How to Educate your Inner Child.
In last weeks Amazing Coaching blog, I shared my tips on how to Validate your Inner Child. Once this important step is complete, the next step is to educate your inner child.
Please don’t be in a hurry to get to this step, as the validation part is extremely important. I always inform my clients to go at the pace that feels right to their inner child, not their inner adult.
Why do we need to Educate our Inner Child?
As a child, you will have soaked in all type of beliefs about yourself, life, society and other people. Some may be positive and some will be negative. A small child’s brain is not yet fully developed and as a result, will literally soak up and believe everything that it hears. Remember believing in Santa Clause until someone told you differently? It is the same about many of the negative beliefs we hold. We simply keep believing them until we are told differently.
When we educate we are updating our old negative beliefs, coping mechanisms and ‘ lies’ we heard about our self as a child. Remember, we become what we hear.
Example of Educating our Inner Child
Please see Validating your inner child
Jane was aware rationally that she should be able to speak up in meetings. However, every time she attended a meeting, her inner child felt terrified of speaking up and Jane would feel anxious that she would say something stupid.
Jane first learned to validate her Inner Childs feelings. Whenever she felt terrified of speaking up, Jane would connect with her inner child and say ‘ It’s ok, I understand why you feel anxious. I totally understand why you are scared that you may say something stupid and people will laugh at you. You learned from Mum that it wasn’t safe to speak up and I know that you got into trouble when you voiced your opinion. I understand why you feel it is safer not to say anything’
Every time Jane validated her inner child’s feelings, she would feel a sense of relief. For probably the first time in her life, Jane felt heard and understood.
Once Jane had spent time validating her Inner child’s feelings, she went on to Educate. She gently connected with her inner child and explained that things were different now. She told her inner child that other people in the world were not going to react like her Mum did. Explaining gently, she informed her inner child that she had the right to be listened too and that her inner child’s opinion was valid and important. Jane told her inner child that it was now safe for her to speak up and she was not going to get into trouble. She promised to look after her and that they would work on speaking up in meetings together.
Educating your inner child can take a little time. Words and phrases will also need to be adjusted over time until the Inner child feels confident and safe to speak up.
Inner Child Coaching with Lisa Phillips
With over 23 years experience, Lisa is an award winning Confidence Coach and Life Coach. She is based in Corby, Northamptonshire but works with clients all over the world. Lisa is also the author of ‘ The Confidence Coach’ book.
Contact Lisa Phillips today for a no-obligation chat.
