The ‘inner child’ term is now part of pop psychology. The man who brought this concept to the masses was John Bradshaw. Known for his writing on addictions, codependency, and spirituality, Bradshaw was an American educator, counsellor, and motivational speaker. He came from a dysfunctional family himself, and studied philosophy, psychology and religion. He ran a talk show, and also made guest appearances on Oprah, Dr. Ruth and CNN. Now this type of work is so helpful when working with parts of ourselves who are holding onto trauma. Oceans Counselling is a leading online counselling service that specializes in trauma and addictions counselling.
The inner-child approach can be specifically directed towards working with adults with childhood trauma. In childhood, ego structures are not yet fully formed, so they seem to grow around the trauma. This isolates traumatic events in earlier stages of development, and makes them difficult to remember later in life. This is particularly the case when the child is traumatized, and then emotionally detaches from that experience. Having those childhood memories frozen in childhood stages of development frozen, the person may also lose access the positive personality aspects of childhood. Children are associated with feelings such as joy and curiosity, being detached from those emotional experience can be a huge deficit in adult life, leading to feelings of depression and emptiness. Healing the inner-child can mean healing the harms of childhood trauma and reconnecting with positive emotions such as spontaneity and excitement that have been trapped in the wounded child’s experience.
Oceans Counselling can help you start to identify different parts of yourself. One may feel like their childhood-self who experienced abuse. Another may feel like a mature but victimized part. Another is a protector. You will be guided by your therapist to turn mindful observation towards whatever parts come up, and to invite them to be observed, and communicate with them. You may have different physiological and emotional experiences with each part. Your therapist will encourage you to sit with the feelings and sensations and to verbalize them, which helps with reprocessing the trauma that is being held experientially in the body.
