The inner child

The inner child is the side a person carries within them that bears the emotional trace of early experience. This concept helps explain why, when a person is triggered, they return not to their age of maturity but to the age at which the wound was formed. In Penny Parks's work, this freezing is treated as a result of needs left unmet in the early period. The inner child is not an illness but a part still living within us that from time to time asks to speak. In coaching, this makes room for the client, instead of judging a disproportionate reaction of their own, to look with compassion at the unmet need behind it; this is not a clinical treatment but a work of awareness and accompaniment.