Befriend & Connect
The Inner Child
“I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”
“Love Yourself the Way You Have Always Wanted to Be Loved”
The Wounded Inner Child is the primary gateway to healing and integration. You honor the past pain when you draw your wounded inner child out of subversiveness and into your awareness. You also minimize its contractive impact on your life. And you begin to strive yourself the potential of something more.
“Let us listen to the needs of our inner child that is being tamed and imprisoned by the rules of a grown-up world. “Going back to yesterday” ”
I consider a sacred child-like spirit in all of us (inner child), one we can reach and heal in restoration. We can gradually learn to integrate our youthful spirit into our everyday life. There is sweet sacredness when a person sincerely dedicates themselves to reclaiming their lost and abandoned inner child. The inner child within us embodies the unconscious parts of our psyche that display the patterns and memories of childhood emotional struggles. With an unquenched inadequacy to be seen, heard, and loved unconditionally, the child develops mental coping tactics and behavior patterns that serve as protection and safety nets, rendering a sense of safety and security when the world feels unsafe and unstable and unloving. These patterns, programs, and suppressed emotions are usually no longer appropriate or supportive in the adult child's life. In most circumstances, they generate anxiety and deprivation, producing difficulties within relationships and hindering the adult child's inherent growth through life.
“Intensity-seeking is an enslavement of our own perpetuation. When we step out of the delirium of always seeking someone new, and meet the same old sad and lonely child within, our healing journey begins. Exhausting ourselves with novelty is a defense against our deepest pain, one that we cannot outrun. But once we stop and feel our losses, we can begin our healing journey and be the authentic, joyous person we were born to be.”
Whoever said 'Children are resilient' needs to look in the mirror and have a reality check. Children are innocent little creatures who end paying for rejected wounds their entire lives. A wounded inner child lives within each of us. We may possess more than one inner child, each representing different compartmental variations experiences throughout our life. The inner child that needs the most attention is the one whose psyche and emotional development got stuck through any age due to traumatic experience, neglect or abandonment, or all the above. Stunted development of an inner child leaves an adult child with unresolved issues that continue to surface until these issues are acknowledged, accepted, and resolved.
We understand ourselves and others begins with our parent's and others' image and essentially at birth. The interaction with others or lack thereof deciphers the idea of the world the child views at large. Is the world safe, reliable, promising, unsafe, hurtful, fearful, problematic, difficult? This phenomenal lyrical tragedy from childhood messages can conquer one's thought perspective for their whole life. The child's image of the parental dynamics triggers a discrete, historically generated energy that engulfs the ego (or sense of self) and alters one's sense of reality. The parental complexes are usually the most influential because they define the authentic experience with the world and remain its chief operative. If the child perceives and is shown a distorted reality, a distorted reality is what the adult child will possess and most likely attract.
Balance is key to any and every aspect of life. To go back to trace any wound from childhood traumas would be simple to decipher if it was fundamentally from 'too much' or 'too little,' meaning engulfing parents or insufficient ones. Neither of which is healthy. Again balance is critical.
The image a child fabricates of the world is based on too much or too little. Let's discuss it in terms of overwhelming versus underwhelming environment. In the case of an overwhelming environment, the child will grow up to feel powerless and will continue to attract people that also hold this belief. Later in life, the adult child will fill his inadequacy of unconscious powerlessness by having power over others. They need to be in control. But even the most powerful of professionals and leaders cannot escape the grip of the infantile powerlessness – for no matter how much ambition, drive and success are wielded, a gnawing sense of inadequacy shrouded by the grandiosity of achievement still prevails. In a relationship dynamic, the powerless adult child will be attracted to a controlling partner or a partner they can easily control. The underlying drive in such a relationship would be power rather than love.
“I might ask if I am a good Dad to the child within me, for all effective parenting begins there.”
The underwhelming world child mind is confined in his judgment of how he associates to others in the first years of development. The child's inner tale persistently reverberates, "What my mother or father manifest is my own doing, my own obligation. I will study to accustom to their demands so I may be seen and loved. I will suppress my actual needs, drives and likings so that they approve of me. My survival in this society is contingent upon their nourishment of my physical and emotional wants. Without my remaining caregivers, my only salvation to this world, I will not survive." What the child does not understand yet is that these are reflections and concepts construed prognostications of the "primal objects" that the child encounters in earlier years. The child procures the false self as a collection of behaviors and attitudes toward self and others whose purpose is the management of the existential anxiety experienced by the child. Sadly, this distorted and wounded vision of the self and the world is followed by many wrong choices in a lifetime and subsequent reinforcing consequences. Whenever we give the authority of instinct and intuition to our external environment, often due to childhood vulnerability and dependence, we remain at its mercy.
“The art of becoming an adult is creating a place for child, for the former without the latter leaves us being less than half of what we could be and none of of what we were supposed to be.
Craig D. Lounsbrough”
So what is the purpose of the adult child? It is to find, restore and save the inner child to maturity. The inner child provides the adult child with creativeness and an ensemble of energies to fully enjoy life in all capacities. The adult child must help the inner child with a more expansive vision and teach the child to weather the storms without being swept away by false limitations that restrain their potential and willingness to learn and survive. It is to break the restrained habits and find yourself a new you without hiding the inner you. You can only attain further psyche development by paying attention to the inner child traumas and feelings. By acknowledging them and peeking them out, you now can help the inner child to forgive themselves for the falsified perception based on other falsified parental and sociological implications. You can teach the inner child to come back out to the surface and feel safe now. As an adult, you will no longer fear the same traumas and mental discrepancies. It is per one goal. To experience the wisdom of growing stronger and together. So let go of all those childhood fears and accept the inner child by talking to them. Hold it. Even Hug it. Let them know they are safe now and in good hands. Allow yourself the greatest gift of all. You are healing your childhood wounds. Breaking the repetitive circle you experienced all your life and finally reaching the tip of nirvana is transformational and liberating.
For those of us that are parents, the best gift we can give our children is to be our whole and complete selves. Without reservations. Our authentic selves. This will allow them to find their best selves as well. It will grant them the wisdom to conquer their inner child earlier on. Where we show we are still struggling, our parental guidance will influence those struggles to our children, and so forth. Until someone breaks the cycle and decides to acknowledge the false implications imagined by the inner child and now feel free and grow happily, let your soul feel alive every second without triggers. Give your soul the freedom you sought, and your children will inherit this is true healing.
“Most of us have an inner parent that doesn’t take care of the inner child’s needs properly. They are more focused on the needs of the ego, such as pleasing other people in order to feel needed, or achieving success and getting recognition from others. This makes the inner parent happy for a short period of time, but it doesn’t last. There is always a feeling of not being fulfilled, no matter how much you achieve, because the inner child’s needs are not being met.”
How to Re-Parent Your Inner Child
Release Blame: Parents' behavior reflects their emotional wounds, not bad intentions; meditate, pray or journal on forgiveness.
Create Self-Care Habits: As adults, we have issues with good habits because we didn't see adults dig this for themselves, and we feel unworthy. Parenting Self is about new practices. (for instance, I started traveling around the world by myself, and I thoroughly enjoy it as I feel memos authentic self without guilt, but it took me 36 years to finally break the 'impossible, not worthy, guilt' out of it. Once I did, I could never go backward.
Ask Yourself: 'Is this action harmful or helpful to who I want to be in the future?' Ask it often.
Use this Affirmation: 'I am my own responsibility. I have. anew opportunity to create life on my own terms.' (I did this when I stopped raising other adults, and I decided to explore myself instead. It was not easy because those you enabled feel bitter when you no longer wish to ease their life at your own expense. Once again, I Would never go back because only then is when I found my authentic self. I have much more to see, and I have every intention to go full force with no one, absolutely no one holding me back. I deserve the life I desire as long as it is not harmful to others. Hurtful is an opinion. If your intentions are clear, feel no guilt.
PLAY: Find it where you can. At the park, the gym, with friends, in your living room dancing to music. Play Heals. Ergo, PLAY, PLAY, PLAY. This strategy is my favorite (you will find me randomly dancing in the kitchen to Bollywood music while cooking or serving dinner or just because. I'm always seeming for a reason to be silly and play.) I'll hide the car keys in funny places or do a crazy butt hug with my family members.
How to Connect with The Inner Child
Find a suitable position where you can slow down your breath and focus on it.
Breathe in gently and exhale slowly until it feels uniformly good.
Now zero in on all the tense areas in your body and send your breath's energy to these constricted areas till you feel relaxed.
Now try to connect with your inner child. If it feels uncomfortable or you feel any pain, focus on your breath to come back to stillness.
Now visualize yourself as a child standing and going through all the tumultuous memories, negative feelings, and even reactions.
Ask to hear the voice of the inner child concerning any scene of your choice. The child may be unhappy, angry, sad, or even scared. Be open to whatever you may hear without passing any judgment. Try to remember as much detail as possible: the clothes, the words, facial expressions and the feelings of the child.
You may begin to feel the inner child in parts of your body. Tune into the inner child. Let your adult ego be still and observant only.
Connect with the observer and the compassionate part of your adult child and let the child speak openly and freely.
Experience these thoughts no matter how immature, painful, disharmonious they may sound. Show complete empathy.
Stay as long as you need with each scene and feel fully evoked. Know that if you begin to feel pain, remain yourself observing from a safe and secure place.
Now begin the positive light adult dialogue with the inner child. Maintain your ego loving, caring, compassionate, and without judgment. Listen attentively to each word.
Allow the child to feel any emotions as they discuss in detail what they felt, and as they work hard to discuss the suppressed emotions, they are growing through the experience.
Feel the closeness to the inner child and allow them to feel close to you. Keep the dialogue going until both the child and adult have love and respect for each other.
Let the child know they are seen, heard, and respected. This is a vital step as most children suppress and feel ashamed of their feelings.
Using your positive light, ask for guidance and blessing for the child.
Listen to the message going to the child and the adult.
Continue until you feel a sense of integrated trauma/disharmony and a harmonious relationship between the adult and child.
When you are ready, bring your awareness back to your physical body. Breathe gently and awaken your consciousness. Make sure to stretch your body.
Congratulations on completing the first step to healing your inner child. How do you feel now? Through my former seven years of self-help, self-growth, and self-love, I acquired to love myself the way I always wanted to be loved. However, to continue on the growth journey, there is continuous room for more self-help. So this week, I attempted connecting with the inner child. I observed a huge weight lift off my body, and I sensed a closeness to the inner child after decades of shunning her. I will continue practicing what I preach because I crave to grow to my vast potential, and I recognize I am safe now. I would love for my children to be authentic as well without inner child constrictions. Ergo I must evolve and break the generational habit for new and healthier generations. I imagine the best way to end this blog is from a rather typical yet indeed valid cliche, "Children are Innocent" ergo, be kind to them because 'Your Inner Child is Innocent.'
Connecting with Your Inner Child,
