Written by: Romana Hrivnakova, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
We all have an inner child that carries all our repressed feelings, memories, unprocessed pain, and beliefs from the past. When this innocent and wounded part of you gets triggered, it pushes your adult self out of the way and takes over. This happens unconsciously, without you realizing that you are being controlled by your inner child. Healing and reparenting your wounded inner child will help you give yourself what you needed as a child – physical and emotional safety, unconditional love, and acceptance. You will learn to calm your inner child before they step in front of your adult self and cause you to react impulsively instead of maturely.
So, how do you heal your wounded inner child?
1. Connect With Your Inner Child
In a previous article entitled “The Wounded Inner Child And The Development Of A False Self (Part 1)”, I emphasized the importance of acknowledging and connecting with your inner child. This younger part that is frozen in time can be very immature and reactive, and when triggered, your adult self uses impulsive reactions (e.g., yelling, blaming, lashing out of anger, lying, overspending, drugs, and alcohol, etc.) that your inner child developed throughout different developmental stages to survive in their chaotic, unstable, or abusive environment. When your wounded inner child remains in your unconscious, they continue to inform your decisions, affect your emotional responses, and keep you in destructive patterns of behaviour.
The first step to connecting with your inner child is to explore your childhood experiences. What were you like as a child? How did you feel? What was your relationship with your parents like? How did they react to your distress? How did they help you manage your emotions? You might struggle to remember your childhood, especially your formative years, so looking at old photographs or talking to people who knew you back then might trigger your memory.
Take your time when exploring your childhood experiences. Immerse yourself in your childhood memories. Remember, as a child, you were all about emotions. So, connect with the emotional experience of your childhood by allowing your inner child to tell their story. They might tell you how lonely, unseen, and unheard they felt. However, they might also remind you how playful, joyful, resilient, and creative you once were. Thus, get to know your inner child, give them a voice, allow them to be heard and express the pain and hurt that still exists inside of you.
2. Communicate With Your Inner Child
Exploring your childhood experiences might not be easy, but communicating with the invisible part of you might be more challenging as it would require you to make yourself vulnerable. Moreover, your inner child’s experience of people might be that of abandonment, rejection, and betrayal, and it might take some time for you to gain their trust. Nevertheless, connecting with your inner child will only feel difficult at first. Over time, connecting with them won’t require as much time, effort, and energy. You will be able to connect with your inner child and calm yourself down so you can respond like an adult rather than a wounded 5-year-old.
Find the best way to communicate with your inner child, whether it’s through journaling, meditation, or visualization. You can speak with them out loud or in your thoughts. Close your eyes, and picture yourself at the age when the trauma or wound happened. Allow your inner child to freely express their innermost worries, pain, and emotions. Listen to them, be curious about their experiences, and ask them what you can do to make them feel better.
3. Identify Your Childhood Triggers
Once you start to connect and communicate with your inner child, pay attention to the people, situations, events, actions and even words that trigger them. Their triggers could also come from touch, smell, or sound. In your everyday life, take notice of situations in which you had quite an intense reaction to something that was not a big deal. These situations most likely reminded your inner child of a traumatic memory, causing them to relive past trauma. Thus, reflect on situations that triggered some overwhelming and intense emotions and reactions. Upon reflection, ask yourself why did you feel so hurt, disrespected, offended, rejected, ashamed, or ignored? Why did you get so angry? Or what made you shut down? Why were you not able to stand up for yourself? How old were you at that moment? Did the person you spoke to remind you of somebody from your past? And if so, who were you really talking to?
For instance, you did not like the way your boss spoke to you, but you were unable to stand up for yourself. You might have felt angry with yourself afterwards and beat yourself up for allowing them to speak to you that way. Upon reflecting on the situation, you might have realized that your boss reminded you of your father, who would always belittle you and was never interested in what you had to say. Talking to your boss triggered your inner child, and suddenly you felt seven years old again. You felt powerless and scared while talking to your boss, who at that moment represented ‘your more powerful father’. You shut down and felt like running away to hide. You acted this way because your wounded inner child lives in a state of fear, not a state of trust.
Identifying your triggers will help you understand the source of your emotional pain. You might describe your childhood as ‘fairly normal’ and your parents as caring and loving. You did not suffer any abuse or trauma. So why do you overreact and feel overwhelmed with emotions in certain situations? It might be difficult to understand your reactions and emotions as your source of pain is less clear-cut. Your pain might come from a series of situations where your parents did not respond to your distress adequately, ignored you, dismissed your feelings, or talked to you in a harsh way. The messages you received from their responses and treatment of you might have negatively affected your sense of self, and your emotional regulation and led to the development of patterns of behaviours and feelings that negatively impact your life and relationships.
4. Nurture Your Inner Child
Once you connect with your inner child, be curious about what would help them feel better. What is their preferred method of comfort? Would a hug help them calm down? If that’s what your inner child needs, you can try the Butterfly Hug to hold them. Or maybe they just need you to be present and listen to them as they feel ignored, unseen, and unheard. No matter how your inner child needs you to connect with them, always show them the kindness and compassion you longed for as a child and nurture them through positive self-talk.
In addition, focus on your self-care to increase your feeling of self-love and to fulfil some of your childhood emotional and social needs. Get back in touch with your playful side and spend time doing activities you enjoyed as a child. Doing fun things will help you channel your inner child and will bring you joy.
5. Reparent Your Inner Child
It’s incredibly hard to accept that your parents will never be the parents you wanted and needed as a child. Both your inner child and you might be longing for those loving and caring parents who would love you for who you are.
You might want your parents (or other caregivers) to acknowledge the pain they caused and take responsibility for it. However, they might not be able to help you heal, or they might not be willing to help. You might try to find other people to help you feel better, for instance, a partner or a friend. But they will only be able to comfort your wounded inner child as long as they act in a way that does not trigger your inner child. The moment they do something that triggers your inner child, your old wounds will be brought to the surface.
“We have to learn how to give to ourselves as adults what we didn’t receive in childhood.” – Robert Jackman
So, take responsibility for healing your inner child. The idea of becoming your own parent might sound a little strange at first. But it is possible for you to become the parent you never had as a child. You have a responsible adult part that matured and grew up. This part of you behaves like an adult, goes to work, and pays the bills. However, this part does not show up when you react to situations from your wounded part.
Thus, once you connect with your wounded inner child and identify the triggers and impulsive reactions that prevent you from acting maturely, you will be able to develop functional tools to help your adult part act like an adult in every situation.
The goal of inner work is for you to integrate your wounded part with your mature and responsible adult part. It might be challenging to do this inner work by yourself. Your inner child still holds onto all those old beliefs, behaviours, thoughts, feelings, and coping mechanisms. It does not have access to your adult reality and how things have changed for you since you were a little child.
So, find a therapist who will create a safe space for you to explore your childhood experiences and connect with your wounded and lost inner child. They will also be able to help you manage overwhelming and painful emotions you might connect with, establish clear internal and external boundaries to keep you and your inner child safe and become the parent you needed as a child.
Visit my website for more info!
Romana Hrivnakova, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Romana Hrivnakova works as a Psychotherapist in Toronto. Romana has extensive experience working with individuals who use substances to cope with childhood trauma, overwhelming emotions, or painful life experiences. In her 13 years of working as a mental health and addiction professional, she obtained various degrees and diplomas; however, she places her experience of working in a homeless shelter in the UK for 9 years above all her qualifications. There she witnessed the terrible consequences of childhood trauma, attachment injury, and people’s desperate attempts to cope with what happened to them (or did not happen and should have happened) in their childhood. This experience and her childhood challenges and life experiences inspired Romana to help her clients connect with their wounded inner children and help them react to present and future challenges as adults rather than wounded children.
Resources:
Bradshaw, J. (1990). Homecoming: Reclaiming and healing your inner child. Bantam Books.
Jackman, R. (2020). Healing your lost inner child. Practical Wisdom Press.
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