Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 9: Inner Child

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This episode has a lot of references to season 1/episodes: #11 on week 4 entitled Developmental Trauma and #20 on week 7 entitled Good Enough. It may be helpful to read/watch/listen to those along with this.

For starters, everyone has an inner child no matter their trauma status. This is the internal self that has stored memories from conception through birth into all your developmental years. There’s not actually a child in there (unless you’re pregnant, congrats). This colloquial term is used to talk about the kid we are were at one time. Infant’s brains start developing in the womb, and every interaction and word is recorded and stored internally like a computer hard drive. Even when you erase the memory and empty the trash can, a good hacker can recover all that stuff. If it crossed the path of the computer, it’s still in there somewhere, even if you can’t find it easily. The inner child is you when you were developing. A vast majority of adult responses, reactions, patterns, behaviors, and beliefs were all formed in the developmental years of their child. That inner child is still at work encouraging you to do the same behaviors and tactics it used as a child.

That inner child has a heap of issues too. If you weren’t heard or believed when you were young, your inner child still carries the pain of being invisible. If your inner child used dissociation during sexual violence, it could keep you disconnected well into your adult years. When the inner child is bullied or mocked, it will continue that pattern of self-criticism — even though it may be things you’d never say out loud though your inner voice says harsh words all day long to you.

When we discussed Developmental Trauma weeks ago, I was serious when I said how devastating it is to endure trauma in your early-age years. Back then, anything that happened to you was because you were not in control of your circumstances. As a child, without the freedom to just leave an abusive situation, this left an impact that can barely be described in words. As a kid, you also couldn’t grapple with everything going on. You simple didn’t understand. You also have an innate sense of love for your caregivers — so it’s very common for a trauma survivor to turn on themselves rather than their abusive caregivers because it’s too hard to comprehend why the adults in your life are hurting you. You surmise that YOU must be the problem; you must be bad. You can carry that burden for your whole life.

When I spoke on “Good Enough Parents”, I talked at length about healing the inner child. This is what the psychology world calls “Inner Child Work”. That thing that I called really really hard work, but also the most beautiful. That. Inner Child healing is about mourning for the childhood that you had — good or bad. Sometimes non-trauma survivors feel like they missed out on much, or they just simply miss being a kid so much. It’s okay to feel this way. A lot of people wish they could return to childhood and fix all the things that happened. They say things like “I’d go back and tell that little girl that she is worth more than gold and not to let anyone tell her otherwise.”

Well, my friends, you can do just that. With Inner Child Work — you can grieve what happened to you, what you lost, what you miss now, what didn’t happen to you, and more. Then, you can actually go back and find the scenes that star the little hurt inner child, and you can rescue them, tell them you are grown now, and are safe. You can tell them they are worth gold, and you can tell them perhaps that as an adult you no longer talk to that abusive stepfather or maybe even that he died. The inner child is actually listening to you. You can visit them, spend time listening to them, let them know you are grown and healing now. This is real. This isn’t just woo-woo; it’s not even a little woo. It’s science; psychology at its finest to be honest. It’s that powerful, in my opinion.

You can also, in present time at the age you are now, write down things that need healing — like the things that didn’t happen that should have when you were a kid. Maybe you never learned how to ride a bike or how to save money. Maybe you never learned how to set boundaries. Back then, maybe you weren’t told “my body my choice”. If you were told you are ugly over and over, you can begin doing some mirror work and learning to find your true beauty now. You can start working on those things right now, and that is part of your inner child healing.

This isn’t going to reverse all the trauma and abuse and damage that you went through. Those years may be marred with horrible things, and there’s nothing that can you back those moments. This is not about undoing; it’s about uncovering what can be healed now to get moving forward. You won’t forget what happened to you, but you can recover from the pain and addictions and patterns and behaviors now that are only making your current present circumstances worse. You can make a shift, start the inner child work, and find your true self again.

On this week’s Full Circle Friday being released in a few days, we are going to learn about IFS and how having conversations with your inner world, your inner self, and your inner child is especially magical in healing developmental trauma. In the meantime, take a moment to try to connect to your inner child. Ask it some questions. Stay curious. Don’t judge what comes up. Just observe and be ready to hear whatever it wants to share with you. Be inquisitive and not pushy.

A lot of what I do with clients with developmental trauma is inner child work — finding the roots of where behaviors and feelings about themselves started and then working on healing through what we discover. If you are interested to learn more, I encourage you to schedule a Complimentary Discovery Call with me to see if coaching is right for you.