Healing The Inner Child (With Meditation)

I have a secret to tell you, I am just a kid. When you see me looking out of my eyes at 90 I will still be just a child. Much of what we experience now comes from what we learned or experiences as a child. Everyone has an inner child. You might see this inner child as a direct representation of yourself in your early years, a patchwork collection of the developmental stages you’ve passed through, or a symbol of youthful dreams and playfulness. An awareness of your inner child can help you think back to lighter, carefree years, explains Dr. Diana Raab, author and research psychologist. “Being in touch with the joys of childhood can be an excellent way of dealing with challenging times.” Not everyone associates childhood with playfulness and fun, though. If you experienced neglect, trauma, or other emotional pain, your inner child might seem small, vulnerable, and in need of protection. You may have buried this pain deep to hide it and protect yourself — both your present self and the child you once were. Hiding pain doesn’t heal it. Instead, it often surfaces in your adult life, showing up as distress in personal relationships or difficulty meeting your own needs. Working to heal your inner child can help you address some of these issues. Many people don’t realize that they have a lost inner child who makes a lot of decisions in their adult life that the responsible adult self later has to clean up. They go about their lives on auto-pilot, impulsively reacting, yelling at the top of their lungs, withdrawing and sulking, or keeping others at arm’s length because they are scared of emotional connection. They feel hurt, confused, abused, shamed, or neglected, just like they did as a child, but now they look and sound like an adult. In this episode we discuss the many aspects of your inner child and in a meditation at the end we go about healing your inner child.