Over the last couple of years, the concept of ‘healing your inner child’ has nested itself in the collective vocabulary. Perhaps its newfound popularity stems from the overall destigmatization of therapy and the self-care craze. Discovering one’s inner child is not a bad thing—society would improve if everyone was in touch with their innate softness and emotions. After all, it’s not totally off-base to suggest that most people experienced at least a sprinkle of trauma in their youth. It’s been proven that wounds left from childhood can affect your wellbeing and behaviour as an adult, whether you want to connect the dots or not. One of the most common ways to heal those wounds is to reparent yourself through inner child work. Lately though, ‘healing your inner child’ has surpassed being a psychology-based practice of working through complex trauma, and has found itself a catch-all term for nostalgic overconsumption and a scapegoat for questionable behaviour. 

It seems that inner child is just the latest to fall victim to the therapy speak epidemic—joining the likes of ‘gaslighting,’ ‘narcissist,’ and ‘borderline.’ Terms that were meant to stay in the mouths of professionals, but become popularized and misconstrued so flippantly that they lose their actual meaning. Social media is rife with armchair psychologists who wield these terms with the precision of a blunt axe, often using them to diagnose anyone who crosses them. In this diluted form, these powerful concepts risk becoming nothing more than buzzwords, stripped of their depth and significance.

This isn’t to knock the real, tried and true reparenting methods used in psychotherapy—the problem the way these methods are being portrayed like a Lisa Frank-themed party. Actually healing one’s inner child is about connecting with your emotions, putting your needs first, feeling safe and loved, navigating triggers, and setting boundaries. It is not a synonym for nostalgia. It does not make it okay to become a Disney adult. It’s not an excuse to start buying re-released toys in droves. Y2K core fashion is cute, but no, it’s not healing your inner child. Leave the playgrounds for the actual children, and it’s weird to be obsessed with Bluey as a grown-up. It is not normal for people over the age of 12 to take a bath with a mermaid tail on.

It makes sense how pleasing it feels to see items and trends from the early aughts creep their way back into modernity. The aesthetics are satisfying, the media is comforting, it all comes with a positive reminder of what once was. There’s no doubt that participating in nostalgia can seem like a relief to your inner child, but it’s fleeting isn’t it? Pressing add to cart and complete purchase on an Urban Outfitters tamagotchi will most likely fill your internal void for at least the evening. We all know that shopping is a fast track to dopamine. But if you step away from your iPad to look at the big picture, it’s all just another trap laid out by late-stage capitalism. 

As corporations do with every trend, they are weaponizing and monetizing your desire (deep-seated or otherwise) to heal your inner child. It might not always be that obvious, but sometimes it’s right on the nose. Hopefully you’re not taking life advice from Buzzfeed, but if you are, they recently published “35 Things Your Inner Child Wants You To Buy Immediately.” For someone who has been grieving the childhood they wish they had and doing the gruelling work of reparenting themselves, this is asinine clickbait is bordering on offensive. Sorry, but I’m not like other girls, MY inner child doesn’t want an adult colouring book, it just wants to not flinch when a door slams. 

I’ll be the first to admit it, my inner child is toxic! I don’t see her as a cute, innocent little cherub cuddling up to a Build-A-Bear who needs to be protected at all costs. In fact, I’m over hearing from the little me inside. She’s a burden to everyone in her life. She is the most co-dependent bitch on the block. She may or may not need SLAA. Her self-esteem is trash and her obsessive thoughts are incredibly dark! She has never fixed any of those issues by buying things, but not for a lack of trying. Any coping mechanisms she learned from the internet have only set her back. My inner child is more of a petulant teenager, insisting on dragging me down memory lane kicking and screaming.

Healing is a subjective experience, and while there’s no ‘wrong’ way to heal, this consumer-based trend is easily runner up. I know it’s a bad look to criticize how someone chooses to self-soothe. To that I say, totally, yes, everyone has their own journey—you are simply being brainwashed to take the easy route! Collecting dolls may be cheaper than going to therapy. Making yourself an ‘inner child therapy cage‘ is more accessible than a psychiatrist appointment, but its fucking weird. It’s time to draw a line in the sand between healing and just outright age regression. We need the mighty army of cancel culture to let stand-up comedians take a deep breath for a minute and come for whatever this version of ‘the inner child’ is. At the very least, cancel mine! She’s problematic and needs to have her platform in my brain revoked immediately.