it’s time to heal your inner child
A majority of people grow up in either dysfunctional or less than optimal family environments. Even if you think that your childhood was healthy and perfect, there’s a good chance that you might have encountered some kind of trauma.
We all have our own wounds to deal with and they all manifest as problems in our adult life. And that’s why, in order to overcome our most pressing problems as adults, we must go back in time and work towards healing the child within us.
According to developmental psychologists, a majority of our problems stem from our early days of development. If our inner child is not healed, we may find it difficult to cope with challenges that life throws at us and experience strong negative emotions in our relationships and otherwise. For instance, if a person’s childhood wounds are associated with fear, then they can trigger anger and hate later in their adult life.
If you find yourself emotionally triggered and have a difficult time controlling it, chances are it may be a triggered event instead of a reaction to something that’s taking place right now. As Liz Mullinar writes in her book Heal For Life: How to Heal Yourself from the Pain of Childhood Trauma, “Remembering that a majority of all emotion comes from childhood, it is a really good idea to check whenever you are angry if it is about what is happening right now or is it reminding you of someone or something from your childhood.”
In order to heal and transform our childhood wounds, we must let go of logic and reason, and instead look at them through the lens of compassion, love and forgiveness. Working with a licensed therapist or counselor can be an effective step in this regard, because there’s a good chance you may re-traumatize yourself and remain attached to your wounds.
The key is to again revisit those unpleasant experiences — which can be both painful and challenging — but with the singular goal of releasing the negativity and toxicity within us. We have to again get in touch with our vulnerability if we want to make both ourselves and our lives better.
When we heal our inner child, we let go of the masks that we have been wearing all along in order to protect ourselves. And thus, we are able to discover and embrace our true selves.
Our wounded self drives us to embody archetypes — victim, vigilante, slave, rebel, hero, savior, and so on — to deal with life’s challenges. And in doing so, we create a new identity and forget our old real selves. But when we take care of our inner child and heal the deep-seated wounds, we start getting a sense of who we truly are, and equip ourselves to live authentic lives.
Let go of the characters you are playing and the masks you have been wearing, and work towards healing the wounds of your childhood. It’s not at all easy and sometimes may take a lifetime to uncover our true selves, but it’s a journey worth pursuing.
If this is something you relate with, trying increasing your awareness about the emotions that you feel and start journaling to capture your thoughts on paper. As you start noticing what emotions and situations affect you, you’ll understand yourself better and figure out effective ways to heal your inner child.
It’s crucial that we embrace our inner child, because only then we’ll be able to discover the essence of our true self and empower ourselves to be free and focus on things that truly bring joy to us.