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How Wounded Inner Child Undermines Adult

Prof. Sam Vaknin

71,038 views

There is always a discrepancy between one’s chronological and emotional or mental ages. When the gap is inordinately big, regressive infantilization sets it (Puer Aeternus or Peter Pan Syndrome).

This happens when the child is not allowed to separate from the parent, establish personal boundaries, and become an individual. The primary objects (caregivers) objectify, idolize, instrumentalize, or parentify their offspring or violate the boundaries via more classical forms of abuse (sexual, psychological, verbal, or physical).

The Ego or Self constellate and integrate via repeated exposure to bruising reality and via external object relations with people. Absent these, one feels estranged from one’s life and cannot own it (“whose life is it anyhow).

Unable to inhabit his own life, alienated and confused, the adult retreats into familiar modes of infancy and remains fixated there.

History of the Inner Child Concept

Developmental needs meeting strategy (DNMS)

Working with the Inner Child

Procedural memory

Transference to people on whom we depend: intensity of reactions disproportional

Children seek to influence a grownup to solve problems magically

View of adulthood: all work and no play, I am a fraud (pretending to be an adult)

Dysfunction is coming from an inner child

Carl Rogers corrective emotional experience

Affect Avoidance Model

Adult reactions more self-efficacious

Values militate against childlike (shame, anger, self-punishment, and repression)

Intrusive

Adult reshaping child content, growth and integration

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0:00 The inner child concept
2:00 Boundaries and reality
3:36 Self-formation and void
6:12 Popularizing inner child
8:35 Archetypes and parenting
11:48 Unresolved childhood
14:07 Internal Family Systems
16:05 Developmental needs therapy
18:25 Ego states and introjects
20:33 Mapping inner relations
22:18 Healthy vs. wounded parts
23:46 Reactive coping mechanisms
27:00 Maladaptive introjects
28:50 Current therapy approaches
30:41 Therapeutic key points
32:37 Procedural memory echoes
35:16 Childish survival solutions
37:42 Arrested development
39:12 The dynamics of need
41:55 Adult temper tantrums
44:54 Trapped in adult bodies
47:11 Defense mechanisms
49:26 Dissociative transitions
51:45 Conditional relationships
53:54 Emptiness and void
55:41 Providing safe containment
57:18 Shame and re-parenting
58:50 Partial solutions
1:01:00 Trust and risk
1:02:56 Objectifying people
1:05:01 Developing trust
1:06:56 Corrective experience
1:09:14 Behavioral pathologies
1:10:18 Neurobiology of memory
1:12:07 Final summary

20 Comments

@deeandrews7051 5 years ago

Most people end up having to spend their adult life working for bosses and co-workers that are abusive, jealous, backstabbing and vicious, which doesn't help with healing from a bad childhood.

@g1fcg 5 years ago

I wish you could be my psychotherapist; I'm sometimes like a 3 year old trapped in trapped in a 63 years olds body. I had the most horrendous parents any child could have, the father was a paedophile, sexual psychopath - the mother was an evil, toxic, blaming shaming narcissistic, vile woman. I was blamed for everything - and I mean everything! The brother was the golden child, I was the vilified child, I could do no right, he could do no wrong! He was also evil towards me. The most horrendous thing is, that general psychiatrists and practitioners don't even have an inkling of an understanding of childhood abuse.
I am going to start doing video blogs about what it's like to be a victim of childhood abuse of such severity, and how difficult it is to 'cope' in life.

@philu4621 5 years ago

I was recovering well until I got a job at a machine shop with a bunch of guys that resembled my father who were also mentally abusive.. I was 23...have had ptsd ever since...every wound became reawakened...im 30 now...and a mess. God willing I can heal again and more permanently this time.

@petemiranda 5 years ago

Professor, I can't express my gratitude enough to you because what you have given here and elsewhere has truly transformed my life around. You are a blessing to many of us that have been taken advantage of by so called professionals over many years. Thank you 🤗

@UnexpectedAmy 5 years ago

It has been a wonder this last year if the denial of accountability to civil decay is a direct result of never having faced up to childhood trauma.

If people repress and deny the reality of themselves, no wonder they refuse responsibility as authoritarianism and inequality accelerates towards breaking point.

Another great lecture, Prof. Vaknin, thanks!

@waragainstfascism161 3 years ago

I feel like I'm stuck in my childhood all the time. There's always a part of me active that controls my behavior, which feels helpless ('in need of a mommy' who tells me what to do). Yes, it feels like I'm waiting for my mom to come back, while don't know what to do with myself without her. It's tragic, it's sad and disturbing asf.

@krisphoenix7168 5 years ago

Sam just described my whole life starting with childhood abuse then alcohol addiction, amphetamines then heroin addiction for 12 years and now bodybuilding. I'm 45 now and absolutely spent. Always striving for extreme perfection whether it's shooting smack or getting the perfect body. Brilliant stuff Sam at least now I can understand why things went to shit.

@lindaedwards756 10 months ago

Thank you for everything that you do Sam. I really appreciate your work and you too. Good for you man, good for you

@DRUMJUNKIE 5 years ago (edited)

So the question is: is there one healthy person out in this world without having been traumatized?
I would say no. I never met one in my life. The more I heal, the more I see we are all fucked up more or less to a certain degree.

@davydacounsellor 5 years ago

As the inner child who has been abused goes through life they often feel low as they often believe every adult as abusive, my adopted boys often felt this way, as they were becoming adults I informed them image yourself walking your inner child," that wee boy is with you every day and as you know as a child these experiences were wrong, thus as an adult you can now protect your inner child.

@itsgiving9393 5 years ago

Inner children rule the world

@MindfulEvolutionIvi 4 years ago

WOW! This is such excellent information. I think this subject DEFINITELY deserves more attention in the psych world. I'm inspired to study this more, myself. THANK YOU!

@JR-uw5iw 4 years ago

For the very first time I have finally understood my close-to 20yrs so-called relationship-marriage to this boy who I thought was a man. I have seen so much dysfunction in him that I never could make sense of! OMG!!! Every point Sam made just kept making me rewind to so many senseless, bizarre behavior, reactions, arguments and fights that I never could understand. It's like a veil has been lifted and now I can SEE all of it so brightly!!! Wow!!! I've watched many of Sam's videos but this one just left me plain speechless.

@aquariusstar7248 2 years ago

Thank you! I learning to get in tune with and repayment my neglected abandoned inner child through emotional intelligence practices. It is a lot of focused hard work, and understanding there are many parts helps me to be more patient

@biolettiruth7715 5 years ago (edited)

The inner child problem is huge...my self, my parents, friends, family and many people I interact with everyday, colleagues, politicians, leaders...what are going to do Sam??

@techworld6879 5 years ago

Thanks Professor for enlightening me, my wife, and many thousands about what the hell was going on with these fucks (my family). No contact except for lawyers mental sanity is in the windshield.

@LurkingLinnet 2 years ago (edited)

You've helped me immensely throughout the course of my healing journey. Thankyou for all your work.

@Amy-o4b 1 year ago

Sometimes I feel like - why attempt to heal the wounded child from abusive parents? The world is just as abusive. The re-triggerings will happen forever. It seems overwhelming in the state of 2025.

@alysgrant6732 4 years ago (edited)

I was looking ... as I was commenting in a different video. This is what I was looking for. My mother became divorced, a single mother of three children. I being the oldest, became the parent, and protector against an abusive aunt & uncle, for my brother & sister. Though my mother had been loving and kind, as I hit 20 years old. As she saw me go into a bad relationship, she started, from my young mind, criticizing me. I realized about a year or two ago, she was actually right, and I in my young mind, took it as negative criticism. Funny, at 60 now, but also having adult children, where I can look back, she was really just trying to stop her daughter from making a big mistake.
Humm, will probably be adding to this.
Yup, I'm back. My mother being a working mom, I never had a childhood. I have pointed out to my mother, that when she criticizing me, calling me Mother Earth, calling me an over nurture, it's because it's the only thing over ever known. No, though like most mothers, when my children left home I missed them, but I had no problem letting them go. I don't need them up my butt, and am fine with seeing them periodically. As a parent, nurturer, I have also taken care of animals, and switched my caretaker role fully on to them.