Is Your Inner Child Impacting Your Relationship?

Emotionally triggered, highly sensitive, reactive, taking things personally, feeling the need to fight, flee or freeze… These are just some of the ways your inner child may be impacting your relationship.

I believe we all have inner children within us that impact our current reality and what I have noticed for myself and the many I have worked with over the years is that relationships is a HUGE part that the inner children tend to impact.

For me the inner child is really any younger version of self that has become frozen in time due to trauma or nervous system overwhelm that has led to some form of shut down in your nervous system preventing the experience or emotion to be fully digested or integrated into your system.

You may find yourself becoming triggered in different scenarios and maybe are confused as to why something is so triggering, overwhelming or causing some sort of reaction where you feel you lose control, maybe you feel like you lose yourself in those moments…

Triggers can often lead to feelings of shame, guilt, embarrassment, further hurt, and you may find yourself getting lost in the mind, in different stories, making the experience mean something about you, your relationship, your partner, or something else, causing you to get trapped in the experience.

Triggers are simply messengers showing you where something from your past is unresolved, unintegrated, wounded, afraid, and needs your attention, love, and care.

Often triggers can be so overwhelming, and there are so many stories attached it can be hard to navigate alone, it can be hard to receive the messages of these experiences but with support and practice you can definitely build the skill of navigating and integrating these triggers.

The inner child isn’t something to get rid of but a part of you to lovingly support in coming home and integrating back into your being, this is about calling back fragmented parts of self so that you can return to wholeness.

Triggers are also not something to avoid or fix rather a message to be receive to support you on your journey back to wholeness.

We can often get stuck in shaming and wronging ourselves and our experience, thinking there’s something wrong with us, something broken, something that needs to be fixed.

Rather you’re someone who needs to be seen, heard, listened to, held, supported, loved, embraced, nurtured.

These inner children are in enough pain and fear as it is, they don’t need to be further ridiculed, criticised and forced into submission, forced into letting go, forced into a release process so that your present self can have what you want in the now.

Your inner child needs you to let go of the attachment of what you want and to meet this part with unconditional love, and openness and a willingness to understand and meet it with curiosity and compassion as if it were a physical child sitting in front of you.

Can you imagine if a child, maybe your child, was sitting in front of you terrified, and you’re trying to force this part to tell you why it’s ruining your relationship, or trying to force it to let go of something that it is using in order to create some sense of safety.

That’s all this part of you is doing, trying to feel safe.

It may not make sense to your present self why it’s trying to create safety in this way and you may also see how the ways it’s acting is actually creating more feelings of unsafety but this part is doing all it knows.

By meeting this part with love and compassion and a willingness to understand we can support this part to release the patterns and behaviours that are not serving you or your relationship in the present and create new, empowering ways of feeling safe and secure.

You can lovingly bring this part of you home, to wholeness.

You are meeting this part of you in a way that no one else was able to meet this part in the past.

I truly feel it is our duty to bring these inner children home. Currently they’re in the dark, hiding beneath different layers of our experience, stuck in the past, in the shadows, and frozen in time. Continuing to play out patterns and behaviours that keep you stuck in the present, perhaps in the same job, the same friendships, the same partnership, dating the same kind of person, holding you back in your expression, holding you back from setting boundaries, asking for what you need or desire, shutting you down sexually, and in so many others ways and areas of life…

The inner child really can affect all areas of your life and often does, there may be one particular area where it shows up the most but after some deeper exploration you may come to realise that it’s not just that one area, there are many other subtle ways that the inner child blocks you from fully thriving in life.

And keeps you playing small, as a way to keep you safe from experiencing further hurt.

When you begin to see that the inner child is only trying to protect you from further pain it is much easier to meet this part with compassion, love and even gratitude… To have a part of you that only wants to protect you, how incredibly precious.

We only protect that which is precious, and if you have these strong protector parts, behaviours and patterns, it’s only showing you how truly precious you are.

As you do the work to integrate the inner child, it’s important to know that you’re not just ripping out the protective mechanisms, rather you are updating them, the protective mechanisms are evolving.

Showing these parts how the current protective mechanisms are actually doing the opposite of what is intended and guiding them to create new, empowering ways of protection. Showing these parts how standing in your strength and personal power is actually going to provide more safety, more protection.

By setting boundaries and expressing your needs you are creating protection, and you are showing yourself that you can be trusted, these parts can rely on you, you can rely on you.

You’re building a relationship with this part and in time they will trust you enough to let go and allow you to take the lead and guide them.

These inner children don’t want to be responsible for these protective responsibilities, it’s not their role, many of them are deeply afraid and only taking on this responsibility because they feel they have to in order to keep them and you safe. By supporting them to feel safe and let go of this responsibility they can take on a new role that will be more supportive for you and them and allow you to thrive in different areas of life.

Perhaps their new role is bringing the energy of innocence, joy, laughter, or playfulness…

Supporting your present adult self to be less serious and have more fun, to laugh more and enjoy the present moment.

Your inner children have incredible gifts and ways to support you and as you support them to come to safety they can return to their natural, divine frequency and benefit you in profound ways.

This is really allow about creating deep foundations of safety and security within yourself and when you have that you’ll find yourself less triggered, reactive and overwhelmed in your life and relationships.

When you’re able to remain calm in different scenarios where usually you would find yourself triggered you will find that your much better equipped to navigate those situations, interactions and conversations.

You can have the conversation, set the boundary, ask for what you need, follow your intuition, say no to what doesn’t feel aligned for you and say yes to what does.

You will have this unshakeable, unwavering knowing that no matter what you will be okay.

You will get through this.

No matter what anyone says or does, you are loved, you are worthy, you will be okay.

You are no longer relying on others or external experiences for validation or for safety. You have cultivated it within yourself.

And from this place you can connect with others in a much deeper way.

Through integrating your inner children, you return to wholeness and when you connect with a partner from wholeness, you create magic.

You’re no longer relying on the other to make you feel whole, no longer searching for “the one”, you are the one you are doing life with and your partner is someone you get to share that with, you get to create magic with, you get to share your life together, and that is a truly beautiful thing.

There’s no pressure on you must be my one for ever and ever and ever and must never leave or I will fall apart. You are strong in your own foundations of knowing that I am safe, I am loved, I am worthy, I will be okay no matter what.

And this creates so much ease and harmony within yourself, your life and your relationship.

So how do you integrate the inner child?

Well there are many ways, processes, and healing modalities you could explore. I highly recommend finding a qualified mentor, coach or support person.

To learn more about the processes I guide my clients and students in, join me Monday, 8th April, for my Live Online Event, Inner Child Healing & Conscious Relationships

Register here: https://webinar.moniquecarmela.com/conscious-relationships