Inner child therapy is an approach that can be incorporated into psychotherapy sessions to help clients connect with their inner parts contributing to their psychological distress. With this approach, there is a focus on their unconscious and the power that their inner child has. The inner child part of our client is often a part of themselves that they have lost touch with as they have aged. Therapy sessions will help bridge the gap between your client’s inner child and adult self. Keep reading to learn 10 inner child therapy exercises and activities you can do with your clients.
As adults, the automatic thoughts that can often be traced back to childhood. Early childhood experiences can affect a person’s beliefs about themselves, others, and the world around them. As you help your client connect with their inner child, you’ll encourage them to have empathy and compassion towards their inner parts that contribute to negative beliefs about themselves.
Showing empathy and compassion can have a significant impact on how clients view the challenges or difficulties they experience. As an example, let’s compare an adult and a child who are going to see a doctor for testing. Both individuals can experience and display fear, sadness, and uncertainty. Who would you have more patience with? How would your reaction to the child differ from the adult? You would likely have more patience for the child, and talk to them in a manner that is aimed at helping them. Working to have an increased sense of empathy and compassion with themselves can decrease a client’s negative thoughts, which may help improve their reaction to stressful and challenging situations.
Sessions can work to help clients recognize the shifts in their thinking when they are triggered through the use of healing inner child activities. Over time, clients can learn to recognize the needs of their different parts and learn how to respond effectively. They may find negative automatic thoughts shifting to something similar to “How can I help this part of me?” or “Which of my needs are not being met?” Reparenting is a concept that involves learning to care for and nurture your inner child in a way that you did not receive at a younger age. This may include feeling comforted, protected, safe, and validated.
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Mental Health Concerns That Can Benefit From Inner Child Therapy
There are several mental health disorders and even difficulties that can benefit from inner child therapy activities. This includes those whose distressing thoughts, emotions, or behaviors are rooted in childhood experiences. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are experiences that could be traumatic. This includes household dysfunction, abuse, neglect, parental mental illness, living in poverty, bereavement, witnessing violence, and parental divorce or separation. These experiences can disrupt typical development in children, increasing the risk for certain physical and psychological concerns.
Examples of mental health disorders that can benefit from inner child healing exercises include Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), depression, anxiety disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), attachment disorders, eating disorders, dissociative disorders, and substance use disorders. These conditions can present with varying symptoms and severities, which highlights the importance of a comprehensive assessment before creating your personalized treatment plan.
Inner Child Therapy Activities
Here are some inner child therapy activities you can do with your clients:
1) Setting Boundaries
Boundaries are something that can have a significant impact on our clients’ overall emotional well-being. This can include boundaries within relationships and in different areas of their lives. Using the setting boundaries Worksheet can help your client gain a new perspective on interpersonal boundaries that they would like to establish. This includes determining who they will share what information with, and such. Talking through this boundary worksheet can help your client gain confidence about their ability to establish and maintain new boundaries in their life.
2) Play
An important part of childhood is playing. This allows kids to explore the world around them, try new things, push themselves, and learn. This is not an experience that all children get, which can have a negative impact on their development and mental health. Encourage your client to play by finding something that they enjoy. This could be a new hobby, interest, or activity, either alone or with others. As they incorporate more playful activities into their routine, explore changes they have seen in their mood, thoughts, and behaviors. Has there been a change in how often they’re triggered? Are they responding to triggers or stress differently?
3) Thought Challenging
TherapyByPro has a thought-challenging worksheet that can be used to address maladaptive automatic thoughts that are rooted in childhood experiences. This worksheet can help your client walk through an event when their belief is triggered, and go through the steps of supporting or disproving its authenticity.
4) Letter to Yourself
Have your client write a letter to themselves as a child, saying things they wish they had heard at a younger age. This can include validating, supportive, and encouraging sentiments that could have made an impact on them. Encourage them to take their time with this exercise, touching on some of the unmet needs of their inner child. An next step would be to bring this letter to their next session to read aloud. This may be repeated if you would like additional time to have their message sink in. You can support your client as they process this expertise, exploring their thoughts and emotions during different stages of the exercise.
5) Role Playing
Role-playing is a commonly used technique for inner child work. This exercise allows clients to re-experience situations where they could have benefited from feeling safe, comforted, or supported. This worksheet provides you with a script that can guide you and your client through a role-playing exercise.
6) Visualization of Safe Space
Since we are focusing on your client’s inner child, encourage them to visualize a place where they feel safe. This may be an actual place for some, or a fictional location for others. Guide this exercise by asking your client to describe their environment using their senses. What do they see, feel, smell, taste, and hear? Is there anyone there with them? Once your client has visualized this location in detail, you can talk about their environment using the benefits of using visualization techniques when they are feeling triggered, threatened, and scared. Engaging in this exercise allows them to address the needs of their inner child by creating a sense of calmness and safety, which can make it easier to cope with the difficulties at hand.
7) Connecting with Inner Child
A component of your client connecting with their inner child is recognizing the influence that early experiences have on their current behaviors and reactions. This can include the use of unhealthy coping skills like avoidance and substance abuse. Bringing attention to these patterns can increase your clients’ self-awareness, allowing them to recognize the role that their early experiences continue to have on them.
8) Writing a Letter to a Parent
Another twist on the letter-writing exercise is to write a letter to a parent, caregiver, or guardian. This can be a challenging, yet validating, experience for clients who have experienced a range of challenging or traumatic experiences during childhood. Your client can take time to stand up for themselves and their needs, providing the safety and support they could have used in the past. You can help your client process this exercise, keeping in mind that you may need to address guilt if the subject of their letter has passed.
9) Positive Affirmations
Positive affirmations can be a helpful way to address negative automatic thoughts. Negative thoughts are often tied to negative beliefs about ourselves. When our clients focus on their perceived flaws or weaknesses, they are likely missing their strengths and successes. Encourage your client to incorporate positive affirmations into their routine. This could be when they wake up, before they go to work, or before bed. They can say this statement aloud, with or without looking in a mirror. Examples of positive affirmations they could use include:
- “I am healthy and loved.”
- “I am proud of myself and my efforts.”
- “I will let go of the shame I have been carrying.”
10) Exploring Triggers
Triggers are often rooted in previous experiences that were challenging or caused distress. Some of which can be traced back to early experiences. This trigger record worksheet with TherapyByPro can help your client gain awareness of patterns regarding triggers and their subsequent behaviors. This can increase self-awareness and bring attention to experiences that should be addressed in therapy.
Final Thoughts On Choosing Inner Child Healing Exercises For Your Clients
Thank you for reading our resource on 10 inner child therapy exercises and activities to do with your clients. Inner child activities and therapy can be an effective treatment option for a variety of mental health disorders. Even clients who have overall positive experiences in their childhood experienced some form of pain, discomfort, or disappointment that shaped them into who they are today. Helping our clients gain an understanding of how their past influences their current thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
If you would like to learn more about inner child exercises and how you can apply them to your clinical setting, we encourage you to explore available training and continuing education opportunities within your clinical niche. Supervision is a valuable resource when implementing new approaches and techniques into your work, ensuring that your work is going as planned.
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