The psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961) is considered the first to have coined the term “inner child.” The child archetype is one among many defined by Jung and is a symbol of the developing personality of an individual. In popular and analytical psychology, this part of us is depicted as the individual’s childlike aspect of ourselves which resides within us, throughout our lives.

It is full of innocence, awe and wonder, child-like in quality. When our inner child is healthy, safe and secure, we feel that connect as the adult and it makes us feel happy, inspired, creative and grounded. However, what happens when our inner child is wounded from past trauma and negative experiences? They hold all the memories and emotions, good or bad, that we experienced. These learned messages incurred when we were helpless and dependent on our caregivers.

As adults, we are covertly controlled by our unconscious inner child. It is hard to believe but often, this leaves the child in charge of our lives. When wounded, these little ones are full of anger, shame, and sometimes rage because of the maltreatment they endured. Inner children are the lens through which injured adults make their decisions about life.

These small, lost, and lonely parts of ourselves are afraid, anxious, and insecure, and that can make our lives miserable. However, there is hope. Inner child work can ease the pain and heal the wounds left behind by caregivers who were unconscious and passive to the needs of our developing minds.

The work I do as a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Coach, together with my experience and research into trauma-informed therapies has armed me with the tools to help you work on the inner child that perhaps needs your love, care and attention.

If your inner child is wreaking havoc and creating issues within your relationship to yourself, your partner, your family, your money or your health, reach out to me and let’s start the conversation.

There is exciting research happening in the last decade on neuroscience and the workings of the human brain. We are discovering new ways of understanding how trauma resides within our memories and how it plays out in our everyday life, over and over again, as if the trauma experience is on a painful loop.

Figuring out exactly what happens in our brains when we have a traumatic event has been a universal challenge. The part of the brain we’re interested in here is called the Amygdala, the part that processes our strong emotions like fear, anxiety and anger. It’s kind of like a Department of Homeland Security. It scans all the sensory information that’s coming to us, millions of bits of information through sight, hearing, touch, all of our senses. And it’s scanning that information for a whisper of something that could be dangerous or a real threat that we need to get away from as fast as we can.

It’s remembering threats from the past, and it’s ready to react within less than one tenth of a second. It receives incoming data through the senses and is ready to manifest a flight, fight or freeze reaction to defend ourselves against a potential hazard.

Painful and frightening experiences of the past can show up as stress in our lives which can trigger anxiety (flight), aggression (fight) and helplessness (freeze) or other debilitating problems.

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In May 2013, I flew from Sydney to Scottsdale, Arizona to train in a Master Facilitator program, designed by Blair Singer. The purpose of me training to be a Master Facilitator was born out of my burning desire to help individuals in a group setting, work through mental and emotional pain in their life, wherever that pain originated.

Very much inspired by the writings of Canadian storyteller, Oriah Mountain Dreamer and in the words of her very special poem, The Invitation, I felt her speak to my true spirit,

“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing…”

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