Using Inner Child Work to Heal from Trauma

By: Dr. Denise Renye

There are numerous benefits to engaging with inner child work, which I like to call inner child play: improving the relationship with yourself, inviting more creativity into your life, and experiencing sexual freedom. Those are all huge and important benefits and there’s another one too that may be the crux of all inner child work/play: healing from trauma.

Trauma is defined as anytime your nervous system is overwhelmed and it impacts your ability to cope on a physical as well as emotional/spiritual level. That could be from war, a car accident, abuse (sexual, physical, verbal, financial, or emotional), a sudden death or experiencing a near-death of your own or someone important to you, miscarriage, repeated childhood neglect, poverty and class differences, racism, etc. This can be a one-time incident or it can be multiple incidents over a period of time.

Why is inner child play a way to heal from trauma? Because every time something substantial or traumatic took place in your life, it was registered within and inner child play is one avenue of healing, if you wish to engage with it.

Trauma comes from not only this life but also from your ancestors, it’s imprinted on your DNA. There may even be trauma inherited from other lifetimes; who can say for sure? Because trauma is complex and multifaceted, I recommend my patients, clients, and students explore via  multiple avenues, such as somatic work, shadow work, and more. It’s hard to get at trauma with one “thing.” As much as many people wish they could take a pill and be healed from traumatic experiences, that’s not how it works, in my experience.

Inner child exploration comes into play because it may uncover something that was previously hidden. When asked, many people say, “I had a great childhood,” but after some reflecting, digging, and recovering, they realize it may not actually have been as great as they thought. Perhaps they learn that while their parents didn’t abuse them physically, they did abuse them emotionally, or what they interpreted as an idyllic “anything goes” approach to parenting was actually neglectful.

Whatever it is, the inner children remember what their lived experience was really like, not the rewritten history some adults engage in as they get older. In essence, inner child play may provide the first step to healing: awareness. After becoming aware, then something may be done about it.

For the inner children, the “something” after awareness, the action piece, may be expressing what has remained silent for so long. When you were young, you may have lived in an environment where you didn’t have words to express what was happening, you didn’t understand it, or you didn’t feel safe speaking it out loud. And if you did speak it out loud, the adults around you may have engaged in gaslighting so you doubted your own reality. Being able to name what actually happened may be profoundly healing and inner child exploration allows for that expression, whether it’s verbal or not.

Another action piece that may result after awareness of trauma is being the parent you needed and perhaps didn’t get. While you can’t rewrite history, you can heal by giving yourself a “do-over.” You can reimagine an upsetting situation and provide a different outcome. This form of active imagination may work wonders because the body doesn’t know the difference between imagination and reality. When you imagine a different outcome for yourself, you are essentially reliving the experience and rewiring your brain to think about it differently.

However, you can’t do any of this without first getting in touch with your inner children and hearing their needs, wants, questions, and concerns. When you do, you have an opportunity to potentially heal from trauma in your past because you’re no longer skirting around it, shutting it down, or trying to “get over it.” Instead, you’re digesting the experience so it no longer feels quite so overwhelming and overpowering. In other words, you’re making the experience not quite so traumatic.  

Journal Prompts

·      What do I imagine my life to be if and when I begin to look within even more deeply to do the trauma-healing work that my body-mind has been asking for me to do?

·      What type of play might I imagine my inner child(ren) to enjoy?

·      How can I be kind to myself through this process?

Stay connected by subscribing to my newsletter. You’ll be the first to hear about exciting developments I have in the pipeline.