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When you’re at a low, do you…
- Find your mind wandering back to memories as a child where you felt stressed, anxious, or negative?
- Catch yourself in the middle of an emotional breakdown, wondering where all those pent up feelings came from?
It’s very possible that your “inner child” could use some comfort and support. Even if you had a relatively healthy and supportive childhood, you may have undergone something that has impacted the way you feel and think as an adult.
Ever had embarrassing memories at school? Times where you felt scared of something? Friends who made you feel left out? Yup, even these can contribute to an inner child in need of healing, even though most of us can relate to these very common experiences.
While these events may be “common,” the feelings we had during those times can absolutely have a greater impact on us than we think. Some children may internalize these experiences, and therefore their thought processes have been shaped a certain way into adulthood.
That’s where these inner child journal prompts come in. Journaling is a powerful and effective way to connect with your inner child and work through any negative feelings still festering in your unconscious mind. Let’s dive in and see how!
This post is all about inner child journal prompts.
Table of Contents
What is your “inner child”?
“Inner child” is just an expression for the childlike side of you. Part of this involves the enjoyment of activities you loved as a child, but there’s a deeper side to your inner child as well.
More specifically, “inner child” in the context of this journal prompt post refers to a part of your unconscious mind that is trying to process events, emotions, and trauma that may have occurred throughout your childhood.
What is inner child healing and why is it important?
Inner child healing is going back to those past events, emotions, and potential trauma from your childhood and unpacking them. It will help you revisit the wounds from the most formative years of your life in an attempt to address them and work toward personal development.
We often suppress so much of what we endured in childhood, especially in our busy adult lives. But just because we feel like it isn’t affecting us today doesn’t mean that’s true. This is why paying attention to your inner child healing is so important.
It’s important to take a step back and assess the upbringing, social environment, authoritative influences, cultural values, and life events you faced during your childhood.
These attributes all have a great impact on how you’ve formed into the adult you are today. This information is crucial to analyze, and one of the best ways to do so is through inner child journal prompts.
Healing your inner child also goes hand in hand with shadow work–which is working with your unconscious mind to uncover parts of yourself you may be suppressing. You can try my shadow work journal prompts to further explore your unconscious thoughts.
50 Journal Prompts for Healing Your Inner Child
- Thinking about your inner child right now, what is he/she feeling currently?
- As a child, was there anything you felt deprived of?
- Did you ever feel like your peers had something you didn’t?
- Did you feel like you had more going on in your life than your peers?
- What is your inner child most afraid of?
- In what way does your inner child need support right now?
- What was a quality or personality trait you had during childhood that you wish you still had?
- In what ways is your mindset and thought processes impacted today from what you experienced as a child?
- What happened in your childhood that you didn’t realize would have an impact on you at the time, but currently affects you?
- How do you feel about the way your parents raised you?
{RELATED: 20 Shadow Work Journal Prompts for Healing and Self-Awareness}
- What was the most helpful thing your parents did while raising you?
- What was the most harmful thing your parents did while raising you?
- If you had to choose one word to describe your childhood, what would it be?
- Was your childhood mostly stable or unstable? How so?
- Which parts of your personality as a child were you told to hide? How does that make you feel now?
- What is one thing you wish you could change about your childhood?
- What is your worst memory from school?
- What was your best memory from school?
- Let out all your thoughts surrounding school during childhood. Do you think your teachers, peers, or the school system had a negative impact on you?
- Did your childhood have mixed periods of time where things were sometimes good and sometimes bad?
- What was your relationship with your parents like as a child? As a teenager? Now?
- Write about a difficult event from your childhood (doesn’t have to be traumatic). How did you respond to the event? What were your feelings surrounding the event? How do you feel about it now?
- What would you say to your childhood self?
- What were 5 activities you enjoyed as a child?
- Did you have a “safe space” as a child? If so, what was it?
FEATURED JOURNAL: THE MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL
If you wish you had guided journal prompts conveniently bundled just for you to help you work through stress and anxiety, you’ve got to check out my printable mental health journal!
It’s jam-packed with 33 pages of writing prompts and mental activities for understanding your emotions, overcoming unhelpful behaviors, and reframing negative thoughts. A super useful tool to assist with your inner child healing.
{RELATED: 30 Self Soothing Techniques for Adults + Why Self Soothing is Crucial}
- What is one activity from your childhood you miss that you could incorporate into your adult life now? How can you incorporate it?
- What was your favorite childhood movie or TV show? What feelings does it now bring up? Do you ever watch it now?
- Who did you look up to as a child and what did you like so much about them?
- What self care or “feel good” activities did you turn to as a child?
- Were you close to anyone other than your parents as a child? How did that person shape you?
- What did you want to be when you grew up? How does it differ from the way things turned out? Are you happy about the outcome?
- Were you allowed to express your emotions as a child or were you encouraged to suppress them?
- Did your parents foster you to have a good relationship with food and/or body image? How or how not?
- Were your parents strict and overprotective? Or were they more laid back and easy going? How did this affect you?
- Did you feel like your parents allowed you to be your true self growing up?
- What was your relationship like with your extended family? Was it negative or positive in any way?
- What did your friendships look like growing up? Did you find it easy or hard to make friends?
- Did you ever have any friends who were not good to you? Describe them and how they made you feel.
- Which positive affirmations did you need to hear more often as a child?
- Did you ever face self-esteem issues as a child? What is your earliest memory of these?
Journaling is a useful piece of the puzzle for inner child healing, but you’ll find the most benefit if you pair it with therapy. Talking to an online therapist can really help you out. It’s helped me tremendously with my trauma! I always recommend Online Therapy because it’s a comprehensive, effective online therapy toolkit at an affordable monthly cost. Get 20% off your first month at the link below!
{RELATED: 52 Journal Prompts for Self Love to Empower Yourself}
- What are three ways you can make yourself feel safe, reassured, and nurtured today?
- Did anyone ever let you down as a child? Have you forgiven them? Does what they did still hurt?
- Were you highly sensitive as a child?
- What are three things from your childhood that you’re grateful for?
- What are some ways you can be more creative as an adult?
- What did you daydream about as a child?
- How can you gain closure from the times you faced hardships or traumas as a child?
- What fascinated you the most as a child?
- What was your first memory of feeling ashamed?
- How can you be kinder to yourself and your inner child?
{RELATED: 50 Therapeutic Journal Prompts for Emotional Healing}
How can you heal your inner child through journaling?
Remember that as a child, you needed the support and guidance of your parents to fulfill your needs as you were incapable of doing so on your own.
So when those needs weren’t met for one reason or another, it may have led you to feeling vulnerable. If this happened to you, that is very unfortunate and should not have happened.
But the good news is that you CAN heal from your childhood. This can be done by essentially re-parenting ourselves to give ourselves the things we lacked during childhood.
Learning skills such as how to self-soothe, practice self care, and address (rather than suppress) our difficult thoughts and emotions all help toward healing your inner child, which can all be accomplished through journaling.
Through journaling, you can also heal your inner child in ways like:
- Practicing self love and acceptance in your journal entries
- Taking note of activities you enjoyed during childhood
- Reflecting on both positive and negative childhood memories
- Write out positive affirmations geared toward healing your inner child
- Writing a letter to your inner child
- Using these inner child journal prompts
Healing your inner child through journaling is effective because you’re taking the time to revisit past struggles to either A. work through them or B. reach a point of acceptance so that you can move forward.
Benefits of journal prompts for inner child healing
When your inner child is in a good place from the result of healing, you unlock your potential to be able to:
- Get more creative
- Experience more joy
- Understand how past trauma affects your present behavior
- Increase your emotional stability
- Feel hopeful for the future
That is powerful!! Healing your inner child truly allows you to experience life through a different lens from a mentally healthy place.
Journaling and using inner child journal prompts gives you the opportunity to work through past traumas while also improving your overall mindset and getting one step closer to acceptance–all great things for healing your inner child.
5 types of human needs
In psychology, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs shows us 5 different types of needs to be met in order for us to truly thrive:
Basic Needs
- Physiological needs – food, water, rest, warmth
- Safety needs – security, safety
Psychological Needs
- Belongingness and love needs – friendships, intimate relationships
- Esteem needs – confidence, prestige, feeling of accomplishment
Self-fulfillment Needs
- Self-actualization – achieving one’s full potential, including creative activities
It’s clear that we need much more than the basic necessities to truly achieve happiness, good mental health, and a good sense of self. However, you can’t reach the higher needs like self-actualization without the lower needs being met first.
If any of these needs were lacking during your childhood years, you would likely benefit from inner child healing. The state of your inner child will show up in your behaviors and emotional patterns. For example, the tendency to feel anxious or jealous in romantic relationships.
Final Thoughts on Inner Child Journal Prompts
Before reading these inner child journal prompts, maybe you’ve never even thought about your inner child before. Maybe you didn’t realize you could use support in this area. It is an aspect of ourselves that deserves much more attention.
Whether you had a rough childhood or even if you had a predominantly healthy one, all of us could benefit from getting in touch with our inner child to become aware of that part of ourselves.
Oftentimes, there are unaddressed issues that have gone overlooked for many years. It helps to assess your unconscious thoughts to determine if you may be holding onto anything negative from your past, as this could hinder you today.
Above all else, make sure you’re taking time for self care. Healing your inner child is just one of many important components to your self care journey, and these inner child journal prompts are the perfect place to start!
Let me know in the comments:
Which questions will you ask your inner child?
Pssst…want to practice more self care? Grab my (free!) daily self care check in sheet below to bring quick and easy self care into your morning and night routines!
MORE JOURNAL PROMPTS YOU’LL LOVE
20 Shadow Work Journal Prompts for Healing and Self-Awareness
50 Therapeutic Journal Prompts for Emotional Healing
52 Journal Prompts for Self Love to Empower Yourself
Trauma Healing Journal Prompts: 40 Prompts for Processing Your Past
LIKE THESE INNER CHILD JOURNAL PROMPTS? PIN THEM FOR LATER!
