Unlock your inner child ...

The goal of healing your inner child is to make sure you fully process both positive and negative experiences from when you were younger or early childhood, so you can move past them with a renewed understanding of your worth as a human being with very real thoughts and feelings.

So, how do you turn all these around? Healing your inner child is about making sure that little version of you feels safe, protected and loved so they’re not popping up unannounced ready to wreak havoc. Journey of healing your inner child becomes much more manageable with these steps:

• Acknowledge your inner child and what they have to say.

  “When you listen to your inner child, you’re allowing and validating any feelings that you may have." “As a child, you may often be taught to cut yourself off from those feelings or ignore and avoid them. But as an adult, the first step is paying attention to when you are having a significant reaction to something and take it seriously.” For example, when you receive critical feedback at work and feel a surge of shame, pause to acknowledge that your inner child is reacting to past experiences of being judged. “Instead of letting those feelings overwhelm you, remind yourself that this feedback is about your work, not your worth, allowing you to respond constructively and grow from the experience."

  
  

• Understand your triggers.

  Knowing yourself and what triggers your emotional impulses is key to finding out how to respond in a healthier way. “If you know yourself and you know you’re incredibly sensitive to feeling abandoned because of a sense of abandonment you had as a child, you can watch out for it." “You can look for it in relationships with friends and other people around you, and spot when you feel oversensitive to abandonment.”

  
  

• Mirror your motives.

  Mirror exercises can help you flip the script so that you start to internalize more positive feelings about yourself.

  “Look at yourself in the mirror and start saying positive and healing statements as you’re looking at your reflection to reformulate some of those automatic beliefs that pop into your mind." “Tell yourself that you feel worthy and that you are good enough.”

  
  

• Write a letter. Write a letter to your inner child, or try writing from the perspective of your inner child.

  “If you’re writing to yourself, you’re giving yourself the love, compassion and empathy you needed, and a sense of safety and trust." “If you’re writing from the inner child’s perspective, it can help to illuminate where these wounds are located inside of you and how they may be popping up.” So, next time your inner child is triggered, try writing a mantra to yourself, something like:

  “Dear little me,

  I see your fear of not being good enough and I want you to know that you are loved, worthy and capable of amazing things — no matter what anyone else says or does.”

  Sit with that, repeat it to yourself and really focus on believing it.

  
  

• Meditate with your inner child.

  “Imagine a version of yourself as a child sitting next to you. Talk to that child version of yourself and tell them what you wanted or needed to hear as a child." “That often taps into very deep places for people to identify where your wounds are located.”

  
  

• Don’t forget about the positives.

  You want to focus on both the positive and negative aspects of your inner child because chances are, you had moments when you were young where you felt happy, safe and playful.

  “Those positive memories helped create your sense of the world.“

  So, if you felt safe and comforted in a relationship with an adult or a friend when you were younger, you may also be able to identify and recognize when you feel that way again in a new relationship as an adult.”

  
  

• Try something new.

  Many of these steps revolve around increasing your awareness so you can start to change the way you think and feel. But once you have insight into your inner child, it’s time to put all of that awareness into practice by changing how you act and react to the world around you. Instead of doing what you’ve always done, try a different approach.

  “It’s also helpful to let your partner know what you need." “If you were a child who needed more hugs as a kid and you tell your spouse that when you’re feeling down, you really need a hug, that’s going to be more healing because it taps right into what your inner child needs in that moment.”

  
  

• Be child-like.

  Allow yourself to let go every now and then and do something you once loved as a child. Be playful. Explore your curiosities. Pick up an old habit you let go of long ago.

  “For a lot of people who have inner child wounds, they didn’t feel safe enough to play and experience joy when they were kids, so they often feel cut off from that part of themselves."

  “Tapping back into that as an adult helps you reparent yourself so that you learn it’s OK to have fun and do things you did as a child that gave you joy.”

At the end of the day, your inner child has always been hidden somewhere inside you. By confronting your inner child, you can begin to protect them and support them the way you would protect and support any one of your own children.