Written by: Janet Philbin, 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.
Within each of us is our inner child. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, first popularized the term inner child. He viewed the inner child as the part of you who is sensitive, innocent, and full of wonder. Our inner child, at its essence, is intact and whole.
If the inner child is “supposed” to be emotionally healthy and whole, then why do people have within them an inner child who is hurting and in emotional pain? How did your inner child become wounded? Essentially, we are asking that wounded one, what happened to you? What caused you to become wounded, hurt, and hiding? Inner child healing work offers you an opportunity to find emotional healing and wellness. As you work with your inner child you help the little one inside of you feel better and release the pain of the past. When you do, you release the impact in your life now. Once healed, the inner child feels free, innocent, safe and carefree once again.
The inner child is real. Not in the literal or physical sense but figuratively and metaphorically real. The inner child lives in the unconscious mind. We were all children once and we will still have that child within us. Most adults are not even aware that they have an inner child. There is a lack of conscious awareness related to the unmet needs of your inner child. Many of your behavioral, emotional, and relationship difficulties stem from the unmet needs and emotional wounds. Because the inner child is not seen, heard, or recognized in your life today it is the wounded inner child that is reactive in your adult life. The hurt one inside of you is metaphorically crying out for attention by acting out in your day-to-day life now.
How does the wounded inner child develop? One way the wounded inner child develops is when, as a child, you experienced trauma or stress. It may have been a singular event or recurring similar events. To survive these stressful times, you develop certain coping skills. You develop coping skills based on your chronological age, emotional and developmental abilities at the time of the experience. You develop coping skills in service of survival because you did not experience the world you were living in as safe either emotionally or physically.
If you have experienced trauma in your life, you may feel disconnected from your body. This is common as during trauma we dissociate to survive, and you may have dissociated from your body. Everything we have experienced is held in the cellular memory of the body. When you have an emotional reaction to something happening in your life in the present moment chances are you feel it in your body. You may get a headache, stomachache, back pain, throat issues, or some other physical reaction. What’s happening is a stored memory is becoming activated and you have a physical response.
As humans we are programed to survive. To survive you make instinctual choices of fight, flight, or freeze. For example, as a young child if you repeatedly witnessed your parents arguing while you were in the room you may have thought it was your fault that they were fighting. As a result of this thought you began to believe negative beliefs about yourself like, “It is always my fault when something goes wrong,” “People do not like me,” or “I am a bad person.” This is when emotional wounds began. Based on those thoughts you develop coping skills. A few examples of these coping skills may be that you; deny your own feelings, isolate, act out, self-harm, develop addictions, lie, withdraw, need to be in control, develop perfectionism or become a people pleaser.
These thoughts and coping skills are anchored in the past. You believe all the faulty thoughts and belief systems as if they were truly who you are, but they are not. These are just the voices you hear in your head. The problem is you have been hearing these voices for so long you do not know it is not the true self. You do not know it is your inner child who is in pain and just calling out to you for help
When speaking of the inner child it is important to understand the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind has no sense of time. Because it has no sense of time when you have an experience in your life that feels like one from the past you revert to the old belief patterns and behaviors. This happens automatically, without conscious thought. This is the inner child in action. Your reality in the present is constructed on the beliefs from the past. You cope in the present moment with the coping skills you developed when you were younger. You react and reenact old patterns instead of responding to what is happening in the present moment with present moment awareness and maturity. Essentially, the adult self gets hijacked.
To begin to heal the inner child you are called to recognize that he or she lives inside of you. You must recognize that your inner child is in pain, and it is up to the adult self to rescue him or her and help them heal.
Here are some techniques that are effective for inner child healing work.
Meditation. Meditation is an effective strategy to help you get in touch and work with your inner child. Meditation is a very powerful practice that calms the nervous system, helps you connect with your body, and brings you into present moment awareness. There are many ways to meditate. If your goal is to help your inner child, guided meditations are very effective. You can do guided meditations to bring you to the inner child who is hurting. Therefore, in meditation, when you find the inner child and offer her/him compassion, understanding, and love it can produce change and healing in your life now. When you find your inner child then you can begin to help them heal.
Hypnotherapy. Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness and a process of communicating with the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind holds all the memories of our lives, as if it were a computer, to access the memories you just need to open the correct file. In hypnotherapy you can access memories to help you heal in the present. It is the stories, thoughts, coping skills, limiting beliefs about the self that were developed a long time ago which create the patterns, pain, reactions we experience now. Through hypnotherapy you can access and heal the pain of the inner child. When your inner child receives healing then your adult self can function and cope better each day. Healing is an inside-out process. When you heal from the inside out you heal at the origin of the emotional injury and make changes in your life.
Journaling. Journaling is an amazing tool to use to begin to work with your inner child. When you pause long enough and begin to pay attention to the feelings and emotions that are under your big reactions, you are letting the inner child know that she/he is heard, important, cared about, seen, and understood. I encourage my clients to write the question they wish to explore with their dominant hand and answer with the non-dominant hand. It is a very effective tool to help you access the feelings, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs of your inner child. I also ask my clients to write with a pen and paper as opposed to typing, as writing allows you to connect your mind and body and accesses the memories through the physical action of writing.
Somatic therapy. Somatic therapies help you get in touch with your physical body. One of the goals of somatic therapy is to treat the effects of trauma and other mental/emotional health issues. This is done with a body-centric approach to help release stress, tension, and trauma. Some examples are breathing exercises, dance, other types of body movement and energy healing, like Reiki. Physical symptoms are correlated to your body's energy centers(chakras). You can use this information to “look inside” of yourself and find the memories that are stored there. It is an aspect of the inner child that became stuck because of a life event. Once you can find the event, you can begin the healing process.
In conclusion, connecting with your inner child allows you to heal. You will continue to heal each time you meditate, journal, work with a therapist who specializes in inner child healing and trauma and tune in to the part of your body which is calling out to you. As a result of your healing, you become more deeply connected to yourself, your essence, and your truth. When you are connected to yourself you can feel more connected to your inner child. This healing allows you to break free from the painful stories and patterns of the past and allows you to become emotionally whole once again.
Janet Philbin, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Janet is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Hypnotherapist, and Certified Conscious Parenting Coach. Janet helps adults heal from the emotional pain and trauma of their past. She is the owner of Janet Philbin, ACSW, private psychotherapy, and hypnotherapy practice. For 21 years, Janet has been successfully helping people recover from their emotional wounds and change their lives with the power of transformational healing and hypnotherapy.
She’s the author of, Show Up For Yourself: A Guide to Inner Awareness and Growth. Her book offers readers a framework to heal their emotional wounds and become emotionally whole once again. Show Up For Yourself hit Amazon’s bestseller status and won as a finalist in the 2020 Readers Favorite book contest. She works closely with Dr. Shefali Tsabary, NY Times best-selling author and Oprah’s favorite parenting expert, as an ambassador in her Conscious Parenting Coaching Method Institute.
