Inner child

Do we all have one of these? Do we also have an inner teenager, inner 20 year old etc....?

Do these all represent somewhere that we got stuck due to trauma?

I am very confused by it all.

yes it is the age we were when the trauma happened. part of our brains are stuck in that trauma... as far inner teenagers or inner 20 year olds.. yes we can have those too if we are older but experienced trauma at those ages...

this is my understanding of it. hope it helped

Yes, definitely.

Not necessarily. Even "healthy" people have inner children etc.

What is the difference between the inner child and memory? I am looking forward to read more on this inner child business...

Is it possible to have the inner adult raise the inner child?

I don't know about you, but my inner adult is a caustic critic, who never runs out of ammo.
This child, inner or outer, had enough of that a long time ago.

Now I don’t know if I am right in my own personal way of understanding an inner child. However for myself I was lead to believe I reverted back to an inner child state of mind to help me cope with what I was going through, it was what my brain naturally done. However this didn’t help because I was acting in a way that might have help a scared me on playground when younger but I was acting like a complete little brat when I was trying to complete my last years of high school and that was causing many troubles for me and people around me.

I think that your brain finds or links back to a past behaviour coping mechanisms you once used because what’s happening now triggers you to go back and react as you once did because the situation you are in now relates in some way to how you were back then. Also I was lead to believe your brain finds it easier to do this then to confront what you are going through now, almost as a safety net. Metaphorically it’s like a parent’s protection they are trying to help but sometimes they can’t because they are only helping from a parent’s prospective. Your brain repeats the behaviour or thoughts or feelings naturally unaware it’s not helpful to you anymore. However this is just another personal view on it. Only you in time will see what an inner child will mean for you. Hope this may help you and wish you all the best.

I think everyone has an "inner child" do you ever just get the urge to skip or jump or color or do a silly thing? Perhaps that is the inner-child in you. Not sure, but yes in Therapy I often regress and end up feeling alot younger and act a lot younger than I am. And T has always told me its my inner-child coming out-especially when we are talking about hard stuff from the past. I'm not sure if it can always be reverted back to a trauma. But I'm 33, and I can get immature at times. Depends on my mood and what I'm doing in Therapy.

I hate to be the ringer here, but I do not think I have an inner child. I think I am an adult with childish impulses.

I understand the concept though, and may have used it briefly in my therapy.

It has just ended up helping me more to think of all of me as an adult.

I've seen it , my partner has no inner child. It's hard to image for me.

Well it's a good thing though cause there are lotsa little inner kids playing around here sometimes, and they need to be monitored.

My understanding of it is that we all need to go through child development which includes emotional development. If you don't get to emotionally develop or miss some child development, that part of you will still be stuck at that age. Traumas mess with child development and emotional development. I got to adulthood at about a 5 year old with emotional development. I simply had not learned certain things/didn't get to experience certain things that would have helped me to develop. Thankfully I was able to pick up where I left off in my 30's and now I'm closer to my actual age.

This is a continuum and it goes all the way to Dissociative Identity Disorder.

I recently went through some tough times with my inner child and meeting her needs. She's about 5-6 years old, very scared, frightened, needy - put both me and T through h*ll recently. Hard to explain exactly - I know she's not a separate person, but at times it felt like she was, weighing me down with her demands. Finally left during a very warm, caring, empathetic exchange with T - almost like a physical weight was removed from my shoulders. Along with this, I was able to shift my focal point from therapy/T to my life where it belongs.

Hope this makes some sense - I know it sounds strange

I believe we are all our ages/selves. My first memory is of being lost and having to cross a creek and not being able to; I can remember looking both ways and wondering where the bridge was; I knew what direction it should have been visible in but it wasn't there (someone moved the bridge? :-) I was two and too young to understand "corners" (the creek bent) But I can "feel" my thought processes, to this day at 61 years old. I "knew" where the bridge "should" have been.

The impact on me of not understanding and thinking "like a two year old" is still there. The problems I had as a two year old, I cannot "feel"/experience as an adult because I was not an adult when they happened to me!

A better example, perhaps, is my stepsister, who is 13 years older than I am; when I started first grade, she was starting college. We use to drive to her college and I met her friends, roommate, sorority sisters, etc. She'd have dance parties at our house and I was dressed up (she taught me to curtsy :-) and allowed to sit on a stool on the doorway and watch for awhile. I was 5-7 (she married when I was 8).

One of her sorority sisters died of cancer 10-15 years ago (I knew her well when I was 5-7) and her husband, my sister had dated back in college in the mid-1950's and she eventually married him. Well, I'm having a heck of a time, still! I'm 61 but my memories of him are those of a 6 year old Here we are two adults together but I keep thinking I should look up to him, be in awe of him. When they married, at the reception dinner all my sister's sorority sisters were there, in their early 60's at the time, and I couldn't understand why she was hanging out with all these old ladies until I realized that I viewed my stepsister and her college friends as being 19 and me 6, LOL.

That can happen in less helpful ways; my two year old self did not get across the creek, I decided it was too wide for me to jump and I was afraid to take off my shoes and socks and wade across because the sea monster might get me! Where did I get a sea monster? My favorite book of the time, Dr. Suess' McElligot's Pool http://www.amazon.com/McElligots-Poo.../dp/0394800834 had a sea monster at the end. However, when I was in therapy, I bought the book and my T and I went through it and the "sea monster" at the end of the book turned out to be a happy, friendly whale! At the time I got lost and tried to cross the creek when I was two, my mother was in the hospital for several months with a fatal brain tumor and I was "protesting" by withholding my feces (who's got "control" now, Dad? :-) and my father was giving me enemas. I learned about this "battle" from his sister, my aunt. But the upshot was, I converted the happy, friendly, whale into a "sea monster" that was going to get me?

As children we do that; we can't understand and only have limited resources. The inner child is the one that both "knows" where the bridge should be but can't find it and has to do the best they can with the situation at hand. Once one grows up, one can figure out where this inner child hit a snag and realize how well that self dealt with the enormous problem they were given and how "now" they can see it all worked out well, it was "enough". I wasn't "wrong" not finding the bridge; I couldn't find the bridge because Piaget proved I could not see around corners yet. My situation with my mother in the hospital and father "attacking" me needed strong emotions/understanding so I took my favorite book and my wonderful imagination and gave myself a sea monster.

It turned out that since I was thwarted finding my way across the creek that I ended up sitting down and bursting into tears. My heroic father came along, looking for me as I was "missing" (I'd followed my three older brothers then given up and tried to turn around and go back home only was at an angle from where we started) and he jumped the creek, picked me up, and I lived happily every after. He was not the sea monster, he obviously saved me from the sea monster. It wasn't my fault (I did not have to think of my father, the only one keeping me from death and destruction with my mother gone, negatively, I converted that difficulty into a threatening book character, containing it quite well, such a wonderful, clever child :-)

It is in looking at one's experiences as a child, from that age (which one has to as that was the age one was) and admiring the way that child dealt with the problems (admiring as an adult who can see/understand it now) and realizing that one IS that child and just as clever now, as then (haven't changed, I still am a wonderful, clever child :-) that inner child work is done, I believe.

I think that's it. I've just finished my inner child work. I can definitely remember those childhoold feeling of confusion and hurt. I truly am amazed at how well I was at handling and absorbing all that crap.

I hope so. If not, I'm screwed...

Schema therapy would say that this is the punitive parent mode. It's an adult mode, but not a healthy one.

ST would also say that there's a Healthy Adult inside everyone, but that for some of us the work of therapy is to strengthen it, so that it is able to take charge.

I think maybe it is the terminology that is confusing me. I am quite literal I guess and the "Inner child" to me means there is some small person hiding inside of me that is separate from me and if that is the case, how do I know she is me? And come to think of that, who am I ? Is there a "me"?

I hated who I was when I was young and fought hard to be someone different, I am assuming that T is wanting me to revisit that time, but in the present. Sometimes I do get a sudden change in perception, for example I may suddenly go from feeling confident to anxious - is this the inner child?

I do feel that I need to understand it more before doing what T wants, so that it is less frightening and makes sense to me.

Anyone ever read Slaugherhouse 5? It's what I always think of when people talk about their inner child.

No I haven't read this - but now I am intrigued.

Yes, they do feel separate and the goal is integration. I remember when I integrated. After you integrate you feel stronger and less divided. You don't have immature reactions to things afterwards.

This is common. The route to integration is to learn how to love that girl. The hate keeps her separate from you.

Could be. Your inner child could get triggered. Do you feel helpless and less able to handle situations when this happens?

Well I guess hearing that about integration is a positive start . Wow learning to love that child is going to be hard, I had felt so burdened by "her" - I think I am also scared that I will become her again.

And yes when I notice that change in perceptions, I feel very vulnerable and definitely less able to handle situations.

A bit of me is now thinking more postively though - maybe there is a different way of being in life, without all this fear and stuff - gosh I am even wondering whether this may truely work and this is the key

For myself I HATE the concept of an inner child.

I respect that others have this concept and work with it.

Have you discussed that with your T? That would be a fruitful avenue to explore.

I don't believe in the inner child stuff. There is only one me, and no other alternate personalities within me. If there was, then depression would be the least of my problems!!!

I see I'm going to have to tell my own story.

I was sceptical about the inner child, indeed hostile to the idea. But T made me see that I was actually hostile to my inner child. There was a part of myself that I had disowned.

In my case (and I can speak for no one else) rejecting the idea of an inner child was a sign of self-hatred. But it was also a clue to growth: I needed to accept, respect and love my own neediness, powerlessness and vulnerability. I'm still working on that.

It is possible that the inner child has no objective reality. But as a symbol and a metaphor, it has great power.

I think inner child is how we refer to our feelings we had as a child and if those feelings were to overwhelming due to abuse then they are split of from our consciousness and feels separate, feels as if something or someone else is in charge and their needs/wants feel alien to us. Once we integrate we become a whole adult.