During our childhood, we are influenced greatly by our environment, both at a conscious and an unconscious level. Depending on how we perceive our experiences and interactions, we assign meaning to them and associate them with emotions like joy, sadness, fear, love. Our experiences cause us to develop core beliefs about ourselves; often these beliefs are negative and self-limiting. As we become adults and live adult lives, the same 'meanings' or beliefs we took on in childhood often remain unchanged. We may not even be consciously aware of them. Yet they continue to control and affect our lives profoundly.

Many of the internal beliefs and patterns we develop in childhood are based on what we have been told about ourselves and the world. As children, we may be influenced by our parents, family, teachers, friends, or others. Unfortunately, the subconscious mind cannot tell the difference from what is real or what the child imagines or perceives to be true. This is how we develop certain beliefs about ourselves or the world, which may not necessarily be true at all, but which can deeply affect the rest of our life and our relationships, if not dealt with.

Some examples of core beliefs and patterns that we adopt as children are, “I am not good enough”, “I am not worthy”, “I am not lovable”, and so on. If we are not shown love or feel that we are abandoned or not deserving of attention, then we may grow up thinking these 'truths' about ourselves. Insensitive remarks from people that we are no good, stupid or worthless, can cause us to actually believe that we are no good and stupid. Similarly, physical or psychological abuse can scar us and lead us to subconsciously believe that we deserve it. When we only believe we are worthy of abusive partners or friends, we may attract these into our lives.

Inner Child Therapy recognizes that as adults we all relate to this Inner Child aspect within. Our Inner Child may still be in need of attention, nurturing or healing and until this is resolved we continue to live with these painful “truths” that we adopted as children. This could impact any area of our life: self-confidence, self-worth, work, family, love, relationships, health and more.