Healing Your Wounded Inner Child

Comforting the Inner Child

I was facilitating my weekly group at a local drug rehab and we were discussing the relationship between addiction and having a wounded inner child. Most of the group members could relate, but one member objected, saying: “I had a great childhood. My drinking started when me and my friends rode our bikes to the store, stole a six pack, and drank it in the woods. It had nothing to do with my parents.”

This same member admitted that he was aware that his dad was an alcoholic, although he claimed to never have seen his father “acting drunk.” I asked, “What do you think you learned from the fact that your father was an alcoholic?” The group member stuck to his story that, as he put it, he was to blame for his addiction to alcohol. Like this client, most of us fail to see the connection between our circumstances growing up and our day-to-day behavior now.

What is Inner Child Work?

Healing a wounded inner child is not about assigning blame. It is about understanding how we responded to the circumstances of our lives growing up and how that set of responses became dysfunctional. Having a wounded inner child doesn’t mean you suffered brutality, cruelty, violence or severe neglect. Inner child work is the effort to understand those wounds and undo dysfunctional patterns of behavior that resulted from our childhood experience.

How Does the Inner Child Get Wounded?

When a child grows up with adverse experiences, the child is typically unable to process these experiences because they are so painful and overwhelming. They become internal wounds that trigger whatever protective behaviors the child can muster. For instance, if a child hears parents fighting all the time, the child may begin to shut down whenever exposed to even a hint of anger. Such "protective" coping mechanisms reflect the child's level of understanding and emotional maturity. Over time, the coping mechanisms develop into neural pathways that “codify” the child’s responses to adversity. So when stimuli that triggers the fears, pains, or memories of the adverse experiences occur, the neural pathway fires off habitual responses. These might include self-soothing behaviors, dissociation, or shutting down. Now as an adult, the person shuts down and withdraws whenever the spouse expresses disagreement.

Habitual Responses Reflect Inner Child Wounds

In childhood, these coping responses may have had some effectiveness, but in adulthood, they become less and less functional. For example, a child whose parents continually broke the promises they made may have developed a distrust response to anything that looks like it requires dependence. Distrust was effective in minimizing disappointment for the child. In adulthood, however, this distrust can block intimacy or prevent the person from engaging in meaningful relationships. It may be that the wounded inner child is still trying to manage things.

Everyday problems create small wounds, but brutality, cruelty, violence , neglect and continual shaming or humiliation can create deep wounds in children. Children can also be wounded by experiences such as having to take on parent-level responsibility, inconsistent care-giving by parents, lack of emotional presence and support from parents, or having certain emotions disallowed. These experiences leave “marks” that shape our behavior and sense of self.

Do you people-please? Try to control things? Persistently feel not good enough? Fear abandonment? Have difficulty setting and maintaining boundaries? Soothe yourself by means of substances or compulsive behavior? These may be signs of a wounded inner child.

A Wounded Inner Child Can be Healed

At EMDR Associates, we can help you learn to recognize and heal your inner child. There are a variety of methods available for such work including Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Eye Motion Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). But whatever method is best suited for you, healing your wounded inner child involves several things:

1: Becoming Aware of the Inner Child

First, it is important to become aware of when your inner child “shows up” and of how old you feel when it does. Are you 4, 6 , 9, 12? How does it feel to know that this “child” is still trying to run things? Are you able to perceive the limitations to the ability of, say, a six-year-old to manage things for you now? 

2: Learning What Your Inner Child Needs

Next, it is essential to understand what that child part of you needs. A child who was subject to regular violence or beatings needs safety. A child who was frequently humiliated and teased needs comfort and acceptance. A child who was neglected or ignored needs to be seen and cared for.

3: Reparenting the Inner Child

Once you recognize your inner child and understand what it needs, it is important to compassionately fill those needs. This is called reparenting and you do this by treating yourself with the genuineness, consistency, and warmth that you failed to get from your parents. Reparenting is a way of befriending yourself, recognizing deficits experienced in your childhood, and trying to fill them.

Begin to Heal with EMDR Associates

Whether you have anxiety, addictions, relationship struggles, or don't like yourself, Inner child work can help you get to the root of your experience and help you begin to heal at a deeper level. At EMDR Associates, we are dedicated to helping you do this work safely with gentleness and compassion.