Think of your inner child as a little you, full of curiosity and excitement, ready to take on the world, and love everything and everyone around them. Experiences in your early childhood shape the beliefs of safety, protection, and love and can be dictating the way you give and receive these things in your adult life. If you are disconnected from your inner child, your child can feel wounded, abandoned, and unloved. You could feel lost in the world; unaware of your feelings, passions, and joy. Being disconnected from your inner child can result in feelings of insecurity, depression, anxiety, no passion or purpose, believing you don’t have a place in this world, and powerlessness. Here are five ways to connect to your inner child:
1. Visualize: Picture yourself as a young child and remember to the best of your ability how you used to act and express yourself. What kinds of things were you interested in? What brought you joy? How did you express your creativity? It’s important to come from a loving, non-judgmental place, when thinking of your child. Now that you are an adult, if you visualize yourself as an 8-year-old child you can understand now that this child does not have the tools or resources to meet their needs or navigate the world. Have empathy for your child if they were trying to find ways to survive at this time.
2. Journal: The best way to make a connection to your inner child is to ask him/her questions. If you’ve been disconnected from your inner child for a number of years it may be difficult at first to get answers from your inner child. Journaling freely or following journal prompts is a great way to get your inner child talking. Writing a letter to your inner child can begin to jog your memory of some of the things that occurred. After this, your inner child may just want to write a letter back.
3. Get in Touch with Your Feelings: When situations arise in our current life, we need to give ourselves the space and time to realize not only what is going on but how we react to it. How does our inner child feel in this time? Are we releasing our boundaries and acting in a way that makes our child feel unsafe once again? Regardless of our upbringing and how our caregivers treated us, it is up to us now to do things that honor our inner child. Our inner adult must execute on these actions that keeps us in the ultimate alignment with ourselves, such as telling people no when we don’t want to do something or not allowing others to walk all over us by speaking up. This doesn’t mean our inner child runs the show, but it does mean that we are not betraying ourselves to fit others needs and wants. We have to make sure that all that we do is coming from a place of self-love. If we are people pleasing and living for the expectations of others, we are putting other feelings above our own and making our inner child feel abandoned and scared.
4. Nurture Your Inner Child: If you have an abandoned or wounded inner child, he/she could be acting out of a place of pain. It is important to love and nurture your inner child. You can say loving affirmations to yourself everyday such as, “I am safe, I am loved, I am protected, My needs and feelings are valid, I deserve happiness, I am in control of my feelings, I decide how I feel regardless of others outbursts or actions, No one can inflict anything on me that I cannot handle”. You may have other thoughts that go directly against these affirmations, but with time you will begin to choose the affirmations over this negative self-talk, and therefore start to act from a place of self-love.
5. Meditate: If you are new to meditation or just prefer guided meditations, there are many on YouTube that can guide you through this journey. Meditation helps you dive deeper into the mind to realize some limiting beliefs and chakra blockages you may have. Since the inner child is connected to the Sacral Chakra, meditations on this may also help you become aware of what is unconsciously happening. Meditation can sometimes bring up painful, repressed feelings, and emotions you didn’t think existed, journaling after this also helps make a connection to your inner child. You may also start to have dreams about your childhood or childhood home/neighborhood/people. This is a good sign that you are beginning your healing work.
