What is inner child work?
Taking a look at what the term 'Inner child' means and how this relates to how we show up as adults.
'Inner Child work'- it's a term we hear about so much these days, so what is it about?
What does the term inner child mean?
Everyone has inner child parts. Within our subconscious, we’ve been collecting messages from our life experience and environment since conception and generating memories, emotions and beliefs that inform our way of being and responding to ourselves and our environment. Another way of putting it: Our entire life experience from conception is held within our nervous system, it holds the impact life has had on us. Whether our mind remembers experiences or not, our body/ nervous system (NS) does, and this informs how we move forward in life.
What has my inner child got to do with my nervous system?
Many of us hold childhood experiences that didn’t get integrated at the time. When an experience we have as a child isn't integrated, I.e. is unable to be completed, such as a suppressed or unexpressed emotion or an in-completed protective response, that experience gets stored as a stressor in our NS. We can think of it as a younger part of us stored within our subconscious that wants to repair and heal what never happened and was needed at the time. These unintegrated experiences get stored within our nervous system as stressors which we then carry into adulthood.
How does this impact me and my quality of life?
We don't just have one inner child. We have multiple younger parts of us from various stages of our development where an experience wasn't integrated. Everyone has these younger parts. It's about how aware we are of their impact on our present. When stored stressors remain unconscious and build up within our nervous system, we find it hard to respond from the true present moment. We might find ourselves easily triggered (expressing a past reaction to a present situation), and our inner child parts start running the show. This can make us feel activated and/or in a state of constant dis-regulation as we go about our lives. It can also manifest as a decline in physical health and the onset of physical pain in our body. As humans, we are driven towards wholeness, meaning we will repeat what we've not repaired until we become conscious of it and are able to be with and finally release what our NS had been carrying so that it's no longer activating us in our present.
What is your approach to inner child work?
I often see inner child work painted as a very painful, upsetting, and traumatic type of thing. I don't hold that view. These subconscious younger parts of us are a source to our creativity, our joy, our wonder, and when we tap into that, we can find that whatever needs to come up and be healed, will do so without us digging for it. My approach is about gently bringing to consciousness whatever needs to be completed and released on a physiological level for it to be integrated. This allows our nervous system to regain its flexibility and capacity to bring us back into balance, where we can once again choose our responses. If this has sparked your curiosity, get in touch for a discovery call and we can talk more about your intentions and my approach.
For now, here's a question to ask yourself; When do you notice your younger parts showing up in your life now? For me, I still get that bubbly excited feeling inside when I see fireworks, toyshops, baby animals, arts and crafts, swimming, going to an airport...the list goes on, and I know this is my inner child popping up! I wonder how yours speaks through you?
