“The little girl or little boy is still alive in you. It shows up in how we treat others, how we’re able to connect, and what we do when we’re triggered by the people closest to us. Our childhood lives in our daily patterns— not just our body.”

That’s where we ended last week’s discussion of our inner child, with the idea that there are echoes of a little child in each of us that are waiting to– sometimes for the first time– be heard.

So how can we learn to hear, see, and heal the inner child in ourselves? The first step is to recognize what unmet needs look like when they’re ignored or unanswered for years, if not decades.

Because sometimes our most familiar patterns aren’t choices we’re making but habits we’re falling back into, and we must learn to differentiate between our intuition guiding us and our traumas– both big and small– misleading us.

We can’t go back in time and relive our childhoods with no pain, trauma, or disappointment. But we can reflect on our inner child wounds and reparent ourselves by giving ourselves the nurturing care we needed when we were children.

If you’re part of my Path Back to You course, you got special bonus content last week (and every week!) in which I share my own personal inner child wounds. If you’re like me and had two good, devoted, loving parents, it may be trickier to identify some of these inner child wounds. But also like me, you might have felt responsibility beyond your years to maintain the status quo in your house. To not be a problem-causer. To not rock the boat.

Whether you had a traumatic circumstance that put inordinate pressure on you to preserve your family’s happiness like I did with my beloved sister’s passing, or you were simply born an only child to parents who put all their hopes, dreams, and identity on your shoulders, you may have felt that the happiness of everyone in your household depended on you.

This pressure often leads to perfectionism and people-pleasing behavior in adulthood.

Can you see that in yourself?

The need to control your environment, your experiences, and others’ perceptions of you? If you unpack that compulsion, what inner child healing needs to take place? Do you, maybe, need to be set free from the pressure of others’ love and expectations and learn how to listen to your own voice? Your own hopes? You own dreams?

Some childhood experiences are more obviously traumatic. When people go through traumatic experiences, they may start picturing the worst outcomes to protect themselves from future surprises. It’s a defense mechanism - a way of staying safe and ready for anything because they are scared of being caught unaware again and left vulnerable. They might look for betrayal around every corner, and call in chaotic experiences because that feels more familiar than stability.

Instead of berating yourself for toxic behavior, can you move toward a posture of compassion? Can you ask your inner child what message he or she needed to hear in childhood? When you were a child, you didn’t have the autonomy or power to take care of your physical and emotional needs. But now you do! You can tell your inner child who is so wary of others motives, “Yes, some people want to hurt you. But a lot of people are kind and good and you are smart enough to know which is which, and you are strong enough to recover if you get it wrong.”

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Some children grow up just trying to avoid conflict in their house. Whether it’s from a parent, a sibling, or a circumstance, the message their inner child hears is, “life is easier for all of us if you don’t need anything.”

If this is you, in adulthood you might find yourself withdrawing from conflict in your personal or professional life because it’s easier to just cut people off– physically or emotionally– than it is to express your own needs.

You might be so accustomed to turning down the volume on your needs that even you can’t name them.

You don’t care what show you watch, what food you eat for dinner, or what color your house gets painted. Part of you might even “check out” mentally in the middle of conversations that feel like they’re headed into dangerous territory. You crave deeper connections, but the potential for conflict never seems worth it.

What messages might your inner child need to hear?

That you’re allowed to take up space.

That conflict isn’t always bad, it’s a way of knowing someone deeper.

That your needs and wants were and are important, even if they aren’t convenient.

When you heal your inner child, you make space for parts of you that have always been. You let them into the light for maybe the first time.

And it’s not always a pretty process. Let’s remember, childhood comes with some selfishness, tantrums, and overwhelm. But it’s an essential part of healing. It’s like you have a wound that has been stitched shut, but there’s an infection brewing beneath the surface. Things may look okay on the outside, but you can’t truly heal until you disinfect the wound from the inside out.

When you start to let your inner child heal, you will hopefully start expressing your true self.

I want to warn you; all the people who benefitted from the ways you kept your inner child small will probably not love the new you. People will get triggered, and they can even blame you for their own triggers.

There will be moments in life when showing up for yourself will mean leaving behind the people who don’t.

Often the path of being true to yourself means the path of being a mirror. It's not a path of comforting others, but the absolute opposite of that. You show people what they've been running away from, you make them question their own existence, choices, and shadows, and that's understandably uncomfortable for a lot of people. Accountability is not something that people are a fan of; on the contrary we have been conditioned to be really good at pointing fingers at others instead of looking at ourselves.

Something I’ve been doing over the past year that has been extremely helpful is asking someone if they have the emotional capacity to talk before I begin to speak about a potential emotional or triggering subject. This is a way that I can show compassion even to people who may have hurt me, and it’s never a good idea to start a hard conversation when someone knows they don’t have the capacity for one.

You also don’t have to be available to everyone who wants access to you.

You don’t have to pick up the phone. You can move to a new town or a new city or a new country. You can decide which topics you’re willing to talk about and which are off the table for a season or indefinitely, if you’re to move forward in a relationship. You can create boundaries that protect you while you’re still figuring out how to express your inner child.

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Remember, there is a part of you that will always tether you to your inner child. And that is special and sacred. Don’t let down your own inner child. Protect him or her the way you always wanted to be protected.

Listen. Nurture. Play.

Honoring yourself, even at the expense of someone else, is the biggest gift you can give the child that is still alive in you. Don’t be afraid to establish boundaries as you heal. The ones who push against them? They are the ones who benefitted from keeping you small.

So don’t waste your energy trying to convince those who seem determined to misunderstand you. Those people are so blinded by their fears and ego that they can’t see anything but the reality they’ve created in their own minds.

We’ve talked about shame and limiting beliefs. Some of the people who push against your healing are so conditioned by the micro-culture of their generation and the limiting beliefs they were handed that they don’t have any awareness that healing is possible or even desired.

You can’t force healing or higher consciousness on someone. It blooms from within through deep inner work and unraveling layers of your own ego. It’s best to share your healing energy with those who are open-minded and ready to heal themselves.

Despite those who might need time to accept the healed and healing you, push forward with self compassion.

Be your own hero. You deserve it.

If you want practical tools for how to heal your inner child and more personal stories of what inner child work has looked like in my own life, join The Path Back to You. I hope you’ll continue the work with us next week on the blog as we unpack Mother Wounds.

dive even deeper on this topic here

This journey can get so lonely, frustrating, or bring out the worst in you but you don’t have to do it alone. We are here to guide your process and show you how to become a wise parent to your inner child.