Embracing Your Inner Child
As promised in last week’s blog, today I’m happy to share this article that I wrote for Spirituality & Health magazine featuring wisdom I’ve gleaned from Dr. Becky about reparenting our inner child. I hope you find it of benefit!
Sage advice gleaned from parenting pro, Dr. Becky
Many of us on a quest to live more peacefully and joyfully have discovered the benefits of examining the beliefs and coping mechanisms we developed when we were young and vulnerable. Looking inward, we often find a frightened inner child banished to our subconscious, seemingly frozen in time. To truly thrive as adults, our inner child must be coaxed out, heard, validated, and embraced. This process is often called “reparenting.”
Since most of us have been conditioned to care for ourselves in much the same way we were cared for growing up, we often find ourselves unconsciously repeating similar patterns of rejection and repression when it comes to our inner child. To develop healthier ways to reparent ourselves (as well as to care for any children in our lives), we can learn a tremendous amount from the sage advice offered by clinical psychologist, Dr. Becky Kennedy, author of the revolutionary parenting book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be.
Myra circa 1964
Dr. Becky teaches that childhood is ideally a time for developing emotional resilience, which she describes as the ability to find ourselves amid our feelings, thoughts, and urges, rather than having them overtake us. “Feeling satisfied with oneself, tolerant of failure, firm in boundaries, capable of self-advocacy, and connected with others . . . all of these important adult dynamics come from our early wiring.”
Since our earliest experiences greatly influence which parts of us feel lovable and which parts we feel ashamed of and attempt to shut down, Dr. Becky believes that one of a parent’s most important jobs is to be their child’s emotional caretaker, which means providing validation and empathy. “Validation is the process of seeing someone else’s emotional experience as real and true, rather than seeing someone else’s emotional experience as something we want to convince them out of or logic them away from.”
Empathy is about understanding and connecting with another person’s feelings without trying to make them go away. “Empathy comes from our ability to be curious: it allows us to explore our child’s emotional experience from a place of learning, not judgment. When a child receives empathy—in fact, when any of us receives empathy—it makes them feel like someone is on their team.”
Myra, right, with her sister Ruthie, circa 1965
Showering our inner child with validation and empathy sends the message that it is okay for them to be who they naturally are, and to feel what they naturally feel. For me, simply reading the dozens of scenarios in Good Inside that demonstrate what providing validation and empathy looks like in real life situations has been surprisingly powerful and impactful. It feels as if my inner child is peeking out from behind a closed door, intently listening to narratives so different from the ones she was raised with.I can feel her ears perk up, her eyes widen in wonder, and the tight knots in her belly loosen as she breaks into a big smile.
In one example below, Dr. Becky outlines the impact of two different responses to a child who is clinging to their parent, hesitant to join a birthday party:
Parent Response #1:
“You know everyone here. Come on! There’s nothing to be worried about!”
Attachment Lesson #1:
I can’t trust my feelings because they’re ridiculous and overblown. Other people know better than I do how I should feel.
Parent Response #2:
“Something about this feels tricky. I believe you. Take your time. You’ll know when you’re ready.”
Attachment Lesson #2:
I can trust my feelings. I’m allowed to feel cautious. I know what I am feeling and I can expect other people to respect and support me.
Learning to Tolerate Discomfort
Dr. Becky’s goal is to have children learn to trust themselves—to look inward and acknowledge how they actually feel rather than looking outward to determine how they should feel—an important lesson for people of every age. We often banish our inner child to our subconscious because we’ve been conditioned to believe that certain feelings are unacceptable, especially those that have repeatedly brought rejection, not connection, such as anger or upset.
To learn emotional regulation, children need to repeatedly experience that emotions that feel gigantic, scary, and overwhelming to them are not scary or overwhelming to their parents. This requires that parents as well as children develop an increased tolerance for emotional discomfort. Believing that discomfort is wrong and should be eliminated as quickly as possible builds very different nervous system circuitry than gaining a felt understanding that discomfort is part of life and nothing to be afraid of.
“Parents don’t so much need to protect kids from having tough feelings as much as we need to prepare our kids to have those feelings,” writes Dr. Becky. “When we aren’t able to cope with emotions like disappointment, frustration, envy, and sadness…our bodies initiate a stress response.”
Anxiety, Dr. Becky explains, comes largely from an intolerance of discomfort. “It’s the experience of not wanting to be in your body, the idea that you should be feeling differently in that specific moment.” She writes, “Avoiding your feelings never ends the way you want it to. In fact, the more you avoid distress or will it to go away, the worse it becomes. Our bodies interpret avoidance as confirmation of danger, and it triggers our internal alert system. The more energy we use to push emotions like anxiety or anger or sadness away, the more powerfully those emotions spring back up.”
Tiny pauses to be right here, right now can have big results. Our Take a Moment series of micro-meditations—all under two minutes long—make taking mindful pauses as easy as possible. We invite you to "Take a Moment" to find the calm that is always within you.
