Can You Really Heal Your Inner Child?

Paola Rosser
1 day ago
5 min read

Can you really heal your inner child? When you grow up in chaos and have a childhood filled with traumatic events, your inner child can still feel wounded and unhealed. But I believe you can heal the wounded child within. But I think people misunderstand what inner child healing actually is.

Many people think inner child healing means writing one letter to your younger self, crying a little, journaling for a week, and voilà you're suddenly you're healed.

In my experience, healing your inner child goes much deeper than that.

It's reparenting yourself and learning how to recognize old wounds, negative beliefs, and emotional triggers. Becoming aware of negative patterns in your current reality that were created long before you became an adult.

And honestly? I have been healing my inner child since 2006 and I am still learning.

Signs Your Inner Child Still Doesn't Feel Safe

Below are signs of someone whose inner child doesn’t feel safe and often lives in a dysregulated nervous system. You may notice:

hypervigilance
people pleasing
overexplaining themselves
needing constant reassurance
fear of abandonment
shutting down emotionally
never allowing rest
staying excessively busy
feeling anxious all the time
constantly scanning the room for danger

If these resonate with you, than your inner child needs your love and attention. If your inner child doesn't feel safe, its like you can never truly relax. You become the caretaker, the fixer, the one everyone comes to and is holding everything together. You can also go from one thing to the next thing. Your body may look calm on the outside, but internally you're always waiting for something to go wrong.

Or you can be someone who shuts down, feels tired all the time, doesn't have the energy to clean or get organized. You can feel overwhelmed and unmotivated too. And this brings on anxiety that you are not doing enough. Your inner child believes they are worthless and unloved and not even worth the effort.

Growing up, I moved 18 times

When Travis and I got married and moved into our home in 2017, it was my dream home.

After months of renovations, every detail reflected me. The tile floors, the furniture, the light fixtures, the wall colors, everything was my Pinterest dreams brought to life. And then something strange happened. I started having recurring dreams that people dressed like SWAT officers would come to my house and tell me: "You have 30 days to leave."

Over and over I had the same dream the first year I lived in our home. You see, logically I knew the house was ours and everything was fine, but my inner child didn't feel safe.

Before moving into this house, I had moved 18 times in my life. I moved from city to city, from house to apartment, from dorm room to rental room. One of our family homes were foreclosed on due to lack of payment, sometimes I moved because of roommate drama or because I lost my job. I was constantly moving and losing stability and roots.

My inner child had learned that home is temporary. That my safety will be and can get taken away. I never felt like home was forever, in fact one of my studio apartments I didn't even decorate the walls because I felt I was only going to move soon. So even though the married version of me knew I was safe and no longer on my own. My inner child was still preparing for job loss, moving, foreclosure or instability. I had to do guided meditations and consciously hold my inner child and let her know, "You are safe now. No one is taking this home away. You can finally rest."

What I Believe the Inner Child Actually Is

I believe the inner child is the wounded younger version of ourselves. The version that created limiting beliefs and stories after painful experiences. Children are meaning-making machines. When a child gets yelled at and thinks:

"I did something wrong."

They don't blame the parent because they had an off day, they automatically store this memory and tell themselves a story like:

"I am bad." or "Nobody loves me."

I watched this happen recently with my little niece. She picked up a decoration and innocently showed it to her grandmother. She wasn’t being malicious. She was simply curious.

But she got yelled at.

She immediately hid in the back of the house. And my heart broke because children internalize these moments differently than adults. Those moments become beliefs.

And later, the subconscious mind collects negative emotions as evidence to support them.

Why I Believe Emotion Code, Body Code, and Belief Code Help

Over the years I have tried therapy, EMDR, tuning forks, psychedelics, float tanks, guided meditations, breath-work, affirmations, visualization, sound healing and more.

Many helped.

But one healing modality that consistently helped me uncover root causes has been Emotion Code, Body Code, and Belief Code.

Because what I discovered is this, triggers aren't random, my people pleasing isn't random, my hypervigilance isn't random, when I shut down, it isn't random.

Many of these patterns are connected to negative trapped emotions, limiting beliefs, and subconscious programs my inner child created years ago. Now, as a practitioner, I often see how the subconscious stores emotional experiences and keeps replaying old stories in an effort to protect us. The body remembers what the mind forgot.

So How Do You Make Your Inner Child Feel Safe?

Start with awareness. Pay attention to your reactions. And ask yourself, Why am I triggered? or Why am I anxious? Why do I need everyone to like me? Why do I feel unsafe?

Become curious instead of judgmental. If you are feeling negative emotions come up or negative limiting beliefs, ask yourself, Where did these come from?

If you are no longer in an unsafe environment and you are reparenting your inner child, show them who they are now. I love telling my clients to carry a picture of the younger version of them. Talk to the picture, tell them they are safe and show them how great their life is now. Your brain loves evidence and facts. So start collecting new evidence.

I personally began writing down proof that my life was safe. Proof that my home was safe.

Proof that I was loved. Proof that things were working out for me.

I also used affirmations:

"I am worthy."

"I am loved."

"I am safe."

Healing isn't one journal entry.

It's layers. It's repetition. It's learning how to become the parent your younger self needed.