Reparenting the Inner Child

The Inner Child

The Inner Child has been a term used since the mid 80’s.

It is not psychobabble or fringe therapy. The term, The Inner Child, came out of the recovery movement when it was finally recognized, understood and acknowledged by many psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychotherapists working in the field that saw a common denominator for those in recovery. The clients all had childhoods that in one way or another had been damaged by poor parenting and/or trauma. The trauma had features including neglect, abuse and abandonment. The abuse was either physical, emotional, intellectual, sexual, spiritual, and verbal or any combination or all. As a result, this left an adaptive child as opposed to an authentic child looking for love in all the wrong places. The search for wholeness created addictions along the way. Today we recognize this as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, because the child in us had no way of protecting themselves when confronted with abuse or negligence perpetrated by the very people who were supposed to be loving and protective.

The Inner Child and Parenting

Let me make one thing clear. We are NOT blaming parents for interfering in the quality of the lives of their children as they were growing up because if we did, we would have to go back multi-generationally to their childhoods to realize how their history impacted their outcome. We are simply saying that intentions do not matter and those left with survival wounds from growing up in dysfunctional families were looking to escape their pain and sorrow and unconsciously chose paths that would relieve their suffering, often creating more problems; thus addiction and the recovery movement. What is relevant and important is they need to know what happened to them!

The Inner Child and the Authentic Self

What we learned as therapists was there is a little lost child inside all of us that is seeking connection with our authentic self. A survival role was mastered on the way to growing up that served a very good purpose. It allowed for us to survive where if not developed, most of us would have not made it. However, what worked then, does not work forever. So there comes a time after we have grown up and have become adults that our childhood wreckage catches up with us and we are faced with loneliness, despair, fear, shame, guilt, and more often, acting out behaviors that are self destructive. What are those behaviors? Anyone reading this blog will know all or some of them: addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex, work, exercise, gambling, food, people and even pain. It was once said that “bad breath is better than no breath at all.” So unwittingly, without intentions we find ourselves in one or more of the above additions. So many addicts are cross-addicted. We have become a culture of addiction. What is even more disconcerting is that our children are following closely behind us. Just look at our children and think about how difficult it is to get their I pads and other computer devices away from them. Our culture is losing its connection not with just our authentic selves, but with one another! Think of how many of you go to bed holding your lap tops instead of your partner.

The Inner Child and Relationships

This has led to some serious consequences. The need to be loved for the very person you are instead of what you do or don’t do somehow got lost along the way. Human beings are hard wired for connection, so when we disconnect, we too often go into crisis and look for something to make us feel better. We don’t know how to go into ourselves to self love because most of us were never given love or acceptance for being who we are. Our survival roles maintained so long, that we lost contact with the very person we are and were meant to be. We put out to the world what felt familiar and safe. Thus what we received from others was a response of what we exemplified as our true self. Many of you reading this blog will have grown up with role models that never modeled love or affection. Some of you grew up in homes where you didn’t matter as much as your mother or father; not just to just each other, but to themselves; the narcissistic parent who’s attention and needs came before yours or the alcoholic father who was never present or raging at your mother, your siblings or you. You thought that was normal. Didn’t every family have the same household? We only know what we know. Our minds as children are not yet developed to see another way. So we tend to either identify with the abuser or the victim, depending on how each of us is physiologically wired. That’s why brothers and sisters raised in the same family can have very different outcomes as adults. Our neuro-biology and environment both play a big part in the choices we make and who we become. So….on with the reparenting.

The Inner Child and Therapy

Without proper guidance of a therapist who is trained in the practice of Inner Child Work, it is not possible to achieve optimum results. It’s like reading a book on learning how to swim. The only way to learn how to swim is to get in the water with someone who can show you how. The same is true with reparenting your inner child. It takes a well trained therapist who can guide you through the process. Each therapist uses their own style and method, so each experience may vary from one to the other. I use a combination of hypno-therapy, NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming), EMDR, Gestalt therapy and other modalities that I think will be appropriate and tailor-made for each individual, as we are all different. The goal is to bring about the most change. It real terms these experiential, guided behaviors serve as ways to enter the unconscious where trauma is stored They serve as opportunities to release the unresolved conflicts to promote healing. It’s our unconscious that dictates our behavior, so it is essential to reach the unconscious to effect change.

In the course of more than thirty-seven years, I have been certified in all the above modalities and had the privilege of being the first associate in the United States to John Bradshaw in 1989. It was through his mentoring and training that I was able to help my clients and take them further than any other form of therapy I had ever learned. Until now, some twenty-five years later, nothing else works better. The cognitive behavior follows the Original Pain Work which deals with family of origin experientially; not just talk therapy! What does this mean? The client needs to go back and visit the wounded child from either or both parents to give back the shame and pain bestowed upon them when they were too young and powerless to defend themselves. Now in the present, the therapist guides the adult back to his/her childhood with resources that he/she did not have as a child and teaches them to reparent their wounded child. This is one of those subjects that is almost impossible to write about because it is feeling work. The neo-cortex doesn’t get it. It happens at the lower levels of the brain: the reptilian and the limbic system. The most important part of this work is to have a benign witness for it to be effective and the therapist holds the space so the client can do the work without shame or judgment.

For further information, please contact me through this web site or email.

Joan E Childs, LCSW is a renowned psychotherapist, inspirational speaker and author of Do You Hate the One You Love: Strategies For Healing and Saving Your Relationship. In private practice since 1978, she specializes in individual and couple’s therapy, grief therapy, EMDR, NLP, inner child work and codependency. Learn more about her services at www.joanechilds.com.