What new insights did you gain about your inner child and its influence on your self-trust? What feels most empowering about connecting with your inner child? And what work excuse me, what support do you need to continue this inner child work? Okay, that's all there is for this episode of Soul Joy. I want to thank you for embarking on this vital journey of self-discovery and healing. Remember, as you nurture your inner child, you build an unshakable foundation of trust within yourself, allowing you to help others from a place of profound strength and integrity. Okay, subscribe to my podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts, leave a review to help me reach more peeps and take care of you until next time.