Why It’s Important You Get to Know Your Wounded Child

You can’t heal what you keep avoiding.

Most of us like to believe we’ve outgrown our past.

We tell ourselves we’ve moved on. That we’re “fine now.” That we’ve built successful lives and stable relationships and good routines, and what more could you want?

But there’s often a quieter truth underneath it all: the wounded child inside of you is still running the show.

Not because you’re weak or broken. But because the parts of us that got hurt the most… don’t just vanish. They hide. And they wait. Until we’re ready to go back and get them.

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The Wounded Child Isn’t Just a Metaphor

He’s real.

He’s the version of you that learned how to hide your softness.

The one who figured out how to avoid humiliation.

The one who learnt to survive by being small, or smart, or silent, or successful.

He shows up every time you flinch at rejection. Every time you feel the need to prove yourself. Every time a compliment bounces off your chest because it just doesn’t land.

Getting to know your wounded child doesn’t mean reliving every painful memory, it means being honest about the patterns that still play out today.

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You Can’t Heal What You Don’t Acknowledge

That sharp reaction you have to being ignored?

That discomfort you feel when someone compliments your work?

That voice that tells you you’re too needy when all you really want is closeness?

That’s him.

Your inner child doesn’t show up as nostalgia. He shows up as your triggers.

And if you don’t pause to understand those reactions - where they came from, why they exist, what they’re protecting — you’ll keep repeating the same cycles, thinking they’re just “part of who you are.”

They’re not. They’re just old wounds with no language.

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Shame Starts Early and It Doesn’t Expire

Especially for queer kids.

From a young age, many of us learned that certain parts of us were too loud. Too soft. Too expressive. Too emotional. Too much.

So we made ourselves easier to be around.

We filtered our personalities. We dulled our joy. We laughed along with jokes that weren’t funny. We became likeable, impressive and hard to fault. We always knew how to work other people (I have always been exceptional at impressing my friends’ parents for example)

But deep down, we weren’t just adapting. We were protecting the little boy inside who once felt unsafe in his own skin. We literally were just craving safety.

Getting to know that boy - his fears, his strategies, his loneliness — is the only way to stop projecting your past into your present.

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Reconnection Isn’t Weak - It’s the Start of Real Strength

The world rewards people who seem unbothered.

But healing, and ‘doing the work’, means being bothered. It means looking at what you went through and deciding it mattered. That you mattered.

And it means going back for the version of you that didn’t have the language, or the power, or the safety to ask for what he needed.

That’s not indulgence. That’s accountability.

It’s learning how to validate your own pain…not to stay in it, but to move through it.

Once you see that little boy clearly, you stop being so hard on him. And maybe, you stop being so hard on yourself, too.

His job is to protect you albeit misguided.

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The Goal Isn’t to “Fix” Him. It’s to Care for Him

You don’t need to become someone else.

You don’t need to be endlessly positive, or perfectly healed, or immune to fear.

You just need to be someone your inner child can trust.

Someone who speaks kindly to him. Who doesn’t abandon him. Who shows him that it’s safe now. That love is possible. That softness is allowed. That he’s not too much, or too needy, or too dramatic, he was just hurt.

And now, he’s finally being seen.

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Because when you know your wounded child, you stop needing everyone else to parent him for you.

You start showing up for yourself - in real, grounded, deeply compassionate ways.

And that changes everything.

Big love,
James 💙