Healing your inner child: The path of self-love and nurturance

Before you understand about healing your inner child, you should know more about it. Inner child is the part of us that's vulnerable, sensitive and needs protection. We often forget this part in us and carry on with our life.

When you take this journey up, it can bring about transformational changes into your life. It's not a simple concept picked up from a Psychology textbook, rather it's something that impacts many lives.

When you start nurturing this delicate part of you, you start loving yourself and become closer to the authentic version of yourself.

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What is the inner child? Why does it need healing?

Healing your inner child can be an immersive experience. (Image via Freepik/Jcomp)

From a psychological point of view, it's the part of us that stays with us even as we grow up and become adults. When we're children, we go through various emotional experiences, which remain with us. These also include experiences that hurt us.

From a biological perspective, you should know that the brain is divided into various layers. The outermost ones are the newest and associated with higher cognitive functions.

The innermost layers are primitive ones associated to our deeper emotional life and survival. Your inner child is a representation of this layer. We're trained to take care of the logical brain, but we often forget the inner child.

Inner child healing is often considered as an option process, but it's, in many ways, essential for our emotional health. The experiences from our formative years can make or break us. So, what can we do about it?

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What can you engage in healing your inner child?

Healing your inner child can be done with a mental health professional or yourself. (Image via Freepik)

How can you go about this transformational journey? If you're willing to seek professional help, a mental health professional can help you in healing your inner child.

This process can help you recognize what therapists call the 'wounded child'. In a non-judgemental and supportive environment, you learn to recognize the negative emotional experiences you have gone through as a child. These might also include childhood traumatic experiences.

If you're not ready to see one, you can also take baby steps on your own. The first window to healing your inner child is observing your inner self-talk. The way you talk to yourself is often a reflection of you were talked to as a child. If you have not received the loving and caring words, you have always wished to listen to, offer words of comfort.

Often visualisation exercises can be powerful in establishing this connection with your inner child. When you start out, it might bring discomfort, and you may also want to skip it as soon as certain emotions come up.

This is a very typical response and anyone can experience it. The idea is to stay with it till you're comfortable and slowly engage in healing your inner child.

If all of that still seems too much, try to use the power of journaling. It's a non-intrusive and safe way of exploring what your underlying emotions and thoughts are. A lot of individuals start seeing their patterns as they continue to write their life experiences.

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The journey of healing your inner child can be unique for each individual and can pose challenges. However, one of the primary keys to this journey is compassion and empathy for yourself.

Perhaps, you will discover that this process has released emotional baggage that was unconsciously stored away. When that comes to your awareness, you may become angry and frustrated. However, healing your inner child starts with being kind and taking care of yourself.

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Janvi Kapur is a counselor with a Master's degree in applied psychology with a specialization in clinical psychology.

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