Welcome to this Selves Inside series on revisioning the inner child.
There has been a lot of teaching and writing and working with the inner child for the last about 50 years,
70s and 80s,
This became something that was attended to in psychotherapy and in New Age approaches,
And it has become something of a cliche,
And yet I think we all who practice awareness,
Who practice intimacy with ourselves and with others,
Come to recognize the inner child as a truth as something that is real for us in the sense that it's with us,
It is there even as we do our adulting.
It is a psychic,
A living presence that is underneath,
Often underneath whatever else is going on.
So I don't want to talk about whether it exists or not,
Where it came from as far as what happened in our childhood and so forth,
But I want to talk about more what it can give us and how we can tend to it,
How we can appreciate it.
So the first thing is what we're calling the inner child could also be called our core of innocence.
That in us which does not become jaded,
That in us which has not lost a capacity for open-heartedness,
For unguardedness,
That in us which no matter what position we hold,
We could be the President of the United States of America or hold any other very serious weighty position,
And this is not drawn into those values.
It remains this core of innocence.
It remains a tender and childlike heart.
So we may have,
And I'm sure we all have,
Our adult roles that we play,
And a thing to appreciate is that the inner child comes with us.
So the inner child is with us at the board meeting.
It's with us on the first date.
It's with us in all of the different things we do as adults,
And we sometimes may wonder why am I anxious or what is the insecurity?
And to consider that,
Well of course if the inner child is here with me,
Supposing we take that on as a relative truth,
If this innocence is with me,
Of course it's uncomfortable at the meeting.
Of course it's uncomfortable doing the adulting thing because it doesn't know how to do that.
And especially if we are not taking care of,
If we're not tending to the inner child,
It goes with us to these situations and has a sense of insecurity.
And we may feel it as a flutter in our tummy or sweaty palms or a heartbeat that is beating faster than we can understand why.
And well there's this child that doesn't know what to do that is with us.
One of our layers,
Layers of our soul that's hidden but present.
Related to that is the inner child,
This core of innocence is defenseless.
It's defenseless no matter how much we try to protect it,
And we can,
And you might say we should protect it,
It receives things in a way that is like having very very thin skin,
If any at all.
And so for some of us who the inner child is closer to the surface,
We have a sensitivity.
It has a positive side.
We can be really touched by things,
By people,
By experiences.
And we can also be really touched off.
We can be what's perceived by others as overly sensitive because the child is not defended.
The defendedness is something in my theory on top of the child.
Because we all have this core of innocence,
Something has developed to protect it.
Something has developed to shield it from the world or to shield us from having to feel its acute sensitivity.
So in voice dialogue terms we say that behind the primary selves is the vulnerability,
And often the vulnerability is the inner child.
And so that means that we may have a rational mind,
A part of us that is always trying to understand and approach things logically and through a cool intellect that distances the child,
Protects it from direct impact of relationships and events.
We may have the inner critic ironically trying to protect the child,
Trying to beat us to the punch of judgment,
Criticizing others before they can put us under the lens of criticism that the child is totally vulnerable to.
So that's a question to consider whether you have strategies,
Selves that tend to take up a lot of space,
That one of their primary things they're doing is protecting the inner child.
And this protecting can be done very skillfully.
It can be a wise tending and it can be a protecting that really is cutting us off from vulnerability,
Cutting us off from the gifts of the child,
And we really want to work with that.
It may be that the inner child can become traumatized.
I believe that whether it is traumatized or not,
Its capacity for wonder and play and its freedom from the transactional and pragmatic views of the world remains with us.
And we may need to work with the trauma,
The wounds of the inner child,
And yet I believe that the core of innocence is still there and we can learn to tap that.
So the work with the inner child,
The tending with it,
Has numerous dimensions and I can only touch on them because this is a kind of nuanced and delicate work.
But the first thing that we could notice are what are the situations that allow our inner child to come out and play?
Where is there enough safety that this kind of innocence and vulnerability feels accessible?
What are the situations where this inner child,
Especially if we have a kind of exquisite vulnerability,
Where are the situations where that is safe?
And to simply appreciate those,
Just to recognize that is a precious person or a precious time or environment that we can really value and maybe protect those opportunities for the inner child.
Because when we lose the inner child,
When we lose the core of innocence and we lose vulnerability,
We lose enchantment,
We lose the wonder and the joy of life.
It can be lost.
I think we know people like that and we know ourselves in times like that.
So protecting the spaces that allow the inner child the vulnerability to come forward and we can also work with looking at how the protectors function in our lives and when they're overdoing it.
And really noticing how they overdo it and letting the protector itself know that it's overdoing it.
Seeing what we can do to let the protector ease up so that there's more room for the child in our lives.
An example may be the protector may have been very necessary when we were a child in our childhood home,
But the protector is still doing the same kind of protecting that's no longer necessary in our current environment because we are no longer with those people who tend to wound in that way.
So it's something of a reality check to see is this way of being still necessary?
Do I need to be still guarded?
Do I need to hide my weaknesses or my emotions in my current life situation?
Maybe not.
Maybe those are outdated programs and we can expose those.
The final thing I want to say about the inner child,
The core of innocence of vulnerability,
Is that we have a task of attending to it on a direct and energetic level.
And that means feeling it in your body,
Feeling it present.
Maybe it's in your heart,
In your belly,
Getting to know its signature texture.
Is it a fluttering?
Is it a heart pounding?
Is it a quivering?
And taking this seriously in the sense that when this is present it is our job to tend to it,
To accompany it energetically,
To hold a presence with that part of ourselves,
To companion with presence this part of ourselves.
And if you have the,
I don't know,
Belief system to do so,
Dialogue with the inner child.
At the very least say,
Oh honey I'm here for you.
I understand why you're scared.
I feel you.
Is there anything I can do to make you feel more comfortable?
This kind of relationship with the child as a psychic reality is the beginning and the catalyst for a deep change in our emotional landscape.
So thank you for tending to your inner child and feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about how you might take that work more deeply.
