In this blog post I will address inner child work, also called shadow work, as this can be a hard concept to wrap our minds around sometimes. It's a psychological fact that the most mental disorders and destructive behavior patterns are a result of of unresolved childhood trauma, this is why we call it the inner child.
The inner child will not evolve past trauma that is not being properly taken care of and treated. Let's say that you at 4 years old experienced a trauma. Keep in mind that trauma in most cases will not necessarily involve being beaten and locked in your room for months. Although this unfortunately sometimes is the case. I dare to say that for most of us , the trauma is more subtle in nature, like for instance emotional neglect. Those times you were ignored, or you got shamed for your so called negative emotions etc. At the moment you experience the trauma, your emotional body stops growing. This means that even though your physical body might be 30, your emotional body still is 4. And you have to treat it accordingly. Let's say you're now in a marriage that does not work the way you've hoped, so you go to a marriage counselor to get advice, and you're the one who experienced the trauma at 4 years old. If you in this situation is being handed tools to improve the adult you in the situation, let's say tools for improving your communication, this will NOT work for your core issue.
So what will work? You have to treat yourself at the level you are at. You would not treat a 4 year old child the same way you would treat a 30 year old adult. This is where the inner child work comes in. We have to internally treat the inner child by listening and unconditionally being there. In other words, we have to internally do exactly what a loving parent will to their physical child. If your child came crying to you, would you turn your back to him/her and said " I can't look at you, and your pain has got nothing to do with me! So go away!" Hopefully you would not! So then why are you doing that to yourself on a daily basis?
Inner child work is about taking care of your inner emotions and conditions like it was this physical child. This does not only have to be in real-time. The real inner child work begins when we start "time traveling". This may sound strange, but it is very much possible, and easy, to use your consciousness to travel in time back to the first time this trauma was brought on and change the frequency of your memory. Please note that this is a practise that is well known and used method in psychology, which is traced back to Carl Jung (1875-1961) who was a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded “Analytical psychology”. Carl Jung is known as the originator of the concept of inner child with his work “divine child archetype”. So for those of you who felt that this was a bit metaphysical for your taste, I insure you that this is a method that is much used in popular psychology today. For more about how to use this method in your own life. This is something I will come back to at a later time. It is also something I can help you with in a private session with me.
