Making Peace with Your Inner Child
Making Peace With Your Inner Child
As we dig into this idea of making peace with our inner child, we recognize that our past really hurt and it doesn’t always stay in the past. Our past can actually become our present if we don't heal. No one wants to repeat the same toxic and painful patterns. How does making peace with the inner child help us have a better present?
What is one past hurt that continues to affect you today?
When I was first divorced, I was a full-time single mom. Although my ex on paper had some custody, he wasn't around and disappeared from our lives for a period of several years. I was alone all the time. There were times that with my eldest child going through puberty, I would reach out to my ex and ask him for support. I’d ask him to talk to our child and he would respond negatively with, “no, you're on your own. Tough luck, you made your bed, now you have to lie in it.”
His response made me so angry, and I felt abandoned and hurt that he wasn't showing up for his kids and that it was all on me. All of this will still come up. Today he's much more present. We've made peace with some of it. Our relationship is much more cordial and he's more present. But if I reach out to him for some help with the kids now and he's not available, I will feel the echoes of all that pain in an instant.
To move forward and to have peace, we have to address things that have happened in our past. We have some key points that will be very helpful for all of us.
We’re going to cover three main points. First, what is meant by the term inner child? Then we're going to talk about how our inner child is connected to our present. And finally, we're going to talk about how we make peace with that inner child.
Inner child is a hot topic on social media now, but it's actually a hundred-year-old concept that was developed by a psychologist named Carl Jeung. But what exactly is it? This jargon has been thrown around for a while now.
What is meant by the term inner child?
The inner child is the part of us that was young and growing up and was full of needs that had to be met that are very human, very normal. But when those needs weren't met at key parts in our development as small, growing toddlers or children, our experiences get implanted in a way that can leave us with false beliefs and unhealthy coping behaviors. We learn to cope with those pains and hurts and we can find ourselves reverting back to that place of wounding our inner child, even as a functional adult. And so, it's almost like an inner self that can still cause a lot of trouble today because it didn't get what it needed way back then.
Typically, these are things that have happened to you before the age of six but it doesn't mean it's only this age group. It’s beliefs that have been cemented in you at some point in the past that you carry forward. You might have patterns of behavior or feelings that you default to. It’s pain or an experience that's formed a belief rather than something that you consciously said to your four-year-old self. These things have a tendency to pop up in our adult lives. Often times it’s the pain or the wounding that we don't have language for because we weren't able to speak at the times that it happened. We don't have words to put to it or a narrative. It’s all subconscious.
Our intention is not to bring up things that we as parents do. We all do things that we regret with our kids. This is not shaming or guilting. Although there are things that we can do better for this, today we’re talking about the things that have happened to us.
We're talking about how the inner child refers to the subconscious part of ourselves that was wounded in childhood.
Now that we're clear on the term, how is it connected to the present? How does this manifest itself in our present condition?
Inner child work goes back to the five core needs and issues that are related to your true self-worth boundaries. How you express your wants and needs, how you manage your desires and have a container for things, or lead from a place of control. It's significant—when your needs don’t get met, you form a belief from the feelings from the wounding. Because it was a belief that you developed that's tied to that memory, those feelings, those experiences. You can't get away from how much that will affect you in the present because it's tied into every part of your being.
For example, I can go back to my childhood with my parents and how they treated certain situations when I was a teenager. I was the feisty mouthy teenager that didn't have a voice. Everything I said was negated or corrected or told I was wrong for whatever reason. I react to similar situations in adulthood—when someone is dismissive about my opinion—from this part of my wounded inner child. And the inner child voice says, “You don't have a voice, you don't matter. Your voice doesn't matter. Your opinion doesn't matter.” And it makes me shut down.
If you experienced trauma, abuse, neglect, divorce, or death of a parent—anything referred to as an adverse childhood experience or ACE—all these things create negative experiences for children and almost manifest later in life if you didn’t process your feelings.
These things are connected to how you develop and who you think you are, your values, which in turn plays out when you get into a relationship. When you think “this is what I deserve, or I don't deserve,” this could be related to a wounding from childhood. So, you manifest these beliefs that you had as a young child.
How do we heal through inner child work?
It's such important work because it really does help you identify behavior or a way that you cope or react today. Your triggers are a good signal—when you’re suddenly reacting in a way that's much bigger than the situation calls for, for example. The first thing is identifying what your triggers are, what are the signals to things that hurt you in the past? Then get curious about why you’re reacting the way you are. Ask yourself, “Why am I reacting this way? Could it be connected to something from my past?”
While it’s helpful to do inner child work with a third party, such as a counselor or therapist, that's objective and that can help you work through it, but it's not necessary. This work is about self-exploration and self-awareness. It's a way to understand more about yourself and where your patterns come from. You absolutely can do it on your own.
A lot of times the idea of inner child work can sound metaphysical. It can sound like something that's new age. That's not what we're talking about today. Instead, recognize that God has created us as incredibly intricate beings with all kinds of complexities and all kinds of nuances that are beyond the conscious. Doing inner child work is really trying to dive deeper. When you do that as a Christian, it's important to commit the time to God. A good place to start is, “God, I'm going to go here, and I'd ask for you to show up and give me Your wisdom. Open my eyes and make things clear.”
Psalm 139:23-24 talks about inviting God into this very type of exploration. It says, “Search me God, and know my heart, test me, and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” As believers, it's so important to invite God into every aspect of your search; your heart, examining your past, asking Him, “Is there anything in me that You want to change or bring healing to?” The psalmist modeled that for us. We can go before God honestly and invite Him into all of the places so we don't have to do it alone.
What is the process of inner child work?
Start with an unhealthy belief about yourself. For example, the belief that you’re unworthy and unlovable. Think about the situations that this belief shows up in—maybe a time when someone said something hurtful to you, you were triggered and reacted harshly instead of reminding yourself the comment is about the other person, not yourself or responding with curiosity as to why that person made the comment.
Close your eyes and visualize yourself as a child in your mind. Put an age to your child self. Think about the belief that you’re unworthy and unlovable. Now visualize your adult self-going to your child self and allow her to tell you why she believes that she’s unworthy and unlovable. Ask your child self, “What happened? Who told you that? Who made you believe that you were unworthy and that you're unlovable?”
Journal about what answers you feel come to your mind. You can even write out a dialogue between your child self and your adult self. One question you can ask yourself is, “What do you need now?” Or “What do you want now?”
Once you have some answers to these questions you can release this version of your inner child. It may sound bizarre, but it actually works because this is part of you—this memory or version of your inner child—no longer feels like it has to protect you. The whole idea is you need to update your brain; you have a memory that’s formed a belief that’s not true anymore that’s trapped in your brain, so you need to update it.
The last important step of the process is thanking the inner child version of yourself for protecting you all this time.
It's really looking back at all the things that have shaped us with curiosity and inviting God to bring truth to those areas where we are stuck and believe negative messages or lies about ourselves. Because of experiences, we developed beliefs in the deepest parts of ourselves. It’s a process that allows you to go back and rewrite that message and to find freedom and healing.
After you go through the process you can reflect on the person you are today and remind yourself you are not a powerless five-year-old anymore. You have a voice that can be heard. You have skills and abilities that you can bring. You don't have to respond from that place that was stored in your brain because of trauma. You can choose a response that's grounded in truth. It's an incredible work that you can invite God into.
Takeaways
Inner child refers to our subconscious where unprocessed feelings and wounds reside.
There is a link between those wounds and beliefs to the choices that we make in the present.
We can trust God with the healing of our past by using this inner child work and uncovering some beliefs.
Listener Question
Hi, this is Rosie, a single mom. How do we love my ex who continues to verbally and emotionally abuse me and my children, causing me emotional pain and our children's hurt division, and resentment?
This is painful and difficult. You love your ex from a distance and with a lot of personal boundaries in place to be sure that you don't subject yourself or your children to situations where that behavior can continue to cause harm. It's not okay. It's not something you need to allow to continue to happen, but you can love from a distance. You can still be fair and care about that person. Even feel the emotion in your heart of love even while recognizing that behavior isn't okay. Putting boundaries in place is about honoring you, honoring what you need, honoring what your kids need and even honoring the best part of your ex's humanity that says you don't get to do that on my watch.
Some practical ways to create distance boundaries are saying if you continue to talk like that or treat us that way, I may have to consider changes to your access to the kids and your access to me. If this continues to happen, I'm going to block you on my phone and I'm only going to communicate with you through email or when we do handoffs, we can only do it in a safe place.
Don't engage any more than you have to during handoffs. You can choose the level to which you engage. Treat the relationship as transactional. Like you're going through a drive-through window. Here's the money, here's the burger. Don't allow yourself to emotionally engage.
As we dig into this idea of making peace with our inner child, we recognize that our past really hurt and it doesn’t always stay in the past. Our past can actually become our present if we don't heal. No one wants to repeat the same toxic and painful patterns. How does making peace with the inner child help us have a better present?
What is one past hurt that continues to affect you today?
When I was first divorced, I was a full-time single mom. Although my ex on paper had some custody, he wasn't around and disappeared from our lives for a period of several years. I was alone all the time. There were times that with my eldest child going through puberty, I would reach out to my ex and ask him for support. I’d ask him to talk to our child and he would respond negatively with, “no, you're on your own. Tough luck, you made your bed, now you have to lie in it.”
His response made me so angry, and I felt abandoned and hurt that he wasn't showing up for his kids and that it was all on me. All of this will still come up. Today he's much more present. We've made peace with some of it. Our relationship is much more cordial and he's more present. But if I reach out to him for some help with the kids now and he's not available, I will feel the echoes of all that pain in an instant.
To move forward and to have peace, we have to address things that have happened in our past. We have some key points that will be very helpful for all of us.
We’re going to cover three main points. First, what is meant by the term inner child? Then we're going to talk about how our inner child is connected to our present. And finally, we're going to talk about how we make peace with that inner child.
Inner child is a hot topic on social media now, but it's actually a hundred-year-old concept that was developed by a psychologist named Carl Jeung. But what exactly is it? This jargon has been thrown around for a while now.
What is meant by the term inner child?
The inner child is the part of us that was young and growing up and was full of needs that had to be met that are very human, very normal. But when those needs weren't met at key parts in our development as small, growing toddlers or children, our experiences get implanted in a way that can leave us with false beliefs and unhealthy coping behaviors. We learn to cope with those pains and hurts and we can find ourselves reverting back to that place of wounding our inner child, even as a functional adult. And so, it's almost like an inner self that can still cause a lot of trouble today because it didn't get what it needed way back then.
Typically, these are things that have happened to you before the age of six but it doesn't mean it's only this age group. It’s beliefs that have been cemented in you at some point in the past that you carry forward. You might have patterns of behavior or feelings that you default to. It’s pain or an experience that's formed a belief rather than something that you consciously said to your four-year-old self. These things have a tendency to pop up in our adult lives. Often times it’s the pain or the wounding that we don't have language for because we weren't able to speak at the times that it happened. We don't have words to put to it or a narrative. It’s all subconscious.
Our intention is not to bring up things that we as parents do. We all do things that we regret with our kids. This is not shaming or guilting. Although there are things that we can do better for this, today we’re talking about the things that have happened to us.
We're talking about how the inner child refers to the subconscious part of ourselves that was wounded in childhood.
Now that we're clear on the term, how is it connected to the present? How does this manifest itself in our present condition?
Inner child work goes back to the five core needs and issues that are related to your true self-worth boundaries. How you express your wants and needs, how you manage your desires and have a container for things, or lead from a place of control. It's significant—when your needs don’t get met, you form a belief from the feelings from the wounding. Because it was a belief that you developed that's tied to that memory, those feelings, those experiences. You can't get away from how much that will affect you in the present because it's tied into every part of your being.
For example, I can go back to my childhood with my parents and how they treated certain situations when I was a teenager. I was the feisty mouthy teenager that didn't have a voice. Everything I said was negated or corrected or told I was wrong for whatever reason. I react to similar situations in adulthood—when someone is dismissive about my opinion—from this part of my wounded inner child. And the inner child voice says, “You don't have a voice, you don't matter. Your voice doesn't matter. Your opinion doesn't matter.” And it makes me shut down.
If you experienced trauma, abuse, neglect, divorce, or death of a parent—anything referred to as an adverse childhood experience or ACE—all these things create negative experiences for children and almost manifest later in life if you didn’t process your feelings.
These things are connected to how you develop and who you think you are, your values, which in turn plays out when you get into a relationship. When you think “this is what I deserve, or I don't deserve,” this could be related to a wounding from childhood. So, you manifest these beliefs that you had as a young child.
How do we heal through inner child work?
It's such important work because it really does help you identify behavior or a way that you cope or react today. Your triggers are a good signal—when you’re suddenly reacting in a way that's much bigger than the situation calls for, for example. The first thing is identifying what your triggers are, what are the signals to things that hurt you in the past? Then get curious about why you’re reacting the way you are. Ask yourself, “Why am I reacting this way? Could it be connected to something from my past?”
While it’s helpful to do inner child work with a third party, such as a counselor or therapist, that's objective and that can help you work through it, but it's not necessary. This work is about self-exploration and self-awareness. It's a way to understand more about yourself and where your patterns come from. You absolutely can do it on your own.
A lot of times the idea of inner child work can sound metaphysical. It can sound like something that's new age. That's not what we're talking about today. Instead, recognize that God has created us as incredibly intricate beings with all kinds of complexities and all kinds of nuances that are beyond the conscious. Doing inner child work is really trying to dive deeper. When you do that as a Christian, it's important to commit the time to God. A good place to start is, “God, I'm going to go here, and I'd ask for you to show up and give me Your wisdom. Open my eyes and make things clear.”
Psalm 139:23-24 talks about inviting God into this very type of exploration. It says, “Search me God, and know my heart, test me, and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” As believers, it's so important to invite God into every aspect of your search; your heart, examining your past, asking Him, “Is there anything in me that You want to change or bring healing to?” The psalmist modeled that for us. We can go before God honestly and invite Him into all of the places so we don't have to do it alone.
What is the process of inner child work?
Start with an unhealthy belief about yourself. For example, the belief that you’re unworthy and unlovable. Think about the situations that this belief shows up in—maybe a time when someone said something hurtful to you, you were triggered and reacted harshly instead of reminding yourself the comment is about the other person, not yourself or responding with curiosity as to why that person made the comment.
Close your eyes and visualize yourself as a child in your mind. Put an age to your child self. Think about the belief that you’re unworthy and unlovable. Now visualize your adult self-going to your child self and allow her to tell you why she believes that she’s unworthy and unlovable. Ask your child self, “What happened? Who told you that? Who made you believe that you were unworthy and that you're unlovable?”
Journal about what answers you feel come to your mind. You can even write out a dialogue between your child self and your adult self. One question you can ask yourself is, “What do you need now?” Or “What do you want now?”
Once you have some answers to these questions you can release this version of your inner child. It may sound bizarre, but it actually works because this is part of you—this memory or version of your inner child—no longer feels like it has to protect you. The whole idea is you need to update your brain; you have a memory that’s formed a belief that’s not true anymore that’s trapped in your brain, so you need to update it.
The last important step of the process is thanking the inner child version of yourself for protecting you all this time.
It's really looking back at all the things that have shaped us with curiosity and inviting God to bring truth to those areas where we are stuck and believe negative messages or lies about ourselves. Because of experiences, we developed beliefs in the deepest parts of ourselves. It’s a process that allows you to go back and rewrite that message and to find freedom and healing.
After you go through the process you can reflect on the person you are today and remind yourself you are not a powerless five-year-old anymore. You have a voice that can be heard. You have skills and abilities that you can bring. You don't have to respond from that place that was stored in your brain because of trauma. You can choose a response that's grounded in truth. It's an incredible work that you can invite God into.
Takeaways
Inner child refers to our subconscious where unprocessed feelings and wounds reside.
There is a link between those wounds and beliefs to the choices that we make in the present.
We can trust God with the healing of our past by using this inner child work and uncovering some beliefs.
Listener Question
Hi, this is Rosie, a single mom. How do we love my ex who continues to verbally and emotionally abuse me and my children, causing me emotional pain and our children's hurt division, and resentment?
This is painful and difficult. You love your ex from a distance and with a lot of personal boundaries in place to be sure that you don't subject yourself or your children to situations where that behavior can continue to cause harm. It's not okay. It's not something you need to allow to continue to happen, but you can love from a distance. You can still be fair and care about that person. Even feel the emotion in your heart of love even while recognizing that behavior isn't okay. Putting boundaries in place is about honoring you, honoring what you need, honoring what your kids need and even honoring the best part of your ex's humanity that says you don't get to do that on my watch.
Some practical ways to create distance boundaries are saying if you continue to talk like that or treat us that way, I may have to consider changes to your access to the kids and your access to me. If this continues to happen, I'm going to block you on my phone and I'm only going to communicate with you through email or when we do handoffs, we can only do it in a safe place.
Don't engage any more than you have to during handoffs. You can choose the level to which you engage. Treat the relationship as transactional. Like you're going through a drive-through window. Here's the money, here's the burger. Don't allow yourself to emotionally engage.
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