A profound perspective on inner child work E106
August 15, 2023
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I am so excited to share a perspective with you today that will help you on your journey with your inner child. If you are not there yet to work with your inner child, I am sure you will be by the end of this episode. This is life-changing stuff.
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Instead of talking about what inner child work is or how to go about this work, I want to share with you a perspective on your inner child that has helped me tremendously in this work.
That does not mean you need to know already what inner child work actually is. Taking in what I have to share with you today will give you a pretty good idea of what inner child work is all about.
My own inner child work
Over the last few months, I have done inner child work myself. But I have heard and learned about it many times over the last years. And doing this work can feel hard and challenging as it goes deep within. Things that you don’t want to look at or accept will come to the surface. But all for a good reason. For you to find release and acceptance and feel more whole.
Going through this work, I have found a way of thinking about my inner child that has helped me to take down the resistance that comes up. This viewpoint helps me to see everything more objectively and neutrally instead of judging myself or the people in my life.
I want to share with you this perspective so it can help you if you are already on your journey to integrate aspects of your inner child. And if you are not, this episode hopefully inspires you to get started with this life-changing tool.
We all have an inner child inside of us.
If you went through childhood, as we all do, then you have had experiences that created the inner child that now lives inside of you.
It’s an aspect of ourselves that is rooted in the subconscious mind. Which means it’s mostly hidden from our conscious mind. The child that experienced the childhood that you had represents aspects of playfulness, innocence, joy, curiosity, and creativity – everything we see as positive qualities.
And at the same time, it holds as well the other side of the coin:
- Unmet needs
- Unexpressed emotions
- Parts of us we hid from our caregivers because they were not approved of.
Anything that we didn’t get as children growing up, becomes unmet needs in our adulthood. And those unmet needs can result in damaging behaviour if we don’t become aware and meet them ourselves.
Integration of the inner child
Therefore integrating the inner child within us, so bringing it to light and to our conscious mind, can bring us an immense sense of wholeness and peace.
I love this phrase that I heard for the first time from Kathrin Zenkina, one of my teachers: The world is run by traumatized 7-year-olds re-enacting their trauma to find healing.
I bet a few of those 7-year-olds comes straight to your mind.
When you start thinking about that inner child within you that has unmet needs, suppressed emotions and big or small traumas, then you can easily fall into the trap of judgement:
- Judgement of your parents
- Judgement towards other caregivers in your childhood
- Judgement towards yourself of letting it happen, carrying these traumas into your adulthood, or not being “good enough” to resolve these earlier to avoid past conflict.
The list can go on and on. And that judgement can easily then make you feel guilt, shame, anger, disappointment, etc.
A profound perspective on inner child work
This is where this unique perspective comes in that I want to share with you so you don’t fall into this very understandable trap.
When we are born, we are born whole but without the knowledge that we are whole. If we would be born into this life with the knowledge of already being whole and complete, there would not be a point to this experience in this reality. So we forget that we are whole, complete beings so we can exist in this 3D reality of duality and experience ourselves in this dimension.
When we grow up we are influenced by the people in our lives and predominantly by our parents. Because of our survival instincts, we try to please them or not upset them, so they care for us, feed us and shelter us.
The impact our childhood has on us in adulthood
So whatever influences they had from their upbringing has formed them into a human with their likes, dislikes, unmet needs and suppressed emotions. And all of that is impacting their behaviour as adults and as parents towards their children.
So you learn that your parents do not like to see you cry, so you stop crying and put on a fake smile even when you don’t feel like smiling. Chances are that you still do this as an adult and the unmet need of your inner child is that you want to be allowed to cry when you feel like crying.
Or your parents did not cherish laughter or humour in your childhood, so you learned to be really good at being serious and hiding your joyful emotions from them. If you still are someone seeing life very seriously now, you could have an inner child inside of you that is longing for approval to laugh more and to have more joy and humour in your life.
Don’t fall into the trap of judgement
As I mentioned, it’s easy to fall into the trap of judgement. Give the fault to your parents for making you hide aspects of yourself that made you not feel whole anymore.
But think about it. They did not know any better and had the same childhood experiences that formed them. And in our reality of duality, of positive and negative, good or bad, black and white, it’s natural to have a preference or a liking towards one and not the other.
That means it’s unavoidable that in your childhood you start hiding parts of you that are not to the liking of your caregivers. But for one child it’s hiding one side and for the next child, it’s hiding the other side. Do you see that?
It’s natural for unmet needs to be created
There is just no way around becoming less whole and creating those unmet needs given the lives that we live and the society that humans have created for millennia.
Let’s look at what would need to happen for this not to happen. Our parents would need to love everything. They would need to love you for being nice and not being nice. They would need to love you being happy and being sad. And they would need to love you bringing joy and being really angry. Everyone would need to be in a state where every aspect of humanity, the “good and the bad” would be equally accepted and loved. Just then would we not start to fragment and become less whole. Does that make sense?
As soon as someone close to you expresses a preference for one or the other thing, the fragmentation of our wholeness happens. It’s a natural process.
Our whole being chose this human experience
But remember what I said earlier. We let ourselves be born in this reality to experience ourselves in the dimension of duality, of good or bad, of day and night, of winter and summer. So our whole being is aware of what it gets itself into and decides to do it anyway.
So being the person that you are with the childhood that has formed you into the person that you are today, is just the way your whole being decided it and sees you as perfection.
You are the one to meet the unmet needs of your inner child
And as adults, we have now the opportunity to remember that we are whole beings and integrate for ourselves the parts that we believed to have to hide when we were children.
It’s not up to our parents to apologize and make up for it now. The only person that can meet your inner child’s unmet needs now is you.
You are the one to accept parts of yourself that you rejected before because you were told that they are wrong.
You are the one to meet your inner child now and tell it that it’s ok to cry when you feel like crying.
That it’s ok to ask for help and be helped instead of doing it all by yourself because you were taught to always be self-sufficient.
Apply this perspective on your inner child work – if you’re ready
Only you can now bring yourself back to more wholeness in your life. And you do that by integrating everything back into your personality now that your inner child thought was frowned upon, not acceptable or unloveable.
We are all whole when we are born, with all the so-called good and bad inside of us. And you can become whole again when you allow yourself to be what was deemed bad in your childhood.
There is no need to judge yourself, your parents or any other people in your childhood for you to have to do this work now. We all have to do it if we want to feel truly whole.
It’s your choice!
It just depends on you if you are willing to do it. Or if you want to stay the traumatized 7-year-old re-enacting your childhood trauma to find healing for the rest of your life. It’s your choice.
I so very much loved sharing this perspective with you. This is a tool and topic close to my heart as it can bring so much healing, peace and wholeness to you as it brings it to me. And it’s so worth going through the resistance of not wanting to look closer. The reward you are getting out of it is so immense and beautiful. I hope I was able to inspire you to do this work.
Two easy ways to show your appreciation!
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First, consider making a donation to the podcast. Every little bit helps to cover the costs of producing and hosting the show. And ensures that I can continue to bring you the latest insights and opinions on the topic of energy and improving your life.
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So whether you choose to donate, leave a rating and review, or both, know that you’re an integral part in my vision. Helping everyone who struggles with burnout or high-stress levels to experience how awesome their life can be. So, thank you for your support!
You Might Also Like
- Inner Child Work: All You Need to know to Decide if it’s for You Episode 110
- Feeling stuck? Find out why and how to get unstuck! Episode 102
- Receiving messages from my Higher Self Episode 99
Connect With Your Inner Child
This meditation is the initial step of inner child work. Building bridges with your inner child so she or he can build trust in you and open up.
I’ve created two versions for you to choose from based on how much time you have and how deep you want to go: 20-Minute OR 14-Minute.
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