When I introduce Inner Child work to my clients, I often get a puzzled look as if to say “I think you might be crazy”. Or sometimes my clients initially respond with something like “it sounds like you’re saying I have multiple personalities”. This is not true of course, and the concept can be hard to understand at first.

What is/who is my inner child?

Our Inner Child is the younger part(s) of us that remain alive within us. When we experience overwhelming emotions as a result of our experiences as children, and we don’t have trust and emotional safety with our caregivers or in our environment to process those feelings, we have to distance ourselves from them in some way. It becomes too painful to sit with the big, powerful feelings, so our bodies do what they do best; they protect us by using survival/defense mechanisms to get away from the emotional pain. When these experiences continue to happen over and over again, we get further and further away or disconnected from our inner child. When this is happening, it’s very confusing for children and in order to make sense out of it all, children will typically conclude that there must be something inherently wrong with them, and this is why they aren’t able to get their needs met from their caregivers. These conclusions form our core beliefs and continue to get reinforced over time. The following are a few common negative core beliefs:

I am not good enough
I am unlovable
I am unworthy
I am unimportant
Everything is my fault
The world is not safe
People can’t be trusted

Our Inner Child is the part of us who believes our negative core beliefs are true. For example, many of my clients have a core belief of “I am not good enough”, despite having a great deal of factual evidence to show themselves they are good enough. Telling ourselves to “just think differently” doesn’t necessarily change these beliefs because it’s this innermost part of us that doesn’t see all of the factual evidence in front of us that would challenge the core beliefs we have.

How do I connect with my inner child?

To heal the emotional wounding we need to first reconnect with our inner child, establish trust and safety in this relationship with ourselves, and show this part of us that it’s safe to feel the feelings we have remained disconnected from for so long. This can be scary at first because we’ve spent a lot of time and energy trying to keep ourselves disconnected from these feelings. When I connect with my inner child, listen to what she is needing, and meet those needs, I am showing my little girl that she is important. I am showing her that the world is not inherently dangerous and people can be trusted. When I connect with her regularly and meet her needs consistently, she begins to trust me. When my little girl feels safe, I perceive the world around me differently. I know I haven’t been doing a great job of taking care of her when I feel exhausted and depleted or when I feel resentful toward other people.

Engaging in play, doing something fun, and creating something are great ways of connecting with our inner children. I will clarify that I don’t necessarily mean you have to sit down and play with barbies or play with monster trucks (haha!), and creating something doesn’t have to be arts and crafts. There are so many ways adults can engage in play including doing things simply because we like doing them: singing, dancing, being out in nature, reading, writing, listening to music, gardening, connecting with friends. These are just a few examples and the key to this type of connection is to be doing something that you love and want to do simply to enjoy the activity, rather than doing the activity to get a need met from someone else.

Creating something doesn’t have to involve the use of markers, paper, and glue (although it certainly can be!). Other ways of creating can be cooking a meal or baking a treat, creating a spreadsheet for a project at work, doing a puzzle, scrapbooking, building a garden, sewing/crocheting, etc.

I have found that I connect best with my inner child through drawing/coloring mandalas, having dance parties with my boys, reading, meditation, and cooking my favorite meals/snacks.

If you would like to learn more about how you can connect with your inner child, reach out to us today, we are here to support you!

Chelsie Ciminelli, LCSW-A