WITH LOVE, DANIELLE

Your Inner Child Is Not the “Younger Version” of You

May 2, 2025

Explore the concept of the Inner Child, which represents our wounded and unresolved emotional self. Learn how this part of us communicates through emotional triggers, suggesting a need for compassion rather than tough love. Discover the significance of reparenting unmet needs and how it fosters creativity and spiritual growth. Uncover the link between self-sabotage and spiritual signals, and embrace the power of gentleness as a tool for healing and self-discovery.

07:44

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Quick takeaways

The Inner Child represents the unresolved, emotional part of ourselves that seeks healing and nurturing rather than criticism or tough love.

Engaging in Inner Child work fosters spiritual growth by transforming emotional triggers into opportunities for self-compassion and creative expression.

Deep dives

Understanding the Inner Child

The inner child represents an unresolved or wounded aspect of our unconscious self, often manifesting through emotional triggers and self-sabotaging behaviors. It is not merely a representation of one's childhood self but embodies the deeper emotional needs that require nurturing and healing. Emotions such as anxiety, fear, and sadness often arise from this inner child, seeking attention and love rather than tough love or criticism. By recognizing these feelings as calls for gentle understanding and care, individuals can address their unmet needs in a loving manner, akin to how a good parent comforts a distressed child.

Healing the Inner Child: A Journey of Self-Discovery

8min

Today is Part 2 of the 3 part What In the Woo? Series—offering a fresh perspective on how to work with the term “Inner Child.”

The Inner Child is not your younger self—it’s the wounded, emotional, shadowy part within, asking for healing.

Your Inner Child isn’t you when you were 8 years old. Inner Child is a really effectual term for the part of us that hasn’t healed yet—the wounded self, the fragmented self. Interchangeable with the ego or shadow self.

The part of you that gets triggered, goes into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn? That’s your Inner Child asking for attention and love.

The gift of the Inner Child is that they’re always pointing to what’s unresolved within us. Anxiety attacks before big events, losing your phone while hustling, getting sick when you’re pushing too hard? Those aren’t accidents—they’re calls for compassion, not "tough love."

True spiritual growth happens when we hold space for our Inner Child reactions—gently, lovingly, without judgment. Reparenting our unmet needs into creative power... and that’s Inner Child work.

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