How your inner child can help your adult anxiety

If there's a word that most aptly sums up the age we live in, it'd probably be "anxiety". That word has become common parlance for those moments we feel overwhelmed, uncertain, and out of control.

In the NHS Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, it said anxiety and depression affected about one in six people. While the 'anxiety economy' - I'll be doing a bigger write up of this later this week - has boomed to cater for this rise in public unease, there are a number of ideas in the history books that are worth exploring. One of those is our 'inner child', first developed by Carl Jung.

Jung at heart 💗

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in the early 20th century. He worked with Sigmund Freud to develop what was then the non-existent field of human psychology.

In his work, he described something called a ‘Child archetype’ in his list of archetypes that represent the development of the different parts of the self into a functioning whole. That idea, Jung said in his memoirs, came out of an acknowledgment that he'd lost the creativity and love for building things that he'd had as a child.

This child archetype became what we now commonly refer to as our 'inner child', and it's important when it comes to understanding our feelings as adults. Jung believed that we all have repressed emotions from childhood, as we were encouraged and rewarded to be 'good', but discouraged and even punished for being 'bad'.

So if you were only offered attention when ‘good’, you might find the inner child holds rebellion, sadness, and anger. The inner child can also hide all of the things we were taught to think about ourselves by parents, teachers, or other adults.

Things like, “you better not say what you really think”, “don’t try to get that promotion you just aren’t smart enough”, “big boys don’t cry”, “sex is dirty”. Our anxieties are often the result of inner voices that sound a lot like those of the inner child. By identifying them, we can help quieten them, and our anxiety.

Let the inner child out 🧒

There are a few exercises you can try to help understand where those anxious ideas come from. Dr. Stephen Diamond, a clinical psychologist suggests in his bookPsychotherapy for the Soul: 33 essential secrets for emotional and spiritual self-healing trying the following:

• Start a dialogue. It sounds odd but it's a key part of working with feelings, says Diamond. A good place to start might be, "what did I miss?" or "what did I not get enough of as a child?"
• Make it a regular thing. You're unlikely to uncover the secrets of your inner child on your first try. It's a process. The trick is to find a way of doing that process regularly. Some people have found it helpful to write their inner child a letter, or to do a voice memo. Either way, ensure it's something you practice frequently.
• Develop a positive way of talking to your inner child. The key here, according to Diamond, is to formulate a more nurturing and supportive way of talking to your inner child. Examples might include: I love you, I hear you, thank you, I’m sorry. I

When you're feeling anxious, try these techniques. When it comes to good mental health, it's a practice that needs to be done over time, says Diamond.