If you are on the path to better healing your Inner Child, I have found it helpful to understand the three classic mistakes that get people into trouble when working to heal their relationship with the Inner Child.
First, I’ll define these errors by giving you some background and examples of what they look like. This will help you recognize them in your own life. I will then compare and contrast them with an external relationship example that everyone can relate to.
Healing the relationship with your Inner Child is certainly more subtle and difficult to achieve than you might think at first. Understanding these classic traps will help you, as an Inner Parent, increase love and joy with your Inner Child.
Here are the three classic mistakes to avoid:
- not even to know you have an Inner Child in the first place.
- You do not listen to your Inner Child.
- You do not respond appropriately to your Inner Child.
Any one of these three mistakes, or a combination of them, usually creates all the difficulties that most people will need to overcome in order to heal their relationship with the Inner Child.
Classic Inner Child Healing Mistake #1:
Not knowing you have an inner child in the first place
Think about it! You can’t really heal your Inner Child if you don’t know you have one or if you don’t really believe there is such a thing as an “Inner Child”. So let me be clear on this point.
Everyone has an inner child! This means YOU, even if you think you don’t have one, or even if you’ve never heard of the concept of an “Inner Child” in your life.
In case this is new to you, the way you would learn to recognize your Inner Child is like half of the ongoing internal dialogue that occurs within your mind, which I call your Internal conversations. These inner conversations take place inside your mind from morning to night, and no, you’re not crazy.
Every normal person has these internal conversations, and in fact, you can learn to slow them down and work with them directly. If you listen to your thoughts carefully, you will hear two different voices interacting with each other.
A voice, I call the internal father. This comes from the parenting style you received as a child. The way your parents raised you is copied and installed in your mind like a computer program and becomes the basis for how you think and interact with the world. Traditional psychology would call this the ego.
The other side of your inner conversations, the voice we call the inner child, comes from who you were as a child, even though you are now an adult. For most people, this is a more important aspect of their total being than they might realize.
Just as outer children have different moods and personalities, so does your Inner Child. Your Inner Child may present his voice as a small, quiet whisper; or it can be the loud and boisterous part of you that everyone knows.
Most people might also identify their Inner Child as their “feelings” or the “intuitive” part of their internal conversations that are constantly taking place inside their mind. Another description often used by writers and artists to represent the Inner Child is that of a person. heart.
Sometimes in the mainstream media, you can hear skeptics sneering or comedians making jokes about people blaming their character flaws on the “inner child” as if this is inconsequential.
This tends to diminish the importance and value of this inner voice, which is a big mistake because if your Inner Child is not happy, then you cannot be happy as a person, which is why one would want to dedicate themselves to healing the Inner Child. Inside in the first place. You’ll have to trust me on this.
Classic Inner Child Healing Mistake #2:
Not listening to your inner child
Suppose you may be someone who is aware that you have a personality called the Inner Child within you. You have heard of it, read some books, or even attended some seminars or trainings on the subject. With the second classic mistake, these people are simply No listening to this precious and important side of themselves, even when they know this voice exists!
Your Inner Child is the intuitive self. It tries to warn you when you are about to make a gigantic mistake in a life choice or perhaps in an outside relationship. Part of its function may show up as the hairs standing on end or a deep sense of impending doom that you ignore at your peril. After “not listening” to such a communication, a person will often say, “I knew I shouldn’t have done that” or “I just didn’t listen to myself.”
Another aspect of your Inner Child is that it provides the clues to your deep inner needs, so it often communicates directly about what would make you happy. Alternatively, perhaps it is providing you with some clues that will move your life forward in a positive direction.
So when you get a clear and direct message from your Inner Child and you just aren’t listening, you are ignoring the advice and advice of the best friend you have. Do not pay much attention to these internal messages provided for your well-being; gosh, that’s crazy!
Classic Inner Child Healing Mistake #3:
Not responding appropriately to your inner child
Many people know that they have an Inner Child, and some are even listening and audience what you have to say So it’s really a shame when these same people make the third big mistake of not responding appropriately.
Why does this get them into trouble? Let me give you an easy to understand example using an outer relation that will illustrate all three errors. Then it will be up to you to begin to do the necessary work to begin to heal your relationship with the Inner Child.
Let’s use the familiar example of the “Friend/Friend” relationship for comparison. Since it is an “external relationship”, it will be easier for you to relate.
Suppose your best friend makes the suggestion, “Let’s go to the movies.” Error 1 would mean that you didn’t even know you had a best friend. This may seem silly to you, not knowing that you have a best friend, but some people are not aware that they have an inner child, so which one is worse?
Mistake 2 in this external situation would be not even listening to your friend’s suggestion. You know you have a friend. Perhaps you were simply not paying attention at the time or were distracted by another situation. Even though your friend has communicated clearly to you, for some reason you just don’t listen to what he says.
There can be many reasons for this, of course, but the end result is the same. What your friend has said or asked is simply not received in the awareness of your Inner Father mind. Also, your friend will feel hurt because you didn’t pay attention to him.
To illustrate the third mistake, let’s start with what WOULD be an appropriate response to your friend. How about something like “Okay, what movie would you like to see?” or “Okay, what day were you thinking about?” This appropriate response shows that:
- You were aware that you had a friend and he/she was talking to you.
- You were paying attention to what your friend had to say.
- He cared enough about his friend to respond appropriately by asking a question or comment, perhaps simply listening in an accepting way.
Now let’s illustrate a inappropriate response. Suppose you heard what your friend said, but then didn’t respond at all. This would be hurtful to your friend because he would feel ignored.
Let’s say you told your friend, “I’m too busy to hang out with you and waste my time going to the movies.” This certainly wouldn’t feel very good either. What if you responded with something even more hurtful like, “You idiot, I wouldn’t get caught dead going to the movies with you if you were the last person on earth.”
To put a simple overview of these latest communications, responding inappropriately to your Inner Child (and yes, even your outer friend) would fall into both categories of Negligence Prayed Abuse.
I’m sure you’ve experienced your own variations of neglect and abuse in your outside relationships, so you KNOW how it feels to be the recipient of this type of behavior. So why would you want to do this to your precious Inner Child? How do you think it feels to be neglected or abused?
conclusion
Think about this example of an “external relationship” (Friend/Friend) and then see if you can reinterpret it into the “internal relationship” between your Inner Parent and Inner Child. You will begin to see the many ways you could be making these three classic mistakes without even realizing it.
You could learn so much more on this subject, and in fact, I have spent over 30 years researching and presenting ways to become more aware as an Inner Parent so that YOU TOO can avoid these three classic mistakes in your parenting relationship.