Why Inner Child Healing is Not New, But Still So Powerful
Image by Fabian Centeno/Unsplash
When do you think psychologists began talking about the inner child? I always assumed this idea started in the Sixties, as part of the seismic shifts in art, society, sexuality and culture that characterised that revolutionary decade. I was stunned to learn that this concept was in fact introduced about 100 years ago by Dr Carl Jung, one of the founding fathers of psychology. He wrote about the Child archetype, which consisted of memories and emotions from each stage of a person’s childhood development. This idea laid the foundations for what we now call the inner child.
And the concept of the inner child has been adopted by numerous models of psychotherapy, including Jungian, Freudian and other schools of psychoanalysis such as ego state therapy and transactional analysis, Gestalt, psychosynthesis, schema therapy and internal family systems, which I think has the most accurate and helpful way of understanding our rich, mysterious inner world.
Boiling down all this theory into something a bit more concrete and useful for you, it’s helpful to understand that we all have an inner child, who is the sensitive, vulnerable, emotional part of us. If this idea seems a bit out there for you, think about times you have felt highly anxious, perhaps as you stood up to deliver a speech, or when you made a mistake and feared being punished for it. I’m guessing in those moments you also felt a bit small, and young, as if you were a little kid in a grownup’s body.
If so, you were feeling your inner child come bubbling up from your unconscious, taking over your mind and body and making you feel the way they feel – small, vulnerable, scared and lonely. I am a tall, grey-bearded, 57-year-old man and sometimes I feel like a six-year-old kid, small and wobbly, unable to speak up or fight back when I’m feeling unconfident or under attack. That’s when the part I call Little Dan has blended with me, in IFS terminology, taking me over so there is no me there, just him.
How to heal your inner child
It seems to me we are experiencing a paradigm shift in psychology – like the one Freud and Jung instigated a century ago, when they moved psychiatric treatment out of the dark ages and proved that talking therapy could help relieve people’s suffering. In many ways, they were misguided (especially Freud, of course, who had some bizarre theories), but they are still the giants upon whose shoulders I and my colleagues now stand. The 21st-century paradigm shift is to understand that we are all many selves – young parts, like Little Dan, and protective parts, like my Worrier or Perfectionist, who try to stop me getting hurt, rejected, criticised or attacked.
I believe all forms of therapy, whether they do this explicitly or not, are engaged in some form of inner-child healing. It is the core, the heart of all psychological work, because I know from many years of my own therapy that, to heal from my childhood trauma, I must heal the part who experienced that trauma in the first place – and that’s Little Dan. So how do we actually engage in this healing? What do we know, from all the research and our rich, collective clinical experience, about what actually works?
One helpful idea is to think about creating a secure internal attachment with your inner boy or girl. Just as forming secure external attachments is key for your mental health and wellbeing, so is connecting with your small self, who lives in your mind and heart. Parts-based therapy is very helpful for this, of course, but you can do a great deal of helpful and transformative work yourself, just by thinking about, talking to and sending loving feelings inward to that little boy or girl (or non-binary child, if that’s how you identify), as often as you can. You could place a framed photo of yourself as a child on your desk, so you are constantly reminded they are there (I have a lovely photo of blonde, chubby-cheeked Little Dan looking up at me as I type this). Use this photo as a lock screen on your phone, or in any other place you will see them often.
Retrieving them from the scary past
For my clients who are parents, I suggest thinking they now have one more son or daughter, who needs the same kind of attention, attunement and attachment as their flesh-and-blood kids. A key step in IFS therapy is bringing someone’s hurt young part out of the past, because they are often stuck in some horrible scene, like the school where they got bullied, or kitchen table where they got screamed at every night. This is called a retrieval, and involves bringing them to a safe place, like a beloved grandparent’s home, or imagined safe place in nature. You could also try consciously retrieving them from the time and place they may be stuck in, to come live with you.
Create a lovely (imaginary) bedroom for them, which should be just the way you would have liked it at that age. So if your little self feels like a six-year-old, design just the kind of bedroom you would have loved at six, with the posters, toys, books, games, soft toys and duvet cover you would have adored as a kid. Sometimes our inner children are older, so if he or she or they seem like a teenager, create a teenage bedroom, which may be quite different from a small child’s room.
Then talk to them, often. Imagine them sitting on the sofa with you, watching TV. Bring them to the park, the movies, for dinner. The more you think about them, the better they will feel, the stronger that internal attachment becomes and the easier it is to self-soothe when you’re feeling stressed, upset, anxious, lonely or any other painful feeling. Remember that this, like any other technique or strategy in psychotherapy, might feel a bit clunky at first. It’s a process, so will get easier and more effective over time. Keep trying, even if it’s hard at first, because it could be transformative for your health, happiness and overall wellbeing.
I hope that helps – sending love to you (and your inner child),
Dan ❤️
Enjoying Dan’s blog? Please make a small donation to support his work – all donations received will go to help Dan offer low-cost therapy or free resources to those who need them. Thank you 🙏🏼