Understanding your inner child

The love, attention, support–or lack thereof–and the extent to which your emotional needs were met by your caretakers in your early life have a profound impact on the development of your inner child. 

If your caretakers were able to fulfill your needs in the ways you needed regularly during childhood, you’re likely to have an easier time identifying and communicating your needs as an adult.

However, most of us have experienced some kind of inner child wound, or an adverse childhood experience that can result in unresolved trauma that has lasting effects into adulthood. Clinical social worker and writer, Julia Childs Heyl, explains how “[u]nresolved inner child wounds may show up as triggers and patterns that affect your current well-being, happiness, and relationships….[by influencing] how you think, feel, and react as an adult.”

In her TEDx Talk, therapist and relationship coach Gloria Zhang shares: “I didn’t know that I had a wounded inner child until I grew up and I started to see these strangely familiar ups and downs in my relationships. And, I started to realize that the answers to my current struggles in relationships were intricately woven into the tapestry of my childhood experiences.”

Zhang goes on to explain what she calls the “4 Core Wounds” from childhood:

• Abandonment; it can drive behaviors like people-pleasing and dependency.

• Neglect; can cause struggles with self-worth or independence, leading to relationships where you try to overcompensate for it by giving too much of yourself.

• Guilt; leads to constantly apologizing, feeling way too responsible for other people’s emotions, and may cause someone to stay in toxic relationships because they’re so used to being treated badly and they feel too guilty to put themselves first.

• Trust issues; they begin when trust has been broken and can happen if caretakers were inconsistent, or betrayed you, leading to adults who have a hard time letting people in. 

Revisiting and processing formative experiences can help us heal younger parts of our psyche and pave the way for us to build new, healthier coping mechanisms and connections.