How Inner Child Work Helped me Heal from Trauma: Part II
If you are reading this and want to know where to start with Inner Child Work, read Part I.
If you are ready to jump in to the next step, read on.
In order to heal from childhood trauma as someone in her mid 30s who had experienced mostly abusive or/or codependent relationships, I was instructed by my mentor at the time to find ways to connect to my Inner Child.
“How?” I asked.
“Talk to her,” my mentor said. “Take her to do her favorite things, like going to the park, eating ice cream, ask her what she would like to do to spend time together. Build a relationship with her as you would any child. Once you have built trust, you can start to talk to her about her feelings, see what she shares, and help her heal.”
None of this made sense to me. I felt like my mentor was asking me to talk to an imaginary friend, or a figment of my imagination. I trusted my mentor greatly and knew that I had to have an open mind and try an approach I had not tried before, but this felt absolutely silly.
After all, hadn’t I studied about trauma recovery? Hadn’t I helped people recover from trauma as a therapist? Why did I have to resort to building a relationship with an imaginary part of myself to heal myself? I had mistakenly assumed that because I had academic knowledge about trauma, this would help me heal. However, I soon learned that having knowledge and an intellectual understanding about healing is different than actually going through a healing process.
The body and being operate differently than the mind. Deeper healing can often be achieved through a somatic (body based) approach.
My body had become a storehouse for all of the emotions I did not feel safe experiencing from earlier times in my life. I was starting to develop what could have become life altering medical conditions. I was desperate and figured, what is the harm in developing a pretend relationship with my past self? It couldn’t hurt me more than I was already hurting…
The list below is a summary of how I began to cultivate a relationship with my Inner Child. The consistent practice of Inner Child Work was the first time I started to value and appreciate myself in a way I had never felt valued from others. The experience of trauma and narcissistic abuse had created a hard shell of self-hatred around me, where I was operating from a belief system that I was disposable and unloveable. Inner Child Work helped me develop a belief in myself as being intrinsically loveable, and this sense of self is now unshakeable.
I offer this in case it could help you start to develop your own relationship with the parts of you that have held onto pain and never had someone to witness and heal this pain. Rather than rely on codependent dynamics where you depend on external factors (your appearance, your accomplishments, your popularity) to show you that you’re loveable, the practices listed below can help you become your own healer and feel loveable from the inside out.
Inner Child Work Part II: Cultivating a Trusting Relationship with your Inner Child
Get a journal that is meant exclusively for Inner Child Work. Choose a journal your childhood self would have liked, maybe something that was your favorite color or designs.
Schedule time with your Inner Child. I would schedule 1 hour a week and put it on my calendar. I would sit and meditate, journal, and talk to my Inner Child. For many of us with people pleasing behaviors, scheduling time for ourselves on the calendar is a way to practice showing up for yourself and to stop the cycle of self-abandonment (where you put yourself last over the needs of others).
Walk and talk with your Inner Child. Go for a walk outside and have a conversation with your Inner Child. This conversation can be spoken out loud if you feel you have privacy, or the conversation could be silent in your own mind.
Ask binary questions to start a dialogue with your Inner Child. This is going to be a very important aspect of relationship building. Inner Child Work intersects with cultivating greater self-awareness and connecting you to your intuition. Ask binary questions such as, “Are you sad today or happy?” Then listen for the answer that arises within you, for example, “I’m sad". Continue with another binary question, “Do you want to talk about it?” Reply: “Yes…”
Have fun with your Inner Child. If you remember something that brought you joy from your childhood, like a favorite ice cream or a movie you used to watch, let yourself indulge in these joys with your Inner Child. Imagine taking your inner child to the ice cream store for example, much like you would a real child, and talk to your Inner Child (internally having a dialogue, for example, “Do you remember this was our favorite ice cream flavor? Let’s try it together today and see if we still like it.”
Address your Inner Child by a beloved nickname. When writing letters to your Inner Child or having internal dialogues with your Inner Child, it may be helpful to address yourself by a nickname you used to be called that brings up positive feelings. This helps soften your approach to yourself and connect with the innocence of the child you once were.
Protect your Inner Child. Make decisions to protect your Inner Child as you would an actual child. For example, if there are people that you don’t particularly feel good being around, perhaps you would not want to expose a child to those people and you would have stronger boundaries with them. If there are habits (such as not brushing your teeth or eating too much sugar) that you know would harm an actual child, you may want to protect your Inner Child from these harmful habits by choosing healthier ways of being. This step allows you to start the process of Reparenting, which will be discussed in the blog to come.
If you are at risk of harming yourself or others, please call or text the national suicide hotline at 988
If you could use support with recovering from trauma, book a free 15 min phone consult to learn more about how my practice can meet your needs.