Inner Child Healing

Inner child healing is a separate interest from being fairykin, but I thought I'd make a post about it, as they can go hand in hand.

Inner child healing is about listening to your inner child, which includes your emotional needs, and childish desires. There are different types of inner child healing, so I'll explain some of them here.

As I mentioned in our post 'About the Melrose System', we are a system. (If you don't know what a system is, feel free to check out the post.) It's common for systems to have members who are children, teens, or age sliders, and attending to their needs is a good way to help them to heal and feel happy and heard. If you're a system with younger members, here are some ways you can help them:

• If they try to communicate with you about their feelings, listen to them. For example, a young child might need some comfort or emotional support, or they might have a different feeling about a situation to you. You should validate their feelings and decide as a whole system what actions to take.

• If they express that they want some time to front (be in control of the body), try to make time for them. We try to do our adult responsibilities and make time for them afterwards.

• Have things in your environment that make them feel happy. This will look different depending on the age and personality of the child, but you could have things like plushies, toys, cartoons, games, or items that reflect their interests.

Another form of inner child healing is age regression, which can work whether you're a system or not. Age regression is when you feel younger than your bodily age; you might start to feel things you felt when you were younger, and/or get the urge to do activities you did when you were younger. Some people age regress naturally, and others have to intentionally trigger it to happen. To trigger age regression, I recommend just imagining that you're a certain age and putting yourself into the shoes of your younger self, maybe by doing nostalgic activities! You can regress to a baby, toddler, child, or teen; it depends on the part of you that you want to try to heal.

Some people can't age regress, but they can still do inner child healing! Age dreaming is similar to age regression, but rather than actually feeling younger, you just put yourself into the shoes of your younger self, as if you were trying to trigger regression. It can still be therapeutic to do the things you enjoyed when you were younger!

There are lots of resources on the internet to help with inner child healing! We have a Discord server with a collection of resources if you're interested: https://discord.gg/xj46cXBK3Y