Inner Child Work – What Is It and Can You Benefit?
Dr. Sheri Jacobson
March 13, 2023
by Andrea M. Darcy
‘Working with your inner child’ can sound a bit out there.
But the inner child is a psychotherapeutic concept that arose with Jung, and many therapists use forms of inner child work as a powerful tool to help clients. Could you benefit?
What is ‘inner child work’?
We were all at one time children. And the child you once were did not just up and vanish, to be replaced by a perfectly formed, always responsible adult.
Indeed, most of us act very much like children at least now and then. It’s in the moment you have a temper tantrum over a parking ticket, or fall into a panicky sense of abandonment when you learn your partner is going off for a three-week business trip.
And some of us, if we had a tough or loveless childhood, are actually children most (if not all) of the time. We might look like an adult, but inside is an angry five-year old who trusts no one and is secretly calling the shots.
In psychology, this part of your unconscious that represents the child you once were, and manifests as a sort of ‘other personality’ in social interactions, is often referred to as the ‘inner child’. (A more in-depth explanation is found in our connected article, ‘What is the Inner Child?’).
‘Inner child work’ is work you do either by yourself or with a therapist to resolve the childhood emotions and experiences this ‘inner child’ still holds, as well as harness the joy, innocence, and confidence that were your birthright.
What does ‘inner child work’ really involve, though?
By: Randen Pederson
Different types of therapists, counsellors, and coaches will have different approaches to inner child work.
Your therapist might not even call the process ‘inner child work’, but instead something along the lines of ‘healing the child within’ or ’embracing your child archetype’. You might even be doing inner child work under the guise of ‘shadow work’. Often it is as a child that we learn to repress things like sadness and anger that then become the hidden shadow.
Really, inner child work is any form of self discovery that helps you access the child you once were, along with the experiences and emotions that child was taught to repress. The general idea of inner child work is that that if you make an effort to contact, listen to and communicate with, and nurture your inner child, you can find and heal the roots of your issues as an adult.
Inner child work might take the form of:
- dialoguing (talking) with your inner child
- journaling from your inner child’s voice
- talking with a therapist from your inner child’s voice
- meditating to feel in touch with your inner child
- working with a pillow, doll or stuffed toy that represents your inner child
- ‘play’ techniques in the therapy room
- allowing yourself to be playful if real life and do things you loved as a child
- learning to ‘parent’ yourself (nurture and care for yourself).
It sounds odd. What is the real benefit of all that?
Yes, it can seem odd to be ‘talking’ to the ‘child within’ or ‘parenting yourself’. But the benefits are impressive. They include:
- accessing repressed memories that are holding you back
- being able to feel again after years of being numb
- gaining personal power and the ability to set boundaries
- learning how to take better care of yourself
- feeling self-compassion and liking yourself more
- being able to enjoy life and have fun again
- gaining self-confidence.
Why would my inner child hold hidden emotions?
By: tiffany terry
Childhood trauma leaves a child with shame, which means he or she will feel they have to hide their experience and/or emotions in order to survive.
If you were controlled by your parents, or if you were taught to believe you were only acceptable and loveable if you were ‘good’, then you would learn to hide the emotions like sadness or anger that got you into trouble.
If you experienced rejection, abandonment, or abuse, you would learn to hide your pain and fear to not be hurt or rejected again.
These repressed emotions then lead to cycles of self-sabotage in adulthood. We either seek the parenting we missed out in other people and always feel disappointed, rejected, and let down when they can’t fulfil our demands, or we refuse to let anyone close to hurt us that much again.
For example, if you were taught to repress pain, you might run from good relationships rather than allow yourself to be hurt. The end result is always feeling lonely. Or, if you were taught you must always be pleasing to win love, you can end up in codependent relationships.
Inner child work helps you to finally accept and feel your emotions, and to take care of the ‘child within’ and thus your adult self, too. Finally you become a ‘grown up’, able to honour and take care of your own needs.
Why can’t I achieve all of the above from my adult self?
As adults, we can be very hard on ourselves. Our own self-judgement and loathing can make healing and moving on difficult.
While we can blame and berate our adult self easily, who can blame a child?
Seeing unresolved childhood trauma, pain, and repressed emotions as a separate entity, an ‘inner child’, can help you to be more compassionate towards yourself. And the more empathy we can show towards ourselves, the faster we can process and heal our pasts.
But you are still your adult self when you do inner child work. It’s simply about accessing another part of your unconscious, or a side of your personality, if you like.
What psychological issues can inner child work help me with?
The issues that inner child work is known to be very suitable for include:
- childhood abuse – emotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse
- depression and anxiety
- anger management issues
- passive aggressive behaviour
- low self-esteem
- abandonment issues and borderline personality disorder (BPD)
- emotional numbness
- self-sabotage
- self-criticism
- relationship difficulties
- codependency and powerlessness.
But I don’t want to blame my parents….
Working with the inner child is not about unearthing all the things your parents did ‘wrong’ and getting angry at them. Yes, you might spend time letting your inner child get furious at the parents she or he then had. The emotions need to be processed, and often at the level they were created. But with this comes the recognition that you are no longer that child.
Therapy also helps you recognise who the adult you is, along with his or her personal power and mature perspective. You might find that after a period of allowing yourself to feel anger and sadness towards others you find all new understanding and compassion, able to see others are not perfect either and had their own unmet needs to struggle with.
Would you like to try inner child work with a experienced, kind therapist? Harley Therapy connects you with some of London’s top mental health practitioners. Not in the UK? We can introduce you to online therapists who can help you no matter where you might live.
Andrea M. Darcy is a health and wellbeing writer as well as mentor who often writes about trauma, relationships, and ADHD. Find her on Instagram @am_darcy
Thank you for this article. Since my father died four years ago my therapist have been working through many of the issues above…emotional abuse, verbal abuse, covert incest, abandonment, anxiety etc. I was too afraid to see or feel it when he was alive. These last months my Therapist/psychiatrist explained I split off the child part of myself and I have written in my therapy journal when all of a sudden the child writes something and it is like the adult hears it for the first time. This week coming we are trying the “kid” attending therapy and talking. I am scared but know the kid needs help. My therapist is my safe person otherwise it would be too scary.
Hi Pat, very glad you have found a good therapist for you! Sounds like you are working through a lot but have found a good support system. We wish you courage with your journey ahead. Best, Harley Therapy.
My adult daughter was covertly abused and then abandoned by her father when we divorced and he chose to have no no further relationship. Now whenever she attempts to have a relationship with a man this child emerges gums blazing and puts a stop to it. My daughter has had much therapy but says she feels overtaken by a tantrumming child and her adult self is frustrated and hopeless feeling this will never improve – any help out there?
Hi Karen, she’s a lucky person to have a mother she can turn to for support, and who cares so much. It’s actually a common side effect of abuse and abandonment, to then have anxiety and overreaction in relationships. And there is not only help, there are types of therapy exactly created to deal with this sort of thing. we suggest you read our article here http://bit.ly/findlovetherapy
Please turn follow in facebook.
Hi there, sorry we don’t know what you are asking here, could you rephrase it? thanks.
Hello,
I’m looking for a therapist that can help me to heal my inner child.
I discovered a massive trauma that had when I was 2 and I believe it is the author of the insecurities I have today.
Hi Krystal, great to hear you are ready for that big step of finding a therapist. Childhood traumas definitely do form us but therapy can indeed help. We don’t know where you are located, or if you want to do therapy over the internet or in person. Depending on how that trauma has affected you (for example if you have c-PTSD) you might want to do a type of therapy first to stabilise you, such as CBT or EMDR, before a long term, deep diving therapy (See our article on therapies for trauma http://bit.ly/therapyfortrauma). A good 80% of talk therapies look at your childhood as a way to heal the present, but if you want to do ‘inner child work’ exactly, you’d need to ask the therapist you are interested in if that is something they are interested in. It was Jung who first developed the idea, so a therapist with Jungian training or a Jungian influence would offer it, but so might a transpersonal therapist or a integrative therapist. Best, HT.
How is a therapeutic relationship effected when the therapist accidentally traumatized you because it’s the same that was done to you in the past i.e. rejection
Hi Kim, depends how it is handled. If you feel this way, you need to tell your therapist and talk it through. If you were heavily rejected in the past and/or have borderline personality disorder, you might perceive everything as rejection. Talking about it means seeing if you have read things correctly, in which case they can be rectified, or if you’ve overreacted, in which case it’s a great learning curve. Best, HT.
Thank you for the article, Harley Therapy. I found it helpful but still have questions.
I started therapy in September last year (2019) following a crisis in a relationship which left me numb inside, totally rejected, feeling unbearable emotional pain that I could not share with anyone, least of all my wife, and absolutely desperate. I found a wise and kind but totally professional therapist who could see me the same week and saved my life. I am still working with her and still getting over the feelings of rejection. Together we realised that the depth of my reaction was because of unmet childhood needs and we started working with the inner child alongside the other issues I had. This is bearing fruit.
My therapist is very non-directive which i find frustrating at times; I have spent all my career of 40 years working in technical and mathematical areas where plans and procedures are important. I am not really sure how the inner child therapy works, whether I need to be working through repressed memories, or emotions, from childhood or whether just letting Young David talk to her about anything in the session is beneficial.
Also, as we have been working on this, I have found I am becoming far more emotional. I have laughed more in the last few weeks than for years but also cried more, I am hypersensitive to any hint of rejection or lack of attention, but also to a kind word, and I have times of non-specific anxiety. I am slowly becoming more able to soothe Young David through those times. Is this normal, to be expected?
I can find a number of useful articles online about what inner child work is but very little about what happens in a session and nothing about the client experience. I know I can discuss all this with my therapist but our sessions already seem so short with so much I want to talk about and another view would be helpful too. I don’t want to waste a minute of it. I can’t wait for the day week when I can go and report no periods when I felt my emotions were unbearable. Those times ARE getting less frequent and shorter though.
Thank you
David
Hi David, it is absolutely normal for the first part of the therapy journey to leave us suddenly an emotional mess. For many of us we’ve spent years repressing everything, and when we suddenly give ourselves ‘permission’ to feel it’s like opening a Pandora’s box. This is why many therapists will let you know that you might feel worse before you feel better. Or will ask first about how stable your life is and help you to stabilise before doing deep work. We would really advise you do, however, talk over all these questions about inner child etc with your therapist, also your feeling of wanted to be more directed. Often these seemingly ‘practical’ or ‘meta’ conversations lead to bigger things that help us explore ourselves. The very way we feel about therapy etc links to other patterns of thinking, being, behaving from the past. So it’s not at all time wasted. Rather think of all the time you are wasting being anxious about this all by not asking! Best, HT
This article is really helpful, I have a history of abuse as well and would say I have quite an insecure attachment. Something I’ve noticed is that after a year of feeling more secure with my therapist, she moved and everything shifted to online. At the end of every session lately I feel like a kid putting my hands over my eyes and just pretending nothing is happening, almost as if I know then she has to stay with me and can’t leave. It feels manipulative but also really young, like a child so afraid of being left or afraid of what’s next I just tune out what’s happening/refuse to accept reality and wait for them to choose me and stay.
I’m curious what age this act of tuning out/burying my head in the moment is reflecting and if you might have any insight on how to help heal process through that scared child part of me?
Hi Ashley, we’d say the best thing would be to talk about all this with your therapist. That’s the point of therapy, to be open, to share all, to use what happens in the therapeutic relationship as a stepping stone for deeper exploration. Is there a reason you don’t feel you can talk about this with your therapist? This is not uncommon when a therapist moves or changes their process, many clients experience reactions, very important to talk about them. We can’t say the age as we don’t know you and your history, but your therapist does. And how to heal depends on what experiences it arises from. Again, we’d say the big question here is why you don’t trust your therapist enough to talk about this. Are you trying to impress her? Good you tell her so. Taking the brave step of doing so, talking about all this openly, can really propel your forward, and help you learn proper trust and honesty in relating. And if she is even a half decent therapist she won’t at all be surprised but rather also see it as productive. Best, HT.
Thank you for this article and the insights it has given me. One stumbling block I recognise in approaching a therapist is that I feel like I am that small child again who was met with either rejection or violence when asking for help. Although I know a therapist wouldn’t react that way, it is the feeling of being a small child again which makes me uncomfortable and somewhat ashamed. It is easier for me to retreat into my childhood state of withdrawn silence and so the cycle of disappointment and frustration with my life continues. This article has however propelled me to change that and make that all important first step. Thank you again.
That’s good to hear, Linda. It’s actually very normal to act like a helpless child around a therapist. It’s kind of like ‘hairdresser syndrome’ where each time we promise ourselves we’ll be assertive then walk in, and just agree with everything the hairdresser says. This usually happens when we come from a childhood where we weren’t allowed to have a voice, so being around someone our brain deems as an authority figure puts us into a kind of stress response. A great way to deal with this is to share this with the therapist right away. Just go ahead and explain in your first session that it was hard to get to the session as you feel like a kid who will be rejected. We’d also suggest that you look into a type of therapy called ‘schema therapy’ and see if it might be for you. It has a warmer, stronger therapist/client relationship and is geared for those with serious trust issues due to childhood trauma. Best, HT.
Are there any therapists on your website that do inner child work? i have BPD and i really think this could help.
Hi there Vianna, I’ve asked with the team and there are several in the London office who fit the category. If you want to give the office a call and have a chat with them they can make suggestions based on your needs 0345 474 1724. Best, HT.
thanks for info