The Importance of Connecting to Your Inner Child

Do you remember, during quarantine last year, there was a resurgence of people playing Club Penguin? Maybe it was just my friends, but we would spend hours playing that game, making pizzas in the pizza parlor, or buying puffles from the pet shop. Something about it felt so familiar, it was comforting during such a confusing and stressful time last year. The cozy feeling was brought on by my inner child. Somewhere deep down, I needed to tend to my inner child and this post is going to talk about that and how you can connect with your inner child as well.

Recently, I have been working a lot on myself. For the past year, I have been stressed, tightly wound, and unhappy. I knew that if I didn’t do something about it, my mental health is going to suffer. It already was. So I started doing some research, looking into different ways to feel more grounded and comfortable in my skin. I looked into exercise, meditation, and hypnotherapy(yes, really). I wasn’t sure what was going to work best for me, but something I found super interesting was the concept of healing and connecting with your inner child.

Growing up, I was always considered mature for my age. I still remember all the praise I would get from teachers and caretakers because I was quiet, concentrated, and calm. Going through middle school and high school, I was always the studious one. I didn’t spend time goofing off, in or out of the classroom. I always did all my work on time. It became my personality, Jackie, a focused and mature student.

However, as I got older, the opposite happened. A lot of the things I use to love as a kid still brought me joy. But many of my peers were abandoning those things. I watched the Disney channel way longer than any of my classmates. I still had a bed full of stuffed animals and loved collecting small toys or reading books meant for younger audiences. It felt like I was being left behind.

Unfortunately, I felt a lot of shame around this. I often hid who I really was because sharing these parts of myself led to ridicule from my peers. I felt ashamed for the things I liked, believing I needed to grow up. So to protect myself, I gave that appearance. My stuffed animals were put away and I focused on things I thought my peers would approve of. I was unhappy, but I fit in.

Thank goodness I got out of that phase. On my journey to connecting with my inner child, I am much more comfortable and confident in who I am. Looking back, I know there were a lot of people similar to me. A lot of kids hide what they like to fit in with their peers. This is why connecting with your inner child has become so important to my generation. To get back what we lost when we were young.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. I will make a small commission from every purchase made through these links. Thank you so much

What is your inner child?

You know when you’re grocery shopping, you turn into an empty aisle, and all you want to do is spin your way down that aisle like a ballerina. Or hop on your shopping cart and roll down like you’re in a race. But you don’t do it because it wouldn’t be acceptable, and someone might see you. There was a voice inside your head that wanted to spin with reckless abandon. However with society constantly pushing for humans to be harder workers and maturity is so sought after, it isn’t even a question in our minds of whether or not to do it. We simply squander that voice and continue grocery shopping like everyone else.

That little voice in the back of your mind? That’s your inner child.

Check out this article for more info and understanding of what your inner child is.

Why connect with your inner child?

What is the goal of all this? I am not just connecting with my inner child for the fun of it, although it can be a lot of fun. The main reason I am doing it is so that I can heal.

Why would we need to heal our inner child? Well, sometimes, your inner child can be injured. It can be from a trauma, or it can happen without you even realizing it. It is important to connect with your inner child and understand it because your inner child can be having a massive impact on how you perceive and experience the world around you. This is so important because it can even impact your mental health. So, connecting with your inner child gets you one step closer to understanding yourself and why you interact with the world the way you do.

Important to note, I am not an expert on the inner child. In fact, I only just learned about the subject. So, the only thing I can talk about is connecting with your inner child, which is what I am doing and it is a huge first step to healing it.

Do some research, and check out websites like this one. There are so many different ways to heal your inner child, and connecting and understanding is step one in the process.

How do you connect to your inner child?

The answer to this question is personal and unique. For me, it is reclaiming my love for stuffed animals and watching all the animated kid-friendly movies I can find. Have you heard of squishmallows? They are the softest, fluffiest cuddle buddies in the world, and I have about six of them sitting on my bed right now. For my best friend, it is playing with infinite amounts of playdough and slime. For both of us, it’s Webkinz. We bought each other a Webkinz, and we love to play. All those games we used to spend so much time on when we were young, are still fun! We may be college graduates, but we still have fun logging on and going to “Kinzville Academy” with our pets.

Here are some things you can do to figure out how to connect with your inner child.

1. Do things you used to enjoy as a child: Did you love setting all your dolls and stuffies up in your room and dancing an entire performance of hannah montanta to them? Do it! Play that old board game you haven’t played in years. Draw a picture of your family as stick figures with crayons. Whatever used to being you joy, do it now.
2. Watch movies or TV shows from your childhood: When I was young I loved anything with unicorns. So whenever my inner child needs a little tender love and care, I have no issues turning on “My Little Pony.”
3. Do some arts & crafts! Nothing more fun that gluing, painting, and cutting.
4. Visit a place from your childhood: You know that weird feeling of nastalgia you get when go someplace from your childhood. That’s your inner child. Allow that feeling to grow and sit with it for a while. It might give you some understanding into how your inner child works and what it needs.
5. Try a new hobby, something entirely useless. I am not telling you to find a hobby, become really good at it, and then monitize it. I’m talking about a hobby that is fun and adds nothing useful to your life. Check out this post with a whole list of hobbies for you to try!
6. Visit the toy aisle: You know, that aisle you always skip over in target unless you have an actual child. Yeah, go there, and pick something up that is compeltely new, something that looks fun. Find something that would make you say, “aw, I wish I had a child so I could play with this.” Buy it. Play with it. Have fun.
   • Try Something like this foam slime from amazon! This stuff is so fun to play with, and super relaxing. Slime wasn’t popular when I was a kid and I know I would have loved playing with it. But no problem there, because I can still play with it now.

Important Tips

• Get out of your head! If you feel silly acting like a child, keep going. There is a reason you feel that doing something harmless, like doing a coloring book, feels wrong, and it’s not a good one. It is just society pushing its norms on you. You have to break that in order to connect with your inner child.
• Give it time. You might feel silly the first, fifth, or tenth time you do something. Thats okay. Give it time and keep trying. Something wonderful might happen. What’s the worst that could happen, you feel weird? So, what. While feeling embarassed by yourself is valid, it is not useful or worth it. Work to get rid of those emotions.
• Find a buddy. Find someone else who wants to connect with their inner child and joing them!
• Have fun! That was the most important thing when we were kids, and it still is. Just let loose and have fun.

---

Connecting with your inner child can be so important. And even if it doesn’t heal anything, it can be so much fun. I love playing like I am ten again. It allows me to forget the stresses of life and just relax.

Thanks for reading!