Today I wanted to talk about inner child healing because this is something that I am currently working through with my Mindset Cultivation students. If you aren’t familiar with my course I host a bi-weekly class session around various wellness topics. I, as a holistic therapist have had years of practice helping clients work through inner child work as well as my own personal journey doing inner child work. I wanted to share three tips in this post for those who are interested in healing their inner child. In my experience, an inner child is speaking to a mindset that is linked to past experiences in your youth. This can range between the ages of three until eighteen give or take. You may have had experiences that have been imprinted into your life through trauma. An important thing to note is that inner child work does not always need to stem from negative experiences. However, when we speak about healing the inner child we are speaking more specifically about trauma based experiences. Inner child work is working through whatever traumatic experiences that occurred when we were younger and didn’t necessarily have the skills developed to manage what was happening during the time. Through my own journey and helping others I have come to realize that our inner child will usually develop tools to help us cope but they may not be the healthiest coping mechanisms we would use in adulthood. Sometimes inner child shows up as reverting to our younger years and behaviours that aren’t as productive as our mature adult self would practice. This can be a good way to determine if your inner child is in charge or if you are in charge. When we behave with maturity and thought that is our adult selves stepping forward whereas our inner child might cry, withdraw, jump to conclusions etc which is how your younger self would cope.
CONNECT
The first point that I want to make for anyone wanting to do inner child work is to practice connecting with your inner child. As a therapist I recommend going into a meditative state and practice having conversations with your inner child. You can also write letters to them. To do this you can write one letter as your inner child and write another as your adult self in response. Another way that you can practice connecting is thinking about what your inner child has experienced and writing about the experience. Write about the timeline of the event and the feelings that came with it. Many people will feel that this work can be very traumatic and can pull up a lot of wounded parts of their past which is true but it can be very powerful and empowering. It can be helpful to work with a therapist for this if you have a lot of trauma connected to your youth.
CHECK IN REGULARLY
It’s important to make checking in with yourself a regular practice. You don’t want to do an inner child practice once then not revisit it because once is likely not enough for proper healing to take place. You can continue to work with a therapist for this or you can choose to create your own practice where you are checking in on your healing progress on your own. By checking in regularly you can also help determine what the triggers are and how you can develop healthy coping mechanisms which brings me to the final point of creating awareness.
CREATE AWARENESS
I think the biggest thing that you can do during your practice of healing is creating awareness around what the triggers are for your inner child. What makes your younger self feel frustrated, rejected, ignored or any other feelings that may arise in situations. It’s a good opportunity to journal and write down the feelings and then the actions you can take to protect and support your inner child. For example if you feel anxious in certain scenarios you may revert to your inner child's coping mechanism which might not be the best choice in adulthood. When this occurs you want to think of what you can put into practice to remove these feelings. In this example if you were feeling anxious instead of jumping to conclusions or withdrawing you could ask questions so you can clarify what’s happening without spinning. I find that asking questions is such a powerful exercise. There are many more healthy coping mechanisms that you can use as well such as setting boundaries. As you do the work you will begin to determine what works best for you.
That sums up this post on inner child work. As I mentioned above this is just one of the many topics we cover in the school of Mindset Cultivation. This is a community for black women who are working to change, heal, grow and connect so I invite you into the classroom to join us. Your first class is 50% off! I look forward to sharing more of what we are learning because it allows you to know some of what we're doing in class and you are able to get a taste of what you can learn.
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