In each of us there is an emotional, irrational part, which is called the "Inner Child".

The "inner child" is an emotional and behavioral experience that we carry with us from childhood.

Have you ever been in emotionally neutral situations when incomprehensible strong and irrational feelings suddenly came to life inside?

For example, fears, self-doubt, anger, jealousy, or you suddenly just start crying.

At such moments, from the depths of your "I" comes the voice of the Inner Child.
And this voice - whether we realize it or not - sounds daily in our daily life:

• "I want to be the best"
• "He leaves me alone"
• "I need to defend myself to survive."

As a result, already in adulthood, we cannot recognize the achievements of other people or are afraid to enter into relationships because of fear of rejection, or we react to a person from the present in the same way as we would react to someone from childhood.

As children, we encounter various traumatic situations. For example, a child whose parents are divorced may not express their feelings openly. He seems to conserve and archive them for many years. And after many years, he becomes very attached to his partner and experiences a strong fear of losing him. As strong as when he lost one of his parents. We can say that here, in this fear, the voice of the Inner Child sounds.

And there are two options here.

1. to hear this voice, this fear and this pain of rejection and process these feelings. This is a long and sometimes painful process - but it leads to greater integrity, harmony and fullness of our lives. On this path, you stop being a prisoner of the past and open the doors to the present moment of your life.
2. There is another option - to remain deaf to your own feelings and fears. But then you remain deaf to yourself - your needs and desires. There is a chance that in this case you will, one way or another, unconsciously reproduce the traumatic situation and experience these feelings again and again in real time.

K.G. Jung has a wonderful expression about this:

Depression is like a lady in black. If she comes, do not drive her away, but invite her to the table as a guest, and listen to what she intends to say.

The voice you hear inside of you (emotions, obsessive thoughts, behavioral patterns, dreams) tells you a lot about what you really want and who you really are. The main thing is to learn to hear this voice, to accept and understand it.

How to find this voice in yourself. Try to imagine it in your imagination. Try to draw it. What does he look like? What does he feel? Is he cheerful? Scared? Angry? Crying? He ashamed? Jealous? What would he like to tell adults? What does he want to hear? What does he dream and fantasize about? Is there someone next to him? Someone to protect him or comfort him.

Try to remember your childhood - what did you want? What did you dream about? Have these dreams come true? Try to fantasize about it, just follow your fantasies. Where are they taking you? Perhaps over time you will begin to better understand your deepest needs and how they are embodied in your adult life.

Connecting with the Inner Child is not always easy.. It can be very difficult to discern this inner voice. Most often, it comes to us in the form of emotions - crying, fear, anxiety, resentment. And at first it seems that these emotions are simply never-ending. And this is natural - they have been hiding inside you for years and decades. But if you have patience and listen, wait, try to understand - one day you will hear what your Inner Child is really crying about.

And over time, the Inner Child will stop drowning in their emotions, survive and integrate them. Over time, he will overcome his fears, leave them behind and go out into a new world.

You wouldn't expect a real baby to tell you exactly why he's crying, would you? I think you will just give him space to experience these feelings and integrate them. Then, when the emotions subside, he will find a way to tell you about what is happening to him and what he is going through. The main thing is to remain an attentive listener to your inner voice. Maybe you should do something similar with your Inner Child?

How can I take care of the "Inner Child"?

• Be patient. This is not a one-time activity, it is a process that can take quite a long time.
• Try to embrace these feelings. Sometimes they are very much in conflict with ideas about themselves. An adult, independent, woman who is used to controlling everything suddenly begins to feel her dependence on a man. These feelings are completely unacceptable to her rational part. But, at the same time, these are her emotions, desires and needs. And they are very natural for her emotional part. What your Inner Child feels is your feelings; it is part of you.
• Try to trust this voice. Try to follow the needs that this voice tells you. What does he ask of you? Try to take care of yourself the way you would take care of a real child.
• Consider going into therapy if you feel that the cause of the problem is deep and long-standing.

Remember that psychological trauma is an episode of life, not a sentence.

How to Help a Wounded Inner Child?

We continue the conversation about the key essential part of the personality, about the Inner Child.

We often find that the Inner Child is hurt and needs our help.

Often this problem stretches from childhood, not for everyone it was only joyful and carefree.

On the way of growing up, many of us had to experience a lot of resentment, disappointment, and misunderstanding from others. At the subconscious level, we have learned to defend ourselves.

As a result, a parallel false entity, the Wounded Child, formed around the Inner Child.

He makes us control, evaluate any situation, gradually forgetting that the inexhaustible source of Love is still within us.

In the life of such a person, even under successful circumstances, there is disappointment and there is no happiness. At the same time, he does not realize what is happening to him, it comes from the depths of his soul. Few people realize that at that moment his eyes reflect the image of a small child, cowering in fear from a parental belt or crying over the body of a pet that tragically died.

Psychology defines the concept of "Wounded Child" as part of the psyche of an adult, which keeps a trace of childhood disappointments, tears and resentment.

Trying to adapt to the parental scenario of life or adapting to society, children learn to pretend, and over time they simply lose their true selves.

The wounded child inside us can be aggressive, envious, critical, or vice versa, indifferent, passive, withdrawn, bashful. This is primarily due to the desire to please others, while refusing responsibility and decision-making. If a person who has childhood psychotrauma or a traumatic past does not purposefully engage in personal growth and self-development, then life often turns into a routine existence or continuous conflicts and disappointments ...

But if you nevertheless decided to meet with your Wounded Child, then the question arises:

How to help your inner child if he is hurt?

In terms of behavior, the Inner Child is no different from a real child. When he feels bad, he waits for support, consolation. You need to take care of him, explain that you will never hurt him or leave him.

Starting work on yourself, first of all, rethink your behavior.

We all come into this world as small and helpless babies. Until the age of six, the child has the ability to be in direct contact with his higher self. He has inexhaustible energy, but at the same time is very sensitive.

When we were at that age, we had a direct connection with the divine source from which we drew our strength. However, they were very vulnerable, helpless and vulnerable. Therefore, all children seek support from their parents. If they want affection and love, they will hum or smile, and if there is a lack of attention, they will start to cry.

Over time, the child learns to express himself in other ways, gradually becoming aware of what behavior leads to the expected results. In parallel with this, he observes adults and gradually adopts their model of behavior. All those forms of behavior that are not recognized by others are rejected and turn into blocks. In the future, it is they who block the energy system of an adult.

Conversely, the behavior that brought success becomes the dominant of our personality. This helps to protect the Inner Child to some extent. However, the blocks do not allow us to release a large flow of energy embedded in us for the purpose of further development.

Thus, healing the Inner Child is an important step on the path to awareness.

The problem for many of us is to find ourselves in various types of addiction: drugs, alcohol, gambling, workaholism, etc. Only by establishing contact with oneself, one can build harmonious relations with the outside world. The greatest effect can be achieved from building relationships with your Inner Child.

What needs to be done in order to heal a wounded child?

track painful reactions and feelings;

identify and formulate the problem;

return yourself to the childhood memories that led into the wound;

forgive everyone who was involved in this problem;

form a new model of behavior and thinking;

with patience, sympathy and love to go the way to change;

become more open and allow yourself to receive the love and attention that you lacked in childhood from other people;

be grateful to the world for your changes.

Thanks to this, you will gradually begin to accept and love yourself the way you really are. You will be able to see your true desires and needs, learn to forgive, realize fears, but at the same time love, feel and enjoy life.

Inner Child Therapy, which is carried out by a professional psychologist, can only be carried out when you yourself have walked the path to healing. A therapist will help your Inner Child tell their story gradually. For this, drawings, photographs, toys and other objects that surrounded us in childhood can be used.

Then comes the weeping process. This is the longest and most controversial period. The task of the therapist is to help ensure that feelings are expressed sincerely. Then comes the stage of awareness and the need to forgive and let go of the situation. At the same time, the patient regains self-esteem and learns to experience sincere joy from his personal growth.

And of course, your healed Child again finds the joy of movement, as in childhood, he is again able to play, dance, love himself and the world around him.

Connecting with our Inner Child is a guarantee of physical and mental health, inspiration and open relationships with the people we love and cherish!

inner child- this is a part of our psyche, our personality, which expresses the image of our true "I", the potential of the personality, its balance, integrity and vitality, direct self-expression, the ability to find a way out of any situation, acceptance and openness to the world.

A person with a healthy part (Inner Child) behaves at ease, creatively, playfully and joyfully. He knows how to sincerely laugh at himself and what happens to him. He is in harmony with himself and the world around him.

Each of us has an Inner Child. This is a girl or a boy, each inner child has its own age, more often it is the age when the wound occurred, when he began to experience pain. Sometimes it is a whole kindergarten, if there were many traumatic episodes.

All that a child needs is a complete acceptance of him as a person, understanding and satisfaction of his true needs, laying positive images of himself and his future life. If parents provide him with these conditions, the child grows up safely and becomes a happy and successful person, realizing his creative potential.

If your parents' needs were not met when they were children, it will be difficult for them to meet your needs. Well, this is of course ideally, in reality we are all traumatized, some to a greater extent, some to a lesser extent.

Parents may make fun of their children, preventing them from expressing their true feelings. They find it difficult to respect their children as individuals. As a result, they lie, beat, threaten, isolate, disbelieve, despise, coerce, humiliate and invade their personal space: “Your hands are in the wrong place! Who needs you like that! It would be better if you didn't! I wish I'd had an abortion like I was going to! I sacrificed everything for you, and you…!”

In the subconscious of such a child, a negative image of himself is formed. And then many renounce themselves even in childhood. We don't want to have anything to do with that scared and stupid kid anymore. This is how self-loathing and self-loathing arise. Contact with the real self, the inner child, is lost, and we stop hearing ourselves.

"Wounded" children grow up and begin an independent life. But they only look like adults. They suffer from countless wounds, not easy to heal, but easy to touch and irritate already in adulthood.

Almost every child makes a “secret oath” to himself that, when he grows up, he will not say to his children those words or do things that were said or done towards him. Unfortunately, as adults, many find themselves breaking this oath, saying or doing to their children exactly what they did to them, and often using the same methods or words. Why is this happening?

In the internal structure of our psyche there is also an Inner Parent - this is a projection of our real parents, an image. and it may happen that the real parents are no longer in the world. But in the human psychic structure, the "Inner Parent" still "nurtures" the Inner Child.

This vicious cycle of cruelty will be passed on from generation to generation unchecked unless the pattern is changed. To do this, you need to heal your inner child. Therapy and a good specialist can help with this.

And you can groom and cherish your wounds and scars for a very long time. This provides a number of benefits. You can not grow up, not take responsibility for your life "to spite your mother." You can endlessly prove something - and so it seems that the goal in life appears. And a lot of the time, that's exactly what we do.

We constantly remember how unfairly our parents treated us. How we were offended or humiliated. And here I do not justify the parents, it is their responsibility, and our responsibility is to make our life happy (as far as possible) from the “legacy” that we got.

The position of a small offended child can be very advantageous. If not for one but, while we chew our grievances and claims, our life passes. We cannot live life to the fullest. We can't be ourselves. We don't know how to build relationships. We become not the best parents.

You can do nothing in your life and put all the responsibility for it on your parents. After all, it is much easier to do nothing - and the extreme ones have already been found. Yes, our parents gave us less than we needed, and this is already irreplaceable ... Our task is to accept what they gave, and do the rest for ourselves, take care of ourselves.

You can take a piece of paper and write everything that we didn’t get from our parents, what we needed, write as much as is written so as not to forget anything, maybe even a sheet is not enough for you, take another one. After that, at the very top of the piece of paper we write: "I can do this for myself." Reading the list...

Find the lessons that your parents gave, they definitely have a resource for you and your future life, and maybe our Mission ...

Accept your parents for who they are. In some cases, this can indeed be difficult if a very traumatic experience was experienced in childhood. They are people with their own life experience, character, troubles, with their own strengths and weaknesses. They are human beings, and like everyone else, they are not perfect. They may not have had a happy childhood.

Most likely, parents do not have what we need. And that's why they don't give it. They just don't have it. They themselves did not receive this stream. Nobody liked them as children. But still they gave us a lot. Everything they could. Sometimes it's just life. But after all, this is already a valuable gift and an invaluable lesson.

Stop waiting for them to change. Accept that this will always be the case. Even if it hurts so bad to admit it. Find a source with which to fill the deficit, because the world is abundant. And it has what you need. Moreover, there is a lot of it - and enough for everyone. You need to learn to take care of yourself, see the resource to meet your needs, and allow yourself to assimilate. Sometimes this is a long process requiring the support of a psychologist, psychotherapist.

What do you want most from your parents? Love? Understanding? Support? Look for it where there is a lot of it. After all, who said that we should and can get all this only from our parents? Through our parents we get our lives - and this is already more than valuable.

Inner child: how to work with him

Content

1. Comes from childhood
2. Happy or unhappy?
3. A little about internal parents
4. Two sides of the same coin
5. How to achieve harmony with yourself?
6. Don't be afraid to connect with your inner child!

Comes from childhood

The first experience a person receives in the prenatal period. Scientists have proved that the well-being of the expectant mother, her mood are the first "bricks" from which the child's psyche is built. Every day after his birth, he brings images, needs, behavioral attitudes into his life “piggy bank”. This part of the psyche, which psychologists call the inner child, does not disappear anywhere: until a certain time, it may not manifest itself in any way.

From time to time, each person faces his own life experience. Those who have established contact with the inner child, who know how to work with him, live easier, achieve more, are less prone to depressive states. But, alas, not many succeed.

Happy or unhappy?

The inner child is a multifaceted concept that combines the potential of the individual, his vitality, balance. It is this part of the soul that forms creative natures, helps to overcome life's obstacles, and is responsible for a sincere, positive attitude towards the world. It is important for a child to be accepted, understood, not compared with someone else and satisfy his needs - this is where the path of the Personality to self-knowledge begins.

Criticism is a bad help in the educational process. It is justified only in the case when it is supported by arguments, and is not limited to the abstract “you are wrong” and “this is not right”. The child must understand why this is good, and that is bad, to see the roots of his actions and their possible consequences. Constant baseless criticism contributes to the formation of a negative image, which many try to renounce even in childhood. A person artificially creates a false "I", ceases to hear himself. How to talk to the inner child if the connection with the present self is completely lost?

A little about inner parenting

And they live in us too! Many phrases the child perceives as powerful statements that form a model of behavior in the future. Often, inner parents only serve as critics. This manifests itself in invisible dialogues with oneself, when in response to attempts to justify oneself, to praise, to regret, the phrases familiar from childhood are knocked out like a hammer: “You are doing everything wrong”, “You are not succeeding”. Inner parents and children who have realized themselves in a new status become enemies and, as a result, stop communicating. This often carries over into real life.

Two sides of the same coin

In each of us lives a happy inner child who is surrounded by love, feels safe, experiences creative impulses, sincerely admires the world around him. But there is also a traumatized inner child who lacks protection, comfort, approval.

Negativity, framed by self-doubt, often becomes a decisive factor in choosing a profession or life partner. People who are "leading" unhappy children rarely achieve success in school and work. Further - a vicious circle: failures exacerbate problems, and those confirm the status of a loser ...

A simple example. The head of the company receives a calm, correct remark to his subordinates. One employee calmly agrees and takes note of what has been said. In another person, it causes a wave of aggression. Everyone took out of his life "baggage" what was there ...

How to achieve harmony with yourself?

Many are sure that a person is the blacksmith of his own happiness, you need to boldly move forward, leaving memories in the past. But life shows: the “forced” closing of the doors to childhood only exacerbates the problems. It helps for a while, but sooner or later, echoes from the past will remind you of themselves.

How to work with the inner unhappy child? Is it possible to stop the mechanism of self-destruction and "program" yourself for success? First you need to try to talk to yourself in a calm state. Sit in your favorite chair, take a break from everyday affairs and imagine the inner child living in you. And now "chat" with him:

1. Listen to his feelings and describe them.
2. Try to remember the "age" of the experiences.
3. Try to see what the child looks like, where he is, who surrounds him.
4. How does he respond to questions? Is he lonely and scared? Find words of comfort.
5. Tell him how you feel, offer to help.
6. How does the child behave around the inner parent?

Don't be afraid to connect with your inner child!

And best of all - in front of a mirror. Talk to your inner child regularly. Let him talk about his experiences, cry out: over the years, the emotional “piggy bank” has become heavier and does not allow him to confidently move on.

Arrange a holiday for the "baby", supplement it with balloons, goodies. Do not skimp on the words that you yourself dreamed of hearing as a child. Every day tell your inner child that he is the most beautiful, kind, beloved. How to quickly expect changes in life? Not before you become best friends with your inner child...

concept inner child is widely used in psychotherapy, in its various directions - gestalt therapy, transactional analysis and others. It seems that it is very simple, but in fact it is not always immediately clear who it is and what it is about, and why it needs to be given attention. Clarifying questions from clients about this prompted me to write an article and helped structure my thoughts on this topic.

The Inner Child (IR) is a part of the human psyche, which contains the experience (in the broad sense of the word) received in childhood and in the prenatal (intrauterine) period. This experience includes emotions and feelings, bodily experiences (for example, the child was frightened - everything in his stomach tightened with fear), behavior and images (visual, auditory, olfactory), needs and motivation. It does not disappear anywhere, but continues to "live" in the psyche of an adult and influence his emotional state today. It is not felt at any moment of time, but periodically each person comes into contact with this experience of his, comes into contact with the feelings of his Inner Child.

We all have a happy Inner Child who feels good, is loved, feels safe, has fun, is spontaneous and creative. And there is the unfortunate, traumatized Inner Child who is abandoned or offended and needs comfort, care and protection. Much of the psychotherapeutic work goes into finding the unhappy Inner Child (the specific situations in which it has suffered) and dealing in some healing way with the experience it has. In general, in many ways, psychotherapy is a healing treatment that could be received in childhood or in adulthood.

In my opinion, it is possible to say that we meet with manifestations of the Inner Child in those cases when the roots of the emotions and feelings that have arisen lie in childhood: an old childhood feeling, need, interest or desire comes to life and becomes either dominant and determines the emotional state of a person , or joins the experience of an adult and enhances it. For example, in itself it causes difficult experiences, but the previously experienced childhood experience of rejection, abandonment, loneliness can also be connected to them. Or, let's suppose that the boss in the correct form makes a critical remark to his subordinate, and the subordinate rises a wave of aggression - most likely these are also echoes of some previous experience, possibly childhood. And this happens often: the Inner Child almost always participates in the emotional life of an adult - his feelings can resonate with the feelings of an adult, thereby strengthening them, or they can completely dominate the emotional reaction to any situation. Whenever the emotional reaction to a situation is more intense than it deserves, it means that the person's previous experience is "rising".

Why do children's experiences "come to life" in an adult? Because he is faced with situations that remind him of some situations from childhood - and the person, as it were, remembers the feelings associated with them.

Someone may disagree with all of the above and decide that in fact there is no Inner Child. The man has grown up and that's it, his little one is no more. But in reality this is not so. In every adult, his childish part continues to live, and its experiences continue to be relevant in today. The unsatisfied children's need for love is highly likely to be in both an adult and. And how he relates to this part depends on his ability to be happy.

One of the proofs of the existence of this childish part is such a phenomenon as regression. Regression is a transition from the state of I-today, I-adult to an earlier state of the psyche. So, for example, an adult woman, after talking with an unkind saleswoman, may feel like a little helpless girl. This means that for some time the feelings associated with the hurtful childhood experience “rose up”. This phenomenon was reflected in the speech: “he was offended like a child”, “she behaves like a child”, “rejoices like a child”, “I feel like a lost child”, “I feel like a naughty child who is afraid of punishment”.

A happy Inner Child gives a feeling of good mood, curiosity, playfulness, spontaneity, and problems with its acceptance are not very common - everyone loves such good, problem-free boys and girls. But the attitude towards your unfortunate Inner Child is often negative. A person can say to his suffering part: “Stop whining! I am tired of you! Get up and get busy!" or, for example, a person can scold his aggressive childish part, try to suppress it. And then it turns out suffering in the square: The Inner Child is so bad, so he is also scolded for these feelings. The attitude of an adult to his Inner Child is always a copy of the real relationship that the child had in childhood. We treat ourselves the same way as we were treated by significant adults in our childhood.

When working with a client, a psychologist encounters such a phenomenon (a negative attitude towards his suffering Inner Child), then he faces two tasks: 1) Create conditions so that a person can relate to his Inner Child with a sense of compassion and 2) Create conditions in order for a person to be able to support the Inner Child and help him survive the negative feelings that he experiences.

What kind of negative feelings can these be and how exactly can you help the Inner Child? Most often it is fear (generated, for example, by situations of violence - emotional or physical), pain of loneliness and aggression. In psychodrama, there are tools that allow an adult to return to a traumatic situation and help a child, giving him what he needs so much - a resource for coping. Thus, the Inner Child receives a different experience, a positive experience - acceptance, protection, understanding. We cannot cancel the traumatic event itself (otherwise there would be no psychological truth in this), but we can console or protect the child after it, help to survive the event in other circumstances.

Let me give you a general example. Group psychotherapy, a woman describes the situation: after a quarrel, her husband refused to go to the cinema, and she was seized by very strong, hard to bear feelings of pain, resentment, anger. Request: "I would like to understand why this hurt so much and learn how to deal with these feelings." The scene of a conversation with her husband is played psychodramatically, and after he (or rather the person playing his role) refuses to go to the cinema and leaves the room, the woman clenches her fists and cries. To the psychologist’s question: “How old are you now?”, He answers: “Five”. This is a regression - a client emotionally at the age of five. Continuing the questioning, the psychologist finds out what happened: the mother and the girl (client) were going to go for a long-awaited walk, the girl did not want to wear the dress that the mother offered, and the mother with the words: leaves the room, leaving the child alone. The girl is very hurt, she is angry and at the same time feels guilty. Further, the work continues with this childish situation: it is recreated psychodramatically, and the client in the role of the Fairy Sorceress comes to the girl, comforts her, “sticks out” her mother’s manipulation and helps to react to aggression. Perhaps there have been many such situations in the client's life, and working with one of them does not mean that she will never encounter such feelings again. But some of these feelings are reacted and lived, and there is also an understanding where they come from and how to react to them next time. For example, tell your Inner Girl: “I see how hurt you are, and I understand why. Still, it's so unfair! I'm with you, I love you!"

Accordingly, you can help your Inner Child not only by “returning” to a traumatic situation. If you don’t remember this situation, but you feel that you somehow feel unwell, and it looks like some kind of early, childhood experience, then you can talk with the Inner Child today.

How to do it?

1. Listen to your feelings, name them.

2. Try to determine how old you feel when you first had this experience.

3. Imagine an image of your Inner Child experiencing these feelings - how old is he, how he looks, what he is wearing, where he is.

4. Contact him. Is he scared, lonely, hurt? The healing response from the adult part, the Inner Parent, is one - “I am with you and will always be by your side, I love you, you are safe with me.”

5. Mentally put yourself in the place of the Inner Child and listen to the appeal of the Inner Parent. If you want to answer something, do it and mentally switch roles again.

Psychologist and poetess Elena Ambarnova wrote a wonderful meditation poem addressed to the Inner Child, this poem is a model of a positive attitude towards childhood experiences: ““.

In order to enhance the effect of addressing your childish part, you can, while talking to her, hug yourself by the shoulders or hug a pillow / toy. Try for a week before going to bed for at least 15 minutes affectionately talking with your little girl or little boy - and your soul will become calmer and warmer. In general, practicing such meditation is useful not only for a week, but every day for the rest of your life.

Here are a few books on psychology that you might be interested in if you want to learn more about the Inner Child and your relationship with it:
1. Geof Graham "How to become a parent to yourself."
2. B. and J. Weinhold, Breaking Free from Codependency.
3. Stefan Volinsky: "The Dark Side of the Inner Child: The Next Step."
4. John Bradshaw: Depression and Emptiness: The Wounded Child Questionnaire.

Best wishes, .