Do You Feel “Silly” When Trying to Do Inner Child Work? You’re Not Alone.

As a therapist, one of the things I hear most often from clients when doing inner child work (or parts work) is that it feels “silly” or “woo-woo” to be thinking about talking to their inner child.

Trust me, I get it. I really do.

That’s how I felt when I first got introduced to inner child work too.

If you know me, you know that I’m not exactly a “woo-woo” therapist - no shade to therapists who are, but that’s just not who I am. As someone who comes from a very “STEM” (Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics, if you’re not familiar with the term) oriented family, I’ve got an appreciation for research and tried and true methods in my blood. However, as a therapist who used to be an auditor (a type of accountant), I know that having a healthy dose of professional skepticism and thinking critically about things can also be useful. In my approach as a therapist, I like to blend the two - I try to be grounded in research and evidence based practice but also not blinded by it - and always being open to new information that may inform or change my perspective.

All that to say: when I first got introduced to inner child work, I wasn’t feeling it either.

For my fellow anxious, analytical, science-minded people, here are a couple ways we can think about inner child work that may feel a little more grounded and a lot less woo-woo:

The Inner Child As The Limbic System

One way that I find helpful to think about the concept of the inner child is through brain anatomy and neuroscience. We can think of our inner child as our amygdala / limbic system - the more primitive parts of our brain that help to keep us safe. When our inner child is “driving the bus”, these lower parts of our brain have taken over to ensure our survival, but they may not be informed by our highest, best self (aka our inner adult, or pre-frontal cortex). As a result, when we are in a survival state (like our flight response), we may not be making decisions that are authentic to us and consistent with our values as a person. For example, we may choose to apply for and take a new job while we’re in a flight response that causes us to ignore possible red flags in our new boss. If we had been able to access our pre-frontal cortex (aka our adult self), which is where our executive function, logic, and reasoning lives, we may have made a different decision that we would have been happier with.

The Inner Child As Trauma Responses Frozen in Time

Another way we can think about the inner child framework that can feel a little more grounded and less “woo-woo” is thinking about our inner child as a series of trauma responses frozen in time. When you were 5 years old, you likely had different ways of surviving your home environment than you did at age 10, or 15. Your brain is in different stages of development at different ages, and so at different points in time, you will have access to different trauma responses. Additionally, as you get older and gain more experience navigating the home environment (or experience new traumas), you may develop better, more adaptive ways of dealing with it. As an adult, each of these different trauma responses (or inner children) may get triggered in different circumstances. For example, let’s say at age 5, you learned that the best way to deal with a raging parent was to just fawn and agree with what they were saying. Then at age 12, maybe you learned that being quiet and staying out of the way (like hiding) was the best way to avoid that parent’s wrath. Then, maybe at age 16, your rebellious fight response started coming more online, and you started getting angry back at that parent. If you’re now an adult with a boss or a partner who rages at you, you may have any of those different trauma responses come up in response to that person, and it may take us back to being that age we were when that parent was raging at us. Another way we can think about this is that the trigger (the raging boss or partner) is activating an old neural pathway (the trauma response/our inner child) that kicks off a pattern of responses that worked for us previously in that type of situation.

Did one of these options land a little more with you and feel a little less “woo-woo”? Hopefully after reading my blog, it feels a little more manageable to wrap your head around the concept of inner child work.

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