Trauma, The Inner Child, And The Gentle Work Of Coming Home To Ourselves
Trauma isn’t always loud or dramatic. Sometimes, it is the quiet absence of safety, the steady erosion of self in a home where emotions were dismissed, boundaries were violated, or connection was inconsistent and unreliable. In the words of Donald Kalshed, trauma is “an unbearable emotional experience that lacks a relational home in which it can be held.” Without that holding environment—where our pain can be seen, heard, and met with compassion—parts of us retreat. They freeze in time, becoming dormant aspects of ourselves that go into hiding, sometimes for decades.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy provides a gentle, respectful approach to inner child work. It helps us turn toward the frightened, silenced, or forgotten parts of ourselves that have been waiting—like Sleeping Beauty in her enchanted sleep—for the right conditions to reawaken. These inner parts, often suspended in a kind of emotional coma, reemerge when they sense that connection, warmth, and curiosity are finally present. IFS teaches us to relate to these parts not with fear or shame, but with care and openness.
In families where emotional or physical abuse were present, it’s common to grow up with chronic anxiety and hypervigilance. When neglect, sexual abuse, or emotional abandonment are part of the landscape, a more complex form of trauma—C-PTSD—can form. This type of relational trauma leaves deep imprints on our identity, our sense of worth, and our ability to feel safe in relationships. As adults, these early wounds often show up in attachment styles: fearfulness, avoidance, anxious dependency, or an inability to fully trust and be known in intimacy.
The legacy of unresolved trauma can ripple out into every area of life. Substance use, compulsions, mood disorders, and even certain personality disorders may emerge as coping strategies. As Lisa Director has explored, addiction can be seen as an attachment to substances in place of a caregiver who was unable to meet our emotional needs. Drawing from Hans Kohut’s work, we might say that in the absence of empathic self-object functions—mirroring, soothing, and attunement—we search for substitutes wherever we can find them.
We return to ourselves—not as the fractured, frightened versions we once were—but as whole, complex beings, capable of connection, expression, and love.
Therapy offers the possibility of an emotionally corrective experience. Within the therapeutic relationship, we begin to understand how past trauma shaped the ways we show up in the world: people-pleasing, dissociating, self-medicating, or staying small. In time, therapy can help us release the unconscious emotional scripts we inherited—scripts of shame, enmeshment, or the need to perform for love. Instead, we begin to write new ones, grounded in self-trust and authenticity.
Healing from early relational trauma is not linear. But with patience and a compassionate guide, we can begin the delicate, beautiful work of reintegrating what was once lost. We return to ourselves—not as the fractured, frightened versions we once were—but as whole, complex beings, capable of connection, expression, and love.
