Why and How to Heal Your Inner Child
If there's one whopping cliché sitting smack-dab in the middle of the world of counseling and healing and psychology stuff it's this whole idea of 'inner child' stuff, whatever that is.
“You have to heal your inner child,”
“His inner child is obviously wounded,”
“My inner child was instantly triggered.”
To people who use the idea of it, it makes total sense. To a whole lot of other folks, it can sound dopey or like someone is just stuck in the past, all of which is understandable.
Why worry about an inner child?
Obviously, none of us has an actual, literal child living inside of us. Thus, what the idea of the inner child is attempting to convey is that stuff happens in childhood, often bad stuff, that wounds that kid in a deeply emotional way.
Those wounds don't go away just because we mature into adulthood.
In fact, quite the opposite.
Those wounds are so extraordinarily powerful that they undermine, or outright run, every subsequent decision, long into adulthood. Despite the blather of the willpower sellers, who say, “Man up,” or “Quit blaming your past,” or “You're an adult and you're now responsible for your own decisions,” childhood wounds are so strong and, often, so deeply hidden that they can wreck a life, much as misaligned tires on a truck can undermine not just mileage but brakes, suspension, axle strength, tire fitness, belts and rods, and more.
Thus, until a person actually does the dirty work of going inside and healing those childhood wounds, they spend their lives forever unwittingly compensating for them or acting directly from them.
How do I know if I have inner child problems?
Are you depressed? Do you feel unfulfilled in life? Do you have dreams you cannot seem to muster the motivation to pursue; or you do muster it, but then it runs out, such that your life/career have a sputtering flavor to them? Does anxiety run your life? Are you forever answering to other people, whether a spouse, friends, parents or even a dead parent?
All of these are indicators that you're not operating from your own center, not drawing inspiration, peace, and power from being your own authentic self. These are all powerful indicators that you've got inner conflict – your own native voice rising up from the depths of your soul is being met by past voices inside you that denied your worth, lovability, wantedness, goodness, or even your mattering, at all. Those voices from way back then wounded you, when you were 2, 8, 13, and/or 18. And because the people with those voices had basically infinite power in your life, you took their messages. (You had no choice!) And their messages became embedded in the bedrock of your soul. They became the initial virus infecting the operating system of your soul. That was the wound – the messages about you back when you were a child. The wounded inner child.
And, that wound doesn't just magically go away because you turn 18, someday. Instead, the messages about your worth and mattering run everything, from that day forward. That becomes the slow-growing depression, the self-sabotage, the overthinking, the agoraphobia, the flying below the radar, or the incessant need for attention, the longing for male attention or female approval, the hyper-anxiety, the proving of self through accomplishment, the descent into drugs or 'self-medication.'
Everything finds its origins in the wounded inner child.
To the layperson, it may sound like bunk. Do this stuff long enough and the patterns become so blatantly obvious.
So, what is the 'dirty' work of healing the inner child?
The dirty, ugly-ass work of healing the inner child means turning into that tidal wave of pained memories that you've spent your life running from. It means seeing the depression as gift, as the soul calling you into your healing, no longer allowing for the incessant running. It means facing the fear of being overwhelmed. It means re-feeling all that pain. It means admitting origins that we don't want to admit. It means facing implications of the origin truths that can be so heart-breaking to face.
When we stop and turn into that tidal wave, it all washes over us. If we're not equipped with tools to flush out all of that pain and the truths they come from, it all can shatter us.
The tools are things like counseling, journaling, writing letters we don't send, the Sedona Method, and more. To finally heal the wounded inner child means to express, to release all of the pain, fears, and BS beliefs you've been taught about yourself. It means to become fully aware of it all. It means to talk about the great unspeakables of your life. It means to open a conversation with your past and to not stop the conversation until the depression, anxiety, chaos, busyness, and lethargy have lifted completely. It doesn't have to take forever, as some tools work faster than others, such as my book, There's a Hole in My Love Cup. But it does require courage, above all else. For this is the scariest stuff of your life.
>> See What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?
I've counseled police, firefighters, special forces operators, professional fighters and athletes, artists, hardened CEOs, and all manner of typically tough, strong folk. Yet, invariably, in the safety of my office, they admit that nothing in their lives has ever been scarier than facing this inner child stuff, which is of course why so many people poo-poo it in society and culture – better to diminish something than have to actually face it.
But how does the inner child differ from the adult self?
The simple answer from a soul health perspective is that the inner child is any part of your past that keeps you from being fully present in your present. In fact, often we think we are fully present in life as adults, but very often we're compensating for stuff from our past, or we're outright driven by past stuff that we are maybe not even aware of.
A simple way to understand this is to imagine that on your first day of a new job, you witness your new boss completely chewing out another employee. Then, quite by chance, later that evening you happen to see that same person yelling at a person who almost hit them in a car while they were crossing the street, and justifiably so. It is reasonable to assume that how you interact with that boss, and potentially other people in that company, is going to be colored by those two experiences. You might be more tentative, quieter, and less likely to share your ideas or opinion. Or, perhaps you'll compensate in the other direction – you become Mr. Affable or Ms. Jokester to keep things light and avoid the boss's wrath, when those two patterns may actually go against your normal personality. Ten years later, you may still be acting the same way, even though you've had two new bosses since that time after that first one moved on.
Now, imagine a similar scenario but with a powerless child and the boss is the parent. It doesn't even have to require yelling.
One person I know had a son who grew up quiet, always sheepish, and slow to offer an opinion. In his 20s when he and I got to talking, I asked about this. He said, “I just remember my mom telling me in the car to keep quiet, a lot.” I corralled the mother and brought her into the discussion. What we discovered is that the drive to school as a boy was through thick traffic and mom, like most people, would get stressed. But little Billy was a chatty guy and mom couldn't focus. So, she'd ask him to hold that thought till later or to be quiet for a minute. And that utterly harmless and completely understandable reaction by the mother drove the son into himself, fearful of speaking up.
The inner child is that part of your self that bears marks from childhood that are driving the equation of your life, but which may not be your authentic self. Thus, the goal of soul healing work is to not only identify and root out all of the trauma and pain from the past. It is to also go deep and identify the beliefs about self and life that got embedded into that child that may be undermining that now-adult's life.
This is where the real action happens, in terms of radically transforming your life and coming into a state of ALIVENESS!
Why does the inner child need healing?
The reason we have to do the sometimes scary work of healing that inner child is because that dissonance you feel inside of yourself is killing you.
– You have dreams, but don't have the energy to pursue them;
– You long for happiness, but can't seem to find your own sense of direction or self;
– You just feel depressed all the time;
– Your anxiety feels unrelenting;
– You just want to be free, happy, and ALIVE, but your misery only seems to increase with each passing year.
Sven, have you had to heal your inner child?
I definitely have. I had been deeply involved in journaling from my early teens. And my deliberate spiritual journey began at about 19. But it was in my late-20s/early-30s when I really was exploring deeply my own wounds from childhood...AND I HAD GREAT PARENTS! What I realized I had been wounded by was simply a lack of positive attention. This would seem laughable to my five older siblings who likely saw me as the pampered baby of the family. But when you have six kids but only two parents, there's only so much attention to go around, especially when one of the parents needed a lot of attention himself. Again, I loved/love my, now-deceased, parents. I adore them. But I just needed more positive attention, lots more. I just wanted people to like me.
Thus, soooo much of my young adult life was spent desperately wanting attention, wanting someone to love me and pour love into my love cup, and dreaming of being famous and having people shower me with attention and love.
As I dove more into my own inner child work, seeing origins, loving on myself, and releasing my need for more and more attention, I had a very distinct experience. In my early-30s, I begin to experience very clearly my life energy calming down. I began to feel myself just relax, more and more.
Further, I began to be less defensive about the odd path my soul was calling me to. I began to stand up for myself, more and more. And, despite my lack of career success, I felt good about myself and my trajectory.
What keeps people from doing the inner child work?
Most people don't want to touch inner child work, at least until the pain gets so bad that they can't keep running from it anymore.
The reason is that the thought of going back into that crud is too painful to consider. Every time they've touched it, either in therapy or when drunk or when caught off guard in some random conversation it has brought a world of hurt that they have zero interest in touching again. So, they build up all sorts of defenses to keep from having to do so. They deny the importance of therapy. They tell their spouse they don't have problems; all problems are the spouse's. They may even isolate themselves from others by keeping all relationships surface, never getting down into the realm of feelings and realness.
In other words, what keeps people from doing inner child work is always fear of pain, as with most things in life. But, as mentioned, eventually the pain of living this way takes its revenge on life, whether through physical/medical problems, fractured relationships, extreme inner turmoil, massive unfulfillment in life, or a million other ways
How long does it take?
Healing the inner child, like all soul work, doesn't have to take forever.
There is this myth in therapy that healing has to take years. It doesn't. The speed of healing depends upon the depth the healer and client are going. If it's taking years, either the counselor doesn't know how to take a client deep, or the client refuses to go deep or simply move faster.
It is this depth of diving and healing that all of my work is geared toward. My book, There's a Hole in My Love Cup is designed specifically for this task – take you deep and challenge the sh*t out of you.
How do you know if you're healed?
Let me answer it by asking instead, How do you know if you're healing?
You begin to feel lighter, physically lighter.
You begin to have greater clarity in life.
You find yourself not only setting by insisting on your boundaries.
You cut back things, people, and beliefs about yourself that undermine you or simply suck the life energy out of you. Sometimes, you even have the strength to cut them out entirely when their drain on your life is so obvious and soul-sucking.
As we heal, we begin to experience life completely differently, like THIS is what life is supposed to be.
And how do you know when your inner child is healed?
We're always healing from the new stuff, as well as from the random, small old things that may come up or be remembered. But you're healed when your days are energized, your path is clear, and you have clarity and tidiness regarding your past and the people in your life from your past.
That doesn't mean everything is always perfect. It means, you're good; you got it. You've got things not just under control but the way you really want them to be and you're happy and excited about life.
You feel that ALIVENESS and spontaneous energy.
So do the inner child and adult self ever work together?
Yes, when the pain of the inner child has been healed what comes through is the original reckoning device imprinted on that child's soul.
What comes through is the authentic self.
What comes through is a life of no longer fearing pain.
And so, the adult can be directed by an inner soul spirit of passion, play, fulfilling work, and happiness, rather than merely a life of shoulds, fear, and closing oneself in.
And what happens if you don't heal the inner child?
You continue to die slowly while seeing your life slip away, all with a sense of remorse and helplessness. You maybe can't name the source of your unrest, hopelessness, and sadness, but the source is most assuredly a wounded inner child who never healed.
You walk through the remainder of your life fully aware that you never lived the life you knew you were capable of, the life you always knew you wanted.
Is it Time to Heal Your Inner Child?
If you’re ready to spend time on yourself and focus on healing your inner child, Sven is ready to counsel you! Just click here.
Thank you for reading!
-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books, Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement, After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com
