There are a variety of perspectives on what our “Inner Child” really is. Here’s mine:
1. Most simply: the “Inner Child” is a term for our unhealed self.
2. Your Inner Child is not you in this lifetime when you were 8 or 10 years old. It’s got nothing to do with age or timelines—it’s a SYMBOL.
3. Depending on what we’re trying to describe or access within ourselves, we can use “Inner Child” interchangeably with terms like the shadow self, unconscious self.
4. Another way to think of the Inner Child: it’s all the stuff in the basement of your psyche that you haven’t dealt with yet. It’s the stuff that we neglect.
5. The reason the term Inner Child can be so effective for our healing is because it stirs feelings of gentleness and protection—the way that we’d approach a child that we love. Which is exactly how we should be approaching our own unhealed parts, with Compassion and attentiveness.
6. Another reason that it’s a powerful term is because it helps us relate to ourselves as spiritual adults… as healers. It reminds us that we have the capacity and commitment to stand by the parts of ourselves that need the most gentleness and patience.
All for Love,
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