Expert Insights

How Reparenting Your Inner Child Helps Your Relationship

If you’ve never tried inner child work, you may write it off as cheesy therapy speak. But in my own personal therapy and in the work I do with my clients, I’ve found some of the most powerful times of transformation have come when we connect with the hurt child parts inside of us.

And when the inner child work helps us, it also helps our intimate relationship.

Here’s how that works, plus an exercise you can use to access your inner child.

What is your inner child?

Your inner child is the part of you that experienced wounds when you were young, especially from parents and caregivers. Because we are imperfect humans living in an imperfect world, we have all experienced wounds as children from situations we had to adapt to.

Your inner child has carried those wounds into adulthood, and they shape how you think and behave. 

The issue is that sometimes those thoughts and behaviors can negatively affect you and your relationships in adulthood.

Behaviors you learned as a child can harm your relationships as an adult

These behaviours include anything that we did to avoid or cope with physical or emotional pain growing up. It usually looks like one of the types of trauma response: fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or fix. 

For example, as a kid you may have learned to:

  • play 10 hours of video games in a day (a “freeze” response) to numb feelings of abandonment
  • prioritize the emotions of others (a “fawn” or “fix” response) over your own in pursuit of connection
  • avoid home (a “flight” response) if it was not a safe place to be

These adaptations were brilliant and necessary survival strategies when you were a child, but they can get in the way of living your most fulfilling life as an adult.

Often, the adaptive strategies we built as kids carry through to adulthood with the same mentality or mindset they did when they first started, which is often quite young.

For example, if our inner child learned that to please others was the best way to stay safe and connected growing up, this part may still be applying the logic in the same black-or-white thinking as the 10-year-old kid who first adopted this strategy.

These learned behaviors and thinking patterns make up our inner child that we still carry with us today.

Honoring and reparenting your inner child

I cannot overstate that these behaviours were necessary survival strategies at the time. We want to honor these creative and resilient inner children, because they are the reason we are still here today.

Inner child work is about validating, nurturing, and guiding your younger parts — essentially reparenting yoursenlf — so that you can look around and be present to see the ways that as an adult you will never be trapped like you were as a child.

As an adult, we can provide the healing for our young parts that they did not receive.

We build a relationship with them to help lighten the load they’ve been carrying all these years.

Why this matters in your intimate relationships 

Your connection to your inner child is its own relationship. It is not about turning on a light switch where you are suddenly “healed.” It is a practice of showing up again and again for yourself with courage and compassion.

The more you are able to hold space and soothe the wounds of your younger parts, the more deeply you can connect with others.

Our romantic partners are often perfectly built to trigger our childhood wounds.

But the more we take care of our inner children, the more we are able to be present with our partners and connect on a deeper level. Otherwise, we are just reacting, and more often than not, that means we are playing out dramas from the past that have nothing to do with what’s in front of us.

Pia Mellody, an expert in the field of addiction and codependency coined the terms “adaptive child” and “wise adult” in her model of inner child work.

Our “adaptive child” refers to the fight-flight-freeze-fawn-fix strategies we developed in childhood and that can get activated when we’re stressed.

Our “wise adult” refers to the calm, flexible, and present state we can be in when our nervous system is regulated, which can happen when we learn to self-soothe.

The couples therapy model I practice is called “Relational Life Therapy,” and one of its main teachings is to help people build the skills of “relational mindfulness.”

This is a skill of noticing your triggered body sensations, and rather than reacting, you pause and calm your nervous system, for example by taking a deep breath, getting fresh air, getting some exercise, or taking a shower. 

Getting into a calmer state of mind helps you react wisely to a conflict with your partner and any other situation around you.

Inner child exercise: Write a letter to connect with your inner child

You don’t need to reparent your inner child alone. It can be incredibly valuable to receive guidance and support from a therapist.

But if you’d like to try out an exercise on your own, here’s one that I often suggest to my clients. It can help you understand, engage with, and nurture your young parts.

Write a letter from the perspective of your “wise adult” self to your inner child or “adaptive child.”

In your letter, make sure to include:

  • Gratitude: Express appreciation for how your inner child has navigated challenging experiences.
  • Acknowledgment of gifts: Recognize and list the positive contributions and strengths stemming from your inner child’s coping mechanisms and strategies.
  • Validate the costs: Articulate the negative things that can happen in adult life when the inner child directs decision-making and behavior.
  • Reassure them they are not alone: Let your inner child know that your wise adult is stepping in to care for them in all the ways they deserve to be cared for. Encourage your inner child to let the wise adult step in, and let them know all that benefits that come with doing so. Perhaps the inner child will have so much more time to play, rest, or connect when they no longer need to spend so much energy protecting themselves or being on high alert.

The final word

We all have childhood wounds that stem from a variety of experiences. None of us get through life unscathed. We’re imperfect humans existing in an imperfect world.

You might have traumas from minor grievances to severe abuse. In both cases, these childhood wounds may have left lasting imprints on your sense of yourself and the world.

We adopt coping mechanisms to protect ourselves that become ingrained over time. Even after we grow up, we continue to view the world through the lenses of our past hurts, anticipating the same pain to occur even if we are now safe.

I often think about the metaphor of an overactive alarm system that goes off unnecessarily when the wind blows. When we were children, the alarm system responded appropriately to the threat of a burglar. But now it’s out of date and needs an upgrade to correctly assess threats in the present.

Even as an adult, your instinctual response to perceived wounds may be rooted in the strategies that your “adaptive child” learned long ago. But these strategies no longer apply.

However, with awareness and conscious effort, you can transition into the mindset of the “wise adult.” This mature aspect of yourself can step back from immediate reactions, evaluate situations from a broader perspective, and strategize for long-term, mutually beneficial outcomes.

Embracing the wisdom of the “wise adult” allows you to transcend trauma from the past and respond to life’s challenges with resilience and understanding.

Erin Davidson, MA, RCC, CST
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Erin Davidson (she/her) is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Certified Sex Therapist working in private practice in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a firm believer in the healing power of pleasure and being kinder to ourselves. Erin is the author of two booksBreak Through the BreakupandThriving in Non-Monogamy. She is most proud of her new fluffball Marv who recently graduated top of his class in puppy preschool.