7 Ways to Heal Your Inner Child Wounds

Our inner child represents the emotional part of us that developed in infancy, childhood, and adolescence. These were vulnerable times when we experienced life as a child. Lots of different feelings developed from experiences and possible traumas. Many of us developed inner child wounds. Inner child work means going back to understand, validate, and heal your childhood wounds. As psychologist Carl Jung put it this way, “The inner child carries the burden of being our past and future." Those are very critical words to describe exactly what the inner child carries around for us.

Let’s look into the inner child wounds from the past and see where we can heal the inner child.

Validate your past

It’s so important to not only connect with what happened to you as a child, but to validate your feelings. If you experienced trauma or grief, it’s important to try recognize and to feel those feelings. Any repressed inner child feelings will only erupt during anxiety, fearful, angry or stressful times and cause havoc in adulthood. It would be like opening a Pandora’s box of horrors. Getting in touch with those feelings will be the best thing you can do to combat adult disruptions. Once you are in touch with those feelings, you can release them. One way to release them is to speak about it out loud, even if just to yourself.

Identify any neglect or trauma

It’s important to recognize any neglect you may have experienced as a child or trauma. Bringing out our dark secrets from the past into the light of day helps it lose it’s power over us. Just speaking it out loud is a great start. Try to acknowledge the neglect to a friend or therapist.

Look for patterns

Our lives are a series of patterns from childhood emotions that seep into adulthood. Our anger issues that get out of control, are usually from past childhood anger that come out of left field during a heated argument. Recognizing any pattern from childhood is a great start to healing. An example of a relationship pattern from childhood would be having anger issues over your father not coming to your little league games. Now, as an adult, you take that anger out on your wife if she can’t be there for you in a certain situation. The anger would be intense and out of proportion to a minor situation with your wife. This is just one example of a pattern of anger from childhood.

Feel your feelings

Suppressed emotions manifest in other unhealthy ways. Make space to feel sadness, anger, and fear fully. It is imperative to feel your feelings.

Write a letter to your inner child. Assure your younger self that they did nothing to deserve mistreatment. Remind them of their talents and intrinsic beauty. Also list any hurt feelings or anger in your letter. Also identify any feelings of emotional or physical abandonment issues. Looking back on your childhood and writing about hurtful times is imperative to healing. Getting it all out on paper will serve as a great way to alleviate the fears and anger from the past. It might feel uncomfortable, but that will pass and you will start to feel healed. You can also do daily journaling on past experiences as an inner child. Journaling is a sure way to bring to light inner child wounds and help heal them. Remember, every time you remember an inner child wound, and write it out, you are releasing it to the universe.

Speak encouraging mantras

Combat an inner critic with loving wisdom. Tell yourself often, “I am enough. I matter. I am worthy of love. I am loveable” Create new neural pathways with affirmative language. Using words of affirmation will help you feel more positive and in turn happier. Speak words of affirmations daily to yourself, and do it over and over again until it resonates for you.

Meet unmet needs

Make a list of activities that would comfort your inner child’s fears and longings. Do you like to play music? Create art? Engage with spirituality to really heighten the experience, if you choose to. Enjoying life is part of self-care. Self-care is putting total focus on yourself and doing things that make you happy. As Audre Lorde wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence; it is self-preservation.” Take that vacation you always wanted. Get out a coloring book and be creative. Go to a park and enjoy the swings. Walk barefoot on the beach. Fulfill your own needs by acknowledging them and acting them out.

Cultivate a safe community

Surround yourself with people who champion all parts of you, past and present. Be around people who celebrate you, not tolerate you. Consider joining a support group to share struggles without shame and reduce isolation. 12 step programs are an excellent way towards healing. Seeing childhood wounds in friends allows empathy for what they too endure. Kindness is contagious. Be the person you need for someone else. When we help others, it helps us stay focused on our own healing as well.

In closing, it’s important to implement with patient devotion these methods in order for your inner child to feel seen, safe, and healed. You deserve to be nurtured now and always. It’s so important to recognize your inner child wounds and start the healing process. These 7 steps are a great start to healing the inner child. You want to graduate to this state of being happy, rather than fight invisible emotional wounds from the past for the rest of your life. Remember, the rest of your life starts today. You have the power to change the things you can.

If you feel like you need help, I offer life coaching, and can help you with reparenting your inner child and other areas you may be struggling with in your life. I offer a free coaching session.

Rachel Devine is the author of a new inner child book called, Discover the Power of the Secret Within - Healing your Inner Child to Manifest your Dreams. This book is available now on Amazon.

Devine Intervention - Inner Healing Center.

If you have any questions, please contact Rachel Devine.

What does ‘Inner Child’ Mean? Understanding and Healing Your Inner Child.

You might hear about the inner child and see a blog and decide to pass over it. You may have a false image of what the inner child actually means. The reality is, we all have an inner child. Inner child is not some far out concept from the 90s, it’s a very real part of everyone’s life. It’s not something you can ignore forever, because it has a great impact and power over your life, whether you realize it or not. If you keep the pandora’s box of the inner child long enough, it will eventually cause untold conflict. So, the question begs, what is the inner child?

The inner child refers to the vulnerable, emotional part of one's personality that forms in early childhood. It contains our core feelings, needs, desires, fears, anger, and memories from the first years of life. Even as adults, this childlike part of us will emerge at times, especially when we feel threatened, anxious, or afraid. Recognizing and nurturing this inner child is key to our emotional wellbeing.

First step is connect with your inner child.

How to Connect with Your Inner Child

• Noticing intense emotions: Strong feelings like excessive anger, sadness, or shame often represent "tantrums" of an aching inner child. Pay close attention when this happens.

• Identifying childlike desires: Cravings, especially for comforts like sweet or fried foods, can indicate the inner child is seeking to be nurtured. Another tell-tale sign of the inner child coming out in your life and why most of us can’t keep the weight off.

• Being aware of regressive behaviors: Do you become especially needy around certain people or situations? This suggests the inner child feels endangered.

• Intense anger for small infractions is tied to the inner child. If you get angry easily, at the slightest thing, you can pretty much bet it is coming from a past situation from childhood that is being triggered by the person or situation you are angry about.

• Feelings of fears of abandonment in adult relationships are also a sign of triggers from past childhood wounds. If your partner is going away on a business trip and you feel fearful, that is from an old childhood wound.

• Considering what "age" you feel: Specific situations may trigger memories of when you were 5, 10, or 15 years old. Pay attention to any pattern of anger or abandonment issues and when you first felt that way.

By stopping when big feelings surface and asking, "How old does this make me feel?" you can connect to this child part. These are all ways to recognize how your inner child causes havoc in your life. The goal is to heal the inner child.

How to soothe and comfort your inner child.

How to Soothe and Comfort Your Inner Child

Ways to nurture the inner child when painful emotions arise include:

• Offer understanding through inner dialogue. Validate how the inner child might feel frightened, rejected, unseen, angry or unloved. Say, “You’re not alone. I hear you, and I’m here for you now.” Being there to reparent your inner child is a comfort.

• Provide physical comfort: rock gently, wrap arms around yourself, or let hands rest protectively over your heart.

• Engage the senses: hold a soft blanket or stuffed animal, sip warm herbal tea, or play soothing music. Allow your mind and body to relax.

• Supply emotional support. Cradle the inner child in compassion, empathy, and patience. Say aloud reassuring statements like “You are so precious to me” or “You deserved better, and you have me now.”

Self-love equals self-care, especially for healing the inner child

Self-Care techniques

Self-care is essential to form a loving friendship with your inner child. Taking care of your adult needs is crucial.

Some of those self-care needs are simple:

• Love

• Companionship

• Nourishment

• Exercise

• Rest and vacation time

• Affirming words of comfort

• Healthy meals

• Hot bath or spa day

• Having quiet time

Make a concerted effort for one full month to do extra special things for yourself and see how much that makes you feel loved and cared for.

The Power is in the Moment

The power of the moment

Most importantly, commit to showing up wholeheartedly for yourself, flaws and all. Living in the moment is crucial to being there for yourself. When you think about it, this moment is all we have. Shining this light of presence into the darkest recesses of your inner world illuminates pain built up over a lifetime. It can initiate so much inner child healing. With time, consistency, and courage, genuine self-care heals old wounds. Gradually, the fierce outbursts of an indignant inner child give way to the peaceful presence of your authentic self, emotional maturity, and personal power. You want to graduate to this state of being happy, rather than fight invisible emotional wounds from the past.

If you feel like you need help, I offer life coaching, and can help you with reparenting your inner child and other areas.

Rachel Devine is the author of a new inner child book called, Discover the Power of the Secret Within - Healing your Inner Child to Manifest your Dreams. This book is available now on Amazon.

Devine Intervention - Inner Healing Center.

If you have any questions, please contact Rachel Devine.