5 Signs You Have A Wounded Inner Child
#2 You have a deep fear of abandonment (you have an insecure attachment style).
We all have an inner child, even if we’re not aware of its presence. Unfortunately, as adults, we tend to ignore it — which is why so many of us are anxious, depressed, and unhappy.
The inner child concept is widely used and accepted among psychologists. It can help you understand why you have certain reactions, emotional triggers, and coping mechanisms.
As children, we can’t meet our own needs. If we experience trauma, or if we live in a chaotic environment, it’s difficult for us to cope with the emotional stress and process everything. Inevitably, we end up carrying psychological wounds that affect our relationships, health, and career.
Besides, as I’ve said before, trauma is trauma — no matter how small or insignificant you think it is.
Here’s how to tell if your inner child needs to be heard.
1. You’re a people-pleaser and you avoid conflict at all costs.
People-pleasing behavior usually stems from a childhood that forced you to silence your needs, thoughts, and emotions, to the point where you learned to suppress your self-expression.
This means you’re afraid of disappointing and frustrating other people because you unconsciously associate your worth with external validation. You don’t know how to say no or set boundaries, so you seek safety through avoidance.
2. You have a deep fear of abandonment (you have an insecure attachment style).
If you fear abandonment, you’re constantly afraid people in your life will leave, and it can be almost impossible to maintain healthy relationships.
This fear can come in the form of being clingy, codependent, or overly insecure (anxious attachment style) or it can lead you in the opposite direction, which is an avoidant attachment style. When you’re avoidant, you’re emotionally unavailable and you push people away to protect yourself because that’s how you find safety in your relationships.
This leads us to the next point…
3. You have trust issues.
Trust issues stem from a wounded inner child that learned the hard way that people can’t be trusted. It’s a defense mechanism that we develop when:
- our caregivers are not able to meet our needs (emotional or/and physical), which makes us believe we’re “better off on our own” or that “relationships are unsafe/unstable”;
- we grow up in a chaotic environment where we spend every single day just trying to survive (even if the chaos is emotional and there’s no immediate physical threat);
- we grow up in an enmeshed family where our caregivers didn’t respect our boundaries or encourage our individualization, which leads us to create the belief “I can’t trust myself, therefore I can’t trust others” (because how can we learn to trust ourselves if our own parents never trusted us to make our own decisions?)
4. Your boundaries are either too weak or too rigid.
During my childhood and teenage years, I always felt suffocated in the sense that I couldn’t express myself freely and safely. Looking back now it’s clear that the problem was the chaos I was living in.
I thought it was normal — now I know it was the result of living with a narcissistic father who was constantly trying to control my behavior and viewed my self-expression as a threat to his authority.
This led me to develop certain coping mechanisms to protect myself. I began overcompensating the lack of boundaries I had at home with super rigid boundaries in my other relationships. For instance, when someone pressures me or keeps calling me all the time, my first instinct is to cut them off.
5. You struggle with expressing “negative” emotions, particularly anger.
When we’re raised by parents who don’t know how to deal with our emotions, comfort us, and validate us — or, even worse, parents who punish us for expressing our emotions — it’s very difficult for us to cope with our emotional life.
“Narcissistic parents find it very difficult to deal with the emotions of others, including their own children. They’re notorious for their lack of empathy.
Instead of validating your feelings (which is crucial for children to develop their sense of self), they minimize your emotional life and even punish you for expressing “negative” emotions (like anger). Ironically, these rules don’t apply to them: their anger should always be given a free pass.
This was the first sign I noticed in my family that got me questioning everything. For as long as I can remember, the only person allowed to express “negative” emotions is my father.
Whenever I or my mom express anger or dissatisfaction, we’re manipulated into feeling guilt for whatever we said and expressed. He always manages to twist the truth and make it look like he did nothing wrong.”
Our inner child does not disappear once we become adults. It stays within us, reminding us of all the wounds we haven’t healed yet.
When we finally give ourselves permission to listen to our inner child, all our fears and insecurities come up to the surface. It’s painful and uncomfortable, but also extremely healing.
All it takes is a little bit of courage.