Recently I had a client ask me about inner child work, which prompted me it might be worthwhile writing a post about it. More so, I thought I’d write to my experince of doing my own inner child work to add texture and maybe relatedness.
I’m pretty open about my own mental health journey. A chaotic pandemoniam of teenage years and early twenties that ended in a mental health hospital admission. At that time, different labels were thrown around by health professionals such as bipolar and resistant anxiety.
If we skip forward, an important part of my healing and recovery journey has been inner child work. In a nut shell, inner child work is when we connect with trauma and psychological wounding, such as attachment disruptions, often by going back to our younger selves at the time/s the trauma occured. We connect with that wounded part of ourselves – our inner child – and use parts of our adult selves to protect, nurture, and nourish.
Every one of us has an inner child and they can present themselves in peculiar ways. For myself, I would often experience anxiety in certain social situations. I discovered through psychotherapy that anxiety was self-doubt fueled by perfectionism and unrelenting standards because I had an unconcious belief that I wasn’t good enough. This belief didn’t make sense because other parts of me knew I was worthy and lovable.
However, I found that the unworthy belief was connected to a couple of early experiences that were not properly processed at the time or thereafter. The earlier experience was related to a time of feeling abondoned. I had been disowning my inner child by pushing away and rejecting my anxiety, labelling it as ‘bad’ and ‘unwanted’. But, if we consider anxiety as our abandoned inner child that I was further disowning, we can easily imagine the snowballing effect of abandonment and unworthiness, eventuating in increased anxiety.
I needed to revisit those early experiences and use the healthier parts of my adult self to soothe and soften my wounded inner child. Whenever I feel a bit anxious or uncomfortable, such as presenting in front of a crowd, I’ll revisit my inner child to reassure him, to let him know he’s lovable and worthy and invite him to be here with me. Sometimes the whirling of my inner child in my stomach and chest and throat subsides, other times it doesn’t quiet as much but it feels more comfortable to sit with. There are many many layers to our psyche and social environment, and this is one part of it, albiet an extremely important one.
World renowned psychiatrist, psychotherapist and author Gabor Mate’ also talks to his inner child. He also has feelings of abondonment and tries to fill the void with his addiction to work – of being wanted as a doctor, and to problematic obsession with music to distract and avoid from feelings of worthlessness. Psychologist and psychotherapist John Bradshaw also speaks to feeling unworthy and feeling intense shame. I have great respect for these men ‘walking the talk’ in their vulnerability. Nobody is free from psychological injuries, not even your therapist!
Have you done your inner child work? Maybe try Googling or Youtubing ‘inner child work’ or come in for a session to have a chat.
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