Inner Bonding — World Book Day 2023.

A little late for World Book Day (April 22nd) but only by a few days!

“Inner Bonding: Becoming a Loving Adult to Your Inner Child” is the book I just finished reading. Even though I had encountered the concept before, in a pretty intimate way, I did not connect the dots until quite far into the book, that I had spoken to her [my inner child before].

Wait, this is not crazy talk, don’t leave just yet.

The book explains the concept of the Inner Child, that is, your emotional and feeling self. One that’s often ignored and set aside by your Adult, that is your rational and non-emotional self, also the self that executes actions in this world. The idea is that because of life, and most likely childhood occurrences, patterns, and things that our parents (unintentionally or intentionally) modeled for us, we have learned to treat our inner children a certain way, and have become disconnected from ourselves. The disconnect manifests in various ways in this world, in our dealings, and in our relationships.

We can go about in this disconnected way with seemingly small, seemingly meaningless behaviors (codependency) but will not live our fullest lives. The disconnected self can also result in more extreme things such as chemically dependent behaviors, maybe death.

The book has numerous examples of people who connected with their inner children during therapy, and continually dialogue with them in order to get back in alignment and really listen to themselves. While one can’t always yield to the child’s asks, because it is, in the end, a child, and our rational selves have to step in to execute meaningfully in this world; one has to at least listen to the child and value what it is feeling, and dialogue with it, in order to not fall out of sync.

I tried dialoguing with my own inner child over a couple of decisions/issues, and I believe I had some success. The skeptic in me is still wrestling with — “Was that really your inner child, or was it you/your Adult just telling you what your conscious mind thinks of this situation anyway?”

But that’s just the thing — in a way, what really matters is that I took time to dialogue with myself to really dig into what I want from that decision/issue. I took action based on what came from the dialogue. Which, the book says, is important — to reflect in your actions what the Inner Child asked of you if it is reasonable to give it to them.

This is a path that I plan to continue on. If nothing else, it makes me set aside time to deeply reflect, instead of execute meaninglessly in the world.

A good read! If you consider it, come back and tell me what you think! Or if you have already read it and feel comfortable sharing about your “inner child work”, please do!

This was written for the Non-Fiction section of The Storyteller’s Vault.

For more books on spiritual and mental health concepts please head over to this humble read!