The Art of Inner Child Work in Couples Counselling

Feb 23

The healthiest relationships are that in which both partners choose to grow. Growth requires bringing awareness to the dysfunctional patterns that exist within yourself and the relationship, followed by understanding and ultimately intentionality for change.

The truth is that the ‘perfect partner’ doesn’t exist nor does a constantly seamless, unproblematic, romantic relationship. Instead, a lifelong partner is one who accepts your flaws, dysfunctions, and chooses to stand by you as you make necessary adjustments for the sake of the relationship- and vice versa. This is why you should value a partner that helps you facilitate growth within yourself both for the sake of the relationship, and for the purpose of personal development.

What is Inner Child Work?

The inner child refers to the part of the psyche that holds onto past experiences, emotions, and beliefs from childhood. Many individuals carry unresolved issues and old emotional wounds from childhood that show up in the form of dysfunctional behaviours in adulthood, most noticeably in romantic relationships.

Inner child work or inner child therapy helps address unresolved issues, heal emotional wounds, and develop a deeper sense of self-awareness. It helps you show up as your most authentic self by exploring each of the experiences that make you who you are today. By acknowledging the inner child, you can begin to uncover deep-seated emotions and traumas that may be influencing your present-day actions and decisions. Embracing your inner child not only allows for healing but also opens doors for greater self-compassion and authenticity, two essential components for a long-lasting, healthy relationship.

Here are some common experiences that inner child work addresses:

1. Persistent feelings of insecurity and low self-worth

You may have symptoms of low self-esteem and insecurities stemming from past childhood experiences.

2. Difficulty forming healthy relationships with others

This can show up as repeating old patterns in your relationships. You may even struggle with commitment issues or people pleasing.

3. Recurrent patterns of self-sabotage or destructive behaviour

These patterns might include undermining oneself in relationships, career goals, or other personal pursuits.

4. Emotional outbursts or high reactivity

These outbursts often point towards unresolved emotions.

This is a non-exhaustive list, but given the persistence of these issues among adult populations, it follows that inner child work can be helpful for most, especially in relationships.

The Effect of Past Wounds on Present Relationships

Relationships are arguably the most common environments in which one is likely to show up unfiltered- “unapologetically you”. While this seems like a good thing, it also increases the chances of allowing earlier childhood wounds to arise and be projected onto your partner. It’s one thing to feel authentic and comfortable in a relationship and another to be unfiltered and unregulated.

The wounds you carry from childhood will present in your adult relationships in the form of avoidance, anxiety, reactivity, shut down, defensiveness, and more. These unhealed wounds influence responses to various events, disagreements, or even basic conversations in your relationship. As the relationship dynamics and inner childhood wounds operate together, responses are affected as your nervous system becomes easily triggered, putting your mind back in the state of the original uncomfortable or traumatic childhood experience. Thus, it feels like this childhood pattern is being presented in front of you, leading to defensive behaviour that often doesn’t match the current situation.

In essence, when you shut down, become anxious, find yourself reactive, or engage in any other unhealthy response towards your partner, you are more than likely reacting to old wounds rather than the situation at hand. The unhealthy ways you respond to your partner are simply symptoms of the unaddressed inner child wounds that are arising in the present moment in order to be acknowledged and healed.

Inner Child Work in Couples Counselling

In a relationship, it is your job to listen to your partner when they try to bring awareness to your hurtful behaviours. Likewise, it is their job to listen when you call them out on behaviours that hurt you. The key here is not becoming defensive or listening with judgement, but instead listening with compassion and curiosity.

Your relationship is like a mirror. Nearly every wound you carry, from childhood to past romantic relationships, will be triggered. This is why it is crucial to be aware of the patterns and dynamics within your relationship and understand that the response you have is typically a response to the wound rather than the relationship itself. Accountability must be taken to validate the behaviours that may have hurt your partner, followed by exploration as to why the pattern exists at all.

There are three main components of incorporating inner child work to heal a relationship:

Finding the deep rooted pattern beneath surface-level issues
Understanding why the pattern exists at all
Committing to leaving behind old patterns and pursuing newer, healthier ones

If you feel like you and your partner have been having the same argument over and over, this is a sign that something deeper is at play.

Upset that your partner never picks up after themselves? This could be a deeper wound within that is tired of being responsible for everyone else all the time.

Struggling to feel regulated until you’re certain your partner is feeling okay? This could be an attachment wound showing up in the form of codependency.

This is what finding the deep rooted pattern means.

Understanding why the pattern exists at all requires digging deeper to recognize the basis of such wounds. Recognizing the pattern of insecure attachment styles, for example, might have you exploring the relationship with your mother- perhaps one where she was rather inconsistent with her love, one day being quite nurturing and the next being distant.

The recognition of these patterns might be difficult to accept, especially when you recognize that it’s having real implications on your partner- feeling hurt and hurting others in the process. I encourage you to use this not for self-pity, but as motivation- this is where committing to leaving behind old patterns and pursuing newer, healthier ones takes place. This awareness allows you to recognize where patterns came from, why they exist, and offers the foundation for change. It’s important to keep yourself accountable to change behaviours, but also offer yourself grace and compassion as shifting these patterns is quite literally a process of rewiring your brain- it will take repetition and patience.

Putting it Together

Through inner child work and honest self-reflection, you gain a better understanding of how your childhood experiences continue to shape your adult relationships. You learn what experiences in your youth contributed to unresolved childhood wounds, which now arise as dysfunctional patterns in adulthood.

Healing inner child wounds in the presence of your partner creates a sense of safety and security that you may have never felt before. Having someone hold your hand and offer reassurance through your process of healing your deepest wounds, so that you can show up better for yourself and your partner, is a rare experience, but one that all relationships could benefit from. Doing this for your partner, and vice versa, creates the foundation for some of the strongest relationship bonds I’ve ever seen in my 5 years of counselling.

There may be instances when walking away is your best option -trust your intuition to guide you- but there might also be instances when staying and working through what feels like the toughest of times can be truly transformational for your relationship.

Bringing awareness to your emotional patterns offers the opportunity for conscious change, freeing yourself of patterns that no longer serve you and ultimately developing healthier relationship dynamics.

Reflection prompt: What inner child wounds do you recognize in your relationship?