Loving Our Inner Child

There is a concept in psychology called archetypes, originally presented (in western culture anyway) by the famous psychologist and author Carl Jung. In more contemporary works the author and medical intuitive Carolyn Myss dives deeper into the topic of archetypes.  I highly encourage you to read or listen to both of these authors especially if you have an interest in psychology and mental/emotional/spiritual healing! It’s quite fascinating, and you’ll start to see archetypes in everyone you come across. 

When talking about archetypes I also include other realms like that of gods and goddesses, mythical characters, elements, astrology. For instance when we look at children in our lives, or perhaps think back to our nature as a child, we may see fire fairies, ancient mermaids, angel energies, earth giants, tiny queens and kings….

And this brings me to what is incredibly important when tending to your inner child: let it be creative, let it be playful…let it be kind. 

Why Work With Archetypes? 

Working with archetypes allows us to identify different aspects of our psyche, the programs and/or qualities we may be currently running. The interesting thing is that in truth ALL of the archetypes are within us to some degree.  Clinical speaking, exploring the concept with myself and patients has several benefits: 

• It helps to discern what areas need healing, and a phrase that comes up often in sessions is figuring out what aspects of self are “running the show”.  A frightened inner child? A frustrated inner teen? 
• It can depersonalize our struggles when we realize these archetypes are present in our collective consciousness as a whole, and thus are areas most individuals are working on integrating, alchemizing, and/or rebalancing. 
• We can lean into our gifts, cultivating that which feels good and self empowering. 
• We can lean into the shadows, again knowing its not necessarily personal failures, more so opportunities for deeper self awareness and empowerment. 
• And specifically when we cultivate a healthy relationship with our inner child, working with archetypes can be an incredibly powerful access point into healing trauma, anxiety, depression and chronic illness. 

For the purposes of this article we are going to focus on the inner child. In general when we refer to inner child we are looking at the aspect of you that is from birth to 8 or 9 years old. After that we are looking more at the inner adolescent/teen which we will go into in another article.