Becoming Your Own Loving Parent, Four Simple Ways to Know and Nurture Your Inner Child
Written by Andy Travis, Therapist
Andy Travis is a therapist specialising in addiction recovery, mental & mood health, sex/love/relationships, and men's well-being. He uses techniques like live guided meditation, simple hypnosis, and somatic enquiry, personally tailored to give his clients access to their inner resources.
If you work, self-sabotage, control, scroll, shop, abandon yourself or others, seek approval, rage, drink or drug too much, if you feel guilty when you stand up for yourself, if you confuse love with rescue, this article could give you some tools to be the loving parent that perhaps the child within you has been calling out for.
In my personal healing journey and in working with others, I use the methods below often. My goal here is to provide enough knowledge for you to start using them right away.
‘‘We first see the world though the eyes of a little child, and that 'inner child' remains with us throughout our lives, no matter how outwardly 'grown-up' and powerful we become. If our vulnerable child was hurt, abandoned, shamed, or neglected, that child's pain, grief, and anger live on within us.’’ – John Bradshaw, ‘Homecoming.’
Journal writing
One way to start is by finding a quiet place and writing a letter to a younger version of yourself. Pick an age where something important happened, and let them know that you want to connect with them and that you want to be there for them from now on. Take some time to remember/imagine yourself at that age. If you have any photos of yourself from that time, look deeply at them. Then see if they want to write back to you. If they do, allow them to move your pen, let it just write. Sometimes writing with your non-dominant hand helps, especially if they’re fairly young.
For a conversation that moves back and forth more quickly, you may want to create initials to start a line. You could call your Present Self ‘PS’ for short, and if you want to talk to your 8-year-old self, you could use ‘8YO’. Or use a loving nickname. In this way, the dialogue looks a bit like a film script, with the character’s name starting each piece of dialogue.
Inner dialogue
John Bradshaw called the inner child "the part of us that is most alive, most creative, most spontaneous." So it’s worthwhile to get some conversation started. Try listening to how you talk to yourself for a day. If it’s critical, I invite you to simply practice the opposite. You can also talk with your inner critical parent, respectfully encouraging them to retire, letting them know that you can manage things from now on.
Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families is a 12-Step peer support group. It has excellent literature, including the ‘Loving Parent Guidebook’, which spells out a process to become your own loving parent. You can start an inner conversation whenever you have a spare moment. Ask your little one: “What do you need right now?” Sometimes I ask my inner child what he’d like to do next, or for help with simple decisions. Before starting to consciously reparent myself, I thought my inner child would be demanding and irrational. Once we started to communicate, I was pleasantly surprised at how cooperative and wise he was.
Mirror work
Mirror work was popularised by the late Louise Hay. Her inner child work can be found here: Forgiveness/Loving The Inner Child. When I was working through the Loving Parent Guidebook, I wanted to skip the mirror-work part: my relationship with mirrors was warped by both vanity and harsh judgement of my body shape.
Try this next time you have a quiet moment in front of a ‘looking glass’: pause, look into yourself through the reflection of your eyes, and speak to yourself with the tenderness you would offer a child. Say something like: "I see you. I'm here for you. I love you." Notice what arises. Over time, this simple practice can begin to heal your relationship with yourself. I’ve found mirror work to be one of the quickest and most direct ways to check in with my inner child and inner teenager. It’s also helping me undo both vanity and dislike of fatty places on my body!
Bradshaw described how we first come to know ourselves through the mirror of a caregiver's face. Mirror work, in adulthood, is a chance to offer ourselves the steady, loving gaze we may not have received when we were young.
Reparenting check-in
I’ve found this method to be a lifesaver when I’ve started to get heated or reactive, and I want to interact with others as a calm, compassionate adult. It’s drawn from the Loving Parent Guidebook. Try sitting quietly and moving through these four questions:
What physical sensations and emotions do you notice?
Who (what part of you) needs your loving parent’s attention?
What triggered this part?
How can you tend to this part from the loving parent within you?
To wrap up
"Each one of us has a three-year-old child within us, and we often spend most of our time yelling at that kid in ourselves. Then we wonder why our lives don't work." – Louise Hay, 'You Can Heal Your Life'.
Inside you lives both a wounded child and the capacity to be a loving parent to that child. I hope the tools above inspire you to get started or keep going. Feel free to visit my website for some free guided meditations on this theme and to share any feedback or questions. Lastly, I wrote the first draft of the poem below with my non-dominant hand. I wanted to explore the deepest beliefs of a younger, less intellectual version of myself. Enjoy.
What I know to be true for sure
Roses smell nice,
Unless they’re rotten.
Anything rotten smells bad,
Including farts.
Chips taste nice,
Unless they’re not cooked well.
Rabbits and most furry friends
Feel nice,
Unless they’re dirty.
Sunrises look beautiful,
Unless I hadn’t slept all night.
Then, when I saw the sunrise,
I just felt worried,
So I couldn’t feel the beauty.
Going to sleep near the ocean at night
Sounds holy.
Unless there’s a storm,
Then it sounds a bit scary.
But what I can’t
Smell,
Taste,
Touch,
See,
Or hear,
That’s where “true” and “for sure”
Get tricky and sticky.
Sometimes, I have a feeling,
Drifting off by the holy ocean
On a beach holiday,
After a day of sunny adventures,
That I know
Love to be true,
Peace for sure,
And there is no “unless.”
Read more from Andy Travis
Andy Travis, Therapist
In 1988, when Andy was 17, his mother began training to be a lifeline telephone counsellor. She would often talk to him about it. He was fascinated. The following year, Andy had a series of out-of-body experiences. They confirmed what he'd been reading about the parallels between mysticism and quantum physics. He embarked on a lifelong journey of meditation. In his early 30s, a mood disorder and sex/love addiction led him to 12-step peer-support groups, where he continues to volunteer today. He established Meeting Point Counselling in 2016.
