Reparenting your Inner Child
Despite it’s overuse, the idea of an ‘inner child’ is actually an important and useful concept that arises from psychotherapy. Let’s start by defining the term inner child. Our inner child is a part of ourselves that’s been present ever since we were conceived, through utero and all the developing years after where we were young and developing into ourselves: baby, infant, toddler, young child and middle school year. Your “inner child” is a part of your subconscious that has been picking up messages way before it was able to fully process what was going on (mentally and emotionally). It holds emotions, memories and beliefs from the past as well as hopes and dreams for the future.
The inner child can be seen as a ‘sub personality’. The concept of an inner child often stems from internal family systems therapy (IFS), which posits that all adults have an inner world or system of "parts" that make up who they are, including protective adult parts and younger child parts. These parts are facets of a personality and are not to be confused with dissociative identity disorder (DID). They are not "multiple personalities”, they are parts of the same internal system.
The inner child can hold repressed emotions- all the things you were taught as a child not to feel if you wanted to be be loved. So if you were only offered attention when ‘good’, you might find the inner child holds rebellion, sadness, and anger. Or, if you experienced trauma or abuse, you would have learned to hide pain and fear to survive. The inner child can also hide all of the things we were taught to think about ourselves by parents, teachers, or other adults. This can sound like, “you better not say what you really think”. “Don’t try to get that promotion you just aren’t smart enough”. “Big boys don’t cry”, or “sex is dirty”.
By addressing the child part of yourself that holds fear, trauma, wounding, and negative beliefs- we can begin to give ourselves what we didn’t receive as kids- attention, acknowledgement, love, attunement. Some of us tend to be protective and defensive around our childhood experience, but we have a unique opportunity to heal and consciously choose different behavior as adults. Regardless of what we have experienced in our past. This process is called reparentin. Reparenting is the act of giving yourself what you didn’t receive as a child.
Do you often neglect your own needs in service of others? Deny your own emotions, and others? This could be a sign that you have a hard time connecting to your inner child. Children take up space and have needs and emotions unapologetically. Its part of being human. Current research tells us empathizing with a child’s emotion is more connecting and relieves the intensity of the emotion because the child feels seen and heard. How often do you feel seen and heard (by yourself or others?)
Inner child work can help:
Discover and release repressed emotions
Help you recognize unmet needs
Resolve unhelpful patterns of behaviors and thoughts
Create an opportunity to reparent yourself and offer kindness and care where caregivers could/ did not
Establish a more compassionate and empathetic relationship with self
Cultivate self compassion
If you are interested in doing inner child work, get in touch with a licensed mental health counselor who can help you reparent this part of yourself.
Here is a inner child video meditation to get started.
