Inner Child Healing | Women over 40 | Healing Childhood Wounds & Emotional Neglect

The child who learned to disappear is still in there. She’s ready to be seen.

You’ve spent a lifetime being the capable one. The one who figured it out andwho didn’t make a fuss. The one who took care of everyone else and called it fine.

And somewhere inside all of that – under the competence and the coping and the careful self-management – is a younger version of you who never got what she needed. Who learned early that her needs were too much, her feelings were inconvenient, her existence was conditional on being easy.

That younger self isn’t gone. She’s running the show more than you know.

What Is Inner Child Work?

Inner child healing is a therapeutic approach that works directly with the younger parts of yourself that formed in response to your early experiences. The premise is straightforward: when children experience things that are overwhelming – abuse, neglect, inconsistency, chronic criticism, emotional unavailability – they develop survival strategies. Those strategies made complete sense at the time. They’re what kept you safe and connected to caregivers.

The problem is that those same strategies often follow us into adulthood, showing up as patterns that no longer serve us: people-pleasing, emotional shutdown, difficulty trusting, chronic self-doubt, the inability to ask for what you need, the habit of abandoning yourself before anyone else gets the chance to.

Inner child work helps you heal where those patterns formed – not to re-traumatize yourself, but for your adult self to offer your younger self the understanding, safety, and compassion she didn’t have access to then. And in doing so, to update the rules your nervous system is still living by.

What Emotional Neglect Actually Looks Like

Childhood emotional neglect is one of the most common and least visible forms of childhood wounding. It’s not what happened to you – it’s what didn’t happen that should have. The feelings that weren’t validated. Needs that were ignored or minimized. The child who learned to stop expressing certain things because no one responded, or because the response was shame or silent treatment.

Adults who experienced emotional neglect often describe feeling like something is missing but not being able to name it. Of feeling hollow or numb even when their circumstances look fine. They identify a deep sense of unworthiness that doesn’t quite make rational sense or report difficulty identifying their own emotions or needs. Many describe feeling overwhelmed with “adulting.” Most all describe a persistent feeling of disconnection – from others, from themselves, from their own life.

These aren’t character flaws. They’re the entirely logical consequences of having emotional needs that went unmet during development.

How I Work With the Inner Child

I use an integrated approach that draws on somatic therapy, parts-based work, attachment theory, and depth psychology. Inner child work isn’t about regression or dwelling in the past – it’s about developing a different relationship with the parts of you that are still waiting for safety, acknowledgment, and care.

In practice, this might look like learning to notice when a younger part of you has been activated (usually when a reaction feels disproportionate to the present situation). Or learning to sit with emotions that used to send you straight into shutdown or anger or frantic activity. Or maybe it’s slowly, incrementally, building the capacity to meet your own needs – not waiting for someone else to finally get it right.

I’m direct, warm, and I don’t rush. I’ve done significant inner child work myself. I know how disorienting it can be to start taking your own inner experience seriously after a lifetime of minimizing it. I also know how profoundly things can shift when you do.

Who This Work Is For

• Inner child healing tends to be particularly powerful for women who grew up in emotionally unavailable households – even ones that looked fine on the outside.
• Women who have a persistent sense of not being enough, no matter how much they achieve.
• Those women who find themselves endlessly giving to others and not knowing how to receive.
• For women who feel disconnected from their own needs, emotions, and instincts.
• Consistently finding yourself in the same patterns – in relationships, in how you treat yourself, in the gap between what you know you deserve and what you allow – inner child work might be exactly what the next chapter of your healing needs.

Ready to Start?

Sessions are virtual, 55 minutes, $180 self-pay. I’m licensed in Indiana, California, and Texas, and I work exclusively with women over 40. Book a free consultation and let’s see if this is the right fit for where you are right now.