Inner Child Healing Techniques for Emotional Wounds - Rachel Devine
Life has its ups and downs and peaks and valleys. It’s all part of the journey. However, when life becomes more of a burden than a joy, it’s time to take back your life. The center of our adversity often lies in the fact that we have some unfinished business from the past. This unfinished business can creep into our lives in unexpected ways. It usually comes in the form of anger, fear, or mistrust towards a situation or people in our lives. The inner child is usually at the center of the negative emotions that comes out when we least expect it.
There are many negative emotions that come out of childhood. However, let’s take a look at these 3 prominent emotions and see how we can connect them to the inner child healing techniques:
Inner child anger
Inner-child anger is when you have unresolved anger from childhood. This can stem from your parents not being there for you emotionally, or perhaps from getting shamed or bullied. Some people carry around resentments and anger for years from their inner child wounds. Unfortunately, the anger is lying dormant until it is activated by a trigger. A trigger is an emotion come from a past memory and reminds us of a childhood wound. All of a sudden, out of the blue, the anger erupts like a pandora’s box from the past just flipped open. All of this is done on an unconscious level, since our locked emotions are in the subconscious mind, where we don’t have conscious access to.
Inner Child Fear
Inner child fear works in the same way anger does. There is some fear from childhood that was unresolved, and it sits dormant in our subconscious mind. During a trigger, fear erupts. I will give you an example from my own situation when a trigger brought on intense fear.
When I was 7 years old, my grandmother suddenly died. We went to the funeral, and her coffin was open. I remember my mother and her siblings going past the coffin and kissing my grandmother. My mother motioned for me to come to the coffin. I stood in the back of the church, alone and feeling petrified from fear. I was so afraid I would be forced to go up to the coffin. Now, fast forward to 2018, when my beloved and best friend, Luke, who was my Siberian husky, died. His death triggered the incident in the church with my grandmother, and I was filled with fear—the same petrified fear I felt as I stood alone in the back of the church as my mother was beckoning me to go up to the coffin. That was an unresolved fear from childhood that was buried in my subconscious mind, which suddenly erupted when my dog passed away. Thankfully, I was able to work through the intense fear with a very knowledgeable therapist.
Inner Child Mistrust
Again, the same premise applies to inner child mistrust. When a child is in a situation where they were perhaps sexually abused, had parents who were addicts who were not present, or just parents who could not provide a safe living space, this all creates a mistrusting nature. Additionally, it brings on the other two emotions of anger and fear. This can cause havoc in all forms of relationships, from romantic to friendships.
Let’s explore the following 7 inner child healing techniques:
Recognize your inner child through journaling
In order to heal the inner child wounds from the past, the first step is to recognize your inner child as a real part of your life. It is also important to recognize the patterns and what transpired in your childhood. Try to look back on your childhood and identify areas where you may have developed anger, fear, or mistrust. I suggest you look at any issues in your present life and look back on your childhood and journal about any patterns you find. Then, when you have the pattern in place, do some more journaling on how you felt in the past and how you feel now. Trying to recognize a pattern from an incident in childhood that relates to an incident in adulthood is a good starting point. Journaling is a great way to get in touch with your feelings.
Go back to your childhood
The second inner child technique is to go back to an incident in your childhood where your inner child needed support and love. You can go back in time through your imagination and visualization. You can visualize on a time in your life when you really needed someone to be there for you during times of anger, fear, or mistrust. Just sit and put yourself in the scene of what transpired, and be the parent to your inner child. You can speak soothing words to your inner child or hug your inner child in your imagination. This will bring amazing healing and comfort to your inner child. The more you comfort your inner child, the fewer the triggers will be in the future. If you can do this often, you will find some peace with your past.
Feel the feelings
You have to sit with the feelings. It doesn’t feel good to get wrapped up in anger or fear from the past, but it’s crucial to healing. When you sit with your inner child, embrace the emotions. It will help you heal. The only way to heal is to feel the pain from the past and then let it go. It’s a natural process of letting go. You can envision putting the emotion in a balloon and watching it drift away into the sky. Or handing the emotion over to God or your Higher Power.
Lean on your faith
Lean on your Higher Power, or God. It’s important to have a spiritual entity you trust and love to be there with you through this healing process. Stay in prayer, meditate, or light some candles, and stay in faith. Faith is important when one is feeling uneasy. Faith is a guiding light that comforts us in times of vulnerability.
Inner Child Affirmations
Use positive affirmations like "I am worthy of love" or "I deserve to feel safe" or “You are safe and I will take care of you.” This will help to reprogram limiting beliefs from childhood. Visualize the words sinking into your inner child’s heart. Using positive affirmations is a great way to reprogram the subconscious mind to a positive state. It’s also a great way to reparent your inner child.
Inner Child props
Use drawings, photos, or objects to symbolize and interact with your inner child in an experiential reparenting process. You can put a picture of yourself as a child where you can see it daily. Use the picture to tell your inner child how loved he/she is and how much you are going to be there for him or her.
Seek professional help
It is important to get professional help from a therapist or a life coach who specializes in inner child healing. Having someone to bounce off emotions is crucial since unlocking the anger and fear from childhood can be overwhelming. It’s imperative to get a good therapist to help you with this journey. The benefits will far outweigh the emotional pain you may feel from unlocking the inner child. Trauma is usually at the core of our inner child wounds. There are several techniques a good therapist can use to help you.
Many types of therapy are useful for trauma. Some examples of trauma therapy include:
These different techniques can help you with inner child pain in one session. For instance, brainspotting can unlock different negative emotions and trauma from the subconscious mind. Once the trauma is cleared, the fear or anger associated with it also dissipates. However, there are usually layers to unlock, like peeling an onion, so be patient with the process.
In closing, I want to emphasize that these inner child techniques are just suggestions and do not replace professional therapy; they enhance professional therapy. I have used these techniques, and they do work. I have also used therapy to help with inner child wounds. Remember, inner child work is emotionally messy, and you may feel more angry or fearful, but with patience and continued work, you will come out on the other side with a liberated emotional state of happiness and joy.
Rachel Devine is the author of, Discover the Power of the Secret Within - Healing the Inner Child to Manifest your Dreams.