Healing Your Inner Child

As children we don’t recognise that our parents have their own issues which have nothing to do with us…

A Sensitive Development...

Through the course of normal psychological development, children go through a phase of identity formation and ego centrism that places them at the centre their world. During this time they tend to interpret everything as being about them.

As children we interpret our parents not seeing, not hearing, not understanding and not appreciating us as meaning they don’t love us. As children we don’t recognise that our parents have their own issues which have nothing to do with us. Rather, we find some aspect of ourselves to blame. In other words we think, “there’s something wrong with me”. This internalised explanation for why we’re not seen, heard, acknowledged or loved is what gives rise to core wounds.

These wounds are beliefs, the most common being the belief, “I’m not good enough”. This is characterised by a feeling of shame. As children we have certain needs and if those needs aren’t met we tend to keep on craving those things from other people. The emotional pain and uncertainty around what our parents think and feel for us, and why, is like a seed from which many patterns develop, as we employ many tactics in order to secure the validation we need.

For example, if we didn’t feel understood as children, we might consciously or subconsciously search for understanding as teenagers and adults. We may be hypersensitive to being misunderstood, as this triggers the unresolved pain we felt as children. This pain may be experienced as a feeling of shame, of inadequacy, of rejection or abandonment. And, in fearing our own feelings we run from them to blame and distraction.

Blame leads to anger, which may be experienced as defensiveness and this anger can obscure our true feelings. We rarely recognise for instance that under anger is hurt or sadness, and under that is often shame but in order to heal from these reactive patterns we must become conscious of the mental/emotional process.

The craving to be understood may also manifest as being hopeful or infatuated with people we think can understand us, and subsequently hurt, angry or disappointed when they don’t live up to our expectations.

Essentially, because we didn’t get the validation and approval we needed as children, we seek it out in other ways and when we don’t get it, we feel hurt. We feel especially hurt if we don’t get it from the people we want it from most, like our parents, our partner, our friends, and sometimes authority figures, like our boss.

Feeling elated when complimented, being easily flattered, and feeling our self-worth increase with approval and our feeling hurt, offended, or bad about ourselves when people disapprove of us are signs of a core wound. Someone who is truly secure never feels their sense of worth increasing or decreasing, no matter what anybody says, thinks, or does. In fact, for the truly secure person, even their own relative successes or failures are no reason to feel good or bad about themselves. They have an unconditional sense of personal worth that is not a comparison to others, or to their own past, or imagined future self.

The Inner, The Outer, The Wounded

The term “inner child” or “wounded child” refers to the hurt feelings and negative ideas we’ve developed through our previous experience, whereas the term “outer child” refers to the behaviour arising from those ideas. The “outer child” is like a protective older sibling trying to secure the inner childs’ needs. These behaviours can take a variety of forms, possibly depending on what worked in childhood.

For example, if, as a child, we only got attention when we did as we were told, we may become more obedient and try to please others in order to get their love and affection. If we only got the attention we needed when we were upset, we may subconsciously use negative behaviour to get attention. For example, if we’re jealous, we may become angry and disapproving and confrontational with our partner or we may become sad and distant. In either case, there’s a conscious or subconscious intention to manipulate the other person into changing their behaviour, or to elicit more validation from them. These behaviours are well intentioned, and do come from love for ourself, as we’re trying to make ourselves feel more secure, but they are dysfunctional.

Thinking of our painful reactions as an “inner child” helps us to externalise our problems by identifying them with a learned psychological pattern, that is not our present Self. Relating to our pain as a child helps us understand what we need to do. Remember, the wound is the result of not feeling seen, heard, understood and loved, so it only stands to reason that to heal the wound we need to respond to ourselves with listening, understanding, appreciation and compassion. This is called reparenting.

When a child is angry or upset, the most empowering thing you could do, even before trying to cheer them up, is validate their feelings by being curious. By saying for example, “I am here for you, tell me how you’re feeling”, and by responding with “it’s okay to feel that way”. This helps remove the shame of feeling weak or needy and that is one way to begin reparenting yourself. By doing this, you will stop reacting to every unwanted thought or feeling as something to be rejected, to be fixed. You will stop considering the unwanted aspects of yourself as something to be ashamed of, and view them instead as something to be understood. You will begin to seek genuine understanding and acceptance of your own inner state.

Recognising Your Outer Child

What we hope to do is recognise the appearance of the “outer child”, which is the blame, the defensiveness, the anger and the other manipulative aspects of our behaviour as a defence mechanism and a call for attention. In seeing this you can ask, what is it I really want or feel I need right now? Do I feel seen, do I feel heard, do I feel appreciated?

Of course, it is fair and appropriate at times to ask for validation from your friend, your family, or your partner. That could be a good solution. That’s advice I cannot give, as it would depend on many different factors. What I do know for sure, is that until we’re able to see, hear, accept and love ourselves, the need for approval and validation (and associated anxiety) will never go away, even with the perfect partner. It will never go away until you believe, without reason or condition that there is nothing wrong with you, that you are whole and complete as you are.

Whenever you feel hurt or insecure, you want to recognise it as an opportunity to heal, to give yourself what you needed and didn’t get before. This can be difficult because our wounds were caused from not having a good example of how to see ourselves, how to listen to ourselves and how to love ourselves but you can learn how.

The best way to reparent yourself is through the practice of mindfulness and meditation. It is in many ways like parenting a child. Your mind throws out positive thoughts and feelings, random and confusing nonsense, as well as negative thoughts and feelings as you sit and listen. In meditation you don’t walk away when something comes up that you don’t like. You don’t go and turn on the TV, you don’t tell yourself to stop crying, you don’t tell yourself not to be angry. You find your curiosity, your love, your compassion and you give yourself permission to notice and experience your thoughts and feelings without judgement. This is the practice of unconditional love.

Although deep down we desire unconditional love, it also frightens us. The gift of being loved, is in seeing ourselves the way the lover sees us. Receiving love challenges the negative or self-limiting ideas we have about ourselves. For example, if someone else views us as “enough”, we may have trouble receiving their love, depending on how strongly we’re clinging to the thought that we’re not enough.

The ideas we have about ourselves are very familiar, even if they’re negative we’re kind of comfortable with them. It’s possible we’ve spent a life time accumulating subjective proof of our negative or limiting conclusions. That is, we consciously or subconsciously keep a record of the reasons we have to feel the way we do, about ourselves, other people and life itself.

It can be nearly impossible to imagine what life would be like if we felt whole and complete as we are, right here, right now, with nothing to prove. A deeper love of Self however, is always looking for some proof we’ve come to the wrong conclusion, and that we are, in fact, whole, complete, and “enough”. We know this deeper love is there because we seek validation from others. If we truly believed we weren’t good enough and lost all desire to see ourselves as whole, then we wouldn’t seek to impress others or feel rejected by them.

A Fear of Disappointment

There’s another reason we may fear feeling loved. If we allow ourselves to feel worthy on the basis of the other persons view of us, we set ourselves up for a big fall. After all, what if that persons feelings change (like others have before), or we realise later on that never really respected or understood us as we once we believed? Since our sense of worth is coming from their validation, it would be devastating.

Only when our love and compassion are greater than our fear will we be able to go deeper and better understand ourselves, for so long as we fear our own thoughts and feelings, we will be like the parent who ignores their child. That is what we’re doing when we drink alcohol, use drugs, eat too much, watch TV, over work, or exercise to avoid experiencing our thoughts and feelings. We’re essentially ignoring our inner child.

To experience unconditional love and heal the wounded child within we need to think big. We need to be honest with ourselves about the kind of love we want and give it to ourselves. We need to imagine it clearly as if we were feeling it right here, right now.

“I want a love in which I can embody and express my naturally arising thoughts and feelings without fear and without shame. I want the kind of love that allow me to be myself and express myself without concern I’ll be rejected, punished, or abandoned in the form of physical or emotional distancing. I want an affectionate and joyful love that sees the beauty in me. I want to feel safe, secure and valued. What I really want is complete and unconditional acceptance. I offer all these things to myself today.”

We give this to ourselves by imagining how that would feel, what it would look like, and by treating ourselves the way we wanted and needed our caregivers to treat us. We can learn to do this through counselling and meditation. Just think of how you’d treat a child you want to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel understood, to feel loved, and that is how you must approach yourself. We reparent ourselves by giving mindful attention and loving acceptance to ourselves from moment to moment and the most important aspect of this, is the actual time, attention and curiosity you devote to observing yourself.

In order to feel whole we need to be comfortable with ourselves. We must be willing to experience all our thoughts and feelings, wanted or unwanted. That is what we’re doing through the practice of acceptance. We’re not trying to change our belief from, “I’m not good enough” to “I am good enough”, since in doing this we’re still trying to prove something. You don’t need to prove anything. You are worthy of love, period. We want to let go of our beliefs without forming new ones and give ourselves permission to be as we are, right here, right now, acceptably imperfect and always changing.

Try it For Yourself by Asking These Questions

Did I feel seen growing up? Do I feel seen now?
Did I feel heard growing up? Do I feel heard now?
Did I feel understood growing up? Do I feel understood now?
Did I feel appreciated growing up? Do I feel appreciated now?
Did I feel loved growing up? Do I feel loved now?
What do I most desire from other people?

When you’re feeling hurt you may want to ask yourself, “when was the first time I felt this?”, as this will help you understand this emotional reaction isn’t new, and that what’s happening right now isn’t making you feel this way; that the wound was already there.

You may want to consider making this affirmation, “I will approach myself as I would a child, with curiosity, with patience and with love. I will not neglect myself when I feel hurt by engaging in distractions. Whenever I feel bad, or have negative thoughts, I will stop and say, “I notice I am thinking / feeling… and that’s okay”. I will listen to my negative thoughts and ask where they come from, and how I know they’re true. I’ll ask myself what it is I need in this moment, and offer it to myself”.