Inner child - How to heal your inner child

So I never thought I'd sit around and talk to my inner child (or do my roller skate practise in my kitchen - another post I think) but here we are...

I'm highly emotional and cry whenever I talk about my feelings or what I need - it's thoroughly annoying and has throughout my life stopped me from having so many conversations. With this reaction my therapist quite early on in our process established that I was too intertwined with my inner child and we needed to work to separate the 'two of us'.

I have never really given any thought to my inner child and thought the concept sounded a bit out there really. But, at this point I'm open to anything which may help my mental health so whilst working with my therapist on the myriad of my other issues (thanks mum and dad!) I figured I'd do some reading.

Scanning Amazon I found 'Healing your inner child' by Natasha Levinger. I'd not seen her work before (this is her first book) or her podcasts or socials but something appealed to me. I'm so glad it did - from the start of the book it was clear she'd had similar trauma experience as a child with a narcistic parent and I felt so seen.

Overall views of the book itself

Natasha writes really well and manages to get a flow which is engaging as well as pulling out key activities and highlights throughout. It was also so clear that she has been through all this herself, and come out the other side, which gives real confidence in what she is saying.

I have to admit that, personally, I found some of the content a bit 'out there' for use of a better term. As an atheist, scientific and evidence based mind I struggled slightly with some of the energy and clairvoyance content. That said, I found so much use in everything else it in no way spoilt the book for me and I'd highly recommend it to all others of the same persuasion as me. I am open to those other elements but I'm not quite there yet. Who knows though, that might come later on my journey - will keep you all posted.

Overall, this book has been life changing as I've related heavily to most of the content and I've found it so useful to 'see' these wounded parts of myself and be able to address them through my healing and therapy work.

Different internal roles

What resonated so heavily for me was the description of the different inner roles and characters that we all have. Even if you can't quite bring yourself to sit and imagine talking to a little version of yourself, that identification and separation is hugely helpful!

The Inner Child

Natasha describes this so well as representing "your gut feelings, from the most painful and challenging to the happiest and most creative and joyful ones. The painful ones are coming from the past where your wounded inner child lives, still feeling they are in those past moments. But the happy ones are expressions of who you are in the present, your true self beyond trauma or painful childhood programming." Love that!

For me I feel the wounded one when someone is angry with me and I will do anything to try to placate that. I feel the scared one when I'm scanning a meeting room that I'm chairing and someone seems annoyed/upset. I feel the grumpy one when I don't get my way and can't do something that I really wanted to do at that time. I feel the insecure one when I'm counting calories or measuring my day's achievements based on my step count. I feel the joyful one roller skating, walking barefoot in the grass or singing (badly).

I also sat down and made a list of situations that I know trigger my inner child so that I can be aware of it when it comes up. This list included moving/change, achievement drive, not getting my way, people that remind me of my dad, making mistakes, people talking about my performance at work and being ill.

The Loving Inner Parent

Natasha equates the inner parent by being in the self and present as well as looking at yourself with compassion. She sets out that the qualities you inhibit when you're in the inner parent are - calm, connection, compassion, creativity, clarity, curiosity, confidence and courage. This really resonates with the place of quiet confidence also described in meditating and the separation of our true selves from our thoughts and feelings - we are not our thoughts! The key here is to try to stay in this 'place' for a majority of the time and not that its is only a part of ourselves that is hurt, not our whole selves.

Personally I've found this super helpful as a concept and realised that I'm barely ever in this place. Natasha sets out really useful meditations, journaling and visualisations to help strengthen the inner parent. This includes imagining a person to take the role of the parent - could be someone you know or a celebrity (I've gone for Tom Hanks) and imagine them helping reparenting you. I used this recently when processing all the emotions of returning to work (fear, shame and guilt) and felt like that worked. I'm not great with visualisations as I've got a more language focused mind so I've been using journalling as my main tool and wrote a letter to myself from Tom 😊.

The Inner Critic

We all have that little voice (or is it just me??) that picks on us. Natasha describes it like a bully - spot on! She also sets out that this part is actually there to help us (at least that's what it thinks it is doing) and is actually just a misguided part of the inner child - queue that compassion! ❤️ Some people name it, in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy we are taught to listen to it and challenge its narrative. The key to know is that it doesn't mean harm.

My inner critic shows up quite a bit, mostly in relation to food and weight "don't eat that" or "omg you ate that, how are we going to deal with this?" It also shows up a lot linked to laziness and achievement - I fell roller skating yesterday and bruised my bum quite badly so am kicking myself today as I couldn't run or go for my long walks for example. I especially hear this when I know I need to rest but the weight and achievement obsessed inner critic won't let me.

Natasha helpfuly notes that one of the key ways to address this can be to hand back the energy driving these feelings to your parents, if that's where they are from (I know both of mine did). This isn't one I've succeeded with yet but I'm continuing to really hear that voice, highlight it when I do, and speak to the underlying issue (fear of failur in both cases I think). I also read somewhere that you should apologise to yourself each time you hear that voice, not sure if it goes with this inner child practise though. One to continue working on.

The Shadow

Ominous right...and where we go 'full on Jung' or as he put it "until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you'll call it fate". So the shadow is all about the parts of ourselves that we reject and don't want others to see. Natasha here shares some really useful journal prompts and asks to focus on who annoys you and who you are jealous of. I found this really useful to start prodding more into these aspects of ourselves that we try to cover up.

The Analyser

This isn't really set out as a full role in the book but this resonated so hard with me! Natasha describes what it feels like when we are in our analyser as "trying to figure the inner child out or trying to rationalise them out of their feelings" - basically being in our heads and this is totally me! I go straight here rather than acknowledging the feelings and then feeling it fully. This is probably due to me repressing all feelings for many years now and I'm guessing this would have been my parents default style as well. It's only this year that I've actually started being able to recognise and identify feelings and allow myself to sit with them - using a feeling wheel has been super useful!

This is also connected to hypervigilance - that behaviour of always scanning for risks (at least in me). Being raised partially by a narcissistic parent has lead to always being on the look out for problems, things which might make him angry and then try to find solutions to keep me/us safe and him happy. I see so much of this behaviour in myself even now and am trying to work through it.

There is a fantastic chapter at the end of the book about narcissistic caregivers which goes into some detail about hypervigilance and how to treat this This chapter was a total game changer! It felt so validating to see a description of the behaviours, gaslighting types and the outcomes of this. I also shared this with my brother as well. It felt fantastic to know that it was my dad's behaviour that was wrong, not how we reacted or behaved. It was definitely him and not us!

The Higher Self

Natasha describes this as "this part of you is always aware of your highest purpose and essence, unaffected by programming that makes you believ you are less than who you are. This part of you has an unconditionally loving view of your life." I love the idea of this personally. Some of the more religious and spiritual elements here slightly lost me though, I'm just not quite there yet. For me, I'm going to keep working through the inner child relationship, cultivating that inner parent and reparenting myself. Once in a most stable place I think I will come back to this as phase 2.

Conclusions

This book has been a real game changer for me. I love the concepts and roles and being able to gently separate from these wounded internal parts to facilitate healing. There was so much in there that resonated and I did feel very seen. This is definitely something I'm going to keep working through alongside my therapy.

Whether you are atheist, religious or spiritual or anything in between I'd really recommend this book and take what you like from it.

I really hope you enjoyed this post! Please do subscribe on the homepage to join me on the mental health and lifestyle journey ❤️