How to Heal your Inner Child

Have you ever paid attention to the little voice inside of you? The one that might remind you of your younger self. No matter how old we grow, we carry our younger selves within us day-to-day. Perhaps our hurt 5-year-old self-shows up when our best friend doesn't answer our phone call, or our misunderstood 15-year-old self comes out when a colleague doesn't see eye to eye.

Caring for this younger version of ourselves is what inner child work is all about. The inner child is a form of an individual’s internal self that stems from past childhood experiences and memories. A person’s inner child can have positive or negative traits depending on their past experiences. Understanding where certain behaviour patterns stem from is an important step in the recovery process. The goal of inner child healing is to eventually reach a point at which you can better identify your own needs, behaviours, and triggers. Healing your inner child fosters a deeper sense of self-compassion and supports your mental health.

Why is inner child healing important?

As adults, we walk around carrying wounds from our childhood, whether it's simple or complex trauma, from emotional neglect to physical abuse.

That's why inner child healing is so important, she says, "To remind ourselves that we're not wrong or bad. To heal the shame that comes with just having feelings."

By healing our inner child, we begin to create the safety and security our younger selves have always needed. By doing so, the positive traits of our inner child have room to shine. We unlock our natural gifts, our inner curiosity, and our limitless capacity to love.

On the other hand, when we avoid addressing our past hurts and feel alone with them, they transform into behaviours destructive to ourselves and our environment.

Ways to heal your inner child

• Acknowledge your inner child and what they have to say by

  understanding your triggers.

• Journal about your experiences and write a letter to the inner child

• Do a guided meditation: “Imagine a version of yourself as a child sitting next to you. Talk to that child version of yourself and tell them what you wanted or needed to hear as a child”

• Be child-like. Allow yourself to let go every now and then and do something you once loved as a child. Be playful. Explore your curiosities. Pick up an old habit you let go of long ago. “Tapping back into that as an adult helps you reparent yourself so that you learn it’s OK to have fun and do things you did as a child that gave you joy.”

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