Inner Child Work

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“Inner child work” is a significant, powerful and an important therapeutic tool. It differentiates from the way therapy has been done in the past. According to Bradshaw (1990) in his book, “Home Coming – Reclaiming and championing your inner child” there are people that present with ongoing and persistent problems e.g. depression, chronic dissatisfaction, addiction and difficulty with relationships that relate to unresolved issues from their childhood. He believes that if a person is able reach back to the cause or the source of their problems beginning in childhood or adolescence, they would be able to understand how the wounds that they received then can continue to contaminate their adult lives. Using “inner child work”, Bradshaw offers a person the chance to reclaim and nurture their “inner child” and “grow up” again. This can have a positive and profound effect on a person. Bradshaw comments that as a result of this “inner child” work, he has noticed vast changes in many individuals, and that creativity and power result when the wounds of the past are healed. In the therapeutic process one would find a new way to contact, reclaim, and be able to nurture your inner child which eventually results in transforming a person’s life.

“Inner child work” understands that when a person hides their wounded inner child this has the potential to contaminate a person’s life in various areas such as: damaging relationships, marital problems, temper tantrums, addictions and toxic parenting. Thus a person may grow up to be an adult with an angry hurt child inside of him. If a person’s development is blocked or arrested at a certain stage, and when their feelings are represse, this can then result in spontaneously contaminating the adult’s behaviour and their life. Bradshaw discusses some ways in which the wounded inner child can affect the life of an adult, he points to behaviours such as co-dependence, offender behaviours, narcissistic behaviour, trust issues, acting out, magical beliefs, intimacy dysfunction, undisciplined behaviour, addictive/compulsive behaviour, thought distortion, and emptiness.

Bradshaw has been seen by some as being a “self-help” movement leader. He has used his “inner child work”, to emphasise certain unresolved childhood experiences, and the resultant ongoing effects of this childhood dysfunction. The term “inner child”, has therapeutic implications in holistic health settings and in counselling. The 12 step recovery movement, works on the same premise that healing the inner child is one of the primary and crucial stages in recovery from substance abuse, trauma or post traumatic stress disorder. Some agree that many different therapeutic approaches recognise and gives some meaning to the inner child.

According to an article written by Theresa Bochard, which is based on the book by Bradshaw there are 6 steps to heal your inner child:

  • Trust: is an important aspect in pain work, and it is necessary for your inner child to have an ally to validate areas such as their abandonment, abuse and neglect
  • Validation: in this stage one would need to accept that you were shamed or ignored and deal with the aspects that truly wounded your soul, instead of minimizing these facts.
  • Shock and Anger: in order to heal your wounded inner child it’s essential to be angry, even if what was done to you was not intentional. Shock is the beginning of grief.
  • Sadness: sadness and hurt comes after anger.
  • Remorse: to help your wounded inner child – through mourning abandonment in childhood, one needs to realise that there was nothing you could have done differently that would have changed or helped the situation.
  • Loneliness: if we want to reach our true self we need to accept, and embrace, our loneliness and shame.

Bradshaw further discusses various strategies and techniques to use in order to reclaim your wounded child, and says that one would need to go back through your various developmental phases, when you were growing up, and complete your “unfinished business”. One of the most important steps initially is to be able to mourn, or grieve, our unmet developmental dependency needs. This is due to the fact that the foundation for adult life is our early childhood stages. In order to be able to alter any harmful and detrimental patterns, you would need to reclaim your childhood. Because we have to grieve or mourn our wounds, this process of reclaiming our childhood could be painful. The four primary childhood stages of development need to be worked through. Bradshaw discusses original pain work in his book, which involves feeling and experiencing the repressed feelings, and the need to “let go of your defenses”. Bradshaw then goes through each stage of reclaiming the infant self, the toddler self, the preschool self, the school aged self, and adolescence. Techniques such as debriefing, writing letters, affirmations, meditations, working with a partner or a group can be used. Forgiveness is another important part of the process of reclaiming the inner child. Once you have reclaimed your wounded inner child, you would need to champion the inner child, and the process of healing will be able to begin. This would involve doing corrective work and “becoming new parents to yourself”.

Finding and reclaiming the wounded inner child is a revealing process, and a journey of self-discovery.  Bradshaw, and those who practice inner child work, feel that we all have a journey in life which is to uncover, reclaim, and champion our inner child; and when we complete this journey it is as if we are “arriving home”.

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