studies show that 'inner children' (or 'child alters') don't behave as children (with respect to cognitive ability and the like), rather, they behave as adults think children would behave. inner children aren't real in the sense of someone physically having a child inside them (like how you do with pregnancy, for example) but the FEELINGS can be ones that were experienced intensely since childhood. that can be very real indeed.

some theorists think that everybody has an inner child. here, inner child just means the child-like feelings and desires and thoughts that we typically try and shut off with comments to ourself like 'thats silly!' and 'how old am i?' and so on. the thought is that it is those really vulnerable feelings... that arose during our actual childhood, yeah. but... the only sense in which they are parts of us that have been frozen in time is the sense in which those vulnerable feelings haven't undergone an evolution into their adult forms because we have ignored them and not been able to deal with them for so long.

> how old? How does that get determined? is it 5 or is it 10? does it depend on trauma...and what if there was none? i do not understand.

vulnerable feelings... everyone has them. it can be good to put them away sometimes so that one can function as an adult doing the things that adults need to do. i guess the age is supposed to be related to trauma. trauma doesn't have to be of 'objectively sickening severity', however, relational trauma (which could be due to misattunement) can be traumatic.

> is it true or real to have a child-self to talk to directly? is it a tool or a fact?

depends on what you take a child-self to be. personally... i think it is a tool because i think the way most people think of inner children is (strictly speaking) false. but i'll admit i wonder at the utility of the tool sometimes. i do think people have a tendency to be overly concrete... there is a literature on the notion of a 'self' and the consensus in psychology is that the self is a narrative construct (or similar). so... is a self a real entity or a useful fiction? the majority of psychologists come down on the latter side. it doesn't make much sense to ask about reality simplicitor. it helps to ask whether something is as real as something else. e.g., are alters more like selves or more like fictional characters? but of course this doesn't make much sense if we think that selves (quite generally speaking) ARE fictional characters... tricky huh...

> what happens in dissociation? what does that really mean in terms of experience?

dissociation is when aspects aren't consciously experienced. for example... some people can dissociate from (distract from) pain. so they don't consciously experience the pain, or they only intermittently become consciously aware of it and then they 'numb out' to it again. you can dissociate from things going on around you too. not be aware of something in your environment... not be aware of certain thoughts or feelings. of course there are moments of awareness but one just kinda numbs out from them. focuses on other things to their exclusion. pushes them away.

> what happens when an inner child, assuming one is there, tries to speak?

a thought pops into your head and you go 'wasn't my thought!!!'. so... whos thought was it then? 'must be... inner childs thought'. then you can ask yourself 'who is my inner child?' and then a name might occur to you. before you know it you have constructed yourself an inner child. but... er... why would you want to? it is a way of making sense of ones experience to be sure. espeically aspects of experience (thoughts, emotions etc) that are too painful. i guess the reconstruction goes that you hear a voice/thought. but that you just KNOW it isn't your voice/thought. it just seems alien or 'not me' or foreign somehow. one way this can go is to be reconstructed into 'thought insertion' (e.g., aliens are inserting thoughts in my head). another way it can go is that one is possessed by... an inner child (internal not me rather than external) that is putting voices/thoughts in your head.

> Can questions bring forth a memory so tangible it forces the adult self aside?

sure. they just have to focus on something that is too overwhelming for the person. when they can't cope they will employ their coping strategy of 'not me', whoever they have constructed their 'not me' to be...

of course this is just one other opinion to add to the mix... but it is the view i've come to in trying to make sense of my experience.