What is Inner Child therapy?

A fantastic painting by a talented patient, depicting her experience of Inner Child therapy.

Did you know that you have an Inner Child? We all do.

What happens to us when we are small can stay with us throughout our lives. As adults, we may believe we are reacting to what is happening in the present, but often we are responding to something much older, which we are unconsciously holding on to. The present situation triggers feelings that belong to the past.

Why? Well, when a child experiences something difficult, something that they cannot integrate in a healthy way, they often protect themselves by developing coping strategies. These strategies may have helped at the time, but later in life they can become limiting and unhelpful. What began as survival can become a pattern that repeats automatically.

The basic principle is simple. Part of us remains psychologically shaped by our early experiences. When something happens in childhood that we cannot fully understand or process at the time, the feelings, beliefs and reactions connected to that experience can become fixed. In a sense, certain childhood survival tactics become almost hypnotic and time-frozen.

Inner Child therapy helps bring these patterns into awareness so they can be understood, softened and changed.

The idea itself is not new. Variations of the ‘Inner Child’ concept appear in many schools of psychotherapy, and although it is not researched in the same way as approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, in practice it can be a very effective way to create emotional change.

Who is my Inner Child?

Your Inner Child is not literally a child living inside you and it doesn’t mean that you are childish! It is the emotional part of the personality that developed when you were young. It holds memories, beliefs and feelings formed during childhood, especially at times when you felt frightened, overwhelmed, rejected or misunderstood.

The child’s view of the world can remain frozen in time, and the adult may unknowingly live according to beliefs that were formed many years ago.

In Inner Child work, we often talk about two aspects of the child. The psychotherapist Stefanie Stahl gave these the simple and memorable names I like to use: Sun Child and Shadow Child.

The Sun Child represents playfulness, curiosity, creativity, joy, innocence and positive beliefs about yourself and the world. This is the part of you that feels free, spontaneous and alive and has self-healing powers.

The Shadow Child holds the negative childhood imprints, fears and vulnerabilities, often from painful or difficult experiences. This may include beliefs such as ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’m not safe’, or ‘I don’t matter’. These beliefs are often outside conscious awareness but can influence behaviour in powerful ways. Even when we are conscious of them, the true origins can remain hidden and they can be stubborn to shift without therapeutic work.

These patterns can show themselves in two main ways.

Acting Out

In hypnotherapy models this refers to behaviour. A person may become reactive, angry, withdrawn, people-pleasing, avoidant or controlling without fully understanding why. The reaction belongs to the Inner Child’s world view, not the adult situation.

Acting In

Here the emotional energy is turned inward. Instead of outward behaviour, the distress may appear as anxiety, low mood, physical tension or psychosomatic symptoms. For example, long-held anger may be turned inward and show itself as teeth grinding, stomach problems, skin conditions or chronic stress responses. Some people believe that deep psycho-spiritual complexes could cause different kinds of illness.

The Inner Adult and the Inner Parent

Alongside the Inner Child, we also have what can be called the Inner Adult. This is the part of us that thinks, reflects, understands and makes sense of experience and sees the bigger picture. It is the rational, compassionate part of the self that mediates between the two children, offering comfort to the Shadow Child and encouragement to the Sun Child.

Change often begins here. Intellectual understanding usually comes before emotional change. There can be a tension and awkwardness at this stage, because insight does not necessarily lead to immediate change and comfort. However, when we start to recognise our patterns, we create the conditions for something different to happen.

In Inner Child therapy, the Inner Adult is the one who meets the Inner Child.

From this point, another role develops — the Inner Parent.

Self-parenting means learning to respond to yourself in the way a calm, caring and emotionally healthy parent would. Instead of criticising yourself, ignoring your feelings or reacting automatically, you begin to offer reassurance, understanding and guidance to the part of you that is still stuck in the past.

For some people, this is unfamiliar at first, especially if they did not receive consistent emotional support when they were young. In those cases, we often begin by strengthening self-esteem and emotional stability before deeper re-parenting work begins. We want to encourage a nurturing Inner Parent rather than a critical Inner Parent.

How does re-parenting work?

Re-parenting is the process of bringing intellectual insight and emotional insight together.

In hypnotherapy, this usually involves trance work. Trance is simply a focused, relaxed state where the mind becomes more open to imagery, memory and feeling. In this state, it is often easier to connect with the inner world in a safe and controlled way.

A typical session may include:

• relaxation and trance induction

• creating a safe place in the imagination

• meeting the Inner Child in a symbolic or visual form

• listening to what the child feels or believes

• offering reassurance, understanding and nurturing suggestions

• repeating this process over time so new patterns can develop

• Following up between sessions with ‘sef-work’ (homework) designed to emotionally, creatively and rationally reinforce the re-parenting.

  
  

The key part of the work is not just one experience, but the commitment to repeated nurture. The Inner Adult gradually learns to care for the Inner Child in a consistent, supportive way. Over time, the child no longer needs to react as if the old situation is still happening.

In effect, the adult is no longer ‘hypnotised’ by the past.

Another beautiful painting expressing an aspect of hypnotherapy by my talented patient.

What does Inner Child therapy look like?

Inner Child therapy is different for everyone. The inner world does not always appear in clear words. Sometimes it is visual, symbolic, sensory or emotional rather than logical.

One of my clients is naturally very visual and very creative and experienced her Inner Child work in vivid imagary in her mind’s eye. After a session she painted what she had seen in hypnosis — a colourful scene representing her younger self in a place that felt safe and alive. The painting was beautiful in its own right, but it was also a therapeutic process for her. Indeed, the act of painting along with many types of art work mimic the process of psychological change, by accepting mistakes as part of the completed work, or brushing over and changing things, or choosing how colourful the palette should be.

Her beautiful painting showed how rich and imaginative the inner world can be, and how healing can happen in ways that are difficult to explain but deeply felt.

There is no single way that Inner Child should look or be experienced. What matters is that the part of you that felt stuck begins to feel heard, understood and supported.

Patients often find Inner Child therapy profoundly moving. It can be experienced as very gentle and loving; occasionally it is surprising in all kinds of ways. The main thing is that it is conducted in a way which is safe, gentle and non-judgemental. It can really help to shift old, stuck patterns, as part of integrative therapy.

Conclusion

Inner Child therapy offers a compassionate way of understanding why old feelings can still affect present life. By bringing awareness to the beliefs formed in childhood, and learning to respond to them with the wisdom of the adult self, it becomes possible to loosen patterns that once felt automatic.

It is not about blaming the past or getting lost in it. It’s about doing whatever nurturing, forgiving and re-parenting is necessary to allow you to move forward.

It is about recognising what was learned long ago, and giving yourself the chance to live more freely now.

Please contact me if you would like a consultation to discuss how hypnotherapy and Inner Child therapy might help you.