This is how you can heal your inner child
The journey of self-discovery is nuanced and you may have discovered a younger you that needs to be seen and heard. Certified Meditation Practitioner, Melissa Lainn, shares her approach to healing the inner child.
Positive affirmations are at the core of inner child healing, Melissa enlightens that it’s like giving your younger self a big, warm hug. “It’s a therapeutic process where you connect with and nurture your inner child—the part of you that holds memories, emotions, and experiences from your early years.” Affirming that by healing your inner child or reparenting them, you’re mending past wounds and creating a stronger, more confident version of yourself. “When we’re triggered or under pressure, we often let our unhealed inner child make decisions in important aspects of our lives, like what we eat, how we are in relationships, or our career choices. The result? It’s like having an angry two-year-old in the driver’s seat of your life. Inner child healing helps us take back control,” she says.
Glamour: What are the signs that the inner child is wounded?
Melissa Lainn: The signs can vary, but common indicators include fear of rejection, low self-esteem, relationship struggles, and difficulty in expressing emotions. It’s easy to spot when our unhealed inner child takes the wheel during challenging times. They often react impulsively and emotionally. Reparenting involves recognising when this happens and gently guiding them towards healthier choices.
Glamour: What’s the first step to healing the inner child?
ML: Start by acknowledging that your inner child needs love and healing. Begin with self-compassion and reparenting. Treat yourself kindly and embrace self-care practices that help nourish the aspects of your inner child that were deprived. Reparenting is like becoming the parent you needed when you were young, providing the love and support your inner child requires to feel safe in the present.
Glamour:What are the alternative forms of therapy?
ML: Inner child healing can take many forms, including meditation, creative visualization, plant medicine journeys, and other holistic practices. Meditations can help you connect with your inner child on a deep level, while plant medicine journeys can be transformative for ancestral healing and inner child work. These approaches provide unique avenues for nurturing and reparenting your inner child. But traditional therapy and coaching are always fantastic avenues to begin with.
Glamour: What other resources are available in this regard?
ML: Books, workshops, and online courses can be fantastic resources for diving deeper into inner child healing and reparenting. Additionally, joining support groups or seeking guidance from holistic coaches like me can provide valuable insights into integrating your inner child into your current life.
Glamour: What would you say is the best approach to healing the inner child?
ML: The best approach isn’t about healing your inner child to ‘get rid of the problem.’ Instead, it’s about integrating them into your life, nourishing aspects of them that may have been overlooked as a child, and giving that beautiful being the care and love they always deserved. It’s about enjoying the spark of youth and innocence that is always within you because of them. This mindset shift can lead to a more profound and lasting transformation in your well-being.
Glamour: What is your personal experience in this regard?
ML: I embarked on my inner child journey many years ago. I always felt like something was ‘holding me back,’ so to speak—self-sabotage and becoming a completely different person when I had to deal with life pressures. It led me down the rabbit hole of realizing that it was my inner child I tried to cut out of my now life due to a difficult childhood. I kind of felt that there was something wrong with me growing up, that’s what caused the pain in my life, and so I didn’t allow her to be a part of my “now” life. But that kept my healing from happening in so many areas of my life, the first place I became aware of this, was my relationship with food and my body. I started healing through meditation, coaching practices, and visualization meditations where I started bringing her more into my present life. Then I learned the concept of reparenting, and it changed so much of how I speak to myself (I still apply it daily). Later on, I did plant medicine journeys for ancestral healing, and it significantly accelerated my inner child healing.
Glamour: How did you overcome the stumbling blocks you’ encountered on your healing journey?
ML: One of the biggest stumbling blocks in my journey was first being scared of the emotions that would come when I acknowledged her (remembering a lot of hurtful things). Secondly, it was thinking that I needed to heal her completely instead of simply allowing the past to be what it was and now integrating her into my healed life.This shift in perspective made the biggest difference and led to rapid healing. Embracing the notion of reparenting and nurturing her needs while appreciating her youthful spirit transformed my healing journey in profound ways.
Glamour: What are the benefits of healing the inner child?
ML: Oh, the benefits are truly remarkable! You’ll experience increased self- confidence, healthier relationships, a greater sense of joy, and the ability to navigate life’s challenges with resilience. Healing your inner child and reparenting them opens doors to a future where you’re firmly in the driver’s seat of your life. And I must say, personally, it’s allowed me to have fun with life again, to enjoy being her and being human like I did when I was a child.
Melissa’s Top 5 tips for inner child healing
Tip 1: Love On Yourself
Practice self-love daily. Treat yourself like your own best friend, and let self-compassion be your guiding light. Use tools like journaling, affirmations, self-care practices and stopping all self- criticism. The world can sometimes be hard enough; we don’t need to be hard on ourselves, too.
Tip 2: Have Freaking Fun
Have more fun, just because! Engage in creative outlets and activities that spark joy like art, making music, creating things and being out in Momma Nature. Allow yourself to reconnect you with your inner child’s sense of wonder.
Tip 3: Embrace Awareness and Reparenting
Become aware of when your inner child is ‘acting up,’ and use it as a moment to reparent. Ask yourself, “What does my inner child need to feel safe and taken care of?” Be the adult who stops decisions driven by fear and creates safety and understanding in difficult times.
Tip 4: Seek Professional Guidance and Community Support
Nothing great comes into this world alone, neither does your healing. Seek professional guidance and join support groups to navigate your inner child healing journey effectively.
Tip 5: Forgive and Set Yourself Free
Practice forgiveness—forgive yourself, others, and your past. Let go of the weight of old wounds and embrace a lighter, brighter future. Use the beautiful practice of Ho’oponopono or write your inner child a letter and bury or burn it in a safe environment. And do it as many times as needed, forgiveness is a practice.