Wake-up the Sleeping Giant: To Heal the Wounded Inner Child - Rachel Devine

Make no mistake about it; the inner child is alive and well and dwells in each one of us. This sleeping giant is powerful, and some would rather let it sleep. However, letting the sleeping giant lie dormant can cause intermittent havoc in one’s life. It can cause fear when you want to exit a relationship. Or uncontrollable anger towards a loved one. And it can cause rage during car incidents and, in some severe cases, cause people to be violent. It will rear its ugly head in times of stress, trouble, grief, and anxiety. The way to arrest these unexpected tantrums of the wounded inner child is to understand them and tame them.

Carl Jung advocated that it was this inside part of all of us that influenced all we do and the decisions that we make. Inner children were a part of us when we were kids that never grew up. They are who hold all the memories and emotions, good or bad, that we experienced.

Let’s look at some inner child healing techniques and ways to reparent yourself.

Awareness of the wounded inner child

The wounded inner child is part of your subconscious mind, and both, in unison, direct your life 95% of the time. When you get up each day and have breakfast, check your emails, brush your teeth, and get ready for work, this is all orchestrated by this dual force. You don’t think about it; it’s an automatic response to your daily routine. Well, 95% of your decisions are made with your subconscious/inner child mind. The question is, what are the inner contents that are driving your life? Are they good contents or bad ones, or a little bit of both?

My inner child is screaming

The first step is to look for patterns in your life that erupt unexpectedly and are screaming for your attention. Are you reactive during arguments? Do you get enraged during car incidents, like when someone cuts you off? Are you violent toward people in times of stress? Are you filled with fear at the idea of dating? Do you have addictions? These are just some clues as to your wounded inner child screaming for help. What is inside you will erupt during stressful times, so these are clues for you to look for so you have awareness of what is bubbling up inside. You want to have this awareness to stop it from continuing.

Self-love

Believe it or not, some of the anger and even fears stem from the fact that most of us did not get our fundamental needs met as children, and we hide the repressed anger deep within us from those times. Additionally, carrying around deep resentments from years of anger can also be what is within. Self-love is one of the keys to filling that inner void that was not filled in childhood. Let’s face it, we are all humans, especially our parents, who did the best they could under the circumstances of their lives. However, the outcome is usually that an adult will have some sort of issue that came out of childhood. Look in the mirror daily and say, “I love you.” Even if you don’t mean it, this exercise will change your inner emotions around to more love.

Inner child meditation

Another form of inner-child healing is meditation. Sit in a quiet room and imagine yourself as a child. Picture what you look like, what you are wearing, and what room in your childhood home you are in. Just picture everything you can. Then, in the meditation, you will approach your inner child as an adult parent and sit with your child. Give your child words of encouragement, perhaps a hug, and reassurance that you are there for them and will always love and support them. Be as loving as you can in this meditation. There is no right or wrong way to do this, or time-frame, just go with your instincts. The more you do this meditation the more inner child healing you will receive.

Affirmations

Affirmations act as a way of penetrating the subconscious, so you put positive words and feelings in there to offset the negative ones from the past. You can say things like, I am here for you, I will support you, I am loved, I am confident, I am worthy, I am beautiful, etc. You can write these affirmations out on sticky notes and post them where you can see them daily as a reminder to say them out loud.

Wake-up call

It’s okay to wake up the inner giant so you can heal. Inner child healing is necessary to eradicate our weaknesses that hold us back in life. Too many of us have anger issues or bitterness from the past, that we want to get rid of. The key to inner healing is through awareness and inner child work. Remember what lies dormant is just waiting to erupt, like a pandora’s box of horrors. You really want to tame that inner child. It will be worth the effort when you start to see your life transform before your very eyes.

Rachel Devine is the author of her new inner child book, Discover the Power of the Secret Within, along with The Third Road and Lessons from the Needle in a Haystack, all on Amazon.

Devine Intervention: Inner Healing Center

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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.