Accessing Your Inner Child : A Step Towards Healing

When thinking of our younger years, most of us recall a mixture of joyful moments, feelings of love as well as difficulties, or incidents that caused us pain, maybe even leaving us with an emotional “boo boo”. Most often, we don’t think about the concept of our “inner child” until we hit a road-bump in our adult life. And quite frankly, I get it. There’s no need to go “digging” into the past unless there’s a problem that calls our attention.

Now, if you, dear reader, are getting stuck or hitting a roadblock, it would be wise to get curious about how to resolve the issue so you can move on.

Feeling stuck?

Most adults reach out for therapy because they feel “stuck” in some way, shape or form. They may be caught in an intense feedback loop (ruminating), or they have been feeling extra sad or anxious. They may be feeling the “blues” , feeling down and just feeling “out of sorts”.

Sometimes, the struggle sparks a feeling of familiarity without any conscious recollection as to why it feels so familiar.

Though the feelings can feel new to you now, those feelings can be familiar to childhood emotions felt in the past.

What does this mean? Here’s a case example.

When you’re 52 but your emotions seem to belong to a frightened 10 year old

Say you’re 52years old and your husband has been acting kind of cold lately.

He seems distracted and distant.

When you asked him about this, he brushes it off and said he’s ok.

Now, you’re starting to feel really worried, and you’re unable to focus at work. Your mind has been buzzing and you keep thinking he may be having an affair, or that he no longer loves you or that he’s dying from some illness. Your body is feeling tense, and you’re not sure what to do.

Unconscious memories cause us to react to current day stressors with a lot more intensity

Though you’re an adult- 52 years old - the intensity of the fear and worry seem bigger than that of a disconnection with your partner.

Should you tune inward, you may notice that, though your adult 52 year old is definitely needing clarity and a healthy constructive conversation, there’s something that’s blocking you. There may be a fear, a worry or a pain. You may be afraid that you’ll find out that your marriage needs a lot more work. You may find out that he’s feeling insecure at work and he’s trying to white knuckle his way through by staying in his “man cave”. Or you may find out something else, entirely.

There may be a lot to be uncovered, but in order to do so, we’d need the panic to subside. Then, you can assertively, yet lovingly, ask for an adult conversation with your husband. If you feel blocked or if you get flooded with big feelings that are inconsolable, it is probable that the feelings are stemming from experiences of the past, likely, from childhood.

Tuning in to the Inner Child’s allows Us To Heal and Resolve the Emotional Pain

In order to help you, we’d need to separate the fears of the adult from the unconscious worries or memories of the child. It’s possible your inner child remembers a time in life when someone was distant and cold and it was scared.

Maybe your inner child recalls mom becoming really quiet before she got sick or maybe you recall dad being distant before he went on a work trip, leaving you feeling alone.

Maybe your best friend started acting less talkative when your social group was shifting…and all of that was frightening for you.

Whatever it is, it’s valid and the feelings are real.

However, to best help you tend to your anxiety of now, we’d need to help you get in touch with your inner child to offer it some space to share..and then heal. By doing that, the emotional intensity inside of you can soften and we can creatively come up with a game-plan and skills to confront the issue at hand.

This is why good healing is so important.

Taking time to get to know our inner world, and get to know ourselves can help us more smoothly navigate when life and relationships get bumpy.

We can trust ourselves and move through issues more skillfully when…

we know what’s a trigger, what’s an inner child wound, an emotional neglect reaction, and what’s a practical issue needing a shift.

Mindfully focusing on your relationship needs as an adult is simpler to do when you’re not carrying invisible bricks of the past.

To get more specific on what healing would look like with the 52 year old woman above, keep reading:

Say you relate to the 52 year old mentioned above, and as a child, you suffered a loss. Maybe your inner child has a pain of being left by dad (or someone significant left in some way, or became unresponsive, or let go of a relationship) when he went on long business trips.

Stay with the somatic experience of the body:

The first step we’d need to do is to get in touch with the feelings, fears and sensations that come up when your husband(or other) is quiet, and distant. We’d help you body move through the fear, panic, isolation or confusion that comes up when the sensations -connected to this situation- are felt. Helping the body process the feeling that are bubbling up are a powerful way to move through, instead of avoiding, whatever is coming up. In this process, we can work with the inner child- if it comes up- and find a way to help it share its wound/fear/ pain and help it process it.

How healing happens in therapy

Somatic healing and inner child work go hand in hand. By going slowly, and providing some psycho-education, a skilled and experienced somatic therapist and relational therapist, helps you release the pain and confusion (or whatever else is felt). A good therapist also helps you develop an ongoing dialogue with the inner child that is likely needing attention and healing.

Getting To Know Your Inner Child: Beyond Talking

Sometimes, talking isn’t the way to go as may not know what’s bothering you, but there’s a feeling inside. Especially when getting to know your inner child, many times it doesn’t yet have words, but it conveys how it’s doing by emotions, feelings or sometimes by art or music. Expressive Arts therapy and Dance Movement Therapy are wonderful for that.

Just like somatic experience therapy, both expressive and creative arts and movement therapies help your body and mind release emotions without needing to “talk about it”. EMDR, known as Eye Movement Desensitization, is also a powerful method that helps our clients with accessing the sometimes confusing symptoms or feelings they have.

The 52 year old, after going to therapy for a few weeks, will be able to have more calm, confident and clear conversations with herself, and then with her husband. He will likely be able to engage with her a little better because she will be speaking with more clarity, and no longer flooding her emotions onto him.

Connecting within allows our external relationships to feel more meaningful.

When we engage in healing work, we have a wider bandwidth to stay engaged in uncomfortable conversations that often come with working on relationship dynamics. Though life doesn’t become perfect when we tap into our inner child, the awareness of our inner worlds allows us to feel more steady when we engage in the ups and downs of life- and in relationships.

Now, what is an inner child and what does our inner child know? We’ve got you covered, read our next blog!

And..if you’re ready for a Inner Child Meditation, click to the right to watch our Inner Child Meditation.

I encourage you to pause the video as many times as needed. Please go slowly so that you have time to introspect, and get in touch with yourself at a pace that feels right to you.

If you’re ready to dive right in and do some connecting and maybe even some healing. FREE Download for Inner Child Meditation + Inner Child Download HERE.

For more on that, read this blog on “What Is An Inner Child, And What Does It Know?”.

Live in New York and ready for Inner Child Healing? Reach out here!

And if you’re ready to engage in some one-on-one work with an expert in healing inner child wounds so you can relieve some anxiety and improve your relationships, reach out here. Our skilled therapists are here to support you today! Schedule your free 15 minute consult right now (by clicking below) to see if we are a good fit!