Inner Child Work: Healing Core Wounds

Does it sometimes feel like no matter how old you get—you still feel like a part of you is a child? We all have inner child parts—no matter how old we get. Maybe when one of your parents or a partners talks to you in a certain tone of voice, you feel like a younger part of you becomes activated. Maybe when you are playing with a child you feel like a young part of you is having fun too. Child parts can often show up when we are playing and having fun but for a lot of us they show up when our trauma has been triggered.

In Internal Family Systems therapy, the inner child parts are called ‘exiles’ because they often hold our childhood trauma, attachment wounds and other painful experiences. The inner child parts can then become activated when something touches near a trauma wound. An example could be if a parent constantly criticized and shamed a child—the child may grow up to become an adult that has an inner child that still constantly feels shame. When a partner or someone else criticizes that adult—this touches into some of this person’s core attachment wounds and their child part that feels the shame will become activated.

In IFS therapy, some of the most profound healing occurs when we are able to work with the inner child parts. In IFS, we can talk directly to the child parts, get to know them better and help them process their wounds or traumas.

Here are some of the steps used in IFS that help your inner child parts (exiles):

1. Get to know the child part

2. Build a trusting relationship with them

3. Witness the child parts’ pain with compassion

4. Updating the child part

5. Retrieve the child part from the past

6. Reparent the child part

7. Unburden the child part from their painful experiences and core beliefs

8. Continue building trust with the child parts and encourage cohesion with all the parts in the system.

Get to know the child parts

There may be many child parts in your system; you may pick one that you want to get to know better. Maybe it is 6 year old part that feels connected to your parents’ divorce and keeps coming up in your current relationships with anxieties around feeling like your partner will leave. In the session, your therapist can use guided mindfulness techniques to get you in to a state that feels like it easier to hear this part more clearly. Then once this part is accessed, your therapist will prompt you with questions to ask this part to help you get to know them better. Some of these questions could be:

What does this part look like?

What are some of the fears or concerns this part has?

Where are they at?

What would they like us to know?

Building a trusting relationship with a child part

Often, a child part feels better just by being acknowledged and heard. The goal in therapy is for them to feel like they can trust you and your therapist. Some more traumatized child parts will likely need a lot more time and re-assurances to feel any level of trust with anyone. We want to show them compassion, curiosity, patience and non-judgemental-ness until they feel comfortable opening up. It is best to go at the pace of the child part and not push them or pressure them—this is an important part of building the trust.

Witnessing the child parts’ pain with compassion

When enough trust has been felt—the child part will feel more comfortable opening up and revealing what their fears are and where their fears came from—it is often connected to trauma and attachment wounds. Because this part of the process, as well as the next steps, involve a lot of touching into trauma material and childhood wounding—it is important to have a trauma-informed therapist to guide you through this process and to avoid emotional flooding (learn more about what trauma-infomed therapy is here). Often in this stage, the child part will take us straight to the trauma memories—its important to go at a slow pace in order to not feel overwhelmed. A IFS therapist is trained to help work with a child part in a way that does not overwhelm the body and inner system. When the client and the part feel safe and ready, the therapist can guide them through witnessing these painful experiences which helps the body and psyche metabolize these experiences. It also helps the child part feel seen and heard which is something they likely haven’t felt before.

Updating the child part

People are often surprised to learn that their child part probably doesn’t believe that they are an adult. When talking with a child part and asking ‘how old do you think I am?’ they will often say something far younger than what the client’s age actually is—they usually believe the client is still a child or a teenager. Part of building a trusting relationship and moving on to these next steps and reparenting the child part—the child part has to be informed of your actual age. An example of how this could look: ‘I am 40 and I am married with two kids that are 8 and 10, we have a 4 bedroom house that we own and I am an accountant now.’ The child part will often be surprised to hear something like this and may not be able to believe it right away. It is important for the child part to learn that you are an adult—you are no longer the powerless child that experienced the trauma—you have agency and control over your life now.

Retrieve the child part from the past

Often child parts get stuck in the past where they experienced the trauma. Maybe they are stuck in the bedroom you had, at the house you lived in when you were 6—the age you were when your parents got divorced. When enough trust and rapport is established and the child part recognizes the client is an adult—we can ask them if they would like to leave the past and come to where the client is in the present. Often the child part is not ready right away and has concerns about getting in trouble or leaving what is familiar or doesn’t yet trust the client or doesn’t find the client’s current and present situation to be safe enough. Without any pressure, some work can be done with the both the client and the part to help the part feel like they are ready to do this. The part, sometimes may choose to go to some other safe place instead—to help them get out of the unsafe childhood home—this could be an imaginary place like a tree fort in the woods or a some place on the beach.

Reparent the child part

When the child part recognizes the client is an adult and has decided to come live in the present with them—the client can work on reparenting their child part. This is the very core of attachment work—this is the ultimate way to heal attachment wounds and issues. The reparenting process looks different for different clients. Some clients like to routinely check up on their child part to see how they are doing and to see if they need anything. Some clients like to invite their child parts to participate in activities they are doing. This is an opportunity to give yourself what you did not get in childhood.

Unburdening the child part from their painful experiences and core beliefs

The unburdening process is the ultimate goal of IFS therapy. After all the previous steps went well, the client and the part may be ready to actually let go of the trauma, their core beliefs that are no longer serving them or anything else they are holding on to that they are ready to let go of. If the part feels ready, and without any pressure, they are invited to let go of their burden. The part can choose how they want to let it go but the therapist may also give the part some ideas of what they can do.

Continue building trust with the child parts and encourage cohesion with all the parts in the system

The child part that you are working with is one part of a whole system of parts—there are often several child parts. This whole process can be done with all your parts—to help them all get some healing from the trauma and beliefs they are carrying. To have a cohesive system, all the parts can benefit from building a trusting relationship with the client as well with each other—this helps the parts work together as a team rather than being in conflict with each other. It a ongoing lifelong process!

What does a inner child work sessions look like?

Inner child work is often done in a mindfulness state—your therapist may use something that looks like a guided meditation to help you drop into that state where it is easier to hear what the part is saying. Some people have a hard time hearing their parts or entering a mindfulness state—what I tend to do for these folks, is guide them to work with their parts in a sandtray (to learn more about sandtray go here) or through some creative expression work like drawing, writing or collaging. I often have the client pick tarot cards to represent their parts and they can lay the cards in front of them and sometimes this makes it easier to work with the parts for certain people.

Who does inner child work help?

Inner child work is trauma and attachment work. Anyone with trauma or attachment wounds could benefit from this type of work (that is all of us!).

Learn more about IFS here or attachment work here.

Feel free to reach out to learn more about therapy or with any other questions.