IN THIS ARTICLE
Do you ever feel like throwing a temper tantrum? Like you're so stressed, annoyed, frustrated, or angry and have an urge to just throw your hands in the air and stomp your feet?
This may be because your youngest self, still living inside you, is triggered.
Meet your inner child: a childlike aspect, archetype, or sub-personality subordinate to the waking conscious mind.
The inner child lies within all of us, some see theirs as a younger version of themselves, others may view it as a feeling or memory associated with their childhood.
No matter the way we relate to it, our inner child plays a huge role in the way we experience joy, receive love, and behave in personal relationships.
Inner Child Work And Healing
Our inner child is just like any other child. They are in need of care, completely dependent on others, playful, naïve, and require a lot of attention, love, and nurturing. For some, childhood memories bring forward a lot of joy, playfulness, and fun.
But if your childhood was filled with painful memories, trauma, and emotional distress, you may see your youngest self as scared, vulnerable, and helpless.
In order to cope, you may have suppressed this pain and these memories to protect your youngest self from getting hurt again. This is a natural and valid response to have when we are young and in pain, but these coping strategies only hurt us more as we get older.
Suppressed childhood pain always finds a way to show up in our adult life. It often ends up affecting our ability to regulate our emotions, meet our own needs, build healthy relationships and accept ourselves for who we are.
Inner child work offers us an opportunity to tend to this wounded inner child within us. It's through this pathway of self-discovery where we can not only make peace with our childhood trauma but also, step into alignment with our true selves.