Healing our inner teenager is sometimes overlooked as we often place emphasis on dealing with traumas or events arising from when we were below 7 years old. While the early years are considered to be most crucial for healthy development, doing inner teen work can be just as important. The teenage years are a pivotal period where emotional wounds can take root, shaping our adult lives in profound ways. The following are reasons why doing inner teen work is important…
- Repressed Emotions. Through my work with clients, I’ve encountered individuals who grappled with unresolved teenage turmoil. These were times marked by confusion, vulnerability, and often a lack of guidance to navigate the storm of emotions and societal pressures. Consequently, many suppressed their feelings, burying them deep within their subconscious. This repression, coupled with unmet emotional needs, would build over the years into adulthood.
If you find yourself getting into emotional overwhelm rather quickly and with an inability to cope, ask yourself if they are related to issues that arise from your teenage years, not just when you were pre-teen. - Body Image Issues. Teenagers go through bodily and hormonal changes and can find it hard to handle their physical challenges. Many feel awkward and having to process societal beauty standards. Some hold on to their body image issues and carry them into adulthood; leading to weight problems, eating disorders or a lack in confidence.
If you have got body image issues, check if they first stem from your teenage years. - Reduced Ability to Form Intimate and Fulfilling Relationships. Then, there are also some who experience their first heartbreak or sexual encounter, and that’s when their wounds were formed. Feelings of shame would lie buried in the subconscious for years, causing them to build protective walls that act as barriers to cultivating more satisfying and intimate relationships as they grow up. Some would even swear off marriage relationships due to past teenage trauma.
If you can’t seem to form intimate and fulfilling relationships, ask yourself if this is due to holding on to unresolved pain, hurt or shame from experiences that are physically or sexually-related from your teenage years. - Unclear About Identity and Feeling Lost in Direction. The teenage years correspond to the time when we seek to find own identity. It’s also the time when we are learning to be independent and to make our own decisions. In order to find ourselves, it may mean having to break away from our parents’ beliefs. During this phase, some confused teenagers may become rebellious as they work out the identity that would define them.
If you are constantly feeling insecure, indecisive and lost, ask yourself it this is related to your teenage years. It could be that your parents made all the decisions for you or that you had simply adopted other people’s beliefs without clearly processing them.
Well, the good news is that even though the past is long gone, all is not lost. We can work on healing the inner teenager. It’s similar to doing inner child work, except with considerations of what has gone on during the teenage phase. Whatever hurt or suffering you’ve experienced back then is the key to healing that inner teen today.
Benefits to Doing Inner Teen Work:
- Calm any nervous tension that originates from your teenage years.
- Resolve any unmet needs of your teenage self with love, acceptance and care.
- Heal the wounds that have been affecting your relationships today.
- Address issues that are about body image and that could be related to eating disorders or lack in confidence.
- Reparent the troubled or rebellious part of you with setting boundaries and clear directions for a healthier way forward.
- Reclaim the vitality and boundless energy of your inner teen that your adult self may have lost.
- Rekindle the sense of curiosity and desire to venture out from one’s comfort zone.
The healthy teenager is at the stage of forging their own identity, with innate curiosity and desire to explore their strengths and interests. Healing and reparenting the inner teenager allows you to restore vitality. Your inner teenage self deserves to be loved, accepted and guided. Set yourself free from your troubled past and be ready to take charge of your life from doing inner teen work.
If you’d like to find out more about working together, request for a discovery call here.
Love and Abundance Always,
Evelyn Lim
Transformation & Emotional Healing Coach
