Five ways to heal your inner child so you can thrive as an adult
Picture this: your inner child is frozen in time.
Frozen during a period of your life where so much emotional, physical, or spiritual pain took place that you had no choice but to develop distinct emotional wounding and energetic patterns. These wounds and patterns are woven through every part of your personality, trying their best to keep you as safe as possible.
There’s a catch. This inner child memorized all the painful moments from the past. They locked them up and stored them away somewhere so you wouldn’t have to keep reliving the physical memories in your psyche. Yet, you still feel them every day.
Over time, these emotionally charged, energetic patterns grow and change as more layers emerge through our individual experiences. It can be really difficult to even understand what the root of the problem actually is. This inner child gets so comfortable within us that we start to believe what they’re saying through stories, emotional reactions, and physical bodily responses.
When this inner child takes control of your life, you will most likely be derailed from your true potential. Your adult self is left feeling deeply confused, confined, and disconnected from your genuine spiritual self. The effects of this can draw you even further from your highest potential and life purpose.
There’s hope.
Once we discover that our inner child needs support and has such a major influence on our lives, we can feel empowered to explore several ways to heal our inner child. With these practices, you should be able to get them out of the driver’s seat and into the passenger seat.
Loving & Nurturing
The best question to ask yourself to begin this practice with your inner child is, “What did I need as a child to feel loved?” These needs can appear in many forms: someone to play with, physical affection, financial safety, healthy food, words of affirmation, environmental stability, honest connections, or unconditional love in relationships. Whatever you felt you needed before, you have to provide it to yourself now. YOU have to become the adult/caregiver you wish you had. This practice affirms that YOU are the only one you truly need to support yourself and get your needs met.
Gratitude
We can easily become resentful or hateful towards our inner child. Usually, this is mirroring an emotional pattern we hold within ourselves from long ago. Understand that your inner child is Divinely designed within you to provide you insight on your deepest core needs. Your inner child is your ally, your best friend to keep you safe in all ways, and your gateway to profound healing. Failure to recognize this prevents you from tapping into the compassion and gratitude you desperately need to heal.
Connection
During this healing phase, connection is essential. Humans at every age have one thing in common that makes us thrive: connection to a loving community, loving persons, and a loving relationship with self. Your first step here is to create a loving connection with your inner child by engaging in practices that nourish your inner child’s needs. This can exist in the form of innocent play, running through puddles, coloring, getting messy, singing songs, resting, creating, and letting go. Anything that sparks a creative, playful energy within you can serve to restore the severed connection. Once this connection is reestablished, you should seek out other relationships in your community that are safe and open to creative adult play.
Intuition
In the very worst (sometimes even in very typical) childhood experiences, we are driven away from our inner voice. This is the beginning of trusting our intuition. When we’ve lived through experiences of other voices being louder than our own through physical volume or repeated shameful words and harsh language from our caregivers and community around us, we lessen our inner voice and tend to resist it. In this practice, you need to teach your mind, body, soul, and spirit to listen to your inner voice – the authentic voice of your Soul. This practice is simple: when you hear that little whisper to “buy milk” even though you already have 2 cartons at home or to “grab your umbrella” when forecasts say it’s sunny all day, listen to it. As many times as you possibly can. You will train this muscle to work more strongly every day. The more you do it, the stronger it gets.
Rest
When you begin to heal your core wound, your nervous system will feel the effects very, very deeply. You will feel more tired, more inward, and in need of more rest. This is an amazing sign that what you’re doing is working and you are healing. Take as much rest as you need. This part of the journey is just as important, if not more so than the above practices. Sleeping is one of the best forms of meditation, after all.
You’re free to explore these practices on your own, but know that I’m always here to support you.