Learn Some Tips on Healing the Inner Child to Help Your Adult Recovery
Maybe you have heard a lot about this and maybe you have not. Healing the inner child is not some far out, esoteric thing that people do because it helps them see through the eyes of a child as an adult. Tapping into the inner child can give deeper insights psychologically into how you were raised, what you experienced, and give voice to a child who may have felt trapped, scared, and disempowered. Destructive behavior can develop when a child is not given the proper guidance, love, and attention necessary to grow into a healthy adult. Learn more about why we should care so much about the inner child in all of us and how to help heal him or her from the ravages of addiction.
Define Inner Child
Although the inner child is not a real live child, it is a part of our psyche. It is part of our history that experienced things we may never remember, or sometimes remember over time, as we age. Mental health disorders and addiction can become a conscious manifestation of our unconscious experiences we had as children. True adulthood is working to acknowledge, accept, and take responsibility for caring for ourselves. The inner child that was neglected, abused, or rejected can have trouble doing grown up things and will struggle with problems all around. This can also lead to self-destructive behaviors like addiction as a means of coping with the trauma from our past.
Learning to Cope
If you struggle with owning your inner child and becoming a competent adult in recovery, it may have to do with taking a healing journey with that inner child as the focus.
- There is no going back to change what happened but you can learn to navigate it better as an adult. Those instincts of wanting love, acceptance, protection, and nurturing stay the same as they ever were. If we didn’t get it as a child, we look for it in many behaviors, including addiction. The key is to release the desire to fulfill unmet needs and accept ourselves as we are, where we are, without judgment
- Relate to the inner child as a parent. Take a look at your own inner child in therapy or with someone helping you. Start to process how to mother and father that child the way they needed back then by giving love, boundaries, and structure. You will never recover what you lost but you can gain everything now by moving ahead with peace in your heart knowing you love all parts of yourself
- Create a new relationship. When you are in recovery is the time to look at how you can create a new relationship with yourself. You are working on healing the pain from the past. Don’t short change yourself now by not doing the hard work of healing
The challenge in recovery is working through all the years you repressed pain and numbed out. The key is finding trained therapists and addiction specialists who will work with you and support your journey of healing now so you can learn how to cope better in recovery and find hope.
The Palmetto Center is based on a Therapeutic Community model. We help people learn how to live free of addiction. Our community support provides structure while trained counselors offer life skills training and therapeutic techniques to help you move past addiction. Our program provides special focus for professionals including chiropractors, nurses, doctors, lawyers, and more who need help with addiction recovery. Call us to find out more: 866-848-3001.
