Inner child work is about recovering yourself, it’s about freedom, it’s about all that you might have been and now can be. It is about becoming whole, finding inner harmony and balance. We are no longer at war with ourselves, reacting to old programs, old belief systems and old coping structures. Healing our inner child creates awareness and wholeness so life can be lived fully.

Pls see this video to get a understanding of the work :

So what is this inner child that everyone’s talking about? How can you have a child inside of you when you’re a grown adult? Does it mean that you haven’t grown up? Before you can do inner child work, you need to understand clearly what your inner child is.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, “Your inner child is the part of your personality that still reacts and feels like a child.” Quite simply – Inner Child is a part of you that is wounded, hurt or repressed.

The wounded inner child is the part of you that has experienced unresolved childhood trauma. Some of your behaviors you have as an adult could be due to your wounded inner child. Your childhood didn’t have to go through severe trauma to be wounded; there are common childhood events that could have led to your wounded inner child. For example, your best friend in elementary school moving away.

As you read the definition of the “inner child,” you may wonder whether your inner child is real or just a psychological concept or theory. Certainly, there’s not a physical child inside of you (unless you’re pregnant). What you need to remember is that, although no one can see physical traces of your inner child, it is nonetheless real. Most psychologists agree that your inner child is part of who you are as a person. The challenge is to know, accept, and connect with that part of your personality. 

Trauma in childhood impacts the physical, mental and emotional responses of a person, creating reactive behaviors, physical responses that are dysfunctional and inappropriate in adult life.

We now know that coping by denial, discounting or forgetting painful experiences does not resolve trauma or the resulting reactive responses.  What starts out as a subconscious survival program in childhood too often results in illogical, immature or destructive behaviors as an adult.  We lose conscious choice because we no longer know what we really feel or want in our present, adult lives.  Whole parts of who we are become locked into the trauma of the past.

This work helps us release the parts of us that are locked in traumas of the past.  It unlocks the path to making ourselves whole, of becoming who we truly are, of being our authentic Self.

What is it that hurts the inner child? The list is long. Some of the items on this list might seem like normal childhood events, but if the child is left to deal with them alone, it can affect their development. Here are some of the events and situations that can cause emotional injury to the inner child:

• Loss of a parent or guardian
• Physical abuse or neglect
• Emotional abuse or neglect
• Sexual abuse
• Serious illness
• Severe bullying
• Natural disasters
• Family breakup
• Being a victim of violence
• Substance abuse in the household
• Domestic violence in the household
• Mental illness of a family member
• Being a refugee
• Feeling isolated from their family

Minor trauma is common in childhood, so even the healthiest childhood doesn’t mean you won’t need to do inner child work at some point. If you experienced major trauma, however, the results are likely to follow you into adulthood. Furthermore, if no one helps you heal when you’re still a child, serious effects are likely to plague you until you do this work. In general, signs to look for as an adult that you suffered unresolved childhood trauma include but are not limited to:

• Self-sabotage
• Self-defeating behavior
• Self-harming behavior
• Passive-aggressive behavior
• Violent behavior
• Depression or anxiety that has no clear cause.
• A distrust of other people.
• You have mood swings.
• You can’t keep relationships.
• You’re unable to sleep, focus, and you feel stressed all the time.
• You go into an addictive personality, taking drugs or alcohol.

Doing inner child work isn’t as easy as understanding that it must exist. The truth is that healing your inner child can be a long, arduous process that requires guidance from a qualified therapist who understands the true nature of the inner child.
Regressing to the traumatic experiences can help release the repressed emotions and trapped energy frozen in the past trauma.  A skilled therapist must know how to locate the trauma and help release this energy from the body, heal the emotional responses and reframe the mental conclusions.
Because these life scripts or beliefs, problems and patterns are repeated on many developmental levels, we approach resolution in many ways. It can be necessary to work at various age levels, the present, the past or prenatal levels.

The mental, emotional and physical levels often need to be explored to relieve symptoms. Therefore, various therapeutic models need to be used to completely heal the client.