The first time I met my inner child was a jarring experience. I had tapped into a part of me that hadn’t previously had a chance to express herself. During that initial encounter, she shielded her fear of being seen and heard with a great big protective layer of anger. My inner child wasn’t pleased with me, nor did she really want to connect with me. In fact, on that first meeting, we didn’t connect at all. But I had tried, and I knew that it would be important for me to try again.
Several years and many interactions with my internal world later, my inner child and I are now best friends. We’ve cultivated mutual respect, love, and compassion. I couldn’t be prouder of my relationship with myself. This blossoming internal relationship reflects in all my external relationships—with loved ones, friends, my career, spirituality, and how I navigate the world. After all, the depth at which we meet ourselves is the depth at which we experience the world around us.
Through my journey, I discovered that inner child healing is a profound and transformative process. Since that first meeting, I have worked with several practitioners, studied inner child healing through my advanced dynamic hypnotherapy diploma, engaged in daily inner child practices, and read extensively on the subject. My experiences have deeply informed my understanding and practice.
This article is for anyone exploring inner child healing, aiming to help you understand what it is, its importance and to encourage you to engage with it for your own healing.
What is Inner Child Healing?
We all have an inner child. Inner Child Work or Inner Child Healing is any form of self-discovery that allows you to access younger versions of yourself along with their experiences and emotions. It’s about choosing to connect with, communicate with, validate, embrace, and nurture this part of ourselves.
Inner Child Healing is an ongoing process where we consistently act as the adult we needed during childhood. It is about addressing unmet needs and healing wounds. As adults, it’s about taking responsibility for all parts of ourselves, giving us the opportunity to meet our own needs and process our experiences with the care of a nurturing, loving parent.
This work is not a one-off event but a journey of building a deep, loving, nurturing relationship with ourselves over time. It involves fostering deep self-compassion—both soft and fierce—and building the capacity to ‘hold ourselves’. This means making time and space to be curious and gentle towards ourselves, rather than judgmental.
Why Does Inner Child Healing Matter?
Have you ever wondered why you keep coming up against the same issues in life, again and again? Inner Child Healing matters because it is the opportunity to take a step back and listen with love and curiosity to our inner worlds rather than judging ourselves for any difficulty we may be facing.
Overthinking as an example…
Let’s take overthinking as an example. Imagine you have a consistently busy mind, which makes you feel overwhelmed and exhausted. It would be easy to take an outside-in (external) approach to ‘solving’ this problem, rather than an inside-out (internal) approach. The external approach would be perhaps to meditate, to journal, or to remove things that we think are the cause of the overthinking. All of these are incredibly valuable and would be part of the process too.
The internal approach, however, is a curiosity that aims to connect with your Inner Child and get under the skin of the behavior (of overthinking in this case). We are not trying to fix or solve anything, because you are not broken. We are trying to listen and validate, so that part of us can feel safe, reassured, and relaxed. This way, things start to heal and change from the inside out.
Inner Child Healing work matters because we are all unique and complex beings. Each and every one of us has had our own completely different lived experiences in life so far. Because of this, we need to have our own unique journeys of healing. The deepest and most potent healing occurs from the inside out, supported by tools and activities that have an impact from the outside in.
The top 3 reasons it really matters are:
- Reflection of Internal and External Relationships: You begin to understand that how you relate to yourself internally is reflected in how you relate to the world around you. From a point of understanding, you can then begin to heal and change the way you exist in the world. From this space, you invite in more joy, love, freedom, and abundance.
- Cultivating a Peaceful Internal Environment: You live with yourself all the time; it’s important to ensure that your internal environment is beautiful, peaceful, and conducive to growth and understanding. Inner Child work allows us to cultivate exactly that. From this, you can choose actions that support yourself, rather than argue with yourself.
- Becoming Your True Self: In deep self-discovery, you become more of YOU, the true you. You heal the wounds so you no longer project them out onto the world. Your patterns of behavior change, and life gets easier because of it.
But how exactly does one begin this journey of Inner Child Healing?
The answer here is short: with intention.
With the intention to connect, to learn, to validate, to hear, to feel, to communicate, to respond, to develop compassion, to build capacity within.
Hold the intention to go on a journey with yourself and to recognize it is not a one-off event, but a process, a homecoming, a becoming.
Set the intention to allow the fullest expression of you.
Practical Tips to Begin Your Inner Child Healing Journey:
- Meditation: Spend a few minutes each day in meditation, inviting your inner child to communicate with you.
- Journaling: Write a letter to your inner child, expressing love and understanding.
- Visualization: Visualize a safe space where you and your inner child can meet and interact.
You can read more about beginning your healing journey here.
If you are curious about a self-discovery journey and connecting deeply with your inner child, book a free discovery call for a chat.