CEUs are available for Inner Child work at AllCEUs.com/ICGrief-CEU
hey there everybody and welcome to this video on
six ways to make your inner child feel loved i'm your host dr donnelly snipes
we've talked about the inner child in other videos basically the inner child is the part of you that
is comprised of all of the memories you have from childhood you can think back
to what it was like being you as a child and that's your inner child a lot of times that
inner child has been ignored either you grew up and you decided that you couldn't be a kid anymore
or that inner child was so wounded that they've been exiled because it was too painful to think
about those emotions and that inner child still feels wounded feels depressed and feels unsafe
so how can you help them feel loved that way you can feel loved too connect with them
explore what you liked as a child did you like swinging on swings did you like riding on the
sidewalk with sidewalk chalk did you like painting or baking or horseback riding or riding bikes
what is it that you liked to do as a child identify five good memories from your childhood
now not everybody can do this so if you can't don't add insult to injury by continuing to try
to find something but try to think of five good memories now they may not be at home
they may be at school or they may be you know with friends but what are five good memories
pay attention to your inner child and i know this kind of sounds weird but we as adults tend
to get too serious too i don't know serious and it's important to connect with that spontaneous
wide-eyed child that we used to be have play dates with your inner child if you want to go hiking
if you want to go to the video arcade if you want to go play you know xbox or something
do that not every day but maybe once a month set aside a day that you're just going to figure out
you know what is something really fun that i would like to do
you can also have fun dinners and you can do this like once a week where maybe friday night
your inner child gets to choose the dinner whether it is pizza or maybe having pancakes for dinner
what would you as a young child what would you have wanted for dinner if you could have chosen
your dinner and do that start reconnecting you don't have to be so stinking serious all the time
or adult help your inner child make friends and this one i know well all these may sound
a little bit odd to some people but all of us have an inner child within us so connect with
your friends and then start suggesting some mildly fun things to do you may not connect
with your friends and go to the park and swing on the swing sets and skip down the trails the
first time you get together that's kind of you know you got to work your way into that
but unless they already know their inner child and then that's great but help that
inner child make friends it can bring out the inner child in your adult friends and you can
help your inner child make friends if you've got children of your own you know obviously you're not
going to befriend other people's children but if you've got children or grandchildren of your own
let your inner child connect with them and when my when my son was little i had the hardest
time because i had exiled my inner child for so long connecting with him and using imagination
and creativity and all of those things i could see him doing it and i was just befuddled at how to
join his world so it can be it can be an uh exercise in parenting if you will if you try to
let your inner child come out you know what would your the eight-year-old version of you wanted to
do in this situation if you're at the park or if you're playing cars or trains or tea parties
support your inner child and trying to do things that they wanted to do now you may not be able to
do everything if you're an adult now you can't go back and try out for high school cheerleading but
maybe you can take some gymnastics lessons if you always wanted to be able to do that
why not try it now just because you're 30 and not 13 doesn't mean that you can't try to do
something that you thought would have been fun but you didn't get support for when you were younger
reframe the bad messages when the inner child starts saying i'm a failure i
suck i'm a bad person reframing that and helping the child helping
the inner child helping your inner critic whatever you want to call it
recognize the difference between bad behaviors
or failed failure because you don't have skills as opposed to being a bad person help them recognize
that they are lovable as a person they just may not succeed at everything and that's okay
because nobody succeeds at everything explore where those messages of badness came from
and try to rewrite those scripts and ask yourself when this happened when i
failed my calculus test and you know i brought home that bad grade what would i have wanted my
caregiver to do how would i have wanted them to respond and respond that way to your inner child
so think back to that day and respond as you wanted your caregivers to respond
and reassure your inner child that they're safe
when children feel safe they feel loved when children feel like their caregiver
is going to protect them they feel worthy so reassure that inner child that okay you
know you made it through some really bad crap growing up and i've got this now i'm an adult
i'm much more powerful than you were back then and i've got this now so i will keep you safe
we all have a part of our brains that remembers being a child reconnecting with the inner child
means reconnecting with those memories if they're traumatic the inner child may
have never learned how to feel safe healing a wounded inner child requires grieving the losses
processing the traumas developing skills and tools to more effectively manage emotions and behaviors
and addressing inaccurate beliefs about self and other
in-depth videos on this topic can be found on the youtube channel at all ceus.com i ic
which is short for inner child healing the wounded inner child at all ceus.com slash wounded
dash ic and helping the inner child process grief at all ceus.com slash ic grief