I can safely say that the toughest, most confusing years of my life were those between the moment I buried my inner kid (I think I was eight?) and the moment I dragged her screaming out of the unmarked grave in which I’d long ago buried her (I believe I was thirty. Yeah. Yikes is right.) I’d started to work in-depth on myself at twenty-nine and had heard of the concept of “the inner child,” but I’d found it so hokey I easily resisted doing that kind of work. Its essential-ness made itself clear soon enough, though, and it was accepting and adopting my inner kid that changed my life in leaps and bounds.
Everyone has an inner child. We become adults, but our essence remains, as do any needs not met in childhood or wounds suffered during all those formative years. An unhealed inner child is at times behind irrational, disproportionate responses to situations/stimuli, shame responses, judgments of self and others, anxiety, and depression. We’re often taught that growing up is denial of who we are, what we need, and most of all, how we feel, when almost the exact opposite is true. In order to grow up into a fulfilled, balanced adult that acts with integrity, addressing all our needs and emotions honestly and with compassion is what is necessary. Many of us have not been taught that, though. So! Even though I’m not a therapist (not even clllllooooooooose), I thought I’d share what’s worked for me and a bit on why! So to start getting back to good with your inner child:
0. Understand the reluctance to do this. Inner child work… I know, it sounds like something a lady with a long white braid, beaded necklaces, and long flowy clothes would suggest, complete tripe. But first of all, flowy skirts are wicked comfortable and feminine, don’t mess with my malas, and I don’t have that many gray hairs yet. But seriously, that side-eye you’re giving this post, that skepticism and reluctance to even try this that I can totally relate to because I sprained my eye muscles too? That’s probably fear. Fear it may work, fear of what you may see, fear of what it could mean for your view of your life, past, present and future. And it’s totally understandable, nothing wrong with feeling that resistance.
I do want to tempt you, however, to try, because usually strong fear is what keeps us from The Really Good Stuff. The I-Can’t-Believe-This-Is-Happening-For-Me! stuff. Asking that girl out, going for that dream job or career, having that first kid (for those who want children), starting that workout after years… it’s all stuff that your fear says you can take or leave, that it won’t work out anyway, that you’ll probably fuck it up… Don’t let fear keep you from peeling through social conditioning to get to who you are and all you can experience. Don’t let fear talk you out of love like the one you can learn to give yourself. There’s no fucking it up here; I don’t think it can happen. It’s just you getting to know you like you’ve always wanted to be known, and thus becoming a never-ending source of love and understanding for yourself when the world inevitably fails to. Just try. And once you’re willing to give it a go…
1. Sit with all your emotions. Before I started my work, my emotions were overwhelming and violent. I would be quiet and even avoid the source of distress, but inside I would be wailing and crying inconsolably, sometimes with sadness and others with unbridled fury. I would become physically ill and lose months trying to stifle it all and return to normal. I learned somewhere that closing my eyes, mentally picturing my inner kid crying and sniffling and trying to express herself, and asking her questions would yield vital information on what was going on and what needed to happen to stop hurting… And if I did that often enough, it would inevitably give me information on who I was. What I needed. Even why some seemingly harmless things affected me so much, for better or worse.
This is probably what took me the longest. It can feel nuts or silly, and if you’ve ever baby-sat you can imagine how long it can take to get all that information from the part of your brain/heart/soul that is still a toddler. But take the time. So much about the real you is in that inner tantrum, stuff to cherish and stuff to adjust. At the very core of all that angst are usually very simple, easy-to-address needs and desires. Really! And honestly, I find that it takes me a lot less time than it used to, now that I do it constantly. Stay curious always about what you’re feeling (and that will help you stay curious about others, too… You’d be amazed how much that can help smooth over any interaction.)
2. Cultivate compassion for yourself. Being hard on oneself has become the most accepted and secretly encouraged self-sabotage in today’s society. So many wonderful people have trusted me with disturbing memories of being punished severely for normal kid behavior and brushed off my dismay with variations of “I deserved it, I was a little shit back then.” Those people also turned out to have intense, crippling shame that kept them from accepting love, celebrating themselves as they deserved, or believing in themselves.
Let me tell you guys what I wish I could’ve had them really hear: correcting a child’s behavior should consist of sobering them enough to reconsider their actions and understand the consequences, not through pain or humiliation, but through breaking the chain of events or pattern and providing a forced pause. What those people’s families or classmates or teachers did was wrong, no matter their good intentions or lack thereof. Those kids did NOT deserve any of that, they deserved to be treated like people, taught the right way or dealt with using communication and patience… and they certainly did not deserve to carry the shame for decades after.
So another difficult step is to acknowledge the fallacies of those who hurt you back then, (at some point forgive and move forward, but that’s a whole other post!) and acknowledge that your inner kid may still be feeling that pain. What that inner child deserves now, what YOU deserve now, is to sit in the knowledge that the pain and shame you STILL feel is misplaced, and you can put that shit down now. That you’re doing your best with what you have, and if that meant you messed up, you have the knowledge to do better next time, and there’s nothing wrong with “next time.”
3. Look at pictures of yourself as a child. Seeing pictures of yourself as a joyful kid with no defense mechanisms, with no hangups, just being your bright, stardust self helps you understand how innocent your emotions were and can again be. It can also remind you of certain feelings felt cleanly: pure joy, pure curiosity, pure amusement. Something I read somewhere that stuck with me is that shame is the opinion of others imposed on to you, and what separates us from the brilliance of our essential being is usually what we’ve been informed we are by others in pain. Disabuse your inner kid and yourself of their notions.
4. Play and retro-play. How is your relationship with “play”? If it’s anything like mine or any adult I’ve had the pleasure of asking, it’s pretty rusty, I wager. But it’s very helpful to set aside time to engage in fun activities without any agenda. Adult lives are full of schedules and activities that seem fun but must result in some result to satisfy or be a valid expense of time. Run to keep in shape, not to just feel the wind in your hair. Draw to post on Insta and gain more followers. Work to earn money, be promoted… so on. Doing something fun for the sake of fun itself can help get you in touch with that pure joy for its own sake I talked up in the last item.
The next step, I feel, is retro-play… a made-up word, heh. It’s taking part in play you remember as soothing, fulfilling, fun, even if it’s considered infantile AF. Adult coloring books have embraced this idea. I’ve embraced it by buying my own Play-Doh and getting lost in making stuff or messing around with a Fun Factory. I do have my baby niece to thank for asking me to join her and thus unknowingly reminding me, but yeah. It’s helped me accept that I’m just a kid hiding in an adult body that only looks like she knows what she’s doing more often than not.
5. Ground and clear slates often. Take time to hit the reset button, every moment you need to. Recognize that every moment is a clean slate, and whatever is stressing you out and freaking out your inner kid can be made better. Deep breaths, time in nature, etc., can be ways to do this. Try to do it at least once a week. Letting pressure build for days on end can convince you life is less forgiving than it really is, and that’s terrifying to any inner kid. Give him/her room to breathe.
Unpopular opinion: A lot of very busy people stay really busy because they don’t want to feel stuff. Keep their inner kid overwhelmed and they can’t feel pain, right? Like jangling a buttload of keys in front of a kid who just skinned their knee, or is getting a vaccination, or anything else unpleasant. I’m going to be blunt: if you are doing that, stop. You are hurting yourself by ignoring your needs. You are telling yourself your feelings don’t matter and denying yourself of growth and relief, even if it hurts more when you first face whatever you’re running from. Stop suffocating that kid. See item 7 below, and don’t give me any guff about there is no time. Make the fucking time, for you.
6. Write letters to your inner kid. Oof. This is a tall order, but again, I think it’s highly effective. Once you’re more comfortable acknowledging and staying in touch with your inner child, write him or her a letter, expressing all the love and compassion you can muster. Write about your hopes for them, apologize if you feel the need, validate pain and neglect you’ve felt… anything. Just be open. No one else will read this letter unless you want them to, so there’s no need for that shame to kick in. I wrote mine a few years back and I’ve shown no one, hid the envelope where no one would find it… but once in a while, I stumble upon it, read, and cry grateful tears.
7. Let self-care be your only goal some days. I don’t care what anyone else says, basic self-care is ridiculously hard to do, day in and day out. A lot of us are used to doing what must be done and then some, but I’m of the strong opinion that, at least once every week or so, grooming oneself, cleaning one’s abode, entertaining oneself, and feeding oneself meals provided with love while one rests is essential. Some people may need that to include an outing of some sort, and that’s great, but if it doesn’t, that’s great too! Letting oneself not be concerned with time, schedules, to-dos helps us reset and be refreshed for the next days, and I feel like, as we became adults, many of us stopped feeling the right to just BE is a valid thing. Plus, when the noise stops, the silence can hold sage guidance and healing you didn’t know you needed.
8. Become the parent to yourself your inner kid always wanted. One of the toughest things I was told in therapy was, “You will never get your childhood back. Those years are gone forever, and the fact of the matter is, you won’t have a time again in which that space and acceptance will be given to you as it should’ve been when you were a kid.” It’s one of the most scarring things I’d ever heard in my life, and for a long time, I thought it meant I would walk around with a hole in my soul until I was given the mercy of dropping dead (I was even more dramatic than I am today, can you imagine?) But nowadays, though I agree that my childhood years are long past me, I disagree that space and acceptance is lost to me forever. NOT because someone else will give me it someday (that expansiveness and allowing that kids need IS something I can’t have now, as I am not a child learning the ways of the world and, in order to be a responsible adult, I need to maintain empathy and regard for others as I move through life), but because I have learned to nurture myself, through communicating with my inner child. It seems odd, but my inner child has served as my moral compass and north star for my best years now, via the kneeling before her, gazing into her baby eyes, and asking, “who do I want to be in this situation?” and “where do I want to end up next?”
Depression has been kept at bay for years now, because in my toughest hours, I feel I am a single mother with a very emotional child to take care of. Those moms can’t afford to lay in bed and not shower or cook meals for weeks on end (I mean, unless they have family rallying around them and are OK letting them close, but those moms are really lucky to have that consistently, from what I’ve seen.) If they want to do right by their children, they have to get up all on their own and care for the inconsolable kid freaking out because “es difícil!!!” They have to care, to talk, to hug, to feed, to love, even when all they want is to sleep their life away. And at some point…. It sounds impossible, but at some point, it stops being an “I have to” matter and becomes an “I really want to” thing. A labor of love, because you can see you are stardust, and you are so worth consistent devotion and love, even in your adult shell.
Anywho. I hope that helps someone who’s heard of the whole “inner child” thing but is skeptical. It has changed my life, and as my Mom would say, I “didn’t even believe in electricity.” Stay gold, and I’m sure I love you! :D