Who Is My Inner Child
and Why Should They Matter to Me?
The “Inner Child” is a concept that we often hear about but don’t fully understand—AND NOT understanding how our “inner child” functions can sabotage everything we wish for as an adult!
Who Is My Inner Child?
Your “inner child” is a unique part of you that originated when you were growing up. It was shaped by the reality and stresses that you experienced as a child and by the ways you tried to cope and survive as a child facing an often dysfunctional, sometimes frightening, adult environment.
“These childhood experiences are literally still alive within you, suspended in time. Only now, they have become a part of your subconscious mind—and you are no longer conscious of their impact upon your behavior.
The Big Picture
--Stuart Moore, MHRN, CADC I
Your inner child is a creative, intelligent and adaptive part of yourself that responds to stress the same way you did when you were that child.
This makes your inner child both a resource and a problem.
Because it means that your child's "voice" -- its needs, its pain and its confusion -- still exists inside you even though you are now an adult, and that part of you is still a child.”
Ways that Your Inner Child May be Sabotaging your Life Without Meaning to:
You can tell when you’ve touched on an “Inner Child Moment” because the intensity of your emotional reaction is far out of proportion to the reality of your adult experience.
Inner Child Quiz
- Have you ever found yourself dangerously over-reacting to a simple setback?
- Struggling with overwhelming feelings of anxiety, anger, shame, or sadness that seem to appear out of nowhere?
- Filled with so much rage you can barely see straight when some driver cuts you off on the highway?
- Cringing with shame when you make a simple mistake?
- Crippled with guilt, anxiety, and self-doubt if you are unable to do enough to make a family member or loved one happy?
- Filled with a sense of powerlessness and sorrow that lasts for hours after watching the evening news or listening to a friend’s troubles?
- Consumed with shame and self-loathing after being criticized for a minor infraction by a work supervisor, a parent, or an older sibling?
- Felt terrified at the sound of a raised voice and shut down your emotions in response?
- Felt furious at the sound of a raised voice and escalated quickly into a physical fight as a result?
- Wept for hours on end for no apparent reason?
- Does a specific smell or a particular place trigger a strong emotional reaction within you, an emotion that has nothing to do with your immediate situation or surroundings?
If you answered yes to any one of these questions, you are potentially tapping into the unmet needs of your unique “inner child”
Thich Nhat Hanh
“The Cry we Hear from deep in our hearts, comes from the wounded child within. Healing this inner child’s pain is the key to transforming anger, sadness, and fear.”
How is Your Inner Child Able to "Take Over" Your Life So Easily?
Remember:
Your inner child is a part of you that was created long ago when you were still a kid by your subconscious mind to help you survive in a confusing and sometimes frightening adult world. It is a creative, intelligent, and adaptive part of you that made sense when your subconscious first created it. BUT the problem now is its life situation never really got resolved. This means that your inner child’s “voice” –its needs, its pain, and its confusion–still exists inside you even though you are now an adult and it remains a “child”.
SO, NOW IT STILL STEPS IN WHENEVER IT FEELS THREATENED (WHICH IS A LOT OF THE TIME!) AND ACTS WITHOUT YOUR CONSCIOUS CONTROL-OFTEN CREATING A ‘HOT MESS’ IN YOUR ADULT LIFE!
Scenario One
If you grew up as the oldest child in a family where your father was gone most of the time, your mother was struggling with alcoholism, and you were left in charge of your three younger brothers and sisters, you learned to be ultra-responsible at a very young age. This childhood experience may have left you with many positives. You are, no doubt, very responsible, trustworthy, capable, hard-working, and resourceful.
However, your “inner child” self—the child that never got a chance to play and to be free of adult responsibilities—may feel resentful and “act out” from that place. Your “inner child” may also be so used to taking care of everyone else that they have trouble knowing how to care for themselves and have no idea how to establish healthy emotional boundaries to protect your right to have time to yourself. For you as an adult, this can easily result in exhaustion, frustration, anxiety, depression, and/or an overall feeling of being victimized by the world.
Scenario Two
You may have grown up in a loving, financially stable household with two parents who loved you and your older sister and brother. Caring as your parents were, they may still have been very busy, too busy or distracted to notice when you asked for their attention. Additionally, your father may have used sarcasm to tease you, not understanding that what he thought of as playful communication actually hurt your feelings because you didn’t understand this kind of humor and felt as if he was making fun of you.
At school, you may have been bullied, an experience you didn’t know how to handle, so you kept your fears and anger inside of you and tried to make the best of it. Perhaps you fought back or perhaps you tried to ignore it. Either way, these childhood experiences ate away at your self-confidence, causing you now as an adult to be overly sensitive to criticism, reluctant to take risks and live up to your potential. As a result of these childhood “shadows” as an adult you may suffer from bouts of low self-esteem, perfectionism, and lack of trust in yourself and in the outside world. It may be hard for you to maintain a romantic relationship because you don’t believe you are worth loving and self-destruct or leave before a commitment can take place.
As a result of your dad’s sarcasm, you might shy away from things you once loved to do as a child in a desire to stay “safe” and not call attention to yourself. After being physically and verbally abused by the school bully, you may suffer from bouts of unexplained anxiety or rage and “act out” from these emotional states.
Even though, on the surface, you had a safer, more loving childhood than many other children, you too have a wounded “inner child” who is holding you back without meaning to, sabotaging your relationships and professional choices with their childhood pain and insecurity. You too have “inner child” healing to do.
Clues that Your Inner Child is
Sabotaging Your Life
You can tell when you’ve touched on an “Inner Child Moment” because the intensity of your emotional reaction is far out of proportion to the reality of your adult experience.
Although your “inner child” remains unaware of how damaging its behavior has become, it is now in a position to destroy your relationships, undermine your professional successes, and torpedo your future plans. This is in addition to everyday risks you run of getting embroiled in unnecessary arguments or even physical fights with strangers and destroying the trust and respect your loved ones once had for you.
“Inner Child” feelings and patterns act as “mini time bombs” pulling us back into core unresolved experiences we never dealt with as kids and now remain beneath our radar as adults, sabotaging us like an unseen tripwire when we least expect it
Our Intense Childlike Reactions Also Often
Come at the Very Worst Times:
For Example
- When we are asked by a romantic partner to become more considerate—and we explode with anger or defensiveness instead
- When we are asked to give an important presentation at work—and we become so anxious we get tongue-tied and stumble over basic facts that we could ordinarily recite in our sleep.
- Just as we get ready to take a longed-for vacation, our mother calls to tell us she’s sick and asks if we could please stay and help her for a couple of days. Even knowing that she already has a network of people who could easily take care of her, we “stuff” our frustration, cancel our own vacation, grit our teeth and drive over to her home instead.
Sound Familiar?
Let’s explore ways to heal your “Inner Child”
Hypnotherapy Allows You a Safe Space to "Meet Your Inner Child"
During our sessions, you will be able to meet and dialogue with your inner child, stop their destructive behaviors and discover together the positive resources they have to share with you. You will also learn, during this reciprocal process, what your inner child needs from you. For you are now the “adult in the room”!
YOU --AND ONLY YOU--ARE NOW ABLE TO OFFER THE SUPPORTIVE PARENTING YOUR INNER CHILD NEVER RECEIVED AS A CHILD------UNTIL NOW!
Remember:
Your Inner Child has no way of knowing that their survival behaviors are now totally messing up your life! They too are innocent, “stuck” in your subconscious; frozen in place until you finally meet, listen to, and support them with the love, protection, and caring that they’ve needed all along.
You see, they have been begging for your attention all this time. Just like “real” children, they don’t mean to sabotage your adult goals, dreams, and relationships. It’s simply their way of tugging on your coat tails—or tee-shirt—because they don’t know any other way to reach you.
And, sadly, their destructive patterns will continue until you finally stop and listen to what they have to say.
YOU ALONE HOLD THE KEY TO YOUR INNER CHILD’S NEEDS.
It's a Win-Win Situation
When you take the time to comfort and offer the adult protection and guidance your inner child has been yearning for
- They will stop the problematic behaviors that are plaguing you as an adult
NOT ONLY THAT THEY WILL THEN OFFER YOU THEIR OWN UNIQUE GIFTS
- Increasing your joy in life
- Increasing your sense of adventure, exploration, and play
- Increasing your sense of spontaneity, flexibility, and curiosity
- Increasing your self-esteem and your trust in yourself and the outer world
For, you see, before your inner child was impacted by a confusing hurtful adult world, they were loving, adventurous, trusting kids who liked nothing better than racing down a grassy hillside, building forts and sand-castles, riding their bikes for hours at a time, finger-painting, laughing freely with friends, imagining themselves dragons, pirates, and unicorns, believing in rainbows, fairy tales, and magic.
Interested in Exploring this Powerful "Win-Win" Process?
Let's Talk During Our Free Discovery Call
Andrea Balt
“Your inner child gets it all, believes it all, hopes for it all, and is the only guardian worthy of your heart. That child knows that life—which runs on love and feasts on creativity—is on your side and that the universe conspires with you, not against you.”
In the Meantime, I’d Like You To Enjoy Your Free “Inner Child Exploration” Gift
Bellaruth Naparstek
“Each breath is a new beginning.”
