How to make inner child healing and shadow work sustainable

We live in a society that is obsessed with time, speed and “getting there”…achieving the goal. However, healing has many layers. Each time you remove one layer, there will always be another. There is always a deeper depth and higher height.

Your inner child has been bearing the brunt of trauma, unmet needs and imposed beliefs for decades. Unpacking and transmuting all of this is a journey that shouldn’t be rushed. In fact Dr. Carl Jung, the 19th century psychologist and psychoanalyst who coined the “shadow” concept said this is a lifelong process. So let’s slow down and take this one trauma, one unmet need, one limiting belief at a time.

Now, take a moment to imagine how it would feel to connect with your inner child, put your arms around him or her and say “I am here. I love you. No matter how long it takes or how dark it gets, we are in this together. I got you.” What would it feel like to follow those words up with patient, kind and compassionate action?

If you’re wondering what that might look like, check out this video to learn five techniques that have worked for me:

1. Start by making a commitment to observing your triggers.

Write them down and sit in the energy when they come up. This will require honesty and the unfiltered truth about You, not the person or situation that triggered you. So no pointing the finger outward, ok. This is all about you.

You can pair this with a short meditation where you give your trigger a color. Close your eyes and imagine breathing in this color and having it fill your entire body. Pay close attention to where you feel resistance to this within your body and notice the sensations that you feel. This practice will help you embody these feelings, rather than push them away or disassociate from them. It will also give you some insight about where you are storing traumas and memories within your body, where you may be closed energetically.

For me, I can usually feel the breath immediately flow into my abdomen (filling the solar plexus chakra). It skips right over the throat and heart because when I am triggered, those are the first two things that happen – I stop speaking and I close my heart.

Remember, this will likely be an ongoing journey, so approach this practice as a neutral observer (without judgment) where you are simply collecting data and holding space for yourself.

2. Notice your reactions when you are triggered.

How do you respond? With anger, avoidance, distraction, minimization, projection, denial? How does that contrast with the way your inner child would like to respond? Really get underneath the surface of your response to connect with and hear what your inner child is asking for. Is it validation, attention, acceptance, to be heard. What is the ask?

From day to day, it may be different; but over time as you reflect back on your journaling, you will clearly start to see some patterns.

My trigger is anything that looks or feels like abandonment. When I did this exercise, I noticed that my response was minimization. Internally I would close my heart so I didn’t have to feel the pain of being let down. Externally, I would minimize the pain I felt by brushing it off.

What my inner child really wanted to say is “can you please show up for me?” At an early age, I learned that love from masculine energy meant absence. This was reinforced by an experience that I had when I was 15 years old. The way that I am healing this and integrating the needs of my inner child and my inner teenager (my 15 year old self) is by making sure that my inner masculine shows up for her in a way that makes her feel seen, heard and loved. And by doing this, I am able to recognize, trust and receive that energy when it shows up in my external reality.

3. Practice behaving and speaking from your inner child’s ask.

When you are triggered, make it a habit to recognize when your defense mechanism, your trigger response is drowning out what your inner child needs and call it out. For example, my inner child’s need is often “please show up for me.”

So, when I recognize my trigger response (which is to minimize or shut down), I stop, place my hand on my heart and throat chakra and allow my inner child to speak – “please show up for me.” By saying this out loud, I am diffusing the energy, putting down my defense and bringing awareness to what I really need at that moment.

I am also activating the somatic (or physical) parts of myself that I tend to shut down and close off – so that energy can flow into and through these spaces, rather than becoming stuck. I call this creating vocal and kinesthetic anchors.

Oftentimes, when we are triggered, we are not grounded in what we feel in the present moment. This practice will call you back into yourself. And once you are clear about the unmet need you are acting out on in any given moment and you call it out, you can then focus on meeting that need yourself.

4. Don’t forget to give yourself space to integrate before you peel back the next layer.

Everything is connected, so the more deeply you connect with one layer of your healing, the more wisdom and compassion you will be able to carry into the next. Adult you may be on a mission to do all the things as quickly and efficiently as possible. But little you wants to be able to stop and dance in the rain, splash in puddles, pick flowers, create and go on adventures. So make sure that in all this healing that you are doing, you also create space to play, recharge and take care of yourself energetically.

As you do these practices, it’s likely that you will accumulate a list of things that you want to heal or work on because you will begin to fully see the unconscious patterns you’ve been repeating. Many of your shadows will start to come to light and you may feel a certain urgency to “fix” everything all at once. But pause. Breathe. And remember that you don’t need to be fixed. You’re not broken. And this is a marathon, not a sprint.

5. Focus on ONE trigger that brings up your darkest shadow and your response to it.

This represents your inner child’s most pressing unmet need and ask. This is the one thing that if you unpacked and integrated it, your life would improve exponentially. This doesn’t mean you are ignoring all of the other stuff. You are simply setting your mind’s RAS (reticular activating system) to zero in one thing at a time, so you don’t get burned out and overwhelmed. And by focusing on the one thing that presents the greatest opportunity for your growth, you are clearing the path for healing and transmuting everything else. It’s a domino effect. This will also help you begin to close the loop on traumas that you unconsciously relive each time your triggers come up and break subconscious patterns that serve as coping mechanisms for these traumas.

I love using astrology as a framework for shadow work. I use the lessons and energy associated with each New Moon to introspect on how I may be embodying those patterns and behaviors and determine if they are contributing to my healing and growth or keeping me stuck. If you want to learn about how I do that, check out this video.