Inner Child Healing (Part 2)
Inner Child Healing (Part 2)
Healing is a non-linear process. Healing the inner child helps us dive through the depths of the locked doors within ourselves. It assists us in reconnecting with our wounded and vulnerable aspects that influence our present. It is a process of self-discovery of our authentic version through forgiveness and self-compassion. This allows us to tend to our emotional wounds and lead a more fulfilling life ahead. In this blog, we’ll learn the ways to reconnect with our inner child, nurture and re-parent it.
Re-parenting Inner Child
Inner child re-parenting is where we learn to re-parent ourselves by providing ourselves with the love, care, emotional validation, and appreciation that we yearned for as children. Re-parenting also trains us to consciously provide security and comfort to us that our younger version needed. As we re-parent, we pave the way to reestablish a nurturing relationship with our wounded aspects during our formative years and heal the deep-rooted wounds through re-framing our self-perception and practising self-compassion.
This journey also fosters our self-esteem, facilitates healthier connections with self and others, and embarks on inner peace and personal growth. Let us further dive into the ways we can reconnect with our inner child.
Ways to Connect & Re-Parent
1. Journaling.
One of the most effective ways of reconnecting is through journaling. You can write letters to express your love and reassurance that your inner child is now safe with you. You can also explore your childhood pain and memories and how they impact your present through journaling. This process navigates you to understand your emotions, and triggers, and gain insights into your past.
2. Professional Assistance.
As healing uncovers deep traumas and uncomfortable memories, it is suggested to consult a trained and experienced therapist who can provide support and guidance in our inner child healing. With professional support, we can learn to explore our wounds in a less triggering manner, know when to pause and equip ourselves with adequate healing tools.
3. Visualization.
Visualization is a powerful tool to be utilized to connect with your inner child. It is strongly recommended to start your visualization journey with a trained therapist. Visualization helps us to imagine ourselves as a child and engage in conversations with our inner child by offering our support and nurturing. It is a process to embrace our inner child, allow it to express itself, and provide much-needed validation and comfort.
4. Art & Creative Expressions.
Art is another way to regulate our emotions and provides us with a safe space to reconnect. You can always paint, draw, write or engage in other creative expressions that allow you to represent and express the experiences and feelings of your inner child. This process would navigate us to access, explore, and release our long-buried painful emotions and memories.
5. Meditation.
Similar to visualizations, guided meditations are also designed specifically for healing that can be acquired from online platforms. It helps us to meet and nurture our inner child through guided vocals. Hence, it is important to note that like visualizations, guided meditation can be a powerful tool and may trigger us if pushed beyond limit. It is better to consult a mental health practitioner for further assistance.
6. Self-Compassion & Forgiveness.
You can also start your re-parenting by practising self-compassion and forgiving yourself for beating yourself way more than needed. Sometimes, the cruellest person to us is ourselves. You can start healing by learning to be gentle with yourself and treating yourself the way you treat a friend. Gradually learn to release the anger or resentment that you may hold towards yourself and forgive yourself. This would give a space for your inner child to feel safe and validated with you.
Benefits of Inner Child Healing
1. Emotional Healing.
The heart of healing is the emotional healing that it brings along. By gradually revisiting and acknowledging old traumas and wounds, we can release our pent-up emotions, ultimately leading to reduced emotional pain and other mental health concerns. It helps us understand what is needed to be healing to lead an emotionally fulfilling life. It also would reduce the physical symptoms of emotional pain that we often experience such as aches, fatigue, restlessness, etc.
2. Increased Self-Awareness.
Reconnecting enhances our self-awareness, leading to personal growth and healing. When we start our emotional healing journey, we will start to understand our triggers, behavioural or emotional patterns, coping, and reactions better. We also would start to be aware of our emotional triggers when they happen and rather than complying with the triggers with old patterns and reactions, we would strive to break unhealthy patterns and coping styles.
3. Enhanced Self-Esteem.
Wounded inner child often manifests in our negative self-belief and perceptions about self. An unhealed inner child would make us question our self-worth. By healing, we are re-parenting our inner child to learn to challenge unhealthy self-concepts and replace them with more self-affirming and positive beliefs, leading to enhanced self-esteem and confidence. Confidence is about accepting yourself for who you are and learning to be comfortable under your skin.
4. Healing Relationships.
An unhealed inner child often tags along with its wounds and affects our relationship with others. It usually makes us have trust issues, self-isolate, be fearful, cold, people pleasing or even self-sacrifice in relationships due to past pain, especially due to the initial relationship we shared with our caregivers. With inner child healing, we learn to heal ourselves and lead a healthier connection with others through addressing and healing the root causes of our relationship issues.
5. Improved Management Skills.
We are often subjected to stress and opt for unhealthy coping skills such as suppression, overworking, substance usage, intimacy, dark humour, sleeping, and emotional eating to cope with our unresolved issues. Through inner child healing, we learn to manage and respond to our stressors in a healthier manner, leading to emotional resilience and a reduction in our overall stress levels.
Conclusion
In short, healing our inner child navigates us to break free from the strings of our past, leading towards enhanced emotional well-being and embarking on our personal growth. By acknowledging and re-parenting our inner child, we pave the way to build healthier relationships with ourselves and others and enhance our balance and resilience. This journey helps us to embrace ourselves for who we are, and heal to unlock our true selves.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that inner child healing may be emotionally draining as we revisit our deep-rooted old wounds. Healing deep wounds may not be as easy as it appears to be. It requires us to equip ourselves with a lot of patience and self-compassion. Thus, it is strongly suggested to start your inner child healing along with a trained mental health practitioner. Our therapists would assist you to gradually navigate through your past pain and accommodate with tools and skills to heal the inner child according to individual needs and goals.
“Healing inner child manifests itself through the change in the way we perceive ourselves; a more positive view.”
If you enjoyed reading this, why not broaden the horizon by reading our Part 1?
You can read the blog here.
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