What is the inner child?
Everyone has a “child within” which is a part of us that is ultimately alive, energetic, creative, and fulfilled. The inner child is who we truly are.
The term “ inner child” demonstrates a fundamental characteristic of authentic personality which includes all the past hidden ages which have made up one’s life journey.
We also call the inner child the following: real self, true self, child within, divine child higher self, deepest self, inner core.
Our real self accepts our feelings and others without judgment and fear and allows them to exist as a valid way of assessing and appreciating life’s events.
Most of us try to hide our true self. If we just let it be, the inner child will express itself and do not need any effort.
some have estimated that we show our true self to others on average for only about 15 minutes each day
Factors that Make Us to Deny our Inner Child
Humans need to have ideal circumstances to be fulfilled so their inner child can grow. All these circumstances depend on our relationships with ourselves and people around us. Growing up without these needs causes us to be confused and grow up without realizing that our needs have not been met. Some of these needs include: Survival, safety and security/ Listening and participating/ accepting/ Attention/ Loyalty and trust/ Freedom/ Unconditional love
Working with Inner Child
Maybe saying “healing the inner child” is not the right phrase but it is more accurate to say “healing the relationship with the inner child”.
In the process of working with your inner child, the first and most critical step is to build a trusting relationship.
Next step is to determine what you want to change- in order to do this you have to be aware of the influence from your past
The third step is to introduce the problem to your inner child and tell them the impacts of it in your life now.
In the fourth step, you have to introduce alternative feelings or thoughts to replace the old ones in order to prevent old thoughts from returning.
“Remember, it is the inner family that is changing, not you as you are now.”
Building a Trusted Relationship
In order to build a trusted relationship with your inner child, you have to identify what you want to change from past experiences.
We need a clear sense of what the issue is that you want to address in this stage
Then you have to form the issue into a question
Your second question should be “ what happened to make you feel that?” after this you should wait for your inner child to tell you the story
Then you should move forward in years and check with each member if this is still the same.
The story then needs to be understood for its essential nature.
In some situations asking one question will not work; you should show love, empathy and care for your inner child or even a hug and then start from there.