Caring for your inner child has a powerful and surprisingly quick result: Do it and the child heals. Martha Beck
Meditation: When we start listening to our anxious and distraught feelings as feelings of our inner child, we can get in touch with those younger parts of ourselves that have often experienced neglect and a lack of love. As we discover those hurting and anxious younger parts of us, we develop compassion for ourselves. We grieve for our inner child that yearned for love but instead experienced abuse and abandonment. Often those memories of our childhood injuries not only show up in our particular ways of coping in life, but they are also stored in our bodies. Sometimes our body shows us where our past injuries still pain us. When we seek healing for those childhood injuries, we begin caring for our inner child. The first step is to distinguish between the adult voice and the child voice inside of us. After we learn to distinguish who it is that is feeling and talking (our inner child or our adult) we become intentional about having our adult self learn to care for our distraught inner child. This care can be physical in nature by us providing extra safety and nurture to ourselves in a loving and caring way. And it is often also an exercise of compassion. We learn to have our caring adult parts talk gently to those younger parts of us that easily get anxious when triggered. We in some ways “re-parent” ourselves. While we want to learn to care for our inner child, we at the same time refuse to let our inner child be the dominating and leading force in our life. We put our adult in charge. That caring adult part of us will want to listen to our inner child’s emotions and voice, however, we will not abdicate our adult role and responsibility. As we take responsibility to care for our inner child, we begin to heal. And as we put our caring adult in charge, the inner child will begin to calm down and feel less afraid. We stop over-functioning out of fear. We stop neglecting ourselves. We stop following our negative predictions. Caring for our inner child is the door to freedom and the door to healing.
Prayer: God, for all of us who still need healing for our inner child, be our guide, be our role model of how to love ourselves unconditionally. Restore our inner child’s trust. Strengthen our caring adult parts so we learn patiently and abundantly how to care for our younger wounded self. With Your grace reaching out to us, we will heal our inner suffering child. Amen
And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 1. Peter 5:10
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