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Embracing Your Uniqueness: What’s Your Addiction? Healing Your Inner Child

BEAUTIFUL ME (Series): What’s Your Addiction? Healing Your Inner Child

Welcome to another issue of our "Embrace Your Uniqueness" edition. Today, we’re exploring the topic of healing your inner child and recognizing the addictions that may arise from unresolved childhood wounds. This journey may be one of the most transformative paths you will ever take, but it begins with a powerful question: What’s your addiction?


Recently, I attended a life-changing conference where different speakers shared their stories of struggle, addiction, and healing. One presenter, in particular, spoke about her battle with alcohol addiction. As she shared her story, she made a point that truly resonated with me—there are many forms of addiction. For some, it’s alcohol or drugs; for others, it may be sex, food, shopping, or even relationships. She explained that, in the end, we’re all looking for a fix, something to numb the pain or fill the void inside.


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The Moment of Realization

As I sat and reflected on her words, I began to look deeply into my own life and relationships. That’s when the realization hit me—I had been using my relationships as my fix. I wasn’t just seeking companionship or love; I was trying to fill a deep emotional void, a space of loneliness and pain that I didn’t know how to confront. I had been codependent, relying on others for validation, love, and acceptance without understanding the deeper reasons why.


That’s when I uncovered the truth: My inner child was wounded.



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The Wounded Inner Child

The wounds I carried didn’t begin in adulthood. They began in childhood. I was a little girl who often felt neglected, unloved, and overlooked. I watched as others were chosen, celebrated, and loved while I sat quietly in the background, feeling invisible and forgotten. These feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy settled deep within me, shaping how I viewed myself and related to others.


My wounded inner child didn’t believe she mattered. She believed she wasn’t enough and carried that belief into every relationship and interaction. Without even realizing it, I spent years looking for someone to fill the void that was left unhealed from my childhood. I sought out relationships that mirrored the dynamics of neglect and abandonment because that’s what felt familiar. It was a cycle I didn’t know I was in until I began to look inward.

 




 

Tending to Your Inner Child

Recognizing the wounds of your inner child is an essential first step toward healing. Your inner child holds your earliest years' memories, emotions, and experiences. When that part of you is wounded, it affects how you see yourself and engage with the world.


Healing your inner child requires acknowledging those wounds, nurturing the parts of you that were hurt, and finding new ways to offer yourself the love and care you didn’t receive. For me, this process began with self-awareness—acknowledging that my codependency and emotional patterns were rooted in my unresolved childhood pain. Once I could see the pattern, I could begin to heal.


Here are a few ways I began the journey of healing my inner child:


Acknowledge the Wounds: The first step is acknowledging your inner child is hurt. This may involve looking back at painful childhood memories and recognizing how they’ve shaped your beliefs about yourself. Feeling sad, angry, or hurt is okay—it’s part of the healing process.


Reparent Yourself: Healing your inner child means giving yourself the love, care, and support you didn’t receive as a child. Speak kindly to yourself, take care of your emotional needs, and practice self-compassion. Be the loving parent to your inner child that you may not have had.


Create Healthy Boundaries: Codependency often arises from believing that we need others to make us feel whole. Healing involves setting boundaries with others so that you can take responsibility for your happiness and well-being. It’s okay to say no and to prioritize your emotional health.


Seek Professional Help: Sometimes, healing your inner child requires more support than you can give yourself. A therapist or counsellor specializing in inner child work can help uncover deeper wounds and guide you through healing.


Practice Self-Love: Finally, commit to loving yourself. That wounded child within you deserves love, care, and attention. Affirm your worth, embrace your uniqueness, and learn to give yourself the validation you may have sought from others.



Breaking Free from Addiction

Addiction, in any form, is a way of coping with pain. Whether you’re addicted to substances, people, or behaviours, the root of the issue often lies in unresolved emotional wounds. Healing your inner child allows you to break free from the need for external fixes and find a sense of wholeness within yourself.


For me, healing meant breaking the cycle of codependency. It meant learning to stand on my own, to validate myself, and to offer myself the love and acceptance I had been seeking from others. It’s a journey I’m still on, but with every step, I move closer to wholeness.


What’s your addiction? Take time to reflect on what you may be using to fill the void in your life. Is it a substance? A relationship? A behaviour? Whatever it is, know you don’t have to continue the cycle. Healing is possible, but it starts with tending to the wounds that caused the addiction in the first place.


Healing your inner child is a powerful step toward breaking free from the patterns that no longer serve you. It’s a journey of self-love, self-discovery, and transformation.


In the next issue of "Embrace Your Uniqueness," we will explore the journey of emotional freedom and how to cultivate a life rooted in wholeness and self-empowerment.


With love and healing,


Mo




Juleen Anderson

Owner of Julz Journal and editor of BEAUTIFUL ME (Series)

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Monique Anderson

Author of the BEAUTIFUL ME (Series)

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