Why Healing Your Inner Child is Important

What is your Inner Child?

A few weeks ago, we gave you tools on how you can start to nurture and reparent your inner child. But what is the inner child? Why does it need reparenting?

As we have said before: “you are every age you’ve ever been all at once.” The inner child is the part of our personality that reflects the child we once were. It’s the script we learned at a young age & internalized on how to deal with emotions, problems, relationships, etc. 

While we exist as adults, our inner child is still inside of us, and it is often that part of our personality that responds to challenges. This means if your 8 year old self was wounded or traumatized, though you are an adult now, it is that 8 year old self who responds to similar conflicts in your life because that wound hasn't healed. 

What does inner child work do?

Why is it important to engage with inner child work? 

If you were abused, neglected, did not experience attunement or experienced trauma at a young age, connecting with that inner child can help you to heal those wounds. When those wounds aren’t identified or healed, we often respond from that wounded place. Meaning, rather than reacting to the situation we are in as an adult, we react out of trauma. 

Inner child work also helps us to look back on early wounds without judgment. When we look back as adults, we often look through our adult perspective instead of seeing the experience as we did as children, judging or invalidating the pain we may have felt. While we know now that the experience may not have been a “big deal” in the long run, the pain we felt at that moment was honest and valid, and may still have an impact. Learning to connect with that inner child, validate the pain they feel, and heal those wounds without judgment helps us better address our own emotions & emotional needs in the present.  

The goal of inner child work is to heal those wounds, and to get back in touch with the self prior to trauma or harmful experiences, to reconnect with innocent joy & excitement we feel as a child

How can you tell if your inner child is wounded?

More than likely, all of us have wounds from our early life we need to heal from. Connecting to our inner child can help that process, no matter the level of trauma our inner child is responding to. 

There are many ways childhood wounds can appear in our adult selves. Below are six common signs that your inner child is still hurting: 

You have trouble with boundaries: Saying no is hard, you don’t set or enforce boundaries, you would rather feel uncomfortable/violate a boundary of your own than risk upsetting someone else

You have a harsh inner critic: Are you too critical of yourself? When you achieve something new, do you take time to celebrate it, or does judgment of how you could have done better, how you should be better, etc. take over your thoughts? Do you find that no matter what you do, nothing is good enough for that inner critic?

You have a weakened sense of self: IF you were taught as a child to prioritize other’s happiness and comfort above your own, you likely picked up the habit of changing your personality depending on who you were with. While it served as a survival technique in your early life to modify your personality based on who you were around, as an adult it likely left you unsure of your own true identity. 

You are highly anxious: Whether to do with new people, new experiences, or new places, you experience a high level of anxiety when entering any new type of situation. There is a lack of control that makes you uncomfortable. When you don’t know how to anticipate what will happen, how someone will behave, etc. your anxiety increases. 

You are in need of constant reassurance: Much like the trouble with boundaries, learning to be a people pleaser early in life can leave you without the ability to reassure yourself, so you constantly seek external approval. You may feel like a failure if not told otherwise. 

You have difficulty with strong emotions: You may have difficulty controlling your emotions, and frequently feel guilty when you feel a “negative” emotion like anger or sadness. 

How to heal your inner child: 

Healing your inner child is a long process, most effective when done with a trusted therapist. There are many techniques you can use to begin to heal & nurture your inner child, which you can find here

Blog authors all hold positions at the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center (G&STC). For more information about our therapists and services please contact us.