How Inner Child Work Helped me Heal from Trauma: Part I
I was in my mid 30s, single, childless, heartbroken, ashamed and confused, because all I ever wanted was love and yet I felt the most unloveable I ever had in my life. I was tired of hearing, “why are you still single? you are beautiful and smart and funny…so what’s wrong with you?” This just confirmed my belief I had carried my whole life: that there was something wrong with me, that I was damaged.
Since I was a child, I thought that in order to get the love I wanted, I had to constantly provide love to others. I had to be of service, be helpful, be supportive, focus on the needs of others over the needs of myself. Isn’t that what a good girl does? And especially a good Indian or Iranian girl?
Unfortunately, my childhood set me up for failure in relationships. It turns out you cannot give something that you don’t have. While I thought I was giving from a place of love, I was giving from a place of being thirsty for love (which is actually the lack of love).
As a therapist who helps people recover from complex trauma, narcissistic abuse, and low self-worth, I can now see that there were a few factors that set me up to be both thirsty for love and also feel that love was out of my reach.
You may have also experienced some of the same traumas as me:
Early childhood sexual abuse
Emotional abuse (manipulation, control, shaming)
Growing up as a parentified child (meaning I was carrying too much responsibility for my age)
Growing up in cultures where women are not treated as equal to men
Narcissistic abuse
Neglect
Verbal abuse
Complex trauma refers to ongoing, chronic patterns of abuse. The impact of these complex traumas left me with the belief that I was unloveable. As I grew up, I entered into abusive relationships with narcissistic people where I continued to receive the message that I was unloveable. The therapist in me now sees that this makes perfect sense, I was just repeating the patterns that I had grown up with. Those abusive patterns created the framework for my understanding of love.
But to my younger self who was going through those relationships, nothing made sense…I gave my all to these relationships. I tried to please them in any way I could, and yet it was never enough. I remember thinking that something felt wrong with this equation…you shouldn’t have to work hard and get very little back in return.
I started working with a spiritual mentor who introduced me to Inner Child work. After years of trying to read, learn, and practice trauma informed therapy with my clients, with the hopes that my education would also save me, I realized that knowing about healing is not enough to actually heal. I could not bypass the emotional experience of being human and feeling my feelings by only using my rational faculties to read and education myself about trauma. I needed help feeling the impact of the trauma, and releasing this emotional energy.
Inner Child work helped me actually feel my feelings that I had dissociated from by overworking and people pleasing. I started to cultivate a healthier relationship with myself, which was incredibly painful given how deeply I hated myself. I knew that trauma healing would need a multi-pronged approach. By this time I could leverage my education, my somatic experience as a dancer and yoga therapist, my spiritual beliefs, and my newly evolving medical team who were helping me navigate complicated health issues (chronic health issues are often co-morbid with trauma). With the help of these multiple resources, I felt supported in continuing my journey into self-love.
Inner Child Work Part I
Make a collage of childhood pictures
I started Inner Child work by making a collage of pictures of myself from birth until age 18. Mine was a collage with paper pictures, yours can be a digital or a paper collage, whatever you prefer. Mine is shown here as an example.
Accumulating these images can be a journey in itself, and bring up a lot of memories and emotions that can be helpful to process in therapy as you work to release trauma and build self-compassion.
Take your time finding images, ask loved ones to help if this feels supportive. It took me weeks to put mine together. Don’t worry if you can’t find an image for each year of your life, just find what resonates with you. Keep a journal to identify memories, thoughts, feelings, body sensations as they arise, and write down patterns you notice.
I kept my collage in my bedroom for about 2 years. I looked at it each morning and at night, and I kept it on an altar where I meditate. I had always thought that Inner Child work was a hoax, or too corny for me to engage in. I didn’t think I would feel such compassion and understanding for my younger self. I was finally starting to understand what it felt like to be unconditionally loved and supported…I was not expecting these feelings to come from within me and not from someone else. Finally, the thirst for love was starting to be quenched.
The collage was just the beginning of Inner Child work for me. There are a lot more components I engaged in that allowed me to cultivate a loving relationship with myself, and eventually with others. For some of my clients, I encourage that they also start with an Inner Child collage as a starting point to get in touch with feelings and memories from childhood.
If you struggle with low self-worth, self-hatred, people pleasing, and generally feeling like you are unimportant to others, know that these can be symptoms of trauma (whether you remember being traumatized or not). Please know that you can heal to have a more loving relationship with yourself and others.
One of the first books I read about Inner Child work that may also help you: Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families, by Charles L. Whitfield, MD.
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.