How to start healing your inner child

So, you’ve heard a lot about healing your inner child. You know it’s an important step on your journey to create a healthy relationship with yourself and crucial to having the romantic relationship you want. But what does inner child healing really mean? And how do you actually do it? Let’s dig into what inner child work means along with some tangible practices to start the process.

What does inner child work mean?

As humans, we are made up of many parts, and each part of us is like it’s own person; each part is deserving of respect and compassion. Your inner child is the part of you who feels small and vulnerable, and often holds painful emotions like shame, fear, terror, and confusion. They can also hold feelings like playfulness, joy, wonderment, and awe.

Just like any real child, our inner child needs to be seen, heard, loved, and understood. She needs to feel safe, and most importantly she needs to feel safe with YOU, your adult self. She needs to know that you won’t abandon her, shame her, and try to make her go away. Since she’s the one carrying pain, shame, and fear, we’ve often spent a lifetime trying to shut her away in the shadows and cut off from those feelings. All this does is make her feel more terrified, more shameful, and more alone.

Inner child healing work is the work of shifting toward a loving, compassionate relationship with your inner child. The first step is to become aware of when and how our inner child expresses herself. Does she flood you with fear? Does she take over with shame, making us feel totally stuck, frozen, and depressed? Where do we sense these feelings in our bodies? Are there moments when we feel a childlike sense of curiosity, playfulness, or awe? Building mindful awareness of this part of ourselves is key to starting a compassionate, healing relationship with our inner child.

Start an open dialogue with your inner child

Once we are aware of the inner child part of us, we can start to speak to her and open an ongoing conversation with her. Remembering that most often she’s a little kid who’s feeling scared and alone, think of how you’d speak to a child feeling that way. You might ask her how she’s feeling, and why? You might ask her what she wants you to know or what she wants to tell you. You might ask her what she needs or what would feel helpful.

Your job here is it truly listen to what arises. Connect to the part of your body where she lives, or an image of her, and sit quietly with her, listening for her responses. Stay patient as you hold space for her to respond to you, without rushing, judging, or needing to fix or change her.

Find photos of yourself as a little kid

One way to connect more deeply with your inner child is to find photos of yourself as a little kid, ideally at age 5 or younger. Set aside time to spend some time with this photo, gazing at yourself at this young age, and really seeing her. Notice everything about her, her clothes, her hair, her eyes, her facial expression, her body language. As you gaze at her, practice seeing her through eyes of loving kindness. Let her know that you really see her, you notice her, and that she matters.

You might also choose to place the photo in a special place in your home where you’ll see her and have a moment to connect with her.

Connect with your inner child through art

Another way to work with your inner child is through art. There are many ways to do this, and I’ll offer two ideas.

The first is get out some art supplies and create an image of your inner child through any medium you’d like - drawing, painting, collaging, etc. The point is not to make a “good” drawing, but rather to create a meditative space where you can channel your inner child through art. When you draw your inner child, it can help you access the subconscious and you may find out new information about her that you weren’t consciously aware of. However you draw her - size, shape, color, what she’s doing, who she’s with, where she is - is all important insight into your inner child.

The second way you can connect with your inner child through art is to get reallyyyy messy. Get out finger paints, chalk, pastels, markers, glue, glitter… whatever you’ve got. And make a mess! Get out of your head and let your inner child play and express herself. This can be really healing and just plain FUN to let yourself express and play freely.

Offer your inner child comfort through touch

One of the ways we calm and soothe babies and young children is through touch - we hug them, hold them, and rock them. As kids we don’t have fully developed nervous systems and we need to be connected to an adult’s nervous system in order to feel regulated, safe, and calm. The same is true for our inner child!

It can feel really soothing to hold ourselves when we our inner child is feeling scared. Something as simple as placing a hand on your heart when you’re feeling anxious can feel so soothing. I often like to put a hand on my heart and the other hand on my belly, and just notice the contact between my hands and my body. Other times I wrap myself in a big hug. I also like to imagine myself holding my inner child, hanging out next to her, and just being there with her.

Seek out support

This kind of work can be difficult to do on our own. Finding a great therapist who’s well-trained inner child healing work can make all of the difference. You don’t have to do this alone.