SELF-CARE: 7 Signs That Inner Child Work is Right for YOU + FREE Self-Love Weekly Planner

Have you ever reacted to a situation in a way that was out of proportion to what happened?

For example, have you ever…

• lashed out at your partner because they put their coffee cup on the kitchen counter instead of in the dishwasher?
• started sobbing because your sister was 20 minutes late to pick you up from the airport?
• yelled at a junior colleague for not printing a document in the exact way you asked them to?

If you’ve ever found yourself reacting to a situation in a way that seemed extreme or even irrational, you might think that you were just “on edge” or “having a bad day.”

And this may very well be the case if it’s only very rarely that you have these kinds of disproportionate reactions to situations.

But if you find that you frequently react to situations in ways that seem “over the top,” it may be one of many possible signs that you have a wounded inner child.

You can find more detailed information on what it means to have a wounded inner child in my post on inner child work. But essentially, if you have a wounded inner child, it means that you didn’t receive the love, care, or attention that you needed from your parent or caregiver as a child.

And when your inner child is wounded, it can affect the way you see and feel about yourself, the way you view the world and your place in it, and your ability to form and maintain healthy relationships.

That’s why I recently shared that if you’re struggling to feel happy, be the real you, create the life you truly want, or enjoy fulfilling relationships, you might benefit from doing inner child work to connect with and heal your inner child.

But what if you’ve read or learned a bit about inner child work and you’re thinking, “Okay, but how do I know if inner child work is really for me? How do I know whether inner child work is the right fit for my challenges or how I want my life to be different?”

My dear, you’re absolutely right that no approach to healing is a one-size-fits-all solution. And even though inner child work can benefit many of us (even if it’s just to connect with our childlike self), it may not be right for everyone.

So to help you understand whether inner child work might be the right fit for YOU, I’m using this blog post to share 7 signs that inner child work could be especially helpful for you.

Keep reading below to find out what they are!

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1. Your Reactions to Situations Can Be “Over The Top”

Remember those examples that I shared with you at the beginning of this post about reacting to situations in “extreme” ways? They illustrate one key sign that you could benefit from doing inner child work.

When we react in ways that seem irrational or disproportionate to the situation, it can be because the situation reminds us of something that we experienced with our caregiver as a child.

For example, you might find yourself getting very angry at your partner for glancing at their phone while you’re trying to talk to them about making plans for the weekend. On the surface, it might seem like you’re angry at your partner for looking at their phone momentarily while you were talking to them. But in reality, your partner’s behavior might remind you of how when you were a kid, your mom usually didn’t give you her undivided attention, even when you were trying to talk to her about something important. In other words, your partner’s behavior might simply bring your unmet childhood needs for attention to the surface.

So if you’re wondering whether inner child work might be right for you, think about how you react to everyday situations. If you often react strongly to situations that are relatively trivial, it might be a sign that you could benefit from inner child work.

2. You’re Very Critical of Yourself

Another sign that you might benefit from inner child work is that you’re highly critical of yourself. For instance, you might have a tendency to focus on your weaknesses, identify things that are “wrong” about you, or put yourself down.

You might be overly critical of yourself if your parent or caregiver was highly critical of you when you were a child. If they often criticized you or had unrealistic expectations of you, you may have internalized this critical voice over time. And now, you might knowingly or unknowingly criticize your adult self in the same way that you were criticized as a child.

Note that this tendency to be highly self-critical may be tied to the belief that you and everything you do need to be perfect. If your parent or caregiver only expressed love toward you when you earned all A’s in school or became captain of the softball team, for example, you might believe that you need to be perfect to be liked and accepted by others. And as a result, you might drive yourself to the point of exhaustion in an effort to ensure that everything about you—from the way you look to the work that you produce—is perfect.

Both frequent self-criticism and perfectionist tendencies are signs that you may benefit from inner child work. The good news is that in the case of either tendency, you can change the old programming that you learned as a child by uncovering and addressing your unmet childhood needs.

3. You’re a People Pleaser

Inner child work might also be a good fit for you if you tend to focus on pleasing other people.

We tend to think of pleasing or helping other people as a good thing. And in the right context and in moderation, it can be.

But if you find that you often prioritize keeping other people happy or even feel like you need to please others to be happy yourself, you might be a people pleaser. That is, you might be someone who needs to please other people to feel good or worthy—even if it happens at the expense of your own true happiness.

If you have a tendency to people please, there’s a good chance that you developed this habit based on your early childhood experiences with your parent or caregiver. For example, your parent or caregiver might have been more likely to express love toward you when you pleased them. This might have taught you that pleasing other people was the key to being loved and accepted. And so even as an adult, you might people please as a way to earn acceptance from others and feel good about yourself.

Doing inner child work can help you uncover and address the wounds that may be at the core of your people pleasing habits.

4. You Sabotage Yourself

We usually want things to go well in our lives and relationships. So if you have a tendency to sabotage yourself, it might be a sign that you could benefit from inner child work.

Self-sabotage can take on many different forms. For example, you might sabotage your love life by going on a date and liking the other person but ignoring their texts when they try to get in touch with you after the date. You might assume that the relationship will just end in heartache anyway, so why bother even seeing where it might be able to go?

Alternatively, you might be a great fit for a leadership position at work. But if you think you “probably won’t get the job anyway,” you might intentionally miss the application deadline for it.

Self-sabotage might be rooted in fears about danger, pain, or failure from your childhood. For instance, you might sabotage your romantic relationships as an adult if you learned as a child that relationships only led to pain and dissolution and it was best to avoid them in the first place.

Inner child work can help you get to the root of your beliefs and fears and transform them so that you can make choices that serve you, not ones that work against you and your happiness.

5. You Use Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms

Do you find that when you’re angry, sad, or experiencing another difficult emotion, you drink, gamble, binge on food, or even shop excessively? If you do, it might be a sign that you could benefit from inner child work.

When you were a kid, you were too young to know how to regulate difficult emotions on your own. So you relied on your parent or caregiver to model this for you. But if your parent or caregiver didn’t model healthy emotion regulation, you might have never learned how to manage your emotions in a healthy way. And so even as an adult, you might turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms when you feel angry, sad, or stressed. These might include drinking, doing drugs, gambling, impulsive spending, binge eating, or throwing yourself into work.

Inner child work can give you insight into how your unhealthy coping mechanisms are linked to your childhood experiences so that you can break free of these destructive habits. It can also help you learn to sit with, accept, and regulate painful emotions in healthy ways while also uncovering and addressing your childhood wounds.

6. You Have Trouble Establishing or Maintaining Healthy Relationships

Another key sign that you might benefit from inner child work is that you find yourself struggling to form or maintain healthy relationships. For example, you might have a habit of ending up in unhealthy or abusive relationships, always choosing partners who aren’t right for you, or going after emotionally unavailable people.

The experiences that you had with your parent or caregiver in childhood played a key role in shaping how you form bonds with people and navigate relationships as an adult.

Specifically, if your parent or caregiver consistently met your childhood needs and made you feel safe and loved, you may have a relatively easy time forming and maintaining healthy relationships with other people in adulthood. But if you didn’t receive the love and care that you needed in a way that you needed it or received it inconsistently, you might struggle to form and maintain healthy relationships as an adult. In other words, you’re likely to recreate the types of relationships that you experienced as a child.

If you struggle in your relationships—whether romantic or not—you might find that you have a strong fear of being abandoned or rejected, avoid conflict at all costs, avoid getting close, struggle with trust, depend on the other person for validation, or need constant reassurance about the relationship.

Inner child work can help you understand where your unhealthy relationship habits stem from and replace the old programming that you developed during childhood so that you can approach relationships in a healthier way.

7. You’re Experiencing Physical or Mental Health Issues

Physical and mental health issues can have a wide variety of causes, many of which don’t necessarily have anything to do with inner child wounds. But if you’re struggling physically or mentally and haven’t been able to identify why or find a way to help yourself feel better, you might benefit from considering inner child work.

Inner child wounds can lead to a range of mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, addiction, and feelings of hopelessness or emptiness. They’ve also been linked to physical issues, such as migraines, sleep difficulties, and chronic fatigue syndrome.

If your symptoms are, in fact, linked to inner child wounds, doing inner child work to uncover and address these wounds might ultimately relieve your symptoms and improve your physical or mental health.

Is Inner Child Work Right for You?

You don’t need to have big trauma wounds from childhood to benefit from inner child work. In fact, even if you had a fairly happy childhood and positive experiences with your parent(s) or caregiver, inner child work can empower you by helping you tap into and leverage your childlike sense of curiosity, creativity, and play.

But if you have any of the 7 signs I described above, inner child work might be an especially good fit for you. After all, these signs describe patterns of behaviors or symptoms that may stem from your early childhood experiences and the wounds you developed in response to them. As a result, inner child work may be able to help you uncover, process, and heal from your wounds so that you can move forward in your life with greater happiness and self-confidence and navigate situations and relationships in healthier ways.

In addition to suggesting that inner child work might be a good fit for you, these 7 signs indicate that you might also benefit from cultivating a stronger and healthier relationship with yourself.

To help you do this, I’m sharing a FREE worksheet with you called the Self-Love Weekly Planner. It’ll help you incorporate simple practices into your daily life that allow you to give yourself the love and care you deserve.

While you’re here, I also want to tell you about a special upcoming opportunity: In October, I’ll be accepting a few new clients into my one-on-one Heal Your Inner Child program.

If you’re ready to get to the root of your current challenges and begin a deeper journey of healing that will help you create the life or relationships you want, schedule a free strategy session with me to learn whether this program would be the right next step for YOU. 

And lastly, if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and courses.

Until next time!

Vera

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