The Wounded Child Within Us

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Every one of us has a wounded inner child that is still waiting to be healed.

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This is not limited to abusive parents or major childhood trauma. Sometimes, it comes from a child's fundamental emotional needs not being met when they were young and vulnerable.

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These experiences may not always look like obvious trauma. They can be the quiet moments of feeling unseen, unheard, unsafe, unloved, or simply not good enough.

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Our Three Basic Emotional Needs

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There are three fundamental things a young child needs to survive and thrive in the new life they have been born into: love, safety, and identity.

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When receiving love from their parents, the child learns to explore and embrace life with a joyful heart.

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When love is missing, the child may struggle to connect effectively with people and even with themselves.

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Safety helps a child develop instinctive trust and faith, allowing them to feel grounded and supported as they navigate growth.

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Children who grow up in an unsafe environment may live with a constant fear of losing what they have or being abandoned.

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Our sense of worthiness stems from our sense of self-identity. Young children look for cues from their parents to understand themselves - their strengths, weaknesses, and potential.

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When signals of recognition are missing, or when they are repeatedly told that they are not good enough, the child may accept this information as truth and store it within their belief systems.

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To Change, You Must Heal the Source

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To change the patterns and predicaments of one's adult life, whether they show up in health, finances, marriage, or success, one effective place to begin is by reviewing one's childhood because that is where many of these patterns first began.

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Here is an illustration of how emotions could be created and trapped throughout a childhood journey.

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At this early stage of growth, when a child still lacks the language to understand and express the world around them, what dominates their learning is instinctive feeling.

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Every emotional experience that a child repeatedly receives can become deeply embedded in their subconscious patterns and influence the way they perceive themselves and the world around them.

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If a child is constantly isolated without the loving affection and nurturing of their mother and father, the emotional experience of feeling "unloved" may become deeply imprinted within them.

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As the child grows, they may begin to perceive the lack of emotional connection from their parents as a sense of unworthiness, thinking, perhaps, "I am not a good kid. That's why my parents don't love me."

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This intense emotion may continue to evolve into shame when the child's sense of inferiority is further reinforced through experiences such as constant bullying from classmates, disappointment from teachers, or repeated feelings of not achieving enough.

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As a teenager, when emotional regulation and cognitive development are still maturing, these patterns of unworthiness, feeling unloved, and shame can become deeply charged emotional experiences carried in the body and mind.

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Over time, these unresolved patterns may continue to play out in adult life, influencing how a person approaches their career, relationships, marriage, self-worth, and overall wellbeing.

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When Childhood Feelings Follow Us Into Adulthood

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The inner child does not simply disappear when we grow up.

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The part of us that once felt unloved may still seek validation.

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The part that once felt unsafe may still fear losing people or situations that matter to us.

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The part that was repeatedly told it was not good enough may continue to question its worth, even when there is no longer anyone telling us that we are inadequate.

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This is why certain reactions in adult life can sometimes feel much bigger than the situation itself.

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We may find ourselves repeatedly seeking approval, struggling with self-love, fearing rejection, feeling unworthy of success, or becoming triggered by situations that remind us of something we experienced long ago.

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Processing the Unprocessed

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Emotional Release Therapy for healing the inner child is a journey to reconnect with and process the missing or distorted emotional needs from when we were young and vulnerable.

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It is about creating a safe space to acknowledge the feelings that may have been too overwhelming, confusing, or painful for us to process at the time.

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When we begin to heal our inner child, we allow our true self to be seen and our true voice to be heard once more.

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We begin to validate our own presence, needs, experiences, and the value of our precious life.

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Learning to See Yourself Differently

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Healing the inner child is not about blaming our parents or rewriting the past.

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It is about understanding how our early experiences may have shaped the beliefs and emotional patterns we carry today and gently creating space for something new.

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If you have always struggled with self-validation or even self-love, Emotional Release Therapy can help you explore and release trapped emotional experiences that may be contributing to challenges around identity, self-worth, and emotional wellbeing.

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You Don't Have to Carry the Past Alone

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Interested to find out more?

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Feel free to book a free discovery call with me. Let me know what you're currently struggling with, and together we can explore whether this gentle healing modality may support your needs.