Ode to your Inner Child

About the archetype that is closest to you, but that you also ignore most often…

How nice it would be if we all connected a little more with our Inner Child. Because in it lies the pure essence of who we deeply Are. Unfortunately, people don’t always Act and Behave accordingly. Just look at the world around us.

Hence this call: Reconnect with your Inner Child and listen to him or her.

In this blog I explain the usefulness and necessity of having a healthy connection with your Inner Child and how you could do that. Would you like to learn more about archetypes in general first? Then read:

Meaning of our Inner Child

The Inner Child is perhaps one of the most famous archetypes. Or at least the most commonly used in our daily language. “He behaves like a Little Child..” “The Child in me could come up more often…” Just to name two examples, which you probably recognize. We say this when we think someone is too childish, or when we think we are too serious.

Pure version of yourself

The archetypal Child represents the timeless, ever-young, eternal aspects of your life. The purest primal version of yourself is ‘stored’ in this archetype. It shows itself when you are enthusiastically working on something, doing something full of energy and cheerfulness, looking openly and sensitively at your environment and being inventive.

Like all archetypes, this applies to the Inner Child in you personally, but also to the archetypal Child in a team or in an organization. In a Start-up, the Inner Child is always clearly visible in the enthusiasm with which the owner, or owners, get to work. But even after a reorganization, you see the characteristics of the archetypal Child emerge within teams or sometimes even within the entire organization in how people act and interact with each other, both positively and negatively.

Different names

There are several names for this archetype:

The Eternal Child (Puer Aeternus and Puella Aeterna)
The playful child
The Wounded Child’
The Nature Child
The Divine Child
The Magic Child
The Innocent Child
The Orphan

Some narrative coaches also approach them as different inner archetypes, because they have clear nuance differences. But for me, they are all sides of one and the same archetype: our Inner Child. That is a complex and layered archetype and that’s how I deal with it when I work with it.

Your pure full Potential

Actually, your Inner Child is always active and visible in your doings. In my coaching practice, there has never been a client who lacked the Inner Child in his or her archetypal management team. This means that the light and/or shadow side of your Inner Child is also visible in your behavior in whatever nuance difference, in all kinds of situations in your life.

Oh dear, something new…

You will recognize it especially when you are going to do something new. A new relationship, a new job, moving to a new city. It is precisely then that your Inner Child is visible in what you do or do not do and especially how you do it.

You are open and curious about your new colleagues. Maybe shy and a bit anxious to take the first step. Yet you ask those new neighbors for coffee. You show your best side. You jump in at the deep end and do that parachute jump that you had been planning for so long. You go through the car wash for the first time – like I did the other day – while you have never done that before and all kinds of fears haunt your head that water can get in, or that you will get stuck…

Beginner’s luck

Within teams and organizations, it is also the archetypal Child that harbors all the potential and possibilities of the company. In Start-ups, you often see this in the enthusiasm with which the owners get to work full of energy. The company is still in its infancy and all the power and possibilities it has in it will come out through the archetypal Child of this company.

Starting entrepreneurs often tell me that at the beginning of their entrepreneurship they didn’t have to make much effort to get customers. This is no coincidence. Lady Fortune and our Inner Child go hand in hand together and symbolize Hope and (Re)birth. As mentioned, this archetype embodies our full pure potential. If we connect with that Inner Child in us, then everything is possible and we have all the happiness in the world. It gives a glimpse of what is possible if you would live life to the fullest, without any obstacle whatsoever and that radiates confidence.

That connection means that you look at situations openly and without prejudice. Not hindered by negative assumptions and prejudices. And that boundless optimism is contagious and attracts customers.

All sounds super nice, but…. Why don’t you and I hold on to that then? Why do we all lose sight of that Inner Child in us at some point in our lives? That’s because there is also a ‘but’ and therefore a very clear and logical reason why you often ignore your Inner Child as soon as you are an adult.

Shadow side of the Child in us

Just like any archetype, our Inner Child also has a shadow side. If you are so open and curious about others or in new situations, you have no inhibition or healthy suspicion. This makes you vulnerable. You are then an easy prey for painful situations, or even abuse. That naivety costs you dearly.

There is a good chance that this has happened several times in your young life to a small extent, but maybe even to a large extent. This resulted in ‘scratches on your soul’ and these are stored in another part of our Inner Child: the Wounded part, or Wounded Child.

Lack of Responsibility

But there are even more dark sides of this archetype. If a change takes place that you are adamantly opposed, the shadow side of your Inner Child is active. Does everyone in your team point at each other when it comes to taking responsibility for a certain task or tasks? Then the shadow side of the archetypal Child of this team is active. Do your relationships end again and again because you or the other person don’t dare to go for it? This is a shadow side of the Child archetype.

If those shadow sides occasionally appear in your life, then there is nothing to worry about. Sometimes you just don’t feel like making another change… Sometimes you just don’t want to pull the cart again. That is very normal and very healthy. The Shadow Side of that Child in us is therefore not necessarily negative. After all, the bow does not always have to be tense.

Hassle when the Shadowside takes over

But if the shadow side in you takes over, there is often a problem with your environment on a social level. Relationships continue to fail because you, or the other person, don’t go for it. Within your team, they keep pointing at each other in who would pick up what and they collectively walk away from the joint responsibility…

The Wounded Child

The Archetypal Child in you reminds you of who you Are deep down completely pure. That does not always – or actually usually does not – correspond to what you Do. This is, as mentioned, because of a part of your Inner Child, which we call the Wounded Child, or the Wounded Child part, within you.

Every child has moments when it grows up, when that pure delicate child’s soul is touched and hurt. A parent who has no time for you, while you need it. Moments when you feel alone, in pain, etc. For most of us, this is what I call “healthy usage damage from growing up”. Those moments have made you more resilient and therefore able to function in this world.

Protecting you

The role of this ‘Wounded Child’ in you is to protect you. It prevents you from ‘hurting’ yourself again. It ensures that your pure ‘I’ remains pure. It puts a thick fence around it with often a number of active archetypes that help it, such as the Warrior, or the Jester. As a result, that same pure ‘I’ is no longer completely visible, or even no longer visible at all in your doings.

This applies to all of us. Every person, every team, every organization. So even though you had a good childhood, you also have a ‘Wounded Child’s Part’ in you, which prevents you from living life to the fullest.

Paradox of growing up

The paradox of growing up from child to adult is that you first have to learn to protect yourself from that pure unlimited openness and curiosity. That is a survival skill that is necessary to survive in society.

The disadvantage of this is that you also put a shield around your own unlimited possibilities and you gradually (partly) forget who you really are. This causes unrest and sometimes even tension. Not knowing what choice you have to make in your work, in your relationship. It makes you react differently than you would actually like in certain situations.

Once you have built that shield, you can function well in society, but you are also no longer able to live life to the fullest. It is precisely for this that it is necessary to learn to be open and curious about yourself and each other.

Ode to the Child

That is easier said than done. As soon as you connect with your Inner Child as an adult, your Wounded Child will also appear. That’s not nice, because it reminds you of the pain from your childhood, or maybe even from before that of your ancestors. Our primary reaction is to get away from that pain and put it away again.

But it is precisely then that there is a good chance that you Do all kinds of things in your life, while you don’t want to Be. And when I look around me in this world, I see that happening to a lot of people, groups of people, organizations, countries, etc. People do all kinds of things (sending hate mail, excluding groups, polarization, waging war, ruining nature, etc), while I am 100% sure that is not who they want to be in the deepest sense.

Hence my call to honor that Inner Child more often. Yes, your Wounded Child will come along, pay attention to him or her. This is necessary to heal the pain and sorrow from your and your ancestors past. In this way, recovery can be set in motion and space and openness is created for that Spontaneous Playful Child in you.

If we all start doing that now, then eventually a world will be created in which everyone can Be and live their pure Self. That’s my true wish for this world: a place where you and I can live according to our deepest essence and in our full potential.

How cool would that be!!

To be continued…

Frédérique te Dorsthorst – de Muij
Balanced Story, July 2025

PS Want to know more and experience live how you can strengthen your bond with your Inner Child again? Come to the Fantastic Friday Session

29 August 2025: Fantastic Friday Session on The Inner Child, online via zoom

You can sign up by clicking on the link above.