How do you heal your inner child? Here are 7 ways I got started

Healing your inner child opens a doorway to healing wounds that occur at the formative stages of your life. Inner child wounds can be deeply rooted, however, I believe all it can take are small meaningful everyday steps to reconnect to your inner child. These build the foundation of your healing journey by acknowledging your inner child, listening to them and eventually cultivating a relationship with these lost parts of yourself.

7 Ways to heal your inner child:

a) Acknowledge your inner child

In order to heal your inner child’s wounds, you must acknowledge the presence of your inner child. As mentioned in the previous article, the inner child is very much a different part of you from your childhood that felt neglected or hurt. Hence, when attempting to connect to your inner child, you must be conscious of approaching it and addressing it as a child. This can include not speaking in full sentences but communicating with your inner child through body language and intuition. Speaking very much like you would speak to a child.

Acknowledging your inner child also involves recognizing the pain you felt as a child. This can involve giving yourself the space to feel your pain, recalling specific incidents that caused you pain as a child, and acknowledging their occurrence.

b) Listening and talking to your inner child

Speaking to your inner child begins by admitting to your past neglect towards yourself as a child. Picture speaking to a younger version of yourself and saying “I’m sorry, In the past, I have neglected you. I’m here now and I’m going to embrace you”. Saying loving sentences repeatedly to your inner child makes your inner child feel safe around you and trust you. When you acknowledge that you have abandoned yourself as a child, you open the door for your inner child to feel more comfortable around you.

Listening to your inner child would include listening to and feeling the emotions you felt during an incident as a child. These feelings can be shame, guilt, anxiety, anger, abandonment, and insecurity. An example could be you as a child often finding your dad coming home late from work and not being in the mood to talk to you. This caused you to feel abandoned at the time. Listening to these experiences and feelings and allowing your inner child to be heard and seen is one of the first steps towards inner child healing.

Inner child therapy allows you to nurture our inner child, the little one that is frozen, stuck, or ruling our lives without us even knowing.

c) Write a letter to your inner child and journal

Writing a letting to your inner child helps create dialogue and starts the process of vocalizing your feelings. You can simply start writing about childhood experiences as an adult offering explanations for what you didn’t understand back then. You can also address your inner child and ask them questions like “How do you feel?” and “How can I support you” and feel how your inner child is feeling and write down what you think they’re saying. Writing a letter to your inner child cultivates feelings of reassurance and comfort and the more you do it the more your inner child feels safe around you.

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

d) Bring back childhood joys.

If jumping around on a trampoline is something you used to enjoy doing, get a mini-trampoline. Not only does this bring to life your childhood spirit but it also allows your inner child to feel free and feel alive in its element. Dancing is also a great way to connect to your body and your inner child. Moving your body helps you feel safe. If you enjoy going out to get ice cream, do that more often.

A lot of people used to paint and draw a lot as a child which as an adult they don’t do anymore. Picking up these old lost hobbies such as painting, singing, gardening, cooking, listening to music, running, and more bring out the child in you. Your inner child feels like it is in its element. If those were activities you missed out on doing they can help you connect more to being a child ultimately allowing your inner child to feel seen and heard.

e) Speak to a therapist

Past pain that is still present in adulthood causes a lot of distress and pain. Talking to a therapist that creates a safe environment for you to express, relive and understand these experiences is important. It is also easier to sometimes talk to someone about your experiences.

According to Healthline Cognitive behavioral therapy is a form of therapy that “helps you recognize negative or unhelpful thought and behavior patterns.” It involves “learning how to face challenges, gaining confidence and a better understanding and appreciation of your self-worth and using calming techniques with challenging situations.” This can be done by self-talk, journalling cognitive restructuring, guided discovery, thought recording, and positive activities.

A therapist introduces you to this technique and other coping techniques to help move past your trauma. If possible seek a therapist with experience in inner cold therapy that can help you learn how to re-parent yourself and connect more to your inner child.

f) Journal your thoughts

Journalling is an exceptional way to process and write down your thoughts and experiences on paper. Oftentimes keeping difficult experiences in our heads is very clogging. According to the Bezzy Depression “If you can record how you are feeling and what you are thinking, you are better able to track your emotions, notice people or places that are triggers, and recognize warning signs of your strong emotions,” says therapist Amanda Ruiz, MS, LPC.

Journaling helps you put down emotions and triggers to paper and free them from your body and system. Many children during their childhood are unable to speak their feelings out loud or make sense of their lived experiences. Only as they grow older are they able to recall some of these emotional instances. By putting them down on paper you allow for them to be released and to be told. You do not need to share your thoughts with anyone; they’re simply for you to serve as a release. You can journal regularly as a practice to vocalize your emotions. You can also write about childhood memories and how you felt them as a child.

Inner child healing is one of the most crucial journeys you can take on as part of your healing journey. As you connect to the child you once were and the child still present in you, you discover what you seek in others. You find that love has always been within you, always has been a part of you, and will be with you as your inner child.

People wait to go to doctors or wait till something is wrong. Though through healing and therapy one can lift their own vibration at any given time