What Is Inner Child Work?

Both Jung and Freud referred to the inner child in their work. Jung referred to it as the puer or puella complex and Freud as the unconscious part of ourselves.

It became known as the “inner child” through pop psychology and the self-help movement. The inner child is seen as an echo of who we once were.

No matter what it is called it is worth noting that as adults most of us would benefit from completing this work with a trained therapist. I must emphasize that you should work with someone qualified to this type of work. But I have listed some things below you can do while waiting to commence therapy.

Becoming Aware Of Our Inner Child.

Most adults are quite unaware of this inner child working away inside of our unconscious. The inner child though can, and does for many of us, control many behavioural, emotional and relationship difficulties we have as adults. These difficutlies are believed to stem from our childhood experiences.

Adjusting to true adulthood, where we accept and take responsibility for loving and parenting ourselves, can be difficult. For most of us it may never happen. Instead we continue to neglect our wounded inner child but it continues to control our every day interactions and emotions as adults.

As I said many adults also hold on to the hurt, neglect, trauma, fear and anger they suffered as children. We grew up making decisions about who we should be and what we should do in order to be seen as being okay to society and survive in our families. All the while pushing down these hurts and truamas.

These must be dealt with in order to successfully grow up and develop our true potential as adults. Our inner child is seen as the one holding on to these old trauams and hurt. It will not heal until we, as adults, are prepared to do the work needed in therapy.

Society has also taught us to “grow up” and not nurture the inner child’s capacity for innocence, wonder, joy, awe and playfulness either. This can be such a pity as it may also leave us feeling as if we are missing a part of who we truly are.

How is inner child work used in therapy?

As I outlined above, we each have our own history. We have all been influenced by our environment, events and the significant people in our lives. Our inner child has stored these memories and their impact on us, it influences how we behave today.

Learning about our scripts.

These are our “scripts” and we carry these immature scripts and decisions with us where they run our lives more than 90% of the time. Therefore, it makes sense that we should revisit these experiences of the childhood. We need to try and find out what our own script says about our life and the unfolding drama we have been re-creating and repeating.

For some of us we may try to silence the scripts with alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, gambling, over-spending, over-eating, work-a-holism, self-harming and any other form of disassociation we can think of.

This is our way of coping and avoiding facing the fact that we have unmet needs deep within us. We may have done such a good job of this that we don’t know we have these needs and that they need to be addressed.

Learning to re-parent the inner child.

In therapy, we address the inner child and give ourselves time to learn to “re-parent” our child. We write our stories at different ages such as 0 to 9 months, 9 months to 2 years old etc. We begin to see what has unfolded in our lives and any trauma, neglect, and any abuse we have suffered is unearthed.

We use letter writing to our inner child to acknowledge all this and any fear, anger and pain etc, the child has experienced. We also encourage the inner child to write back to us. We need to help build trust between us and the inner child. We open a dialogue and give that inner child a voice that has so long been denied them.

We nurture them, care for them and begin to love ourselves again.We learn to allow our competent adult to be in change and learn to self-soothing in an appropriate manner.

We also learn how to set healthy boundaries, many of us will learn this for the first time. We will learn to love ourselves properly, enjoy our life and nurture ourselves and our connections to our family/friends.

Can I do inner child work by myself?

I would recommend not, but some books are available on the subject such as Bradshaw’s Homecoming: Reclaiming and Healing your inner child. This will give you a good insight into the topic, help you decide if this type of work is for you and get you started while waiting to begin therapy.

Signs your inner child is wounded

As I’ve already mentioned, your inner child controls many behavioural, emotional and relationship difficulties. These may show as follows (this list is not inclusive):

1. Low self-esteem
2. Poor body-image
3. Mood and emotional imbalance
4. Alcoholism
5. Gambling
6. Drugs addiction
7. Co-dependency
8. Problems with boundaries being too rigid or too weak
9. Eating disorders
10. Harming yourself
11. Psycho-sexual difficulties
12. Feeling like you’re being ‘false’ and wearing ‘masks’
13. Identity problems
14. Being a rebel
15. Hoarder
16. Bully
17. A perennial victim
18. A super-achiever
19. Intimacy problems
20. Commitment problems
21. A general lack of trust in yourself and others
22. Criminal behaviour
23. Excessive lying
24. Being ‘overly-responsible’ for others
25. Being fiercely competitive and a poor loser
26. A lack of genuine friends or in making friends
27. Obsessive and needy behaviour
28. Fear of authority figures
29. Being manipulative
30. Being passive, or being aggressive

The Inner Child Is Part Of Who You Are.

Please remember that your inner child is a real part of your sub-conscious mind. Perhaps a wounded child who needs your love, care and compassion. Because no-one else can heal their pain and help them to make peace with your past.

You can at the least start this work by booking an appointment with a therapist near you trained in inner child work. Or by reading a book and starting the work there.

I would caution you against doing this work by yourself. You will need support, particularly if you have had a difficult childhood and/or suffer from a major addiction or have mental health difficulties.

You could start by just taking your time, write down what you remember of your childhood up to age 26. I’d write it on loose pieces of paper, so you can go back over time, as you work through the different stages with a therapist and fill in some more blanks.

It’s About Reconnecting With Yourself.

I found while working on my inner child I could go back and re-parent my younger self and treat her as she needed to be treated at the time. It helped me overcome so many difficulties I felt I had suffered as a child.

It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. It enabled me to find myself, reconnect with myself and learn to love myself again after so long.

I can’t emphasise how much you can learn about yourself. Learning to love yourself and generally how much more open and positive you will feel after having completed this work.

Taking the time now to complete a journey that began in childhood so you can bring it to its full and happy conclusion.

Other ways to help your inner child (until you get a therapist)

1. Remind yourself how special and wonderful you were as a child, I found using photos of myself very helpful here.
2. Have a safe place in your mind where you and your inner child can meet and play together.
3. Start to speak kindly to your inner child each day. Use a loving and soothing inner voice, one that is supportive, soft, nurturing, patient and comforting. Tell them they are now loved, valued, and appreciated by you. That they don’t have to prove themself to anyone. Tell them how proud you are of them. Using affirmations can help here. Such as I am good enough, I am safe, etc.
4. Tell them they have nothing to feel guilty or ashamed about. None of what happened to them was ever their fault. They didn’t deserve to be treated badly.
5. They need to know that you will be their guardian, champion and protector from now on. You respect them and will not tolerate any disrespect towards them. Things will be okay and you will never let them come to any more harm. They need to feel they are not alone anymore.
6. Set up some creative ways to play, sing childhood songs and allow them to cry if they need to. Use a teddy bear or baby doll to represent the child while you hug them.
7. Start showing yourself some respect, use affirmations, take care of your health and self-care.
8. Set some boundaries with others, if we have inner child work to do our boundaries with others are usually skewed.
9. See a doctor or dentist f you need to and begin to take back your own power.

As I’ve said this work is hard, you may have to relive painful memories but it is worthwhile and better than the alternative of continuing with an unhappy life.

Work With Me.

Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No one is an island. If you need extra support then you can also work with me. We all struggle with stress and overwhelm from time to time. If you find this has become a problem for you and you’d like some support then schedule an appointment with me.