Have you met your inner child?

Have you ever found yourself reacting to something in a way that surprises you? You feel the sensations in your body, heart racing, chest tightening, a knot in your stomach, perhaps you felt scared, vulnerable, lost?

In this week's reflections from the therapy room, I want to introduce the idea and concept of the Inner Child. Your inner child.

This is a photo of me with a happy, smiley four year old Melanie. As an adult reflecting, I feel a lot when I look at her sitting with me, about what was happening in her life at that time and what was about to unfold that would be life changing.

You may have felt the presence of your inner child before and not known it. Perhaps someone doesn't reply to your message, and you find yourself worrying that you've upset them. Maybe someone offers you some constructive feedback, and instead of simply hearing what they've said, you feel a wave of shame or a sense that you've somehow failed. Or perhaps you find it almost impossible to say no to someone, even when you're exhausted and desperately need a little time for yourself.

Sometimes, our reactions can feel bigger than the situation in front of us. We might find ourselves wondering why something has affected us so deeply, or why we seem to fall into the same patterns despite promising ourselves that next time will be different.

There are, of course, many reasons why we respond as we do. But sometimes, it can be helpful to consider whether a present-day experience has touched something a little older within us.

This is where the concept of the inner child comes in.

It's a phrase you may have come across on social media, in books or perhaps in conversations about therapy. But what does it actually mean? And how might understanding our inner child help us to understand ourselves a little more deeply?

So, what is the inner child?

The inner child isn't a literal child living inside us. It's a way of describing the younger parts of ourselves that we carry into adulthood: our early experiences, emotional memories, unmet needs, fears, hopes and the ways we learned to navigate the world around us.

Think back to when you were a child. What happened when you felt upset? Were you encouraged to talk about your feelings, or were you told not to make a fuss? Were you praised for being independent, helpful and well behaved? Did you feel that you could make mistakes and still be loved, or did you worry about disappointing the people around you?

Our early experiences can influence what we come to believe about ourselves and our relationships.

Perhaps we learned that being helpful made us feel valued. Perhaps we discovered that keeping our feelings to ourselves helped us avoid conflict. Maybe we became very good at reading the mood of a room because knowing what others were feeling helped us feel safer.

These responses may have made sense at the time. They may even have helped us navigate difficult circumstances. But the interesting thing is that we don't always leave these ways of responding behind as we grow older.

Sometimes, we continue to carry them into our adult relationships, our work, our friendships and the way we speak to ourselves.

When the past shows up in the present

Imagine someone who grew up feeling that they needed to get things right to receive approval.

As an adult, they might become a perfectionist. They may work incredibly hard, struggle to accept compliments and feel disproportionately distressed when they make a mistake.

From the outside, they might appear capable, organised and successful. Internally, however, there may be a persistent fear of not being good enough.

Or consider someone who learned early on that expressing their needs led to conflict or disappointment. As an adult, they may find it difficult to ask for help, express when something hurts them or tell someone that they are unhappy.

They might describe themselves as independent, easy-going or someone who doesn't like making a fuss. Perhaps those things are genuinely part of who they are. But it may also be worth wondering whether, somewhere along the way, they learned that having needs was uncomfortable or that keeping others happy was a way of maintaining connection.

These are just examples, of course. Our experiences are individual, and there is no single explanation for why we behave as we do.

But they illustrate something worth considering: sometimes, what we see as a personality trait may also be a way of responding that we learned earlier in life.

The person who always says yes may once have needed to keep the peace. The person who struggles to trust may have experienced relationships that felt unpredictable. The person who appears to have everything under control may have learned that showing vulnerability wasn't easy.

Understanding this doesn't mean we have to blame our childhood, our parents or anyone else. It simply gives us an opportunity to become curious about how we came to be the people we are today.

Why do these old patterns stay with us?

As children, we depend on the adults around us. We are still learning how relationships work, how to understand our emotions and how to make sense of our experiences.

We may not have the words or perspective to understand why a grown-up is distracted, why someone is angry, or why our feelings aren't always met with the response we need.

Instead, we can develop beliefs about ourselves. Perhaps we decide that we are too sensitive, too demanding or somehow responsible for keeping everyone happy. Perhaps we learn that being quiet is safer than speaking up, or that we must achieve something to feel worthy of praise.

These beliefs aren't always conscious. We may not be able to trace them back to a particular moment or remember where they began. Yet they can influence how we interpret situations as adults.

A partner needing some time alone might feel like rejection. A disagreement with a friend might trigger a fear of losing the relationship. Making a mistake at work might feel less like an ordinary human experience and more like evidence that we aren't good enough.

The situation is happening in the present, but the feelings it brings up may have familiar echoes.

This doesn't mean every strong emotional reaction comes from childhood, or that we should automatically look to the past for an explanation. Our current circumstances matter too.

But when we begin to notice recurring patterns, looking back can sometimes help us understand what is happening now.

What does inner-child work look like in therapy?

Inner-child work can sound a little daunting, particularly if you imagine being asked to revisit painful memories or uncover something you would rather leave alone.

But it doesn't have to look like that.

In therapy, exploring these younger parts of ourselves might begin with something much more ordinary: noticing how we speak to ourselves when we get something wrong, exploring why we find it difficult to disappoint someone, or wondering what happens inside us when we feel rejected or criticised.

We might gently ask questions such as:

• When have I felt this way before?

• What am I telling myself about this situation?

• What do I fear might happen if I express what I need?

• What would I have needed to hear when I was younger?

  
  

Sometimes, these questions lead us towards earlier experiences. At other times, they help us recognise what we need in our lives today. The aim isn't to spend our lives looking backwards or to suggest that our childhood determines our future. It's to understand ourselves with greater compassion and to recognise where we might now have choices that weren't available to us when we were younger.

We can begin to learn that we are allowed to make mistakes, that someone else's disappointment doesn't automatically mean we have done something wrong, and that having needs doesn't make us a burden.We can start to offer ourselves some of the understanding, reassurance and acceptance we may have struggled to find earlier in life.

It's not about blaming the past

I think this is an important distinction.

Exploring our inner child isn't about deciding that our childhood was terrible, identifying someone to blame, or assuming that every difficulty we experience today can be traced back to our upbringing. Many people have loving childhoods and still carry insecurities, fears or patterns they'd like to understand. Others have experienced significant difficulties and may find that these continue to affect how they feel about themselves and their relationships.

There is no requirement to have experienced trauma to benefit from reflection. Sometimes, the things that shape us are obvious. Sometimes, they're much quieter: a feeling that we needed to be the sensible one, an expectation that we shouldn't inconvenience others, or a sense that being successful was how we earned approval.

We can acknowledge the good in our early experiences while also recognising that some things may have been difficult or that certain needs weren't met. Two things can be true at the same time.

And perhaps that is part of the work: allowing ourselves to hold a more complex, compassionate understanding of our own stories.

Becoming the adult you needed

One of the things I find meaningful about this concept is the possibility of recognising that we are no longer the child who first learned these patterns.

We may still feel that familiar anxiety when someone is unhappy with us, but we can learn to pause rather than immediately try to fix everything.

We may still hear that critical inner voice when we make a mistake, but we can begin to question whether its message is fair or helpful.

We may still feel uncomfortable expressing a need, but we can practise doing so, one small step at a time.

This is not about pretending the past didn't happen or expecting ourselves to change overnight. And it certainly isn't about getting everything right. It's about developing a different relationship with ourselves. One in which we can acknowledge our feelings without being ruled by them, recognise our vulnerabilities without judging them, and respond to ourselves with a little more kindness.

Perhaps the younger version of us who learned to keep everyone happy, never make mistakes or manage everything alone did the best they could with what they knew at the time.

Perhaps those ways of being served a purpose.

But we can also begin to ask whether we still need them in quite the same way.

I often think that understanding ourselves is less about discovering something fundamentally wrong with us and more about making sense of how we came to be who we are.

The ways we respond to the world have histories. Our fears, our habits, our relationships and even the ways we talk to ourselves have been shaped by experiences, some of which we may barely remember.

When we begin to approach these patterns with curiosity rather than criticism, something can shift.

Instead of asking ourselves, "Why am I like this?" we might begin to ask, "What might have led me to respond this way?"

And instead of judging the parts of ourselves we find difficult, we can become interested in what they might be trying to protect, communicate or make sense of.

We cannot change everything that has happened to us. But we can begin to understand how those experiences have shaped us, and we can gradually discover different ways of relating to ourselves and to others. Perhaps the invitation isn't to go back and change who we were as children, but to recognise those younger parts of ourselves with a little more understanding as we move through adult life.

To acknowledge what was difficult. To appreciate what helped us cope. And to recognise that we have more choices available to us now.

Because sometimes, understanding ourselves a little more deeply begins with being kinder to the person we once had to be.

And perhaps that's a good place to start.