🧠 What Is Inner Child Work? A Gentle Approach to Healing Old Wounds
Maybe you've heard the term before—“inner child work”—and wondered what it actually means.
Is it about rehashing childhood memories? Pretending to be a kid again?
Not exactly.
Inner child work is a therapeutic process that helps you connect with the younger parts of yourself that may still be holding onto pain, unmet needs, or old survival strategies. These parts show up not just in memories, but in how you feel, react, and relate to others today.
👶 We All Carry Younger Parts of Ourselves
Whether or not we had an objectively “bad” childhood, most of us didn’t grow up in perfectly attuned environments. Maybe your feelings were dismissed. Maybe you had to grow up too fast. Maybe you felt responsible for others' emotions.
And while your adult self may know more now, those early experiences can still shape your internal world—especially when you feel overwhelmed, abandoned, or not good enough.
Inner child work helps bring those younger emotional parts into awareness, not to shame or fix them, but to understand and care for them.
🧠 Inner Child Work Isn’t Regression—It’s Integration
This isn't about reliving the past or blaming your family. It’s about noticing how old emotional patterns may still be running the show. For example:
Do you freeze when someone’s angry—even if they’re not yelling at you?
Do you over-apologize or people-please to keep the peace?
Do you feel guilty for resting or asking for help?
These responses often come from parts of us that learned to stay small, stay quiet, or stay busy to feel safe. Inner child work invites us to meet those parts with compassion, not judgment.
🪴 What’s the Evidence Behind Inner Child Work?
While “inner child work” is often used as an umbrella term, many evidence-based approaches support this kind of emotional healing, including:
Attachment-Based Therapy – Explores early relationship dynamics to build safety and self-worth in the present.
Parts Work / Internal Family Systems (IFS) – Helps clients connect with different “parts” of self, including wounded child parts, to create internal harmony.
EMDR & Brainspotting – Use bilateral stimulation and body-based processing to resolve unresolved trauma from childhood.
Somatic Experiencing – Focuses on how early stress is stored in the body and gently discharged through nervous system work.
DBT and Inner Child Reframes – Encourage self-validation, emotional regulation, and reparenting through practical skills.
Therapy doesn't have to look like reliving trauma to be effective. Sometimes, it’s simply about helping a part of you feel safe—maybe for the first time.
🌿 What It Looks Like in Therapy
In a session, inner child work might include:
Visualization or guided imagery to “meet” your younger self
Naming emotional responses as “parts”
Using somatic cues (like posture, tension, or breath) to tune into what a younger part might be holding
Exploring your body’s reactions when core emotions like fear, rejection, or shame are triggered
You don’t have to revisit every detail of the past. Much of this work happens in the present—by noticing what arises with curiosity and care.
💛 You Deserve to Be Nurtured, Too
For many clients, especially those with chronic illness, burnout, or histories of relational trauma, it’s hard to believe that your needs matter. You may have learned to function without softness, support, or slowness.
Inner child work can be a powerful step toward changing that—toward learning that you are allowed to rest, to speak up, to take up space, and to feel.
You don’t have to do it alone.
👉 Reach out today to connect with a therapist who can walk with you as you rediscover the parts of yourself that still deserve compassion.
