The phrase “inner child” is becoming more common and is being used more often. But what exactly is the Inner Child? The inner child is an archetype. It is a part of our personality that we need to look after in order to discover harmony, peace of mind and wholeness.
Furthermore, it represents characteristic traits like openness, creativity, kindness, and trustworthiness. The Inner child is developed in our psyche in the earliest stages of our life. This is the part where we want to feel accepted, loved, and safe. Inner Child is very important to our well-being because our sense of belonging is being formed. And as a result, the whole perception of ourselves and the entire world is being programmed into our subconscious mind.
Inner Child Work
None of us are born adults. We have to learn everything as we grow. Children do that in two, incredibly effective, ways: experience and play. For adults who want to keep learning and growing, joyfully, to thrive in a fast-changing world, it might be time to reconnect with our inner child.
However, no one’s life is perfect. For some, reconnecting with the childlike learner might also require facing some more difficult emotions. Sometimes we learned lessons as a child that get in the way of open learning and adaptation today. That’s where inner child work comes in.
As children, we act out our experiences, thoughts, feelings, and dreams through our play. Our creativity becomes the basis of how we prepare for the real world.
Moreover, adolescence is a time of discovery, but it can also be painful. As we grow, we begin developing expectations of the world. Sometimes, those expectations fail us. We have broken hearts, we have frustrations, and we have dreams that just don’t materialize. Many of us stop playing and start letting our experiences dictate who we are and what we want.
Childhood Trauma
If, however, you didn’t have a warm, loving, accepting parent. Or if you have experienced some trauma in your childhood, you will be impacted by its effects in your adulthood. Therefore healing your wounded inner child is so important. It will set you free from your old wounds, that you keep carrying in your subconscious mind.
Childhood trauma can simply block out the freedom of exploring life and developing the sense of true self. It can also make us develop the belief that the world isn’t a safe space and disconnect from life and people. When we do that, we are in survival mode, which is preventing us from truly living harmonious, happy, and fulfilled life.
Healing your Inner Child
We all have a younger part of ourselves that was never quite loved the right way or the way they needed as a child. The Inner child work, like any type of inner work, involves creating a space where your subconscious is allowed to take the lead.
Healing your inner child is the act of going inside ourselves, to explore our true feelings and parts of us that may have been rejected and labelled as “inappropriate” or “too much” by others. By allowing ourselves time to go within, we begin peeling back our everyday coping mechanisms (being avoidant, numbing our feelings, etc.) and are able to accept and integrate our subconscious into consciousness fully.
