How to Heal Your Inner Child
Have you ever heard someone say, “You need to take care of your inner child,” and wondered what that really means?
I’m going to explain it in a simple way—and share how you can actually do it.
When we’re kids, the adults in our lives don’t always meet all of our needs. This can cause problems as we grow up. We might struggle with relationships, feel bad about ourselves, or find it hard to trust our own feelings and choices.
Sometimes, these experiences are so hard that we push parts of ourselves away just to cope. So, when someone says, “Take care of your inner child,” they’re really saying, “Go back and give your younger self the love, support, and care you didn’t get.”
It’s like becoming the kind, caring adult your younger self needed. Here are four ways you can do this.
Heal Emotional Wounds from Childhood
Working on healing is the best way to take care of your inner child. As you heal experiences from childhood that impacted you negatively then you are automatically helping your inner child.
This is called reparenting, where as you understand and process what happened, you can parent yourself the way you needed when you were a child. Showing yourself compassion, comfort and security.
One thing you can do to reparent is write a letter to yourself as a child. Sharing as your adult self what you as a child needed to hear. For example, you as an adult can tell 10-year-old you that it was okay to trip on stage during the school performance. And how much you love them for taking the risk of being in the performance.
Have Fun & Play
One of the best ways to support yourself throughout your emotional healing journey is to make sure you have play time! Play has been shown to help support the emotional healing process.
Play doesn’t have to look exactly like it did as a kid.
Stuart Brown, founder of NIFPlay, defines play as “voluntary, naturally motivated, and pleasurable.” There is even a state called play state that is similar to the flow state where you forget about time!
To find what is going to be enjoyable to you, create a list of things that you love doing. Then pick a couple to add to your week.
Some ideas to get you started:
- Coloring – there are coloring books for adults to help with this. I have one that is of major cities. I love to travel, so using this book is fun for me.
- Playing games – video games, board games, card games, puzzles. These can be alone or with friends depending on what you want!
- Play with your pets.
- Pick something from your childhood you loved and do that! For example, re-create Saturday morning cartoon time. Stay in your pajamas, grab a bowl of cereal and snuggle up to watch your favorites.
Tend to Your Adult Needs
Just as it is important to heal the past, it is also important to make sure that you are taking care of what you need today. When we continue to not have our emotional needs met, then we re-trigger our childhood pain.
It is easy to get stuck in the habit of not getting your needs met, because it is what we know. You need to be intentional about breaking the pattern.
For example, maybe you had a demanding parent that wouldn’t allow for any downtime. You had to always be doing something productive and working hard. Your need is time for rest (and play). So, make sure you schedule your downtime on your calendar. This way you will make sure you take the rest you need.
Inner Child Retrieval
From a spiritual perspective when we experience trauma two things can happen to our soul. The first is when it is very extreme, we can suffer soul loss. To try and save itself, part of our soul detaches. This can happen at any age.
The second, is when parts of our younger self become separated from who we are but are still with us. They haven’t left.
To heal the first, you have to do a practice from shamanism called Soul Retrieval. But with the second you can do an inner child retrieval which can be done as meditation, visualization or as a shamanic journey.
Process for Inner Child Retrieval
The following is a process you can use to retrieve the younger versions of yourself.
- Set sacred space – this ensures that you and your spirit guides are in charge of the process. Simply declare “I am setting sacred space to do an inner child retrieval. Only my spirit team and I am allowed in. Plus, any others I invite in during the process.”
- Gather additional spirit helpers – this can be anyone that you resonate with. For example, Mother Mary or Thor. The idea is to bring in those that can assist you on the journey and support the younger version of you.
- Descend to where your inner child parts are. Imagine you are walking down a set of stairs to get to where they are. You can imagine this as a basement, a cave, or whatever pops into your head. There is no right or wrong with this.
- Once at the bottom of the stairs, start to look for doors where younger versions of you may be.
- Once you locate a door try to open it up. This is where your spirit team can come in handy. If the handle doesn’t work, you can have Thor break it down!
- Once in, call your younger self to you. Begin a conversation with them, about what happened and if they want to return with you.
- If they say yes, then bring them with you back out of the door.
- At this point you can return up or continue looking for more inner child parts that are ready.
- Once back up, thank your team and close sacred space.
- For the next week or two, you will want to connect to your inner child and see what they may need. Eventually they will be ready to fully merge with you again.
You can find recordings of this, if you prefer to be guided. (I haven’t created one yet, it is on the list!) You can also work with someone to guide you on the journey so you can fully immerse yourself in the experience without worrying about the space and helpers.
I can help you with this! Schedule a Soul Healing and I will walk you through it using a version I do combining my training in shamanic journeying, meditation and hypnosis.
Remember you don’t have to do it all at once. Small steps overtime will get you there. Healing is possible—and the more you care for your inner child, the more whole and at peace you’ll feel.