Free The Secret of Life Wellness: The Essential Guide to Life's Big Questions by Inna Segal

role of an
    archetype is to alert you to potentially destructive patterns within your psyche and to
    aid you in transforming them into healthy and empowering points of view, feelings, and
    behaviors.
    Many of the beliefs, occurrences, points of view, unprocessed energies, and
    emotions, you experienced as a child are held within your inner child archetype. This
    archetype is concerned with family, support, care, and security. Thus, when dealing with
    the shadow aspects of the child, you must help it to find safety and comfort in change,
    allowing it to understand that transformation can be energizing, fun, and bring about
    new and exciting opportunities.
    Much of the anxiety that people experience is related to their childhood and the
    aspect of their inner child that felt unsafe, vulnerable, and powerless to change things.
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    Inna Segal
    If, as a child, you had to take too much responsibility for your family and grow up
    too fast, it is possible that aspects of your mental, emotional, and spiritual maturity were
    stunted.
    As an adult, you may suffer, feeling like you never had a chance to experience the
    innocence, freedom, hopes, dreams and inventiveness of a child. You may feel burdened by
    responsibilities and sabotage your relationships and career because you want to experience
    more fun. You may abandon your responsibilities, get lost in fantasies, demand attention,
    or need someone to take care of you. On a physical level, you may feel depressed, heavy,
    and unwell. Many digestive conditions, kidney problems, chronic lower back pain, and
    fertility problems are related to the inner child’s inability to process his or her childhood
    pain. To feel healthy and balanced you may need to work with your abandoned inner
    child, help it to feel loved and accepted, which will lead to its growth and evolution.
    Some of the strongest desires your inner child has is to be acknowledged, and nur-
    tured. It holds much of your creative, spontaneous, and mystical potential. When you
    are in tune with your inner child, it can literally magnetize magical experiences into
    your life that seem Divinely inspired and synchronistic. On the other hand, if you deny
    your inner child, it can plague you with doubts, fears, and insecurities preventing you
    from moving forward and achieving success.
    The inner child holds both personal and universal patterns and behaviors of a par-
    ticular aspect of a person’s energy.
    Although you may have never been physically abandoned as a child, at a particular
    moment in your life you may feel drawn to the abandoned child archetype, such as a
    time when you might be going through a difficult break up. Working with this arche-
    type can help you heal feelings of rejection, isolation, loneliness, and misunderstanding
    that you have carried throughout your life.
    When you work with the inner child archetype, you become softer and gentler. You
    begin to understand that this archetypal energy is there to help you. It can assist you to
    heal past wounds and embrace joy, lightness, a sense of adventure, fun, and spontaneity.
    When you become conscious of this archetype, you gain awareness of how it oper-
    ates in your life, and if it serves you or not. When you accept and embrace your inner
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    The Secret of Life Wellness
    child, it creates support, wisdom, and healing in your life, rather than chaos and
    destruction.
    Aspects of the Inner Child
    Often, people can relate to different aspects of the inner child at particular times in
    their lives. Through working with thousands of people I have observed four common
    types of inner-child archetypes—the abandoned, wounded, rebellious, and Divine.
    Below, I have tried to share brief explanations about them.
    Before we dive in, remember that due to the fact that every psyche is individual, the
    inner child can present itself in a myriad of ways.