Introduction to Growing Down

Introduction to Growing Down

Growing Down - Tools

for Healing the Inner Child

By: James J. Messina, Ph.D. &

Constance M. Messina, Ph.D.

Introduction to Growing Down: Tools for Healing the Inner Child

When a person talks about INNER CHILD HEALING the first question which arises is: What are you talking about? This is fair since Inner Child is a term which means a lot of different things to different people. For our purposes here Inner Child means the person inside of yourself whom you have ignored for too long resulting in your having low self-esteem and feeling conflicted about putting too much attention on your own mental health.

Why the Term Growing Down? Why a Tools for Healing the Inner Child? 
To ensure a greater sense of recovery from low self‑esteem, the metaphor of an "inner child" is utilized here so that you can direct your emotional work on that inner part of you, your inner spirit or inner voice which you have for too long neglected, ignored, or forgotten. The inner child is the emotional part of you which you may have stuffed or hidden when you were young. Rather than having the full array of emotions or feelings of childhood you may have been a "little adult" who grew up too fast for your chronological age. Your emotional life may have been stunted as a result of this "growing up" process. 

In order to begin to feel "good enough" you must be able to feel the full array of feelings and not just the "black" anger and "white" happy ones. You may not currently believe, feel or act in ways which promote your healthy self‑esteem. You may not like you enough to take care of yourself. The metaphor of "inner child" allows you to take care of someone smaller, more fragile, and needier than you - the little child within you. If you can't take the time to make the "adult you" feel "good enough" maybe you will be willing to help the "child you'' feel better. 

Where will you gain the strength to take care of the inner you? In the 12 step programs of recovery it is our belief that our Higher Power provides the spiritual strength it takes to take care of our inner children. It is through the joining of our inner spirit with the spirit of our Higher Power do we gain the serenity and peace needed to free the pain, hurt, sadness, and grief inside of us. By working with our Higher Power we are able to let go and hand over our negative feelings, memories, and images so that we can replace them with positive affirmations, visualizations and actions which help us move forward in self‑esteem. 

Growing Down Special Dedication