How to heal your inner child
Inner child work is profoundly transformational. It releases you from the past, and helps you connect to your authentic self.
First let’s understand what is inner child:
Inner child is the child part of us that wasn’t fully acknowledged or seen and heard at a certain point or points in our life. It’s the part of our mind that stores all our emotional experiences from childhood.
Think of it as a filter through which we view our current experiences. So our inner child contributes to the choices we are making in our life, and comes out in our relationships, at work, in our business: in all and every area of our life.
Your inner child has created strong beliefs about yourself and the world. From 0-7 we are in an altered state of consciousness, in theta waves, which is the state required for hypnosis, and we have an egocentric thinking. Egocentric thinking is the normal tendency for a young child to see everything that happens as it relates to him or herself. These beliefs become the subconscious script we use all our life, if we don’t become aware of it and change it.
Example : Dad comes home everyday in a grumpy mood. Translated by egocentric thinking : I am not cared about or I am not lovable. It’s how is created the wounded Inner Child. At this age, you cannot understand that Dad is maybe stressed by work. « I’m not lovable » becomes a story you tell yourself every time dad comes home in a grumpy mood. You carry then this belief in your adult life and replay it in your relationship with your partner for example. If he/she is cold or preoccupied or grumpy, you’ll go to this automatic thought : he/she doesn’t care for me, I am not lovable.
Or if a friend doesn’t answer your text, you’ll make it mean you’re ignored or unimportant.
Whether it’s true or not, it’s your wounded inner child that is still assigning this same meaning to your new experiences. You are in auto pilot mode reacting triggers the same way your 5 years-old self would do.
Here are some signs you have a wounded inner child:
You have low self worth
You feel as if something is 'wrong' with you
You have issues communicating and expressing your emotions
How other people perceive you is a constant source of anxiety
You fear being left and/or emotionally abandoned
You take people's behavior personally
You are a people pleaser
You are unforgiving to yourself, perfectionist, rigid
There are many more signs that your inner child may be wounded. Truthfully, all of us, no matter how small or insignificant, have traumas from our past that need addressing.
How to start healing your inner child?
Step 1 : Create a loving, reassuring, safe relationship with your inner child.
Acknowledge your inner child : we all have a little girl/boy inside of us who is scared and need to be loved, cared for, seen and heard. But this child part of us is not us, just a part of our mind.
One of the best way to create a connection with your inner child is through a simple meditation :
Sit in a quiet place, maybe with a picture of you as a child in front of you. Close your eyes and take 3 deep belly breaths. Think of yourself when you were little. Start talking to her/him with kindness, keeping her/his image in your mind, and repeat some of these nurturing mantras:
I love you
I see you
I am here to guide you
The present moment is safe
You are enough
You are worthy
You are perfect exactly as you are.
Take few more deep belly breaths and open your eyes.
Make this meditation be a daily or at least weekly date with your Inner Child.
Two very powerful ways to get in contact with your inner child is through visualization and hypnosis. I use both with my clients, with incredible results.
Other fantastic ways to make your Inner Child feel seen, heard and important are :
Writing her/him letters. There is no right or wrong way to do it. You can just write her/him a letter telling how important she/he is for you, promising that from now you will always take care of her/him, and won’t let her/him anymore with the weight of making decisions for your life ( remember your inner child is only 5!). I also like starting a writing conversation with her. A helpful technique is to use your dominant hand to express the adult you to ask questions of your Child Self, and then switch hands so that your Child Self can answer using your non-dominant hand. Switch back and forth as the conversation unfolds. Do not judge your writing!
“Time travel” back to your childhood. Look at pictures of you as a child, make a list of things that brought you joy when you were young. Spend some time daydreaming and reliving these memories as though they were happening today.
Recreate what you loved to do as a child : it can be tree climbing, drawing, dancing, jumping on your bed…
Step 2 : Mindset work.
With the mindset work, you will uncover the limiting beliefs your wounded Inner Child has and you’ll be able to change them for more empowering beliefs.
It’s important to understand what triggers your Inner Child and how you usually react to those triggers. Awareness is the first step. Do not judge yourself for your reactions, look at them with compassion and understanding.
When you feel triggered, you generally feel a strong emotion. This emotion is created by a thought. It’s not the event in itself that creates the emotion, but the thought you have about the event.
Our thoughts create our emotions, our emotions drive our actions and our actions create our reality.
Take a moment and write down all the thoughts you have about the event that triggered you. You will see that some of those thoughts are the ones your inner child has created in your very early childhood.
Now that you uncovered those automatic thoughts and beliefs, you can decide that they don’t serve you and choose more empowering and affirming thoughts to replace them.
Practice these new thoughts as often as you can, till they become automatic.
Now when your inner child will want to react as it always has done, you will be able to stop and choose another reaction because you have new and much more empowering beliefs.
This inner work is the most important work: the biggest trip you’ll ever take is your inner journey. If you are ready for this transforming and amazing journey, let’s have a Free Virtual Coffee chat, and ask me all your questions about the Mindset Coaching and how it can change your life. Book here!