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.

I Think I Can, I Think I Can, I Think I can! It All Starts with Your Inner World! Rachel Devine

I love that children’s book, The Little Engine that Could by, Watty Piper. The big phrase in the book is the little blue engine says repeatedly, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. It’s such a positive affirmation of hope in achieving the little engines goal of going over the big mountain. Many of us also have mountains we want to climb over in life. Some are goals and other mountains are obstacles.

We all are capable of unimaginable success and climbing over mountains, if we realize that our inner world is a big factor in determining how we progress in life. Most of us are oblivious to this crucial part of our lives that dictates almost every decision we make and we wind up in a circular driveway, going nowhere fast.

The wounded inner child, carrying baggage from childhood wounds, abandonments, or critical messages, can undermine our success in life through self-doubt, excessive need for external validation, perfectionism, feeling unworthy, and other limiting patterns and beliefs. By understanding and healing this part of ourselves, our inner child transforms from foe to friend. This transformation helps one to be successful in any endeavor they undertake including, losing weight, running a successful business, becoming a writer, an actress, giving up an addiction, making lots of money, finding your soulmate, etc.

Let’s look at this in a comprehensive way.

Identifying Inner Child Sabotage

Unconscious ways your inner child may sabotage success include the following:

• Needing others’ approval before acting on inspiration.

• Abandoning projects when you hit roadblocks.

• Talking down to yourself with criticism.

• Only feeling worthy with perfect outcomes.

• Isolating when feeling overwhelmed or depressed.

• Self-medicating the empty void with food, alcohol, or drugs.

• Staying stuck, envisioning the worst-case scenarios.

• Low self-esteem.

• A feeling of unworthiness.

The inner child operates behind the scenes by distorting thinking around present-day goals based on old conditioning. Those negative thoughts that come out of left field and invade your mind are the dialogue of the inner child from the past. This negative dialogue is a block to good relationships, family connections, success in business and so much more.

Transforming Inner Dialogue

Bring conscious awareness to times when you undermine progress through harsh self-judgment, doubt, isolation, unworthiness, or seeking excessive reassurance. Pause and identify this as the inner child’s fearful influence. If you want to start a project or move towards a long-awaited goal and you can’t get past self-doubt, it’s time to really look at the inner child and your thoughts.

Rather than reacting the same old way to negative self-talk, consciously respond with compassion towards yourself. Provide the unconditional love and affirmation your inner child craves to heal old wounds. Forgive perceived imperfections. Turn negative dialogue into positive ones. Create a self-loving environment. Build on your own self-esteem by giving to yourself in a nurturing and generous way. When you direct your own love toward yourself, you are building a strong relationship with the most important person in your life, and this will carry over to every area you want to succeed in.

Positive affirmations

Positive affirmations are positive phrases, or statements that are used to offset negative thoughts. You can use them to motivate, encourage positive changes in your life, or boost your self-esteem. Affirmations also penetrate the subconscious mind, if said with enough feeling, and this in turn will help your life move in a positive direction.

You can build positive affirmations by writing them out and saying them out loud as often as you can. Some ideas are, I am worthy, I am loved, I am confident, I am successful, I found my soulmate, I am healthy, and I am making lots of money. Or you can make positive statements, such as, I now express health, happiness, prosperity, and peace of mind.

Gradually, this positive self-parenting transforms your inner voice from sabotage to an uplifting cheerleader. The light of awareness dispels unconscious shadows and you might find yourself succeeding in areas you thought were not possible.

Replacing negative patterns

As dysfunctional patterns loosen through inner child healing, proactively build positive habits that serve your goals, like consistent practice in moving towards your goal, dividing tasks into manageable steps, and celebrating small wins. You can also journal with positive affirmations and replace any negative intrusion of thoughts immediately to positive ones. This alone can help you transform to new heights. By building positive habits that serve your goal, you are on your way to succeeding in the goal you choose. Additionally, a “To do list” will keep you on track in moving in the direction of your goal.

Louise Hay, founder of Hay House Publishing and author and teacher says this about the inner child:

“Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”

Picture your words as being in an echo chamber. What you say comes back like an echo. This is the law of attraction working, as like attracts like. Changing dialogue to a positive state will move your life in a positive direction.

Remember, it’s so important to let your inner mentor emerge to help manifest dreams rather than allow past pain to dictate your present moments. Befriending your inner child removes blocks to claiming your joy and success. Be the parent to your inner child that will help you grow into the person you were meant to be. Remember, if you think you can, then you can do it. Stay positive and focused and your dreams will manifest into reality.

Rachel Devine is the author of, Discovering the Power of the Secret Within - Healing your Inner Child to Manifest your Dreams.

My new event is January 31, 2024 7:30 pm on Zoom, “Master the Power of Manifestation. Turn your Dreams into Reality.” Click on this link for more information.

Devine Intervention - Inner Healing Center.

Ways to Recognize when your Inner Child Sabotages your Relationships-Rachel Devine

The wounded inner child, carrying baggage from past hurts or abandonments, often undermines romantic relationships unconsciously. This is a very scary notion that there are aspects of each and every one of us that we are not aware of, which can destroy a relationship. By understanding your inner child’s dynamics and the way it acts out, you can heal its pain and break free of relationship-destroying patterns. But only when you can understand it, can you really heal its fury and live a happy life. Inner child healing starts with you. And make no mistake about it, we all have an inner child that causes havoc from time to time. Furthermore, those who are just ‘unlucky in love,’ might see a pattern from childhood to adult relationships that explains this dilemma. If you are dating and meeting the same type of dysfunctional person, with a different face, it’s time to look at the inner child. Awareness is the key to solving any issue. Let’s explore all of this together.

Defining the Inner Child

According to psychology pioneer Carl Jung, the inner child represents our instincts, vulnerabilities, feelings, and unmet needs from childhood. John Bradshaw, an expert in the inner child and author of Homecoming, further defines it as “the accumulation of all unmet childhood needs and wants that make up the childhood energies still expressing themselves in our adult lives.” John Bradshaw was an advocate for reparenting our inner child.

This inner child dwells in the subconscious mind, influencing behaviors independent of adult awareness. Our reactions to romantic partners frequently reflect the inner child’s projections. To be clear, the subconscious mind is like a vast memory bank holding all of our past traumas, experiences, and feelings from our inner child. During times of stress or triggers, the subconscious mind or inner child lashes out in very unexpected ways that are often unexplainable.

Inner Child Dynamics

The inner child dynamics are not complicated. There are 4 stages of infancy development. Let’s look at these stages:

The first stage is the infancy stage. This is the co-dependent stage from 0 to 2 years old, where we are completely dependent on our parents for survival. This is the stage where we need a lot of care, nurturing, and love. It’s a time in our lives when we depend solely on our parents for survival.

The preschool age from 2 to 4 years old is the stage of counter-dependence. This stage is often referred to as “the terrible twos.” This is a time when the child wants and needs to assert their ability to interact with their environment. The child is gaining his or her autonomy through co-dependence.

From 4 to 7 years old, there is the independence stage. At this time, a child is becoming independent and doesn’t need his or her parents to do everything, and the child becomes more independent of them.

At seven years old, the child is at an inter-dependence stage of being, which is much more independent from their parents than previous years, and pretty much can do most things for themselves.

All these developmental stages are a crucial time in a child’s life, and if a child does not get their fundamental needs met, there will be issues that develop later on in adulthood.

How we learned to love from birth to seven years old in our family of origin will determine our subconscious imprint that gets embedded in our brain. These imprints will determine who we connect with as a partner. When we get into adulthood, we attract those people who fulfill our innermost subconscious needs. This imprint from childhood is what we subconsciously navigate with when seeking out a partner in life. This is why it’s important to understand that we attract what we are resonating with. Additionally, this is the reason why most people marry a clone of their mother or father!

Recognizing Inner Child Havoc

Some signs your inner child is sabotaging your relationships include the following. These are all reactions to triggers, which would be a stimulus that elicits a reaction stemming from a negative childhood experience.

• Extreme defensiveness or mistrust of your partner’s intentions

• Severe jealousy about harmless interactions

• Constant need for validation and reassurance

• Major mood swings or emotional sensitivity

• Fear of enmeshment or losing yourself

• Panic when feeling alone or abandoned

• Difficulty with true intimacy and vulnerability

• Inability to keep a healthy relationship

• Extreme anger issues or fears

John Bradshaw explains: “The wounded inner child inside many people can destroy loving relationships. Your childhood wounds affect your relationships.” These wounds stem from the inner child’s neediness. This is due to not getting your fundamental needs met as a child, from infant to 7 years old. It is a good idea to explore this time in your life and what transpired. The patterns in our family of origin are usually what we bring into our relationships, friendships and work environment.

Healing your inner child

To short-circuit destructive inner child responses, self-awareness of the triggers through mindful observations of your emotions and reactions is key. The first step is to be aware of the problem and not ignore it. Then intentionally reframe your self-talk. It’s hard to do this in the heat of the moment, but reflecting back on the conflict you had with your partner is key to awareness because you can look at it during a calm time and adjust your actions in the future.

As an example, if abandonment wounds cause you to interpret your partner’s business trip as intentional neglect, remind yourself, “This is my inner child projecting past fears of abandonment. My partner loves me and is coming back.” Recognizing a pattern from childhood that correlates with the adult situation is the first step to healing.

For instance, if your father was working all the time when you were a child, you may have developed fears of abandonment, so your partner going on a business trip could trigger these painful feelings from childhood. Remember, all of your traumas and experiences are locked away in your subconscious mind and will get triggered when stressful events happen that jolt those inner child feelings. When you identify a pattern, you can go back to the time of the trauma from childhood and comfort and love your inner child in a meditation. John Bradshaw boldly suggests we go back to your childhood home and visualize your inner child in pain and comfort him or her. It is the most loving thing you can do for yourself.

Self-love

Self-love is crucial to having a healthy inner child. Cultivating secure relationships also involves reprogramming core relationship beliefs in your subconscious mind—for example, that you are worthy and loveable. Visualization, affirmations, and therapy can help instill self-reliance, regardless of your partner’s proximity or validation. It all starts with a firm, loving foundation in your relationship with yourself. Healing the inner child is crucial, and so is this inner child work. You have to be the one who is strong in your own skin, and it’s important to develop a good-loving, secure relationship with yourself. You can do this with daily affirmations and visuals of being strong alone, so when you are alone, your subconscious will draw on the visualization. I used to do a meditation where I would sit on my higher power’s lap as a child. In my case, I proudly call my higher power God. In this meditation, God would instill in me that I am worthy and loved, and I can never be abandoned because His spirit dwells within me. Of course, you have to use the higher power of your choice. Just imagine your higher power telling you how valued and loved you are, and give you assurance that you can never be abandoned.

Positive Affirmations

These positive affirmations are a good start to changing the negative subconscious to a positive one:

I am happy.

I am loved.

I am strong.

I am secure in my own skin.

I am at peace.

I am a child of God.

The more compassion, understanding, love, and stability you extend to your inner child directly, the less it will act up unconsciously in your relationships. It is like reparenting yourself with much love. You deserve that peace and stability. Using positive affirmations daily is a good start.

In closing, the inner child is a multifaceted issue and really does demand your attention. It is important to explore your inner child, who is very real and a very big part of your life, and try to see the patterns of self-sabotage when they happen. It will help your relationship become happier. Remember, awareness is the key to overcoming any obstacles in life. Having a loving relationship with yourself is the single most important thing you can do to heal the inner child.

Rachel Devine’s new book, Discover the Power of the Secret within - Healing your Inner Child to Manifest your Dreams, is on Amazon now.

Devine Intervention: Inner Healing Center

Ways to Recognize when your Inner Child Sabotages Your Relationships - Rachel Devine

Our relationships are precious. The wounded inner child, carrying baggage from past hurts or abandonments, often undermines romantic partnerships unconsciously. This is a very scary notion that there are aspects of each and every one of us that we are not aware of. By understanding your inner child’s dynamics and the way it acts out, you can heal its pain and break free of relationship-destroying patterns. But only when you can understand it, can you really heal its fury and live a happy life. Inner child healing starts with you. Furthermore, those who are just ‘unlucky in love,’ or can’t meet the right partner, might come to see a pattern from childhood to adult relationships. Let’s explore all of this together.

Defining the Inner Child

According to psychology pioneer Carl Jung, the inner child represents our instincts, vulnerabilities, feelings, and unmet needs from childhood. John Bradshaw, an expert in the inner child and author of Homecoming, further defines it as “the accumulation of all unmet childhood needs and wants that make up the childhood energies still expressing themselves in our adult lives.” John Bradshaw was an advocate for reparenting our inner child.

This inner child dwells in the subconscious mind, influencing behaviors independent of adult awareness. Our reactions to romantic partners frequently reflect the inner child’s projections. To be clear, the subconscious mind is like a vast memory bank holding all of our past traumas, experiences, and feelings from our inner child. During times of stress or triggers, the subconscious mind, or inner child, lashes out in very unexpected ways that are often unexplainable.

Inner Child Dynamics

The inner child dynamics are not complicated. From birth to 7 years old is a crucial time a child has to get their needs met, and if they don't, they grow up to be needy adults.

How we learned to love from birth to seven years old in our family of origin will determine our subconscious imprint that gets embedded in our brain. These imprints will determine who we connect with as a partner. When we get into adulthood, we attract those people who fulfill our innermost subconscious needs. This imprint from childhood is what we subconsciously navigate with when seeking out a partner in life. This is why it’s important to understand that we attract what we are resonating with. Additionally, this is the reason why most people marry a clone of their mother or father! It’s another way to get our childhood needs met with a partner that resembles our parents.

Recognizing Inner Child Havoc

Some signs your inner child is sabotaging your relationships include the following: These are all reactions to triggers, which would be a stimulus that elicits a reaction stemming from a negative childhood experience.

• Severe jealousy about harmless interactions

• Constant need for validation and reassurance

• Major mood swings or emotional sensitivity

• Fear of enmeshment or losing yourself

• Panic when feeling alone or abandoned

• Difficulty with true intimacy and vulnerability

• Inability to keep a healthy relationship

• Extreme anger issues or fears

John Bradshaw explains: “The wounded inner child inside many people can destroy loving relationships. Your childhood wounds affect your relationships.” These wounds stem from the inner child’s neediness. To reiterate, this is due to not getting your fundamental needs met as a child, from infant to 7 years old. It is a good idea to explore this time in your life and what transpired. The patterns in our family of origin are usually what we bring into our relationships, friendships, and work environment.

Healing your inner child

To stop destructive inner child responses, self-awareness of the triggers through mindful observations of your emotions and reactions is key. The first step is to be aware of the problem and not ignore it. Then intentionally reframe your self-talk. It’s hard to do this in the heat of the moment, but reflecting back on the conflict you had with your partner is key to awareness because you can look at it during a calm time and adjust your actions in the future.

As an example, if abandonment wounds cause you to interpret your partner’s business trip as intentional neglect, remind yourself, “This is my inner child projecting past fears of abandonment. My partner loves me and is coming back.” Recognizing a pattern from childhood that correlates with the adult situation is the first step to healing.

For instance, if your father was working all the time when you were a child, you may have developed fears of abandonment, so your partner going on a business trip could trigger these painful feelings from childhood. Remember, all of your traumas and experiences are locked away in your subconscious mind and will get triggered when stressful events happen that jolt those inner child feelings. When you identify a pattern, you can go back to the time of the trauma from childhood and comfort and love your inner child in a meditation. John Bradshaw boldly suggests we go back to your childhood home, visualize your inner child in pain, and comfort him or her. It is the most loving thing you can do for yourself.

If you are dating and can’t meet a compatible partner, it’s really time to look at the patterns from childhood, how you learned to love, and how that correlates with your adult relationships. The answers lie with the inner child dilemma.

Self-love

Self-love is crucial to having a healthy inner child. Cultivating secure relationships also involves reprogramming core relationship beliefs in your subconscious mind—for example, that you are worthy and loveable. Visualization, affirmations, and therapy can help instill self-reliance, regardless of your partner’s proximity or validation. It all starts with a firm, loving foundation in your relationship with yourself. Healing the inner child is crucial, and so is this inner child work. You have to be the one who is strong in your own skin, and it’s important to develop a good-loving, secure relationship with yourself. You can do this with daily affirmations and visuals of being strong alone, so when you are alone, your subconscious will draw on the visualization. Just visualize a positive feeling of safety and love.

Positive Affirmations

Positive affirmations are a good start to changing the negative subconscious into a positive one.

I am happy.

I am loved.

I am strong.

I am secure in my own skin.

I am at peace.

I am a child of God.

The more compassion, understanding, love, and stability you extend to your inner child directly, the less it will act up unconsciously in your relationships.

In closing, the inner child is a multifaceted issue and really does demand your attention. It is important to explore your inner child, who is very real and a big part of your life, and try to see the patterns of self-sabotage when they happen. It will help your relationship become happier. Remember, awareness is the key to overcoming any obstacles in life. Having a loving relationship with yourself is the single most important thing you can do to heal your inner child.

Rachel Devine’s new book, Discover the Power of the Secret Within: Healing Your Inner Child to Manifest Your Dreams, is on Amazon now.

Devine Intervention: Inner Healing Center

Wake Up Call! It’s Time to Awaken the Real YOU!

From time to time I think we can all use a wake-up call. Especially when life becomes dull and meaningless. Some of us go from one day to the next in the same mundane routine, with no room for fun or happiness. Days become years, and years become decades, and one might look back and see opportunities that were squandered. What do you have on the back burner of your life that you want to do? What is waiting in the wings that can bring you joy and happiness? And the big question is, what is stopping you from living a life of fulfillment and joy? It’s time for a wake-up call and to discover the real you! It’s time to see an aspect of your life you may not be aware of. Let me clarify what I mean in this article and look at some positive thoughts and manifesting methods that can transform your life! Let’s awaken the real you to reality.

The real you

It might sound crazy, but there is a dual power within that drives your life. You may think that you have full control of your life, but the stark reality is that there is something within that is driving your life in a direction that you might not want to go in. That dual inner power is your subconscious mind and inner child. All of your past experiences, traumas, and feelings are locked away in your subconscious mind. Think about this for a moment. To be clear, you can’t consciously access this part of your brain unless you do some subcortical brain work. However, your life is ruled by your subconscious mind 95% of the time! That’s right, all of your decisions and day-to-day routine are directed by your subconscious mind. This is a fact. So the question is, how do you wake up that part of yourself to steer it in the direction you want your life to go? The next question is: how much trauma and bad experiences have you had in the past that are driving your life today? To make it more complicated, the inner child is part of this whole subconscious dilemma.

Example

In order to be more clear about this, let’s look at these examples:

I will never forget this incident, that is an example of fears of abandonment from childhood that are embedded in the subconscious mind. I was walking my dog, Luke, at the time, and there was a white SUV stopped at the corner for the stop sign. The window was open, and I could hear this man screaming at someone on the phone, saying:

“You are never home; we don’t eat together anymore; you don’t cook; you are such a witch” (although he used the b word), and he was berating her.

I am sure that the more he yelled and became angry, the more she retreated and wanted to stay away from him. It was a vicious circle. And I thought to myself, All he wants to say to her is that he is lonely, feels abandoned, and would like to spend more time with her. But I suspect his inner child, feeling hurt and being triggered by her pulling away, is setting off his fear of abandonment issues from his childhood, so he is lashing out with intense anger, reverting to the way he behaved as a child. He was trying to get his needs met, and she was pulling away, so his anger got out of control. The fear of abandonment starts with fear and morphs into intense anger.

Another example is road rage. As you are driving along, perhaps someone dangerously cuts you off, and you go from fear to rage in an instant. The rage is intense and comes out of left field. What is happening at this point is that your inner child is reverting to a time of feeling fear and is triggered by the danger it feels when the car cuts you off. The inner child in turn is erupting with rage. This rage is what is within you that is lashing out in times of danger.

Subconscious work

The subconscious mind is typically embedded with fears, anger, and neediness from the past. There are several ways to do some work on reprogramming the subconscious mind to become a positive state of being. One way is called brainspotting. Brainspotting is a technique done by a professional therapist that is able to clear away parts of trauma from the past so it does not affect your life today, as I just outlined. This is especially helpful for those with PTSD. However, not everyone wants to go through a therapist to clear the channels.

You could also get a life-coach to help you reprogram the subconscious mind. This is a very good option.

Another way would be to offset the negative subconscious thoughts with positive ones. There are several ways to do this that I will outline in the next section.

Positive tools

Visualization and affirmations are a couple of ways to reprogram the subconscious mind. As you are falling asleep, you are going from a conscious to a subconscious to an unconscious sleep state. Many experts agree that this unconscious sleep state is where we can reprogram the subconscious mind. Let’s say you want to get rid of anger from your subconscious mind. You do that by offsetting it with kindness, love and peace.

Here are the steps:

1. Fall asleep with one image. If you want to be less angry, put an image in your head of you being kind, peaceful, and loving. Love is a strong emotion that offsets many negative ones. You want to keep one image in your mind of you in a loving state as you drift off to sleep.

2. The feelings are what changes the subconscious mind from anger to love. Let me repeat that. The feelings are what changes the subconscious mind. So you want to resonate with loving, kind feelings as you fall asleep, because these feelings will resonate in your unconscious mind for 8 hours. This is a powerful time for changing the subconscious.

3. You want to do this at least for 30 days. You will find that the next day you will feel more loving and wake up quite happy after feeding your subconscious with loving thoughts for 8 hours.

Remember, your subconscious mind drives your life 95% of the time, so it makes sense to always feed it positive rather than negative thoughts and feelings.

Manifesting your goals

Manifesting your goals is another aspect of using positive visualizations and feelings to reprogram the subconscious mind. Let’s go one step further with this, and let’s say you want to connect with your soulmate. You would fall asleep with one image of having met your soulmate. You fall asleep with the feelings of how it would feel to be in a relationship with your soulmate. You would feel loved, secure, elated and happy. You want to resonate with these feelings as you drift off to sleep. Again, you would do this for 30 days and see how that works for connecting with your soulmate in your awakened world.

Say you want to lose weight or end an addiction. You can use the same technique as described above for this or anything else you want to manifest in your world. Remember, your subconscious mind drives your life 95% of the time. Feeding it future goals and dreams is a smart way to bring these dreams into your waking world.

In closing, it is important to wake up and recognize the part of you that drives your life most of the time. The real you is buried in many aspects of your past. You want to live your best life, and in order to do that, it is important to get rid of the baggage from the past of resentments, anger, fears, and neediness. There are many layers of negativity from the past that can be cleared away one thought, one feeling, and one day at a time and get you to a point of living your best life.

Rachel Devine is the author of The Third Road and Lessons from the Needle in a Haystack, both on Amazon. My new book on the inner child and the subconscious mind will be out very soon.

Devine Intervention: Inner Healing Center website

Inner Child: A Pandora’s Box of Addictions! Rachel Devine

The inner child might sound like a far-fetched notion of a Freudian error from the past. It might conjure up pictures of your childhood—the good, the bad, and the ugly. However, the inner child is alive and well and dwells within each one of us. The inner child is in charge of steering our lives in one direction or another, depending on the emotions and experiences it was fed throughout your childhood. This revelation is enough to get anyone’s attention, as it is vital information on why your life is where it is today. The really crucial part of inner child dilemma is with addiction. If you tried to lose weight, stop smoking, drinking, or working long hours, and you can’t do it, it’s time to look at the inner child. Reparenting your inner child is key. Inner child healing is possible in order to curb addictions. Let’s explore this a little deeper.

Inner child definition

The inner child is our feelings, energies, needs, vulnerabilities, experiences, and neurological imprint. Simply put, the inner child is part of your personality that still feels and acts like a child.

The inner child that develops in each of our individual childhoods is what navigates our subconscious mind and drives our decisions in life without our realizing it. The subconscious holds all your experiences, traumas, and family interactions. The subconscious mind is the navigator of most of your life and is very powerful. In fact, the subconscious mind is in charge of 95% of your life, which includes your actions, decisions, and pretty much all that you do in a day.

When we struggle to move forward in life, to get out of a bad relationship, to start a love relationship, or to break an addiction, all of these decisions are coming from the subconscious mind of the inner child. That imprint that was embedded in our mind at different developmental stages is ingrained in our subconscious, and our adult intellect tries to reason with certain decisions we make but usually loses out to the fear or insecurity of the inner child. And most people are oblivious to this conflict that is going on within them and have no clue as to why they make certain decisions that are unhealthy for them. Make no mistake about it, when I say “subconscious mind,” it means we are totally oblivious to what is happening in that part of our psyches.

The wounded inner child

The dilemma ensues when our childhood was dysfunctional with things like alcoholism, drug addiction, abusive parents, etc. All of us have some degree of dysfunction from childhood; it is a matter of degrees. The inner child develops during the infant to 7-year-old stage. If you didn’t get your fundamental needs met at that stage, you would grow up to be a needy adult and perhaps fill that inner void with addictions such as alcohol, food, people, work, drugs, shopping, etc. This addictive behavior is to offset the void and also keep one in a numb state of having to feel our feelings. The wounded inner child wants to heal from the past. Inner child work is necessary to curb addictions.

Struggles with addiction

Most people struggle with addiction because, at the root of the problem, there is this feeling of emptiness within. I truly believe that if we fill that void with something healthy, it will help release the addiction. For instance, one can fill that void with exercise. Exercise induces endorphins, which make one feel good. When I tried to stop smoking, it was much easier when I exercised. Or you can fill the void with your own self-love. Loving yourself and parenting yourself can turn your whole world around for the better. Or you can fill that void with your Higher Power. The reason 12 step programs are so successful is because it reconnects one to their Higher Power. Being the parent of your inner child is key to releasing some of the hurt from the past. Parenting yourself is crucial to healing.

When you learn how to re-parent yourself, you will stop attempting to complete the past by setting up others to be your parents.” 
― John Bradshaw, Homecoming: Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child

Healing for the inner child

Once you can start to heal your inner child, the addictions will be more manageable. So, how do you heal the inner child? The first step would be to impress positive feelings into the subconscious mind. Remember, the subconscious mind drives your life 95% of the time. It makes sense to feed it positive feelings to offset the negativity from the past. The time to do that is just before you fall asleep at night. As you go from a subconscious to an unconscious state of sleeping, that is the most powerful time to feed the subconscious positive thoughts.

Make no mistake about it. Some of us are addicted to food, especially carbs and sugar. So, let’s say you want to lose weight. You will think about one image of yourself as slim, as if you already lost the weight, and fall asleep with that image in your head and with the feelings of how it would feel to be slim. You would feel healthy, happy, secure, etc. Those feelings will get into your subconscious mind and drive your life in the direction of losing weight.

Your story

In order to tame any addiction, your story has to align with the direction you want to go.

Here is an example of a negative story:

I have done everything, and I can’t lose weight.

What if we changed this story to a positive one?

I am willing to do anything to lose weight!

Your story must align with a positive light in the direction you want your life to go. Whether that is in business, healing, or anything you want to achieve in life.

Affirmations

Affirmations are phrases that are positive. Saying them out loud on a daily basis, consistently, will penetrate the subconscious mind. Whatever you say after the words “I am” is crucial to your inner child.

Some positive “I am” affirmations are:

I am loved.

I am beautiful.

I am successful.

I am happy.

I am a child of God.

Visualization

If you recall a time in your life when you were alone with some pain from childhood, you can change the feelings around. We all have them. Even being left out of a party can be traumatic for a little child. Just visualize that time in your life as a child and put yourself in that time frame in your visualization as an adult. Now you have a chance to comfort your inner child with words of kindness, love, and assurance. You can even give your inner child a hug. Going back to the hard times of your childhood and being a parent can heal one layer of many that would need healing. The more you do it, the more healing you will have.

In closing, it is crucial to connect with your inner child and start the healing process. You don’t want to live life in an oblivious state of not understanding the inner child factor. We all have hidden negative experiences from our childhood that cause havoc in our present world. Reparenting your inner child, with love, comfort and security is the most loving form of self-care. It will foster inner child healing and peace in your adult life. You have a choice, will you take this awareness to heart, or walk away to the same routine as yesterday.

Rachel Devine is the author of The Third Road and Lessons from the Needle in a Haystack, both on Amazon. My new book on the inner child and the subconscious mind will be out very soon.

Devine Intervention: Inner Healing Center website

Taming the Terror of the Inner Child: Embracing Peace with your Past - Rachel Devine

We all have a wounded inner child from past experiences. Some of us have a higher degree of inner child wounds than others. The wounded inner child, carrying unresolved hurts and fears from the past, can wreak havoc through self-sabotage, anxiety, fears, rage, or addiction in your current world. It can literally be a terrifying experience to encounter the rage of the inner child. There can be unexplained tantrums that happen because of past experiences that erupt out of nowhere. Your decisions in life can be thwarted by your inner child's fears that you are totally unaware of. You might have an addiction that you can’t break as well. However, making peace with this hurt inner part of yourself brings harmony. With love and understanding, the inner child’s tantrums can give way to tranquility and your life will be happy again.

The Wounded Inner Child

According to psychologist and bestselling author John Bradshaw, “We have the need to be respected and understood by our inner children, who still exert a tremendous influence on our everyday lives.” That inner child lives within all of us. When the inner child feels threatened or invalidated, it lashes out in unconscious ways rooted in old defenses or trauma responses in the present day moment. It wreaks havoc with relationships and family and can cause trouble in your work environment.

For example, the inner child may manifest in the present as excessive people-pleasing due to past neglect or doing good deeds to get attention. The inner child pain from the past can be overwhelming and one might numb their emotions through overeating, alcohol, or drugs. These maladaptive patterns provide short-term relief but long-term suffering. There is always this feeling that there is a gaping hole within, and it needs to be fed with drugs, alcohol, people, food, work, or some other way to numb the pain and fill the void. It’s a vicious cycle.

Bradshaw advises, “We must listen to our inner child to find our personal truth.” Only through compassionate inner dialog can you integrate these fragmented parts back into the whole.

Inner Child Healing Meditation

It takes courage to face wounded parts of yourself, but the rewards of inner peace await. Strategies like journaling, talk therapy, and visualization can help reconcile with the inner child. Meditations are also helpful. John Bradshaw boldy suggest going back into your childhood home and sitting with your inner child as a way to be the loving parent of the child. You can recognize a particular time in your childhood where there was trauma and go back in your mind to reparent and love your inner child, offering support and healing. This meditation will work wonders in your present world and bring you some peace. However, it’s like peeling an onion; there are layers of pain from the past that need healing. This inner child work is crucial. The more meditations you do, the more healing will occur.

Have patience, speak reassuringly, and let the inner child be heard. Help reframe old fears and beliefs that no longer serve your adult growth. The goal is not to banish but to integrate the inner child with compassion into your present-day life.

Love your Inner Child

Love can move mountains and heal the most advanced case of inner child dilemma. Love is the answer. Loving yourself is loving your inner child. We need more love in the world, but we also need more love in our own world. Sitting and nurturing your inner child is the most loving thing you can do. Encourage self-care in your life. You probably do a lot of wonderful things for others; do those things for yourself. The most important relationship you will ever have is with yourself. I suggest you get a picture of yourself as a child, put it where you can see it daily, and tell that child how much you are loved.

Mindfulness

It’s important to see the patterns from childhood that affect your life as an adult. Being mindful of what is happening in your life is crucial. Staying in the moment and really seeing what is happening is important, rather than just getting wrapped up in your daily routine without any contemplation. If you have an outburst or can’t lose weight or stop an addiction, it’s time to shine a light to focus on the origin of the problem. It’s important to see the correlation from childhood and present day issues. When you do connect with that little child, you can open up a whole new world of healing. At times, I can actually feel my inner child raging. Those are the times I need to listen very carefully to because something from my past is coming into my present day to get my attention. The key is to listen to it and then act upon it, with the aforementioned meditations, in calming the inner child through loving reparenting techniques.

Inner child therapy

If you have intense anger issues, fears from the past, or addictions, it is a good idea to see a therapist that specializes in the inner child. Opening up the pandora’s box of inner child trauma can be overwhelming. A good therapist is crucial to inner healing. There are many techniques that help clear the brain of past trauma. One very successful tool is brainspotting. It helps bring out the trauma from the subcortical brain to release it. Once the trauma is released it will not have an adverse influence on you anymore.

In conclusion, you possess everything you need to create internal ceasefires. With care and wisdom, you can guide the inner child to trust life again. With the right therapist, and inner child work, healing is possible. Meet this sacred part of yourself with empathy. Connect with your inner child and be the emotionally supportive parent you may never have had. Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you will ever have. You have the power to set the stage for profound healing. Once the healing begins, peace will reign in your adult world and you will be free from the terror of the inner child.

Rachel Devine is the author of, The Third Road & Lessons from the Needle in a Haystack, both on Amazon. My new book on the inner child will be out very soon, called Discover the Power of the Secret Within.

Devine Intervention: Inner Healing Center website.