Your inner child is an essential, integral part of who you are. At its core, your inner child is you as a child in its authentic expression. It expresses itself as you are and knows what you want and need in life. This authentic expression embodies your true self. As your inner child is an integral part of who you are, it has a significant impact on who you are and how you live your life now.
As you grow up, your inner child is susceptible to being damaged, traumatised and controlled. Any wounding you experienced as a child, may be held within the inner child. This may lead to behaving in a certain way to avoid being hurt again, such as expressing anger, self-sabotage or other destructive expressions later on as an adult. In many ways, you may be in an adults body now; however, it is your inner child that is in control. I am sure we have all come across adults who behave or perhaps lash out like children.
As an adult, it is common to completely ignore or even aggressively suppress and criticise the inner child. It is rarely nurtured, loved and honoured. Unfortunately, this typically compounds the potential non-serving ways the inner child expresses itself. You would never neglect or mistreat a child like this, yet we do it to our inner child. Your inner child is susceptible to not only non-serving influence from yourself but also others, society, culture, religious views etc. Often your family has a profound impact on the health of your inner child and how it influences you later on in your adult life.
Your inner child is a core aspect of who you are and requires maintenance to feel more balanced and able to live your life the way you want. Connecting with and healing your inner child is essential for all energy and spiritual work. As a consequence of a traumatised inner child, you may find it very difficult to maintain focused intention to bring about change in your life or move forward and grow in the ways you would like to.
Opening a healthy dialogue with your inner child is essential. Acknowledging and honouring your inner child, your childlike aspect of self, can be life-changing. Looking at how you communicate with and love yourself is not always an easy thing to do. Especially if you realise that you are harsh with your inner child or self-sabotaging. The work and dedication that it requires are demanding and challenging, though, and it would be remiss of me not to mention this. You will be challenged, and you will need to reprogram yourself to be kind, mindful and nurturing of yourself. Even though your inner child may have been traumatised by others, often it is how we handle our inner child that has a significant impact on how we heal and live our lives.
The process of opening a dialogue with your inner child is straightforward. In a calm and relaxed space, focus on your inner child. It may help to imagine your inner child as you as a child. If you are unable to visualise, this is fine. Just try and hold the intention to connect with your inner child. Start by allowing a sense of love to build and express it with your inner child. You may want to say you love your inner child. Let the emotions flow. If you feel you have been harsh or neglectful, admit this and apologise. You are communicating, so whatever you want to say is fine, as long as it is positive and heartfelt.
Spend some time getting to know your inner child. You can ask direct questions or just spend time with your inner child in a supportive and loving environment getting to know and reconnect with each other. The more you do this, the easier it will be to establish clear communication. You may also find that by checking with your inner child before making decisions helps you strengthen the bond and allows you to know what it is you want. Your inner child will know this naturally.
If you are looking for an attunement to energetcially support the work you are doing to heal your inner child, you may want to consider the Shamanic Inner Child Maintenance Attunement.
