About the inner child

Much of the sadness, anger, weakness or blockage in our adult life comes from the wounds of the child we were. A child who maybe wasn’t loved, wasn’t encouraged, validated, didn’t feel safe, lived in a hostile and aggressive environment or maybe he himself was abused directly, physically, verbally or emotionally.

As I explained in the article about needs, we humans are born and manifest throughout our lives a series of needs, physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual. Our efforts as babies, children, teenagers or adults go towards fulfilling these needs, through direct negotiation with the needs of other people around us.

When these needs are not met in childhood, the child experiences chronic frustration, which often exceeds the management power of his fragile psyche. Thus the child begins to protect himself from these frustrations, creating walls, limiting beliefs about the world and life and solid defense mechanisms to ensure his self-protection. Later, these defense mechanisms and limiting beliefs turn into rigid ways of thinking, feeling or acting that only sabotage their adult life.

Let’s take an example. A child whose need for autonomy in terms of feeding was violated, being forced to eat what and how much his parents put on his plate, constantly lives with this frustration related to the freedom to choose and promises himself “When I grow up, I will eat what I want, how much I want, when I want.” Reaching adulthood, he abandons any healthy limits related to food and consumes insane amounts of processed, high-calorie foods. Having reached obesity, he discovers that it is very difficult for himself to self-discipline and establish healthy eating routines.

Consequently, any deep, solid therapeutic process that aims for emotional healing and psychic reconstruction based on healthy life principles should visit the client’s childhood stage, investigate which needs have been met and which have not, and offer repair and healing to the inner child. It is essential that in the therapeutic space this child is seen, supported, validated, honored, both by the client and the therapist who, together, symbolically fulfill the needs of the child that he was. Through techniques such as guided imagery, the empty chair, the letter technique, working with the body, etc. and through the very deep therapeutic relationship, integrative psychotherapy offers countless tools to reach the soul of the child and offer the healing he so desperately needs!