Reconnecting With Your Inner Child

Have you ever felt rushes of shame, playfulness or vulnerability that made you think, “I feel like a kid”, but you’re not sure why? 

That’s your inner child surfacing: part of your subconscious shaped by early experiences, that “infuses all the past hidden ages which have made up one's life journey”. All of us have it. It’s common to reconnect with or heal it, to better understand your “authentic personality” and move on from childhood wounds (John Firman & Ann Russell, 1994). 

Try the following:

Re-expose yourself to activities you liked as a kid

Think back to activities you found fun as a child. List them out and find opportunities to try them again. 

For example:

• Maybe you used to be intrigued by plants. Pick up a succulent from a florist, or take a walk in your neighbourhood and try nature journaling. 

• Did you once love learning the names of dinosaurs? Visit a natural history museum, find a paleontology documentary, or pick up a dinosaur toy set. 

You don’t have to replicate the exact activity you did. Instead, the key is to consciously remember, acknowledge and re-engage that part of you that felt curious, wondrous or playful.

Work through reflective exercises

While you can go through these books and articles with therapists, it’s worth exploring them yourself, too:

• Engage in parts work through Dr. Richard Schwartz’s No Bad Parts. He developed the “internal family system” model, proposing we’re each made up of parts that need to be treated with curiosity, not judgement.

• Art therapist Dr. Lucia Capacchione’s books, such as Recovery of Your Inner Child and The Power of Your Other Hand, suggest writing questions with your dominant hand and journaling replies using your non-dominant one.

• Articles like PositivePsychology’s Opening to the Inner Child present shorter and more accessible journaling exercises.

Written by: Tze Min

12/2024

References

Capacchione, L. (1988). The power of your other hand: A course in channeling the inner wisdom of the right brain. Shambhala Publications.

Capacchione, L. (1991). Recovery of your inner child: The highly acclaimed method for liberating your inner self. Fireside.

Firman, J., & Russell, A. (1994). Opening to the inner child: Recovering authentic self. The Synthesis Center. https://www.synthesiscenter.org/PDF/opening.pdf

Schwartz, R. C. (2021). No bad parts: Healing trauma and restoring wholeness with the internal family systems model. Sounds True.

Sutton, J. (2022). Inner child healing: 35 practical tools for growing beyond your past. PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/inner-child-healing