Why do psychologist seek to talk to the "inner child" when helping someone in therapy, hypnotherapy, etc?

Question

why and how so for this?

and which methods to they use to do this?

Thanks for your answers!

Answer 1

They seek the inner child because every psychological "disorder" is because there is something or trauma that stopped us from moving forward, which in turn caused us from not maturing from the situation hence the the term inner child. Whenever anything stops us from progressing, it is still in a child state and that's what they're trying to get to in order to make some type of progress.

Don't know the methods but it's common sense. for example, depression....it's just a state of living in the past instead of the present. U're so caught up over a situation that happened that u're not allowing ur mind to progress, hence being "de-pressed" and that is forming an inner child. While other areas of ur life continues, that part is not.

Hope I gave u some insight.

OneLove

T

Answer 2

Sense of willingness to please, to win the adults/parents/caregivers’ attention; we as a child depended on them utterly to feel warmly protected by that love….this sense stays with us because part of us is still locked in the past.  Emotionally, we retain many of the characteristics of a child before our intellect was fully formed.  Since the roots are emotional, we need to do something where we are emotionally engaged.  In doing that, we can tear out the roots of these old patterns and truly be free to live our own lives.

The first step is to be aware that we are not born with a pattern.  i.e. “plays victim” and/or “poor me/acts helpless”.  We learned it.  The next step is to “give it back” through healthy expression.

To learn to understand yourself, you need to crawl inside the emotional part of your being.  Imagine it as a child of around eight years old.  It is old enough to know about manipulation and game-playing but still young enough to play “victim” and “poor me.”  At this age lies the origin of the reactions of our emotional self, an aspect that many people refer to as their “inner child.”

To dig out, a photo of yourself, as a child of about 8 years old; what do you see in your child’s face?  Imagine the feelings that you had as a child-happy, vulnerable, alive, withdrawn, excited, pouting, fun loving, needy, or frightened.  Now imagine that this emotional aspect is still living inside you, the grown-up man or woman.  This side of you is just more subtle and better controlled now that you are grown up.  .  .   .

We have to recognize that there is now an emotional part of us that is negatively programmed.  If we can get to this emotional part and balance its needs and its voice with that of our rational side, then we can achieve more peace in life…

Answer 3

Problems in our adult life are often a result of some sort of childhood shock/abuse. Talking to the "inner child" might help the therapist understand the root of the problem.