Healing inner child wounds can not only free you from your childhood trauma but also heal you so that you can live your life to the fullest where nothing is stopping you from growing in life.
Today we will learn about:
So, let’s discover.
What is Inner Child and Inner Child Wounds?
What is the Inner Child?
We all have a younger version of ourselves inside of us. Our inner child which is the part of us holding the emotional experiences of our childhood.
It holds all the memories, needs, emotions and experiences of your younger self, when you were a child.
This younger self is always with you and can actually be a source of joy, hope and creativity in life but if this part was ever neglected, abandoned or abused– whether emotionally or physically; the trauma from those experiences can actually transfer the pain into your adulthood experiences and can hinder your growth.
All the unresolved emotional experiences that were never dealt with are what are called inner child wounds.
Examples of Childhood Trauma
Any experience of your childhood that left an emotional impact which was disturbing or harmful weather physically, emotionally or mentally is a childhood trauma or childhood wound
A few examples are:
- Physical or emotional abuse
- Losing a loved one
- Being neglected or abandoned as a child
- Growing up in an unstable or unsafe environment
- Growing up in a physically violent household
The emotional challenges from these experiences can leave a lasting impression on a child’s mental health and these scars can actually lead to anxiety, depression, low self esteem and even pose difficulty forming healthy relationships in adult life.
How does Childhood Trauma affect your life?
There are so many ways that childhood trauma or inner child wounds can manifest in the adult life, for example;
1. Difficulty Building Trust:
If as a child you experienced abandonment, neglect or betrayal; it will be difficult for you to form trust in your relationships in adulthood.
2. Low Self Esteem:
During childhood if you were excessively criticised for your looks or your work or made to feel that you’re not enough the way you’re, you will develop low self esteem as you grow up.
3. Triggered Emotional or Physical Reactions:
You might easily get triggered in relation to experiences which might be similar to your childhood experiences.
For example; if you were beaten as a child and now if someone tries to even slightly touch you, you might easily become violent or extremely attentive when someone tries to come close to you.
4. Relationship Challenges:
Childhood trauma can often lead to challenges in forming healthy relationships in adult life if ever in childhood your familial relationships were difficult to handle or deal with.
If you never received enough love or care, you subconsciously might believe that love and care is not for you and you might face difficulty in building strong close knit relationships in adulthood.
5. Addiction or Escapism:
When as a child you were taught healthy coping mechanisms in situations of emotional triggers and you never dealt with your emotions well; you might get into the loop of escaping from your emotions every time you will feel triggered.
A lot of people go onto the path of substance abuse or unhealthy addictions with food, alcohol, etc to escape or avoid facing their feelings.
Why should you Heal your Inner Child?
Healing your inner child is one of the most powerful and transformational acts you can perform to get past your blockages and everything keeping you away to live the life of your dreams.
So, let’s learn why healing your inner child wounds is important:
1. Breaking Free from the Past:
Because of our childhood trauma, we get stuck in a loop.
We keep on thinking about what hurt us when we were a child.
Even if you’re not actively thinking about it, you’re running your life on subconscious patterns that you developed when you were a child.
A child’s development happens in the first 7 years.
So, your current personality is actually based on the experiences of your childhood.
When your inner child wounds are unhealed you get stuck in old patterns, behaviours and emotions.
By healing your inner child wounds, you can let the past loose its grip on you, stop letting it hold you back and step into your most empowered version of your present self.
If you would want to work with me to heal yourself and step into your most powerful feminine self. Apply for 1:1 Coaching here
2. Improved self worth and confidence:
By healing your inner child wounds, you are giving acceptance, offering love and validating the child inside you and when you do that your self worth increases.
You look at yourself with more value because you are being seen now.
When you offer yourself the compliments you never received,when you truly appreciate yourself, your confidence skyrockets.
3. Healthier relationships
Healing the inner wounds of your younger self can help you regain trust in life, in relationships and mostly in yourself too.
This helps you to develop strong relationships with not only yourself but the people in your life.
Plus, you’re easily able to make new connections and form healthy communication with others because now you can trust better.
4. Emotional freedom
When you carry suppressed emotions and unresolved trauma from childhood, it often leads to triggered emotional or physical responses.
But when you heal your inner child wounds, you regain emotional balance, your nervous system gets regulated, you feel heard and understood and no longer carry the weight of those unhealthy emotions.
It gives you the freedom to express yourself freely and you can actually tune into your authentic self.
5. Breaking the cycle
If you carry the trauma from your childhood, you may unconsciously be continuing that same emotional pattern and still attracting similar situations in your life and wondering why your life is not changing.
You need to break the patterns of your childhood.
You need to step out and heal what was left broken as a child.
Healing your inner child wounds will not only break the cycle in your life but also, it stops from perpetuating in your children’s lives further.
Healing stops the cycle right with you because you’ve broken that pattern.
How to heal your inner child and your childhood trauma?
I will share 7 ways which you can use for healing your inner child wounds.
1. Acknowledge the wounds:
Acknowledging that you’re hurt does half the job.
We live so out of touch with our emotions that we don’t even realise we’re hurt.
When you dig deep into yourself and recognise what actually left you broken, you get your power back.
Reflect on your childhood experiences and accept that wounds do exist, even if they’re difficult to face, give them acknowledgement.
A beautiful exercise you can do for this:
Write a letter to your younger self acknowledging the pain they went through and accepting their deep felt emotions.
Express your compassion to them for what they had to go through and say how strong they were.
2. Reparent yourself:
We live in a world of ignorance.
We care for others more than ourselves.
Even though that is good in some cases but in the love of caring for others, we often ignore our own selves.
We ignore our needs physically, mentally and emotionally.
Reparent yourself. It is the process of giving your inner child the love and care it deserved when they were younger.
Give them the validation they’re seeking outside.
Pour love into your own self first before giving it to others.
Speak kindly to yourself, use gentle tone and give reassurance that you’re there for yourself.
3. Forgiveness:
Forgiveness plays a huge part in healing your inner child wounds.
We hold a lot of grudges not just against ourselves but against others too who might have hurt us or misunderstood us when we were younger.
If your parents never understood you, forgive them.
They did what they knew best.
They were not aware that they’re carrying the traumas from their younger selves as well.
You might have been hurt by not only your parents but it could be anyone, whether a relative, friend, or a caregiver.
Forgive what they did to you.
This doesn’t mean you’re condoning their hurtful behaviour but just understanding it and losing the grip those experiences have over you.
Exercise: Write a letter of forgiveness to all the people who have hurt you ever in your life, expressing your anger, resentment or anything you feel and after you write it, burn it to release the energy into the universe.
Trust me you will feel amazing. Try it once.
4. Inner Child Healing Meditation:
Meditation can actually help you connect with yourself on deeper levels.
Even my clients have experienced deep healing during guided meditations I provide in my 1:1 coaching program.
If you would like to Enroll, you can apply here.
When in mediation, you visualize your younger self, offering them acceptance and compassion; you are able to heal with ease and release the pent up emotions.
You can also find such healing meditations on youtube.
5. Therapy and Emotional Healing:
If you’ve deep rooted trauma and it’s difficult for you to deal with your emotions by yourself, you can ask for professional help best suited to your needs.
Working with a therapist who specializes in childhood trauma can actually benefit you deeply and help you heal your inner child wounds.
6. Journaling for Healing Inner Child Wounds:
If you want to become your own therapist, then you need to start journaling about your feelings and emotions.
You can checkout my exceptional Self Help Journals and Workbooks here
Journaling is a powerful tool which I also personally use a lot and it can help you gain insight into your inner child’s needs and process your emotions which were suppressed earlier.
When you write down your feelings, you’re able to understand what needs attention.
7. Positive Self Talk:
Since childhood you might be discouraged or not appreciated what you did or the way you were which might have led you to talk lowly of yourself.
You might even disrespect yourself for the little things you might do wrong on a daily basis like not washing the dishes right or forgetting your keys at home.
Understand where you’re coming from and reflect.
Have better communication with yourself.
Make yourself feel heard. Talk to yourself kindly.
Affirmations can actually be a great way to impart positive self talk.
Choose the affirmations which give you confidence, make you feel supported, understood and worthy of love.
For example:
“I am safe and supported. I am worthy of love. I am heard and understood.”
Healing your inner child is a transformational journey that you can take for yourself.
Once, you step into this powerful journey; you’re never coming back.
You will see what you were missing all along and finally come home to yourself.
By offering love, compassion and understanding to your younger self, you break free from old patterns and behaviors, become a more confident and authentic version of yourself who is now empowered to handle life better.
And remember the healing process takes time and it’s okay to ask for support.
Be patient and gentle with yourself- your inner child deserves it.
Wrap:
So, today we learned what is inner child and what are inner child wounds.
We also understood how childhood trauma affects you in your adult life and why there is a need to heal your inner child wounds.
At last, we discussed 7 effective ways to heal your childhood trauma.
If you found this post helpful, let me know in the comments below!
