When you were a kid, do you remember having all the energy you could spend on things you loved doing? The things that made you excited? The things that made you look forward to every tomorrow? The things that made you feel more alive?
Perhaps it’s playing with your friends in the streets, watching your favorite cartoon on TV, getting presents on your birthday or Christmas, eating your favorite snack or meal, going to the beach with your family, visiting your grandparents’ house, or being able to bathe in the rain and run and jump into the puddles without any worry?
Whatever it is, remember them and the sensations they bring you. I’m sure you get a sense of wonder, carefreeness, bliss, and excitement thinking of you as a kid before the world of adulthood threw a pile of responsibilities and worries onto you and made you forget that your happiness actually comes from little things like those mentioned above.
As children, we are so full of hope, curiosity, empathy, creativity, and courage. We are very open to the world around us, and we innately seek to grow through experiencing life and learning from it.
This is why even when there were bad days, it was mostly easy for us to still go through them and look forward to tomorrow. Happiness is very accessible to us as kids.
This nature and our general values are also sustained by a nurturing, safe, and supportive environment that allows us to experiment in life. This means healthy parents, family members, or adults who are role models for us.
We are sponges as kids, and we take in so much of what we see from our surroundings. Even when we’re naturally curious and creative, when we have, for example, parents who don’t pay attention to us and our needs or validate our experiences, our growth gets stunted.
We get disconnected from our core values by shape-shifting to please others around us. As very sensitive children, we learn to shrink instead of make and create more space — because the space we are in feels unsafe.
Enter childhood trauma.
It is any traumatic experience we have as kids — physical, emotional, financial, etc. — that creates disconnection within our bodies and puts us into a state of survival, which ultimately shapes or affects our personalities and skills as adults.
One common sign that indicates the presence of trauma in someone is a deep sense of shame about themselves — the feeling of not being enough or perhaps being too much — embedded in the subconscious mind. People with unresolved trauma tend to feel lost, fearful, or overwhelmed; others go through life feeling numb and dissociated.
A healthy and secure person can feel sad from time to time, but they don’t have that deep sense of unworthiness, unlike many who have been disconnected from their inner child due to early circumstances.
Children who have healthy, stable environments where most of their needs are met grow up with a healthy sense of self. Their feelings of worthiness are not conditional because they were consistently reassured as kids that they are safe and that they matter no matter what. They grow up to be adults who have the courage to speak up for themselves, who are hopeful about their dreams, curious and creative in their crafts, and who care deeply about others because they know that as much as they matter and deserve love, others do too. They have a balanced view of themselves in relation to others.
This is where we need to start reflecting: when and how did we lose touch with that natural balance within us? When did we stop advocating for our feelings and needs in order to maintain peace or safety in our environment? When did we start dissociating from our own bodies? When did we begin to feel out of control or unsafe? What caused us to build a thick layer of protection that prevented us from actually living life the way we want to?
This is how trauma affects us. We develop fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses to survive — when in the first place, we are here to live. The moment we are in that mode of survival, our inner child gets stuck.
Understanding the when, how, and why depends on our individual experiences. It can be a complicated, slow process that requires an excellent and consistent support system.
The good news is that the actionable solutions to start feeling better aren’t really that complicated. The answer lies in going back to our inner child and the memories we have of them — the happiness that was once so easy to feel.
First, be kind to your inner child. Know that they’ve been through a lot, and the first thing they need is a hug and to hear that you’re here now. The reparenting journey can begin when you become the guardian you never had — and guess what? Your inner child’s requirements for a guardian are simple: someone genuine, kind, and present. And yes, you are that person first.
There are many ways to reconnect with your inner child, but if you start with these few, you’ll begin to feel differently as you build the habit of remembering and embodying what it feels like to be your carefree, courageous self. Don’t forget to be playful in the process. Leave your adult self and all its serious business in a corner from time to time — run, dance, or smell the flowers instead.
