Healing Your Inner-Child, with Alex Elle

(air whooshes) (mouse clicks) (empyrean ambient music) ♪ Headspace Studios ♪ (serene ambient music) (waves splosh) Hey, everyone. I'm Alex L, your guest host this week. Welcome to "Radio Headspace" and to Tuesday. If you listened yesterday, you know that this week is all about healing, and finding ways to take care of ourselves through the process, and one way that we can do this is by showing up for our younger selves, or as some people like to call it, our inner child. So today, let's talk about what inner child work actually means, how to recognize the impact of our childhoods, and why it's important to experience joy in the process. Inner child work for me is showing up for myself in a way that my caretakers didn't, and so it's showing up for little Alex who actually is adult Alex, in a way that feels easeful, and kind, and honest. And something that I tell my students and clients all the time is, be a mentor to your younger self. Our younger self is us, but a lot of us as adults, we don't go back to that place, especially those of us who have had a tough time growing up, and if you're someone who's struggling with childhood trauma, I would highly suggest reaching out to a therapist to help support you as you lean into your inner child work. I started leaning into inner child work by way of writing. I had a tumultuous childhood and a painful childhood, and so a big part of my healing work was allowing adult me to kind of go back, and I learned this in therapy, go back to certain stages of my life and take my inner child in my hands, and speak words of love, and kindness, and gentleness to her. That is how I found the practice of gentle reminders to my younger self. A lot of my notes to self when I'm writing in my journal, a love letter to myself, or a gratitude letter to myself, it's rooted in holding my inner child. (peaceful ambient music) If you're curious about your inner child work, of course I'm gonna tell you to go to the page, and here are three prompts that you can take with you to start your gentle reminder practice for your younger self, or even your notes to your younger self. So, the first one is, "Dear younger self, I see you and..." The second one is, "Dear younger self, I am grateful that you..." And, "Dear younger self, you are special because..." Those prompts are very to the point, very basic, but they encourage us to dig deep and find loving kindness within ourselves to put on the page. I want us to keep in mind that play is important as we're healing our inner child. For me, that looks like coloring, blowing bubbles. I actually carry around a little vial of bubbles, and when I'm on my walks, I take them...