Not everyone connects with their inner child or even has the desire to. What made you want to explore this concept?
Well I had to realize that all my adult ways weren’t working. I tried therapy, I tried to handle the here and now, I tried to mask, I drank, I tried to handle each situation as an adult would. Unfortunately the trauma that occurred during adolescence was never settled then so as an adult I went to therapy for relief. CBT helped a bit, EMDR didn’t help at all. It wasn’t for me, it opened doors too quickly. I still wasn’t getting the help I needed. I had to be honest with myself. I worked to quiet the external noises, to quiet my adult voice and instead I listened. That’s when my inner child popped up. That’s how the work started. He didn’t necessarily want to talk to me, he didn’t think I could control the situation. It took a while for me to understand that that was my inner child speaking up. It took a lot of digging, a lot of looking in the mirror, dropping of the ego, and giving time and space to my core needs- which for my situation was a lack of nurturing, a lack of protection from the world, a lack of healthy exposure to challenges to the world. I would describe it as being thrown into a deep end of a pool before you’re ready. I asked Little Michael “Why don’t you want to get into the pool anymore?” and I had to listen to his feelings, I had to validate him, try to earn his trust. We talked about steps, maybe entering the kiddie pool first, maybe just walking in the rain, anything water related. You have to meet your inner child where they are at and earn their trust again and again. The survival skills I had built up until then were kicking and screaming in the pool when there was perceived danger. And that translates to so much heartache in adulthood. For me a major one was living with debilitating anxiety. And those taught survival skills that follow us into adulthood is what I work with my clients on. It all starts back in childhood. The sooner I can reconnect them to that original learned coping skill, the sooner they get better.
Inner child work is all individualized. It’s based on how you think, the way you are able to conceptualize how trauma manifests currently. Some people may not even want to identify this child while they are in adulthood. They think they’ve moved past it. They don’t even want to look at their inner child. Maybe they don’t even know how to start. Personally for me, It was helpful to hang a picture of me as a kid in my office. This reminds me every day to check in with my feelings. Where are they coming from? How old are these thoughts? Then I can communicate. I can offer understanding and even apologize that these traumatic events happened to Little Michael. I tell him “It was not your fault, you were a child, etc.” Sometimes young adult Michael will come out with his fuck the world anger. He wants to push back on anything anyone says even if it is trying to help. But young adult Michael needs healing too. He needs to trust adult Michael as well.
I see now the way I move through life is like traveling with a caravan of these different Michaels. Baby Michael may be in the back seat crying, adolescent Michael may be raging in the front, resisting the trip. You have to go through life as their parent. You have to be fair. You have to be nurturing. You have to be careful. Your passengers don’t trust you. If they trusted you they wouldn’t be screaming “Mask! Isolate, don’t let anyone get too close! Don’t trust anyone!
So it sounds like you have the mental separation when communicating to younger versions of yourself. Do you have that separation with current day Michael? Do you communicate with him?
Absolutely. You have to talk to your current day self otherwise you get caretaker fatigue. If you’re constantly people pleasing these internal systems, you are ignoring your present day self. What I have found to work is when you are all together, you remind them of all the changes you’ve made, all the work you’ve done on yourself, and you do that work to help them move forward. Also it is so important to check in with your current self. Ask yourself what do I need in this moment? Are the people in my life treating me well? Are they nurturing? Keep in mind it’s a slippery slope when you start thinking externally. You don’t want to assign external factors as the major contributors to your happiness. But in the beginning of this process it is helpful to surround yourself with positive influences. Identifying what you need is key. You have to be honest with yourself. If no one was looking, if there is no societal expectation, what is it that you need? How would you articulate that to yourself? Is it a hug, a dinner made for you, a pat on the back, words of encouragement? Do you need someone to remind you of everything you’ve gone though, everything you’ve survived? This is especially hard for men. And we know now how toxic societal bred masculinity can be. It isn’t working for us. It’s time to accept that and move onto what does work for us. All of these things you can now offer yourself in the moment. You can offer them to your younger selves.
Would you consider your inner child your true self?
The thing about trauma is that it traps you in that time where the event occurred. You can’t bust out of it. If you had trauma at five like I did, you don’t have the skills to get yourself out. Your psyche is stunted there, your survival skills are stunted there. You look around and see that no one is normalizing your experience, you realize that you have to bottle this up, no one is going to be here for me. Or you develop a fear of abandonment, you attach yourself to other people easily. So what I’ve done for myself and for my clients is look through their whole lives, all parts of them. How did they look at the world? How do they look at people around them? How they were hurt. What they needed. Once my clients began to make those connections they saw positive changes in their lives. It is hard. And it takes a good practitioner to sit there with you and go through everything and pull the weeds. Some practitioners watch the grass grow, empathize with you, or they help you mow the lawn and ignore the weeds. I’m on my hands and knees pulling the weeds with you in the brutal sun. But the work is getting done.
What this can mean in therapy
For me, “inner child” is a way of talking about the younger experiences, feelings, and needs I still carry. You do not have to picture a younger version of yourself, or use that phrase, to talk about your childhood.
We can begin with something happening now: a conversation that leaves you shutting down, a boundary that is hard to hold, or a familiar feeling that you are not good enough. From there, we can explore what feels connected to your past and what would help you respond differently today.
Your pace matters
The interview above describes my personal experience. It is not a prediction of how therapy will feel for you. We can talk about what you want help with, how comfortable you are discussing the past, and whether this approach fits your needs. You do not need to tell your whole story in the first conversation.
The National Institute of Mental Health explains that psychotherapy should be chosen around a person’s needs and circumstances. Different approaches serve different purposes; no single method is the right fit for everyone. Read NIMH’s guide to psychotherapy.
A place to start
You can come in with a question, a pattern you want to understand, or simply the sense that something needs to change. We can start there.
