Heal & Comfort Your Criticized Inner Child

The criticized child is the part of you that believes the inner critic. This 15-minute long guided "parts work" (IFS) practice will guide you in connecting with and healing your inner child.

It was recorded on the windy cliffs above big beach in Maui and features ocean and wind noises in the background.

Transcript

Music This is a meditation design to help you Comfort and heal your criticized child The part of you that believes you're inner critic It starts with a brief body scan I want to invite you to just close your eyes and take a breath And notice your thinking Just notice what's on your mind without any need to change it or judge it Notice your feelings,

Your emotions And notice your physical sensations And feel the top of your head Feel the muscles in your face,

Relax your face Relax your jaw And relax all the little muscles around your eyes And feel the back of your head And your neck And your shoulders and your chest And just allow your breath to deepen And your shoulders to drop And feel your upper back Your lower back Your belly Feel your upper arms,

Your elbows,

Your forearms Your wrists and your hands Feel your hips and your pelvis Your thighs,

Your knees Your calves,

Your ankles and your feet I want to invite you to reflect for a moment How does your inner critic speak to you?

What does it criticize?

How harsh is it?

And just take a moment and see if you can remember or bring to mind the exact phrases that it uses One way to get in touch with this if you're not is to notice what you don't like about yourself What some part of you that we call the inner critic is telling you is wrong Might be your appearance Might be the sound of your voice Some of us inner critics are so strong they criticize everything about us But just notice,

See if you can bring to mind the exact phrases that it uses And as you bring those phrases to mind,

See if you can allow an image to form of your inner critic If you were to personify it,

What would your inner critic look like?

And you don't need to have an image if an image doesn't come Just having a felt sense of it is enough And I want you to imagine for a moment moving all that criticism and the inner critic out of your body Across the room,

Maybe 20,

30 feet away from you Getting the critic at some distance And see if you can even imagine shrinking the critic,

Making it smaller Maybe even making it the size that it would fit in a jar You may or may not know that your critic is actually trying to help you In a really sometimes hurtful way But for this meditation,

We're just wanting to get the critic to some distance from you and shrink them down Maybe even put them in a jar or send them to the moon Because there's another part of you that we call the criticized child And that's the part of you that believes the critic There's an inner child that's being criticized that believes the critic And reflect for a moment How do you feel when you believe the critic?

Notice those feelings Find them in your body perhaps But just notice how do you feel Does the critic make you feel shame?

Less than,

Not good enough Ugly These are the feelings of the criticized child And allow yourself to imagine now an image of the criticized child Notice how old they are Notice their body position And imagine a bubble of healing,

Loving light around them Of a certain color It's kind of a force field between them and the critic And go up to them and take their hand and look into their eyes And say I'm going to take you someplace safe And imagine the two of you in that loving bubble of energy Gradually moving and floating someplace Maybe a place in nature that feels loving and safe Maybe an imaginary place But bring the criticized child to a loving place And when you get to this place take their hands and look into their eyes And start to tell them the loving positive messages that they need to hear To counter the messages of the critic Tell them how beautiful they are Tell them they're special Tell them the things that they need to hear from you And look deeply into their eyes as you do it And tell them that you are here now You are here And that you love them And they need to know the truth now And that you're going to protect them now You're going to protect them from those critical voices And look deeply into their eyes and tell them those positive messages one right after another And notice how they respond Just keep telling them the positive messages,

Just sending so much love to them And let them know that if they wish they can send all that shame,

All that negativity,

All those negative beliefs Deep into the earth or far out into the ocean or into the sun They can send them away,

They can release them And allow them to do that Allow them to release all that toxic negativity in whatever way that they wish And again looking into their eyes,

Just pouring love into them Telling them the truth,

The truth that you would tell any child To comfort them about the truth of who they are And allow that energy of the sun or the ocean or the earth wherever all those burdens were sent Allow all that negativity to be completely released And notice,

Just notice the positive quality that's emerging for the child now Just notice it And hold their hands,

Look into their eyes And both of you feel that positive quality in every single cell of your body Both of you feel that positive quality in every single cell of your body And tell the child that you are going to protect them now That you are going to watch for the critic That when the critic speaks up that you are going to interrupt the critic That you're not going to let the critic abuse the criticized child anymore And make a vow that you're going to do that That you're going to protect this poor,

This beautiful precious child And you're not going to allow the critic to harm them anymore And bring the child into your heart,

Bring your hands to your heart Take a deep breath And then feel your back,

Feel your feet Say your full name to yourself three times And allow yourself to emerge from the meditation Or if you like to continue to sit and be

Reviews

Thank you sweet brother, perfect🩵✨🙏🏼

Thanks very much for this guided journey. I woke up feeling a sense of doom and anxiety. I knew it was a frightened inner child asking for help. I went back to a difficult memory with my mother and intervened for my child. It was quite healing for all involved. I made a deep and clear connection with the 8 year old this time around. 🙏

Lovely ☺️ 🍁
Thank you

Thankyou. I really liked the exercise of releasing the child from the inner critic.

Wonderful. Thank you very much. I felt an inner-shift happen

I found the audio with the wind a little distracting but I loved the meditation. It felt so good for my inner child to send the negative feelings info the sun and to feel held by me. Thank you.

A beautiful and healing practice. Here in Minnesota it is cold late autumn, and I took my inner little one to the ocean where we heard the waves rolling softly in the background. Thank you.

Really comforting, my inner child needed this. Needed me to see her ❤️

imagery clear instructions easy to follow. Nice and slow cadence. just the right amount of time for body scan. very affirming of the inner child offers hope for a future very grounding

Beautiful and healing. Thank you.