Perhaps our hurt 5-year-old self shows up when our best friend doesn’t answer our phone call, or our misunderstood 15-year-old self comes out when a colleague doesn’t see eye to eye. Caring for this younger version of ourselves is what inner child work is all about. We all have a younger part of ourselves that was “never quite loved the right way or the way they needed as a child,” clinical psychologist Trish Phillips, Psy.D., tells mbg. “Inner child work, like any type of inner work, involves creating a space where your subconscious is allowed to take the lead,” Phillips says. Inner work is the act of going inside ourselves, to explore our true feelings and parts of us that may have been rejected and labeled as “inappropriate” or “too much” by others. By allowing ourselves time to go within, we begin peeling back our everyday coping mechanisms (being avoidant, numbing of our feelings, etc.) and are able to fully accept and integrate our subconscious into consciousness. To name a few, the inner child lens can be found in trauma therapy, Parts Work, Internal Family Systems, EMDR, sensorimotor psychotherapy, somatic work, Gestalt work, art therapy, and story or narrative therapy, notes Phillips. What is truly special about inner child work is its intention to speak to our inner child through their language, a language that is emotionally based and embodied, rather than expressed through intellectual thoughts and words. This part of us is very much connected to our natural enthusiasm, curiosity, and creativity we experienced as actual children. “When you get in touch with your inner child, you can connect with their qualities and experiences at the time,” creativity coach Julia Berryman tells mbg. “You can even physically feel how they felt.” As children, we are also very impressionable, readily absorbing what our environments and caretakers teach us and how they treat us. Inner child wounds, or attachment wounds, can occur when there is either a traumatic event or chronic rupture without repair. For children, a rupture without repair can look like crying out for help but being unheard by an emotionally unavailable caretaker. Ruptures also happen in our daily lives throughout adulthood, “from when someone forgets to hold the door open for us at the store or when a friend doesn’t say hi to us,” says Phillips. “How we internalize them determines if the experience stays a wound or if it becomes processed right there.” In adulthood, we have a chance to heal our wounded inner child and create the safe, secure inner and outer environments our younger selves always wanted. That’s why inner child healing is so important, she says, “To remind ourselves that we’re not wrong or bad. To heal the shame that comes with just having feelings.” By healing our inner child, we begin to create the safety and security our younger selves have always needed. By doing so, the positive traits of our inner child have room to shine. We unlock our natural gifts, our inner curiosity, and our limitless capacity to love. On the other hand, when we avoid addressing our past hurts and feel alone with them, they transform into behaviors destructive to ourselves and our environment, such as workaholism, alcoholism, or racism. “When we heal the inner child, we heal generations. We heal the world. We literally affect one another; that’s what coregulation is,” Phillips says. This means they’re essentially repeating patterns of childhood trauma. According to Phillips, enacting an attachment pattern can look like: If you recall what it’s like to play with a child, rather than speaking to you in full, eloquent sentences, children will express their wants and needs through body language and intuitive noises. That is why much of reconnecting to our inner child is through engaging in activities that activate our full realm of senses. When we can be fully here instead of thinking our way through situations, we are “tapping into a place beyond the cognitive narrative that is familiar to us,” Phillips says. In these present moments, we can create a new relationship with our inner child. We can start by first taking ourselves out of the left brain—associated with language, logic, and critical thinking—into the right brain, associated with our emotional expression, intuition, and creativity. Below are some ways to get started: Use all five senses to check in with our body. We can do this by taking three conscious deep breaths. It can help to place one hand on your belly and chest. As you settle in, note one thing you see. One thing you smell. One thing you hear. One thing you taste. One thing you feel. Not sure what to collect? Many of us as adults collect books. Good news is, you don’t have to read them to find joy in having them! When first starting out, guided visualizations can be most helpful. You can start with the one provided by Berryman here. It can look like sitting down and simply asking your inner child how they’re feeling today. The key is honoring your inner child’s perception of their own experiences without filtering or correcting them. If you’d like guidance in creating that safe space, here are self-parenting journaling prompts to start you off. When you’re ready to go deeper, here are more inner child healing exercises to explore. Trieu has always been curious to ask, “how can I make space for my full self to show up — both masculine and feminine energy, right brain and left brain?” After working as an museum exhibit designer in 2018, she left her full-time job to create her own career in coaching. Since then she has dedicated her time, energy, and love into exploring what it truly means to create Home, a place that exists within ourselves and around us. You can say hi to her on Instagram, where she hosts biweekly IG lives, including Creative Play Tuesday and Eat Together Tuesday.
