Who's driving? How to identify and support your inner child

The following describes what the inner child is, how it can have a powerful influence on our lives and how to support it during times of stress or overwhelm.

The imaginative child in us loves stories. Using the metaphor of driving – imagine that you’re a car and the road is your life. Up ahead are numerous destinations, from completing life projects and goals to having conversations, paying bills or brushing your teeth.

Inside the car are three passengers: child, adult, and parent, which are inner states that you continually move between. The car represents the forward movement of your life, and the method described here is a navigational system designed to rescue your inner child from life's overwhelming pressures. 

What is the inner child?

Do you sometimes feel that life is too much and that you can’t cope? Does it appear that everyone else is grown up while you feel very young and vulnerable inside? If so, you have something most of us do: the inner child is in the driving seat of your life.

Whilst we understand that in reality a child driving a car would be hazardous, we unconsciously send the child out to deal with life and then wonder why we feel so lost and afraid. Like any child, our inner one is often inconsolable and requires great patience, which is particularly difficult when directed toward ourselves. The aim of this approach is to help you get the child, whatever its emotion, into the safety of the back seat, being driven rather than driving.

The inner child is understood as a reactive system, aged 0 to roughly 16, responsible for your sense of play, spontaneity, and creativity. It resides in your nervous system and reacts to life based on past memories and future fantasies. Any fear responses you feel in your body are a way to meet your inner child with “Ah, there you are”.

All your emotional reactivity, including fear, joy and creativity, originates from the inner child. We use the term inner child to describe an internal system that, when safe, is essential in facilitating your happiness, sense of aliveness and calm.

We need our inner child

This process isn't about getting the child to grow up; it's about building inner security so it can shift from carrying the weight of the world to the safety of the back seat. Once there, it’s then free to play and create, unburdened by the pressures of grown-up responsibilities. The times in your life when you experience this are when you feel safe enough to take risks, enjoy yourself, think creatively, and feel excited about life ahead.

The child is an archetype responsible for all your desires, which is why it can take over so easily. Like all young children, its moods and emotions can shift dramatically. Its main driving force says: “I want what I want when I want it.”

Because of this, you need your other grown-up parts (neutral adult and inner parent) to manage its cravings, demands and boundaries. When these aren’t in place, your wounded inner child can take over, potentially contributing to addiction, self-harm, obsessive thinking and patterns of chronic anxiety and depression. Ideally, you’re aiming for the neutral adult in you (the doer) to be at the wheel. As a result, this can then run parallel with your wounded self, which means that whilst your fears and stresses may continue, you now have the neutral adult alongside saying “Don’t worry about life, I’ll take care of it.”

In this way, we don’t dismiss or deny the child’s vulnerability; instead, we care for it, which is what it most longs for. The neutral adult is the part of us that goes out into the world and faces life's challenges. Stressful situations are much easier and simpler from the adult’s perspective because life is not personal. Whilst for the child, life is always personal and therefore very complicated.

The infinite child

As an archetypal system, the child is eternal by nature and mythologically known as The Puer Aeternus, with stories such as Peter Pan and the ancient Egyptian boy-king Tutankhamun, who demanded that his name live on forever. Not only is the child an individual and internal phenomenon, but it can also be observed and experienced outside in the wider world.

This might show up through the instant gratification of online shopping and next-day deliveries, having entertainment available on demand, or the endless supply of connection and information offered by social media. 

This reflects “I want what I want when I want it,” which is not a problem unless it remains unconscious, where we get stuck in patterns of consumption that never satisfy. With conscious awareness, we can take better care of ourselves and our worlds. The child in us is not designed to take responsibility.

Other indications of the child in the driving seat include:

• At work or in relationships, you overcompensate, overexplain, or overdeliver.
• You take difficulties and challenges personally.
• A harsh inner critic bullies you and judges others.
• Procrastination, numbing out or avoidance that leaves you with feelings of guilt or shame.
• There’s a background sense of lack, never having enough, or being enough.

The inner parent

Your inner parent functions as your self-care system and is constructed from what you’ve learned about care growing up, often from parents who were themselves children with unmet needs.

The anxious parent shows up as your inner critic or saboteur. This is because, with the child driving, life is not safe for the parent either, so it attempts to control things from the back seat. It’s that internal voice that questions and doubts all your decisions and choices.

Similarly, it’s the part that takes care of your ongoing needs – it takes you to therapy, decides what you want to eat or removes yourself from harm. 

The neutral adult

The adult is the part of you that is the doer. It is the automatic part of you that breathes, puts one foot in front of the other and gets you from A to B. It’s neutral because it’s rooted in the here and now rather than the past and future.

The adult must maintain a relationship with the child by listening to and responding to it. Without this connection, life becomes dull and lacks meaning. What the child wants most is safety and unconditional love. The neutral adult is your link to the unconditional and therefore provides the rescue service that your inner child is longing for.

You have immediate access to this part at all times. We know this because this is the part simply reading these words, while the child and the parent react to them by liking or disliking, judging, or engaging. The Adult says: “Whatever happens on the road, I’ll deal with it.”

Nervous system support

As soon as the child is in the back seat and the adult takes the wheel, you will feel your nervous system shift from the sympathetic (fight or flight) to the parasympathetic (rest and digest). Repeating this process helps tone your nervous system.

Rather than practising the inner child, the actual purpose of this method is to practice and strengthen the neutral adult. Through doing this, you become aware of what you can do to access the unconditional and shift from fear to ease. Once being driven instead of driving, the child can sit back and enjoy the ride.

When next experiencing fear or stress, imagine being a child driving a car. Notice how difficult it is to see the road or reach the pedals. Clock the backseat driver. How does this feel? Now switch to the neutral adult. See your hands on the wheel handling the road and imagine the child now in the back seat with its safety belt on, being cared for by the parent. How does this feel?

Keep asking yourself: “Who’s driving?”