We are all born as infants in this world. Growing up as children and then embarking on the journey of adulthood. As children we experience a journey of learning and growth, primarily guided by two powerful tools: experience and play. For those of you seeking to navigate this ever-changing landscape of life with joy and resilience, there emerges a compelling call to reconnect with your Inner Child.
However, the journey to rediscover the childlike joy of learning may also sometimes necessitate confronting challenging emotions rooted in our past. Lessons learnt in your childhood, sometimes create hindering patterns to obstruct your open-minded learning and adaptation in the now – these can be identified and addressed through the practice of Inner Child work.
As a child, your experiences, thoughts, feelings, and dreams find expression through play, serving as the foundation for your creative preparation of the real world. While adolescence introduces both discovery and challenges, expectations formulated during this period may later prove unfulfilled, leading to broken hearts, frustrations, and unrealized dreams.
At some point, many of us cease to play and instead allow our past experiences to dictate our identities and desires. These patterns and the coping mechanisms which were of use and value as a child are now the very stumbling blocks of our happiness and peace.
The demarcation between an adult life and childhood extends beyond a mere numerical age. The pivotal shift occurs when we cease engaging in imaginative exploration and focus solely on the dictates of our accumulated experiences.
Most of us never pause and choose to reconnect with our inner selves, stunting the growth of creativity, joy, passion, and potential. Understanding the principles of Inner Child work becomes instrumental in healing longstanding wounds, unlocking the gateway to playfulness and self-discovery.
Imagine a 5-year-old version of yourself playing in kindergarten, only to stumble and fall on the playground, becoming the subject of laughter from other children. While the exact details of the event may blur with time, the emotions of shame, teary eyes, and the pain of a skinned knee linger.
Your physical wound would have healed but on a subconscious level you may still be choosing to carry those scars into your adulthood. You may not remember the actual event or even how old you were but the imprint of the resulting emotion runs through into adulthood – strong and adamant, still running the show twenty or even forty years later.
This was an example of a simple event but then there more intense or traumatic childhood experiences which cast enduring shadows into your adulthood, with the Inner Child still hurt and traumatized - influencing your emotions, decisions and reactions as an adult.
When you chose to work on healing your Inner Child, in a way you go back in time on an emotional and mental level — to that traumatic event. You can then understand how your Inner Child feels from the perspective of an adult. With this knowledge and understanding your adult self can begin to untangle the coping mechanisms your thirteen (or four) year old self devised to protect you from further trauma.
If as a child, you have experienced dysfunctional parenting or family life – and have experienced any kind of parental manipulation, overt control or dominance, aggression – either direct or passive, negative self-beliefs, any kind of neglect, abuse or abandonment, loss of a parent or sibling then the scars of these experiences are deeper and stronger and they are an integral part of how you operate, respond and react as an adult even though these are no longer effective and required in your present – but they run the show.
Inner Child work emerges as a method to first recognize and then heal these childhood traumas, acknowledging that adult behaviors often trace back to formative experiences, re-parenting ourselves becomes the focus, addressing unmet needs and fostering self-discovery.
This transformative journey enables you to embody both, the “struggling, confused adult" and the “vulnerable tantrum throwing child” and get them to understand each other with unconditional self-love and self-compassion.
If as a child, you have experienced dysfunctional parenting or family life – and have experienced any kind of parental manipulation, overt control or dominance, aggression – either direct or passive, negative self-beliefs, any kind of neglect, abuse or abandonment, loss of a parent or sibling then the scars of these experiences are deeper and stronger and they are an integral part of how you operate, respond and react as an adult even though these are no longer effective and required in your present – but they run the show.
Inner Child work emerges as a method to first recognize and then heal these childhood traumas, acknowledging that adult behaviors often trace back to formative experiences, re-parenting ourselves becomes the focus, addressing unmet needs and fostering self-discovery.
This transformative journey enables you to embody both, the “struggling, confused adult" and the “vulnerable tantrum throwing child” and get them to understand each other with unconditional self-love and self-compassion.
Identifying a wounded Inner Child involves recognizing signs such as frustration, big reactions to unmet needs, childish outbursts, difficulty expressing feelings, low self-esteem, a harsh inner critic, immaturity, self-sabotage patterns, fear of abandonment or high codependency and challenges with setting boundaries or expressing needs.
These are some of the more identifiable characteristics however is impossible to list all the circumstances that you as your younger self may have internalized but it very likely that if you had any childhood trauma then the effects, manifesting as these issues are clearly evident in your life today.
Inner Child therapy is highly effective in managing and addressing a variety of emotional and psychological challenges.
Childhood Trauma: Inner Child therapy is particularly effective in addressing and healing the effects of childhood trauma, including physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, neglect, or other adverse experiences.
Breaking Self-Sabotaging Patterns: Inner Child therapy is effective in helping you identify and address self-sabotaging behaviors rooted in childhood experiences. By understanding and changing these patterns, you can create positive changes in your life
Low Self-Esteem and Self-Worth: Anyone struggling with low self-esteem, self-worth, and self-confidence issues would benefit from Inner Child therapy by exploring and addressing the root causes of these issues.
Relationship Issues: Inner Child therapy helps you understand and work through patterns of behavior that may be affecting your relationships. These could be across parents, spouses, children, family and friends and could be about issues related to trust, dependency, communication, and intimacy.
Anxiety and Depression: By uncovering and addressing unresolved issues you’re your childhood, Inner Child therapy contributes to the management of symptoms associated with anxiety and depression.
Codependency: Anyone of you dealing with codependency issues, characterized by unhealthy dependence on others, would find Inner Child therapy helpful in either breaking these patterns or establishing healthier relationship dynamics.
Addiction and Substance Abuse: Inner Child therapy is also incorporated into addiction treatment programs to address underlying emotional issues contributing to addictive behaviors.
Self-Sabotaging Behaviors: For any of you engaging in self-sabotaging behaviors, Inner Child therapy helps identify and change patterns originating in childhood that are responsible for this
Grief and Loss:Inner Child therapy assists you in processing and healing from grief and loss by exploring the emotional impact of such experiences on your Inner Child.
Anger Management: If you are struggling with anger issues, you will benefit from Inner Child therapy to explore and understand the origins of your anger and develop healthier ways of expressing and managing it.
Perfectionism: Inner Child therapy is effective in addressing perfectionistic tendencies and the underlying fear of not being good enough, often rooted in childhood experiences.
Emotional Regulation: Learning to connect with and nurture your Inner Child contributes to improved emotional regulation and the development of healthier coping mechanisms.
The core foundation of Inner Child work is developing self-awareness. In all our years of practice we accept that the skills of mental fitness develop in a particular order. The first skill to develop or focus on is “introspection” as it lays the foundation for all other kinds of personal and professional growth. Our experienced guides use techniques and processes to untangle these threads, clarify the mist and provide a plan for this journey to unfold towards a better you
As you partake in this journey and develop greater self-awareness, some of the benefits of Inner Child work that you would experience are
These sessions are delivered using a video call platform
Typically, substantial change and progress can be experienced after three sessions through this may vary from person to person.
Broad process that can be expected, though this may vary from person to person
1. Initial Assessment and Goal Setting
2. Guided Inner Child Exploration
3. Dialogue and Reparenting Techniques
4. Integration and Closure
5. Follow-up Recommendations
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