Inner Child work directly correlates with both recognizing and healing childhood trauma. This approach notes that many of our patterns, behaviors, perceptions, and conflicts as adults were most often developed during our younger years and stem from attachment wounds.
When we participate in Inner Child work, we are working to connect with all parts of self, identify those unmet needs, reparent our younger selves, and time-orient present selves. There are some modalities in therapy such as The Progressive Approach or Internal Family Systems (IFS) that have many commonalities and provide great structure for inner child work.
We all get something from every behavior we have, children, adults, EVERYONE. When our basic needs are not met when we are younger, we will walk through the fire, and even if we develop a maladaptive or negative way to get that need met, it will be developed for survival. Time orientation and resourcing are two very important pieces when doing inner child healing and reparenting.
Interested in learning if Inner Child work will benefit you?