Neuroscience: Have scientists found the inner child?

April 7, 2021 Paul Roebuck

Introduction

The “Inner Child” is a term used in psychology to describe an emotional state or sub-personality within all of us.

Is it purely theoretical though? Have scientists discovered the neurological placeholder for the inner child?

An open access research paper 2748 (2019) in the Nature Communications journal Immature excitatory neurons develop during adolescence concluded that “a group of cells in the amygdala (the centre of our emotional processing) sometimes don’t grow up”

When an adult deploys disproportional or childlike behavioural responses in certain situations this can be a sign of the inner child expressing itself, and if often supported with the statement “grow up”, meaning change to adult behaviour.

Background

The foundation of psychodynamic psychotherapy is the presupposition that early life experiences and relationships shape our adult behaviour and relationships.

When I reveal that hypothesis as a therapist people quickly and fearfully say “oh I had a wonderful childhood”, and undoubtedly, they did, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking an egg, Children do get wounded in childhood and sometimes that wound remains into adulthood, its referred to as a wounded inner child.

There are a number of well documented and proven therapeutic techniques to help reach and provide healing to a bruised inner child.

Childhood experiences

We can have a truly wonderful childhood, but that doesn’t preclude us from experiencing seemingly inconsequential moments, which can have a significant and life lasting impact upon us.

I had a fantastic childhood, we played out from dawn till dusk, went to Sunday school every week, had wonderful Christmases and birthdays, holidayed every year, never missed school, had three meals a day, two parents and one cat. A perfectly normal healthy Yorkshire upbringing.

I do have some unhealthy behaviours though. I used to spend money like it’s water, had to have the best of everything, used to be extremely insecure, and was often very, and I mean very very angry. A spiky behaviour, quickly there and quickly gone. Childlike in many respects, except for the foot stamping.

The inner child

A great example of my inexplicable rage was when I returned home one Saturday afternoon to find my grown-up son had drunk the last can of Coke from the fridge. My response was a moment of incandescent rage and I kicked the hallway radiator off the wall. A clear pointer of my inner child making his feelings known perhaps.

I’d say its about the “proportionality” of my response. It was wholly disproportionate. A clear indicator that the inner child is controlling my behaviour. No adult would wilfully kick a radiator off a wall, would they?

How many times have you said to someone “stop being so childish”, or have they said it to you? How often have you noticed yourself or someone else “behaving like a child”?

Welcome to your inner child, the little version of you being expressed through your adult behaviour.

Reaching the inner child

A significant part of my therapeutic work is illuminating for my clients the concept of the inner child, and then where necessary reaching their inner child to identify any painful memories with unresolved emotions. This provides the inner child with the opportunity to express itself fully and therefore to heal any emotional discomfort it may be carrying.

Sounds real hocus pocus doesn’t it? I used to think that, however, I see the overwhelming and undeniable results in my client’s day after day. I see people happier and more settled with themselves, not only immediately after therapy; but they report significantly less disproportionate and spiky behaviour from their inner child thereafter.

Events and memories

The theory behind the hurt inner child is that when we experience unexpected and shocking events as children, we can inadvertently hide our feelings, hiding them is restricting us from expressing them and they can remain stuck or locked up indefinitely, or until they release themselves in an unruly manner from time to time.

A powerful and surprisingly common occurrence is the death of a person of significant (parent, significant grandparent or sibling) early in a child life. The child witnesses and is overcome with inexplicable emotion and doesn’t know how to react. The family don’t know how to help the child react and how to fully express their feelings so the feelings can get stuck in the child, in their inner child.

The impactful event doesn’t need to be anywhere near as dramatic as family death. Getting lost in a supermarket, being asked to sing at the school assembly, play a musical instrument at a parents evening, or read from a book in front of the class, anything which, if it goes wrong or something unexpectedly happens, can provoke strong emotion (especially guilt, shame and fear).

For example, an unexpected stutter when losing track of the page whilst speaking out loud, or a musical instrument not working correctly or out of tune, or that moment when a child can’t control their bladder in a public place.

The most innocent events can lead to little John or Jane locking in rather than expressing their emotions out of the fear of shame or ridicule.

Healing the inner child

You’d be surprised at some of the unusual events which I’ve discovered from within a bruised inner child. Events we might consider as completely insignificant as an adult, can feel life-limiting for a child. Getting lost on a beach directly lead to a client of mine developing a stutter, shivering so much from the cold sea and then not being able to tell a stranger she was lost. Or fear of eating in a public place or restaurant as the result of wetting themselves at the dinner table then being laughed at (and the inner child humiliated) by her siblings. An unwillingness to commit to a wedding venue because of a fear of speaking, born out of being made to speak at school and being ridiculed for his accent.

Reaching the inner child, pinpointing the event which causes the childlike behaviour, and releasing the blocked emotion is commonplace, however coming upon a scientific representation of what might be happening in the Brain is an entirely new journey, until now.

The scientific findings

The following article recently caught my attention, the research found cells in the amygdala (the part of the brain which manages our emotional response) can remain unchanged from early childhood into adult life, unlike other cells in the same region of the brain which adapt as we age. Does this suggest we store aged emotion? Is this unlocked and unexpressed childhood emotion?

The Amygdala - our emotional centre

I hypothesise that the brain cells described are those left behind from uncomfortable or difficult emotional experiences, the core of the inner child maybe?

“findings show amygdala houses paralaminar nuclei a group of cells in the amygdala (the centre of our emotional processing) which develop late and sometimes don’t grow up

“Notably, the researchers also found that some immature neurons appear to remain in the amygdala throughout life and were even found in one 77-year-old brain. These results were in stark contrast to the hippocampus -- a nearby structure in which the authors recently found that new-born and immature neurons completely decline to undetectable levels by adolescence”

The amygdala is the area of the brain which manages our emotional response, the part which in my case reacted disproportionally to the Coke incident.

the hippocampus is responsive for memory management, so it natural that our brain cells in that area decline as we age, a sign of forgetfulness perhaps?

Article links

A full link to the opinion piece is here: http://sciencemission.com/site/index.php?page=news&type=view&id=developmental-biology%2Fhuman-amygdala-mood&filter=8%2C9%2C10%2C11%2C12%2C13%2C14%2C16%2C17%2C18%2C19%2C20%2C27&redirected=1

The original research paper can be found at:
Nature.com. Article S41467-019-10765

A citation link to the original research paper: https://rdcu.be/ch9nA