What is your Inner Child? Discover the Power of the Secret Within - Rachel Devine
You might ask yourself, what exactly is the Inner Child and how does it affect me? I will explain all you need to know about what the inner child is and how it affects you in this article. I will use an important excerpt from my new book, Discover the Power of the Secret Within - Healing your Inner Child to Manifest your Dreams!
The dynamics of our inner world are pretty intense. However, as I open up the nucleus of the inner child you will see how easy it really is to comprehend.
I will start from the beginning. What transpired in our childhood determines how we develop as adults. Some of the things that transpired in childhood will plague you as an adult with things like alcoholism, drug or food addictions, anger issues, intimacy issues, fear of abandonment, commitment issues, claustrophobia, sexual disorders, continuous relationship failures, workaholism, paranoid tendencies, narcissism, fears, etc. These issues get embedded in the inner child’s psyche and carries into adulthood. This all stems from the roots that took place with the inner child and what went on in your early childhood.
Inner Child Definition:
So, what does it mean when I refer to the “Inner Child”?
The inner child is our feelings, energies, needs, vulnerabilities, experiences, our neurological imprint. Simply put, the inner child is part of your personality that still feels and acts like a child.
The inner child that developed in each of our individual childhoods is what navigates our subconscious mind and drives our decisions in life, without realizing it. The subconscious mind 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, that includes your actions, decisions, and pretty much all that you do in a day.
When we struggle to move forward in life, or to get out of a bad relationship, or we struggle to start a love relationship, or we cower down in arguments, 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 mind and our adult intellect tries to reason with certain decisions we make, but usually will lose 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.
Stages of the Inner Child
Let’s look at this in stages. There are four important developmental stages of the inner child.
The first one 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 that 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 from co-dependence.
From 4 to 7 years old, 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.
Inner Child Relationships
How we learned to love from birth to seven years old will determine our subconscious imprint that gets embedded in our brain. When we get into adulthood, we attract those people who fulfill our innermost subconscious thoughts. This imprint from childhood is what we navigate with when seeking out a partner in life. If you are wondering why you are having a hard time finding the right partner, look no further than your inner child for the answer. You can improve your love-life with some knowledge about the inner child, that will help you navigate the dating world successfully.
Example of Inner Child Tantrum:
It is important to understand the dynamics of the inner child with an example:
I will never forget this incident, which is an example of fears of abandonment from childhood. These fears develop when we don’t get our fundamental needs met, or we are emotionally abandoned by our parents because of their own dysfunctions.
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 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 and 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, 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 became out of control. The fear of abandonment starts with fear and morphs into intense anger.
This is just another example of how the inner child wreaks havoc in our relationships and is in charge and very powerful. It dictates how we behave in certain circumstances. It controls us in a way that we are totally oblivious to. It subconsciously navigates our entire life. This man screaming at his partner is just labeled as temperamental and he had no clue that what took root in childhood determines his temperament as an adult.
Another Inner Child example
I think most of us can relate to this example of road rage. When someone cuts me off on the road, I go from fear to anger in an instant. The reason is because fear from childhood rears its ugly head and the person who cut me off has triggered that fear, which usually instantly morphs to anger. I find myself sitting in my car ranting and raving about almost having an accident and in that moment my inner child is dictating my angry words and actions.
In closing, I want to say that there are ways to reprogram the subconscious mind and change the negative imprint of the inner child. You also have the power to manifest your goals and dreams with this process of reprogramming. Get a copy of my new book, Discover the Power of the Secret Within and learn the secret within that will transform your life!
Rachel Devine is the author of Discover the Power of the Secret Within, a book about the inner child and subconscious mind, The Third Road, a book that gently guides one to the power within and their purpose in life, and Lessons from the Needle in a Haystack, a spiritual book on dating and relationships. All are on Amazon.
Devine Intervention - The Healing Center website.
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