Start Your Inner Child Healing With These 4 Easy Steps
It’s the age of healing, y’all! Let’s face it, even if you had such amazing sweet people as parents, they didn’t get an instruction manual, and a lot of the time, they can’t protect their child from developing traumas along the way. Regardless, many many people find themselves discovering parts of their inner child that need healing. Just because you are an adult, doesn’t mean you aren’t also a child. I once heard someone say on every birthday, you may be turning a new age, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t still all those years that came before. Yes, I may be 22, but i’m also 2, 12, 16, etc. Just because you’re getting older, doesn’t mean you don’t have that little kid still inside of you. They never went away, they’ve just been pushed into the background when you started needing to deal with more and more adult challenges.
Is your inner child pushed to the back of your head too? Instead of ignoring that little kid in you, let’s learn how to embrace them and fulfill the needs that they still have. Why is this important? Well, that inner child is still you! If you improve your relationship with your inner child, you are opening the door to healing your present self and help you move on as a more healed version of yourself. So, how do you heal your relationship with your inner child? Let’s get into it!
Curiosity Adventures
Kids are known for being curious. Where’d all that curiosity in you go? Now, when you don’t fully understand something, do you find yourself just accepting that you don’t understand it because, well that’s easier? I’m guilty of this one. It could be laziness. It could be the fact that you’ve been told to prioritize certain things. Maybe you’ve been disciplined for letting your curiosity “get the better of you” and guide your way. The thing is, these aren’t bad things at all! Whatever might have killed off your child-like sense of curiosity, don’t let yourself be convinced that curiosity is an unproductive quality! Curiosity can take you on some of the greatest adventures, curiosity can also help you learn more, it can even help you find fun throughout an otherwise mundane day! I think whoever wrote ‘curiosity killed the cat’ heard it wrong, ‘curiosity killed the kid’ in us.
Write A Letter
If you feel disconnected to your inner child, why not write a letter to them? Get to the root of what you want to know from the kid inside you, what you want to embrace about them, and what support you want to offer them. It may feel a little silly to write a letter to yourself, but acknowledging any distance between you and your inner child can actually draw those pieces of you closer together. Once you’re finished writing this letter to little you, try to read it as if you are that younger self. Hearing the love, curiosity and compassion an older version of yourself has to offer younger you can feel so healing.
Stop Limiting Your Body
Now, this isn’t to say that you should be running around all day until you drop as if you had the energy of a child. Our bodies aren’t the same as when we were younger and we do have some super reasonable restrictions. However, there are ways that we’re unnecessarily limiting our bodies, and letting loose and stop that limitation can open up a sense of child-like fun! Were you scolded and told to sit nicely, stop wiggling, stop fidgeting, etc? As a kid, we had to learn which environments were appropriate ones to move and rest our body however we want. But, hopefully as an adult, you know that you can’t be sitting on the tables at restaurants, or that you might get some weird looks if you walk all goofy around the street. But, as an adult, you get to decide what you do! If you want to have an epic dance party in your living room, do it! If sitting on the counter while sautéing your dinner sounds comfy, go for it! If you want to get your friends together for a pretty cool kickball tournament, do it! Kids look at the world in such a different way and they can really help make things less mundane in your day to day life.
Unpack Childhood Trauma
Oftentimes, trauma from your childhood can cause an uncomfortable relationship between you and your inner child. Sometimes, it’s hard to deal with really big problems we faced in the past on our own. Using a therapist or another resource to guide you along unpacking your childhood traumas can be so helpful to get you to understand what you might not have been able to process at the time. Using resources and unpacking childhood trauma can truly help you and the little kid in you get closer and have a healed relationship, not one where you’re pushing the little you away.
What’s your relationship with your inner child like? Are you working on some inner child healing? Let us know in the comments!