Reparenting Our Inner Child

One of the more consistently confronting and, at times, embarrassing concepts that psychology forces us to consider is that of an ‘inner child.’ All of us have, along the years, made such efforts to become adults that it can be at once grating and dispiriting to be told that there might, nevertheless, be an ‘inner child’ still lodged somewhere within us.

But in truth, we contain within ourselves a version of all the people we have ever been. There is, in recessive form, somewhere in the folds of our nature, a confused teenager, a sad child, a jealous or hungry infant. No version of us entirely disappears; it is merely added to and buttressed, just like an oak tree that still contains, in its rings, the marks of all its former circumferences.

The Struggles of the Inner Child

Furthermore, if we follow the psychological thesis, some of our inner children are likely not to be especially well. They might be dealing with a hurt that they have no idea how to cope with, they might have suffered a loss without any chance to understand who and what is to blame, or they might be lonely, distressed, or ashamed. No one might have taken proper care of them during a crisis or bothered to sympathize with their unusual difficulties at school.

Despite their pain, it isn’t that the inner child’s cries are in any danger of breaking through into the public realm. That is precisely the problem. Inner children cause psychic distress not because they are too present, but because they are not present enough. They have been too effectively locked away. Their cries have been seamlessly forgotten and ignored. They have been pushed into a soundproof chamber from which no murmur emerges. And yet, still, they exist.

We are dealing with unwanted, restless ghosts who have not been appeased or understood — but whose ongoing ignored unhappiness threatens the course of our lives.

The Need for Reparenting

The task ahead requires a perhaps even more grating and obtuse word: reparenting. The inner child needs to be identified, their distinctive troubles understood, and their pains soothed and becalmed.

In a perfect world, it is parents themselves who would carry out this work at the time the difficulties arose. But in the real world, some of the work gets left behind and lingers, requiring a bizarre-sounding maneuver to correct. We — as adults — need to become parents to the children we once were. We need to gather together our adult capacities for kindness, reassurance, empathy, generosity, and warmth and direct these toward the three, five, or fifteen-year-olds who still exist in our minds.

We need to take stock of these young people’s sorrows and help them in a way they were not helped at the time, in the name of helping ourselves right now; for we are standing on their shoulders — and can only be as stable as they are.

Healing Through Self-Compassion

It’s when we can directly imagine what a good and kind person might have said to us, and yet when we are simultaneously aware of how little anyone did actually say, that we might be suffused with compassionate tears for our former selves. We may register a trapped sadness that at last has an opportunity to be seen, worked through, and expunged.

We might feel a lot lighter afterward, and we might then regularly — perhaps late at night — repeat the exercise: revisiting the inner child and bringing them an extra dose of comfort and tenderness, so that they (and we, for we rest as a collective) might sleep more easily.

We probably know well enough how to treat real children around us; true liberation awaits us when we finally learn to treat the children inside us with as much tolerance, patience, and warm encouragement.

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Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!

I am waiting for your comments.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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