What is the Inner Child anyway, and where is it hiding? The Inner Child is also a subpersonality, like those that I wrote about in the previous article. Jung, for example, among other things, singled out the Persona and the Shadow. The Persona is our approved image of ourselves, which we are always happy to present to the world, and the Shadow is what we hide away, in the basements or attics of our soul, and we ourselves often have a very distant idea of ​​the Shadow. The shadow, in essence, is a set of different-sized subpersonalities “with a complex fate and character.” It is difficult to work with the Shadow, because all these subpersonalities do not really want to “come out into the light”, because some of them are rejected, some have long been suppressed, and in general are subject to various zigzags. So, unfortunately, the majority of Inner Children (Did you think you had one Inner Child? No matter how it was, they wanted to get off easy: there are many of them!!!) are located precisely in the Shadow. What are all these Inner Children? And this is like a cross-section of some of your childhood (approximately from the infant period to the age of 15), in which something happened or happened to you. It should be noted that childhood from 0 to 5 years of age has an increased sensitivity to the formation of inharmonious personal structures, that is, simply put, if the child’s basic needs for safety, acceptance and love are violated, and the child has not yet developed a certain criticality towards the opinions of adults (because that the brain is not yet “mature” enough), then the authoritative adults around the child and simply peers or older children can easily “plant” all sorts of unconstructive “bullshit” into the brain. The result of this “badassery” is Inner Children who never grow up. It must be borne in mind that it is believed that the formation of subpersonalities never occurs “immediately” (although this opinion causes me some hesitation). In order for a subpersonality to be formed, it takes, they say, at least six months. (It seems to me that in early childhood this can happen much faster, but maybe I’m wrong). In any case, we do not always know that Inner Children live somewhere in the wilds of the psyche with their intense lives. Depending on the age at which the traumatic events occurred, our Inner Children may be unusually talkative, or they may remain silent like partisans, manifesting themselves exclusively in the form of feelings and emotions. In any case, Inner Children are the product of our life experience multiplied by our reaction to this experience, which occurs in our childhood. The child's psyche creates Inner Children to protect itself from pain, which the child, due to inexperience and underdevelopment, cannot even comprehend, let alone “accept.” Inner Children help real children survive and somehow establish interaction with others. The trouble is that when the “danger” passes, the Inner Children remain in the same position and state. They do not draw any conclusions and do not change; they seem to be “stuck” at a certain period of life. When a real child grows into an adult, such a wonderful metamorphosis does not happen to the Inner Child - he remains unconscious at that time and in those circumstances. Time seems to “freeze” for him. The film “Baby” with Bruce Willis in the title role is very indicative in this sense. For me, this film kind of reveals this Inner Child phenomenon that I'm describing. The main character of the film is a rich bachelor who works as an image consultant. As for me, this is a disappointed, cynical and world-weary man who hates his father, who is unsuccessfully trying to improve his relationship with his son. His life is like chewing gum without taste. And it goes on and on until one fine day the bachelor discovers a little boy of about 8 years old in his bunker house. By the way, the most magnificent bachelor should turn 40 any day now. At first he mistakes the boy for a hallucination, when he gets rid of.