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If you were to ask several people what their interpretation of the Inner Child is, you would get many varying answers. It’s one of those terms that can be hard to articulate. In part, this is possibly due to the fact that each person will work with, deal with and acknowledge their inner child in a different way. My understanding is that the inner child is the part of an individual’s psyche that is still little, small, and young. This part has the emotional and mental age of a child, it is a part that is innocent, authentic, filled with awe and creativity, and often in need of love and support. The concept follows that even once we have reached adulthood, we all still have a part deep within us that is childlike, that it is as though a child lives buried deep with us all, and that this childlike energy has needs, wants, and desires that also need to be met. The inner child theory posits that child-like characteristics are carried over from the early part of our current life. So, if we use an example of a child whose needs were never met, the energy from those experiences may still be playing out in the adult’s life. This could manifest in many different ways from, being overly insecure, lacking confidence, not being able to speak up, or wanting to blend into the background. The strength and severity of the inner child issues range from person to person, and they seem to directly correlate to the experiences that we lived through in our formative years. With this in mind, it is so important that even as adults we tap into and embrace our inner child.
Many of our core operating mechanisms are formulated during our childhood. Up until a certain age, we are all products of our environments, good, bad, or indifferent. Working on our inner child and doing the work that may be needed to heal the inner child can feel like a daunting task. It is deep internal work, and often the pain and wounds feel so much bigger when we start to unearth them and break them down to facilitate the healing. So many of our behaviours anxieties, compulsions, and neurosis stem from our formative years or are adopted from those that we grew up with. When we want to actively invest in ourselves and heal some of these conditions or issues, a great place to start is to work with the inner child. A wounded inner child can have deep unhealthy repercussions on an adult’s life and if left unchallenged can breed dis-ease mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.