We all have a wounded child inside…but we all survived childhood….so become your own therapist- heal it and live inJOY! (Part 2)

Childhood is over, but you still have a wounded inner child (the ‘little you” that wants to be heard, acknowledged and nurtured. And like I said before, a healthy adult relationship cannot give that to you. So, the part of you that survived childhood and keeps you alive is the part that you can use to heal your wounded inner child. We’ll call this the ADULT part.

I have devised a simple method to mature the wounded inner child and have found it to be extremely successful. The more you use it, the more inJOY you’ll be!

It is a dialogue process between the adult and inner child part.

Generally, whenever you feel something ‘not good’ ,whether it be an ache or a pain or a negative emotional state it is a good idea to try this dialogue (this is very often the inner child expressing itself and needing nurturance).

Expect this process to feel foreign or silly or pointless in the beginning or that you don’t know how to do it. In time with practice, that will change. Your inner child has been communicating with you in many non-verbal ways, so the language will follow in time.

1. ASK + LISTEN

a. All you need to have is an intention to access your inner child/’little you’.

b. Ask it what’s going on…

c. And JUST LISTEN. At first you might here nothing or think that you are going crazy…but keep at it…and you will start to hear it express itself.

For example:

          Your adult part: “What’s going on?”

          Your child: “I feel sad”

Give your child permission to feel that way (often we were told why we must not feel that way or that we were wrong to feel that way…which invalidated us and caused more frustration and feelings of rejection. Or, our parents (they did the best they knew how) tried to change our negative emotions into something happy without acknowledging them, so we didn’t ever learn how to cope with negative emotion. Or we learnt that they were bad…or worse…that expressing them didn’t help- so we shut them down and DEPRESSED them).

2. ACKNOWLEDGE + EXPLORE (Think how you would lovingly deal with a small, upset child, or how you would have liked to have been talked to as a child and apply it).

Adult: “it’s ok to be sad”. “What are you sad about?”

Child: “I feel lonely”

3. REASSURE

Adult: “You’ll never be alone, I’ll always be here with you…we will always be together” – A very powerful statement that bonds the child to the adult part and begins an intimate relationship, sometimes for the first time. The truth is that wherever your adult goes, so does your child. So this is a guarantee of never being abandoned (again) that you can make to the child.

  

Feel free to change the words according to what feels right for you!

This is the first half of the healing dialogue exercise- the more challenging part. For now, practice these steps and next time we will complete the process.

Wishing you more joy.

Live inJOY!