Delna Mistry Anand experiences a Guided Meditation- Healing Your Inner-Child with Madeeha Afridi at Lighthouse Arabia and tells us more about it. This is an online guided meditation for understanding and healing your inner- child. Learning how connection with your inner-child is the gateway to long-lasting positive change, and working through present day blocks that get in the way of living a deeply meaningful and fulfilling life.
There is this tiny little voice inside each of us, one that reminds us of our younger self. Have you noticed it? It’s the voice that we carry with us every passing day, no matter how old we are. Have you noticed that certain incidents could trigger a certain individual more than another? For example, if you don’t get invited to a party (as an adult), it could trigger you more than someone else – as it may reminded you of how your 8 year old classmate didn’t invite you for her birthday party years ago! Or a simple disagreement with a colleague could remind you of being misunderstood as a 15-year old. Caring for this younger version of ourselves is what inner child work is all about.
The inner child is a sub-personality that resides in our subconscious mind. To put it simply, the child you once were did not just vanish away and get replaced by a perfectly formed adult. There are still elements of our childhood wounds stuck within us.
Inner child work is a way to address our needs that haven’t been met as children and heal the attachment wounds we’ve developed. We all have a younger part of ourselves that was never quite loved the way we needed as a child.
Madeeha Afridi, Mindfulness and Meditation Practitioner at The Lighthouse Center for Wellbeing led a healing guided meditation taking us back to that moment in our childhood (within our meditation) where the pain began. We started by first taking ourselves out of the left brain―associated with language, logic, and critical thinking―into the right brain, associated with our emotional expression, intuition, and creativity. Connecting to our breath and physical body, we got into a state of relaxation and then through the process of visualization, we connected with our inner child, reaching out to it, learning to forgive it, love it, care for it and begin the process of healing. Inner child work is a beautiful process, and will leave you feeling more at peace with yourself.
We all need to heal some aspects of our inner child, and here are some tell-tales signs for you:
1. Easily triggered
When you notice how easily certain simple situations trigger you, leaving you suddenly feeling very detached or irritated, it is a sure sign that your wounded inner child has shown up.
2. Destructive coping behaviors.
Excessive behavior, such as coping through too much alcohol, shopping, cheating, gambling, food, and even chronic procrastination – are all signs of an unhealed inner child.
3. Repetitive patterns in our relationships
This is about repeating certain patterns with our partners that we have experienced with our parents, such as attachment patterns; avoiding conflict when a partner brings up their feelings, or being overly anxious or fearful in a relationship.
4. Poor emotional and mental health.
Notice if you have any of these:
- Anxiety in different areas of life
- Depression
- Feeling isolated/orphaned
- Feeling unmotivated
- Wanting too much time alone or on the other hand – always wanting to be with friends
- Sleep difficulties
- Not able to be focused or productive at work
- Increased anxiety
There are many more signs that your inner child may be wounded. When needs for love, recognition, praise, and other types of emotional support go unmet in childhood, the trauma that results can last well into your adult life. Quite honestly, all of us, no matter how small or insignificant, have traumas from our past that need addressing.This reconnection allows us to access the fragmented parts of ourselves so that we can discover the root of our phobias, fears, insecurities, and self-sabotaging patterns. It’s never too late to heal. By learning to nurture our inner child, we can validate these needs, learn to express emotions in healthy ways, and increase self-compassion and self-love.
Madeeha Afridi can be reached on +971 4 380 2088 events@lighthousearabia.com
Links to a few Healing Inner-Child Guided Meditations:
Relaxation Guided Meditation: