Have you hugged your inner child lately?

It’s a term that surfaces from time to time – Inner Child.  You either get the concept or you think it’s silly and dismiss the person who said it.  Well, I have news for you…it’s real!  The term inner child doesn’t refer to some woo-woo, hippy, liberal, esoteric ritual or practice.  We’re all living with an inner child, my question to you is this: Is your inner child or your adult-self driving the bus? 

Your inner child is the part of your that connects you to the joy and wonder if being a child.  It’s the part of you that embodies your childhood memories, both good and bad.  Some of us have an inner child that’s mostly happy, joyful and playful.  Other people have an inner child that carries around a lot of pain, heartache and unmeet needs.  Our inner child often defines many parts of our adult lives but not everyone takes the time to help their inner child heal. 

Your inner child may be driving the bus when you look at your life, your behavior, your reactions and don’t really understand why you’re reacting the way that you are.  Your inner child may be driving the bus when you know that the reason your acting a certain way is because of your childhood or experiences you’ve had in your childhood.  If you read my blogs, you know I’m a big advocate of doing the deeper work.  Inner child work…is Deep Work!  It’s powerful, transformative and life changing work when you learn to identify, heal and love your inner child.  Let’s not be mistaken, on paper you may have had a perfect childhood and you’re thinking – I don’t have any trauma or demons in my past, I don’t need to do any inner child work.  You are wrong!  Your work is likely just different.  You don’t have to have had a traumatic or difficult childhood to have unhealed wounds from your youth.  Let’s pretend for example that there was a time when…little Suzy, your best friend growing up really hurt your feelings and whenever you think back to that day you can recall exactly how you felt.  The memory of that experience is so vivid you can even remember thinking to yourself, “I’m never going to let this happen to me again.”  What you may not realize is that your inner child just made a promise to themselves, to keep them safe in the future and that this promise may be impacting your life in the present.  Yep, that’s inner child work.  Maybe you’re lucky and your inner child isn’t driving the bus often but most of us walking around out in the real world have unhealed wounds from our childhood that could benefit from some therapeutic work.  Maybe your inner child just needs to be loved, hugged, comforted, nurtured.  Maybe your inner child needs a little more work to feel healthy and happy.  Regardless, doing your own inner child work means freedom!  Freedom from being controlled by outdated promises, pain and unhealed wounds from your past.  Doing this work can be life changing and it may be helpful to enlist the help of an experienced therapist to do this powerful with, if you’re ready!