I am so excited for this week’s topic because we are getting into an extremely therapeutic topic — the inner child. 

A lot of times we have heard people talking about tending to their inner child or doing “inner-child work”,  but we don’t always know what that even means. Today we’re diving into what the inner child is, how to identify your own, and how to start connecting with it to begin true healing. 

So here’s why the inner child business matters – so many of us are walking around in adulthood with a wounded inner child who is longing for their basic needs to be met or for somebody to tend to them emotionally, and when that doesn’t happen, we can become triggered. If we can create awareness and compassion around our inner child today, we can become aware of when they’re taking over and when we need to bring our adult, present self back to the forefront. 

This overall concept is based around the premise that as humans, we are complex beings. Many parts of us are in our awareness, and many parts of us are more subconscious — this being where the inner child lives. As we are growing up in formative years (0-6), we are navigating the world, living in imagination, and feeling big feelings. These years are really when we live as our truest selves because we aren’t in tune with the big life stuff yet. But as we grow older, we start to become aware of other people’s judgments or where we fit in, we get feedback from the people around us, and we pick up ideas about who we are supposed to be in this life.

overnight the child version of us is phased out and pushed to the side, but they still exist within us.

Even as a middle-aged adult, there is still a part of us that has big emotions, dreams and desires, and this part tends to come out when we’re triggered without us realizing it. So where should we start in getting to know our inner child, and really to start healing them?

• The first step to get to know your inner child is to have an energy of awareness and compassion. It’s usually a younger version of ourselves that feels the big feelings, and we need to start taking note of when we have big responses to things. Start asking yourself what is really underneath it. Tell the little version of yourself that they are free to feel. 

• Start asking yourself – who was I when I was little? What did I love when I was little? Where am I allowing that to exist in my life today?

• Play, play, play! When we were teenagers we told ourselves that playing wasn’t cool anymore, but we have to bring that shit back. What was it that you used to do for the sake of joy and how can you start weaving it back into your world?
  

• Identify what your inner child longs for. When we abandon our inner child’s needs, they start to get louder and more emotional. They need to be attuned to, too! What basic needs have you been ignoring in yourself? 

• Start reparenting. Start telling your inner child what they needed to hear growing up. If your emotional needs weren’t met in childhood, you need to start tending to them now. If you didn’t think that anyone believed in you in childhood, let yourself know that you believe in you now. What narrative is on repeat in your mind, and where can you start reprogramming yourself today? When you tell yourself what you need right here right now, neuroscience shows us that your internal psyche will adopt it and will create new neural pathways around it. It will start to sink into your subconscious. 

You were born perfect, precious, and with unlimited potential. You’ve been busting your ass after life started throwing unreasonable standards at you, but we are now starting to remember who we were before we became conditioned.

Stop subscribing to the ideal of perfection, and start tending to what your inner child is longing for. When you allow space for them to thrive, your possibilities are truly endless.

Take care of yourselves and therefore each other!

xo, brooke jean