Inner child work involves realizing how adverse experiences in early life shaped our ways of relating to ourselves, others, and the world, how these patterns persist well into our adult years, and how to be released from these cycles given their tendency to cause suffering.
Honouring Childhood Trauma
We have all experienced childhood trauma. Not every person has experienced Big-T Trauma such as childhood abuse, a parent dying at an early age, or a life-threatening accident. Yet every person has, by virtue of being human in today’s stressed-out and competitive society, experienced small-t trauma, such as not receiving parental emotional attunement as often as it was needed, or feeling inferior for coming in second place.
As trauma expert Gabor Maté teaches, “trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside of you as a result of what happens to you”. If a child is not supported in processing and discharging their emotional pain following an adverse experience, the emotion will remain unprocessed within the body. This pain, accumulated with other unprocessed experiences, adversely affects our thoughts, behaviours, ways of socializing, organ/tissue development and functioning, the state of the nervous system, and more. These are examples of what happens inside of you as a result of what happened to you.
Coping Mechanisms
In response to our childhood traumatic experiences, we each developed adaptive strategies to cope with the unresolved emotional pain. Part of this adaptation was the forming of beliefs or hypotheses (e.g. “I am inferior”), and from there adjusting our behaviours, thinking patterns, and social style in ways that soothed and protected us. The strategies we adopted were informed by many factors, including our biological wiring, what we learned from our families, what behaviours our caretakers would and would not tolerate, what gained us social acceptance, and more. Here are some common examples:
A child figuring out that making a mistake leads to emotional punishment from her father becomes a perfectionist.
A child who feels small, powerless and scared amid frequent family conflict finds emotional safety in becoming the schoolyard bully.
A child whose single parent gets home late from work learns that sugary foods (and the dopamine they provide) soothe their fear of being home alone.
A child who came to perceive themselves as inferior through a multitude of events, later develops traits of a narcissistic personality and makes constant attempts to prove their superiority to the world.
Making the Unconscious Conscious
Born of childhood trauma, each person’s beliefs and coping mechanisms merit deep compassion given the circumstances that created them. And yet, remaining unaware of our unprocessed trauma causes suffering in every area of our adult life. The ultimate power of inner child work lies in making the unconscious conscious. For as long as our childhood pain remains suppressed and unknown to us, this pain will run the show. If we choose not to address our trauma, we can remain in these patterns of unconscious emotional pain for the remainder of our lives.
Doing the Work
By making our childhood suffering a conscious process, a new and deepened world of healing opportunities become available to us, including:
Uncovering the stagnant and unprocessed emotions that were too overwhelming to experience when we were young.
Processing these emotions through individual and interpersonal practices, such as depth and holistic psychotherapy, journalling, indigenous healing ceremonies, contemplative practices, and inner child visualizations.
Developing a relationship with our inner child, and in turn knowing ourselves more deeply. This includes knowing what triggers us and why, and how we feel and act when we are triggered.
Remembering who we truly are, including our gifts, interests, and passions that we disconnected from amid the trauma. This knowledge is crucial for the life we wish to create, as it helps us discern what we want to cultivate and what we want to leave behind.
Cultivating acceptance, compassion, and gratitude for the emotional survival strategies we developed as children and how these strategies present today. Compassion is a beautiful antidote to shame, and unlike shame, compassion is very conducive to creating positive changes going forward.
After grieving the truth about the trauma inherent in our childhood, we can allow the strategies we developed for emotional survival (e.g. perfectionism, aggression, binge eating, acting superior to others) to go to rest. This creates new space within our bodies and lives, which we then have the opportunity to fill with authentic and healthy ways of living.
For those committed to the path of liberation from cycles of suffering, rest assured that developing a relationship with your inner child and offering her or him the necessary healing conditions will undoubtedly be a rewarding experience.
