What is inner child healing?

Inner child healing involves working with the subconscious patterns that were imprinted in our brain as a child. Our subconscious mind operates off learned memory patterns and controls most of our behavior. Prior to age 7 we lack the ability to reason which means our perceptions are directly downloaded into our subconscious minds without context. This is an influential time in our lives as it programs our minds and drives our actions and behavior throughout our lives.
Inner child healing involves developing an awareness of the deeply imprinted feelings and beliefs within us. When we bring these deeply embedded belief systems into our conscious, reasoning mind we can reprogram our brain.
Our inner child wants nothing more than to be seen and heard. When we carry wounds from our childhood those pieces within us cry out for attention, holding us back in our lives and creating symptoms within our bodies. A key part of our healing journey involves making these parts feel seen and heard so we can feel whole again and back in charge of our lives.

As children, all of us absorb spoken and unspoken messages from our caregivers. We are told we are lovable, sweet, and good. Or we are told just the opposite - that there is something wrong with us and we are not good enough or lovable enough. This has a tremendous impact on our confidence and self-esteem our entire lives. If we believe that we don't deserve love, for instance, it can make it hard for us to accept love, have good relationships, or be successful in our chosen pathway. Fortunately, hypnosis is one of the best ways to revise internal beliefs and messages that don't serve us, messages that are held by our inner child. Hypnosis can heal our inner beliefs so we can feel more confident, relaxed, and happy in everything we do, paving the way for greater success. If you'd like to know more about online hypnosis with me and how it can help you, please schedule a free consultation on my profile today. Take care and talk soon! Jennifer

Inner child healing is a process of trauma healing by giving yourself the voice and choice you may never have had. It goes something like this... Painful events occur and/or painful words are spoken. These particular events and words really stick with you, impacting you so deeply that a part of yourself becomes frozen in time. Then whenever events or words remind that part of the originating event/words, that part rushes to the foreground, hijacking your brain and taking control of your emotions, thoughts, decisions, etc.

We all experience painful events that fracture and freeze parts of us. This is perfectly normal. At any given time, you may have one or many frozen parts. Sometimes however, our parts may become so prevalent that we feel they are disrupting our lives. That's when you might want to consider support to help you and your parts integrate.

Understanding integration starts with understanding the genesis of and the role of the part. In the moment of the painful event, you felt like you could not speak up or if you did, you were not heard, perhaps you felt you were not even seen and that you were completely powerless. That's the moment that part of you becomes frozen. From there, the part assigns itself the prestigious task of keeping you safe by rushing to the foreground when certain events elicit certain emotions, thereby reminding that part of the originating event.

Have you ever thought to yourself that someone's behavior or your own behavior seemed childish? That is a part who has taken over in an attempt to protect the true Self! We witness this every day, never realizing what we're witnessing.

I help clients get to know their parts, understand the role the part plays, how it has served them and then to give voice and choice to that part. When you lovingly accept a part and feel genuine gratitude to their hard work, you are giving them voice and choice. From there, you partner with them, assuring them that you are now an adult that can take care of yourself. As the part slowly learns to trust your ability, they reintegrate with your true Self and no longer interfere by taking over and holding you back.

Inner Child Healing is a very powerful way of integrating our younger versions of our self, and that affects our grown self, our "now self" so deeply and so powerfully. All our younger versions of self are always with us, they don't leave us when we get older, they are always here. They might be dissociated, traumatized, shocked, or stuck in any other way of feeling, acting and experiencing though. When that is the case, how our surrounding acts and talks to us can often trigger us and make us feel like we are back in our younger self since a younger version reacts. We will feel out of control and helpless. When these younger versions of us were not allowed to feel, to express how they felt and then integrate (with the help of caregivers who can hold their emotions and experiences and work through it with them) hence healed, we will not be able to control who we want to be in our live since our unhealed younger self drives us. When we heal those younger versions/that younger version of us, we can leave it in the past and be more present and feel empowered and in self control.

My absolute favorite form of healing because I believe our inner child represents our intuition and helps us become more aware and attuned to our true feelings, wants and needs.

In the first three developmental stages of our lives: infancy (co-dependent), toddler (counter-dependent), preschool (interdependent) — we are magical. We don't think the same way because we’re in a completely subconscious realm where our conscious wall hasn’t developed yet. They call that the age of reason. And then after seven years old, we become more logical and we can figure stuff out and stop believing in "magic" ie Santa Claus.

So what we're trying to do with inner child work is help people get back in touch with the energy that they had in those first three development stages because very powerful decisions were made at that time... what somebody called the core material >>> You made decisions about yourself, your own identity, your place in the world, what you're capable of, about what it was to be a man, what it was to be a woman, and about your sexual identity.

So to go back and directly impact the child, get in touch with them and champion them, is the way to rewrite and reprogram those decisions. This can create lasting change and powerfully improve self-worth, self-confidence and self-compassion.

From the moment you have a heartbeat, your consciousness absorbs any and all information it can find. In utero, if your mother suffered from depression or high levels of stress, those hormones affect you subconsciously, even before you are born. As you expand into your early years of life other conditioning takes place, whether it's from your parents/guardians, friends, or the education system, you learn habits of how to cope and adjust to emotional struggles.

For instance, if at a young age you were criticized heavily, you may suffer from people-pleasing and a lack of self-esteem. your coping mechanism to deal with criticism is to serve others and put your own needs aside. Even as an adult, you are still reacting the way you did in your early years.

Inner child healing is all about recognizing these behaviors in your life that correlate to the environment your mother was in while pregnant, and/or your upbringing. When we heal the inner child with all the wisdom and knowledge that life gives us, we open the door to emotional intelligence and healthy coping mechanisms that will serve us throughout our life. Think of it as reparenting yourself the way your soul needed to be parented as a child.

Inner child healing helps the various aspects of our emotional body that were stressed in our nervous system at a very young age, even in utero before we were born. Connecting with these aspects through our body and with guided dialogue from a practitioner, help to redesign how they impact us in our life now. Something I've developed called Role Play Somatics (c) shows you where feelings and beliefs from your "inner child" are limiting you, and leads you to a way of freeing yourself from them.

Simply put, as a child we experience traumas on many levels. Emotionally, parts of us can get stuck in these traumas. As we grow up we lose focus on these parts and they become part of our subconscious. For most this affects our daily lives in a variety of ways, with each person having their own unique experience.

Since emotions gets stuck at the age which the trauma occurred, and our subconscious will represent this back to us as a stuck child of the same age, this type of work is called “Inner Child Work”.

Inner child healing directly addresses the part of the personality which is stuck. It focuses on freeing the stuck emotion and reintegrating this healed aspect back into the whole personality. The client experiencing this will generally feel and express a new found sense of freedom. There are many types of healing modalities which do this work.

When we come into this world, we are a being of emotions. As children we respond emotionally first, mentally and then physically. As we age, these emotions get hidden. As adults, we response mentally first then emotional and then physically. Many times, the emotional response never surfaces for adults. If a trauma has happened at a young age, the emotional response it still within us. One must dig deep to find that emotional response from their childhood in order to release it. We create layers of responses to different situations. When one starts their healing process, these layers, like an onion, are removed. Once the mental and physically response is removed, the emotional will be revealed. Many times, the client recalls when that emotional response is created which is usually when they were a child. Once one releases the energy and makes peace on why they emotionally responded in that way, the client has done inner child healing on that one situation.

When we suffer a trauma - which can be as mild as your best friend moving away - the conscious, social mind motors on while the subconscious tries to heal. Most of that work is done in dreams at night, and if an answer isn't found, the repeated mulling-over of the wound creates a partial identity that doesn't age with the rest of us. Its needs manifest in unexplained fears and resistance to change. In hypnosis, inner child work allows us to contact and heal that orphaned portion of the self. One of the greatest benefits is recovery of child-like joy and enthusiasm that was lost in the initial trauma.

Inner child hypnosis uses a variety of tools and techniques to access, communicate with, calm and heal your inner child. Hypno therapy to heal inner child can create positive changes in adult who seeks grater self respect, self confidence, self-worth, and self acceptance.