How Healing Your Inner Teen Can Improve Your Relationship with Yourself and Others
It’s time to let go of that angst and replace it with self-love and acceptance.
Raise your hand if you feel personally victimized by your teenage self. If you’ve found yourself having trouble reconciling the emotional turmoil you experienced during the time period when your hormones seemed to be running (and ruining!) your life, you’re certainly not alone.
Lots of people struggle to reflect on their angsty teen years with fondness. That’s one of the main reasons why inner teen healing—much like inner child healing (also referred to as re-parenting)—is starting to gain traction in the personal development space.
A while back, I stumbled on an article about inner teen healing, and it prompted me to consider how this type of self-work might impact a person’s ability to better connect with themselves and the important people in their life. I decided to find out.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I go into the details of my inner teen healing practice, l want to share a little bit about what brought me to this personal development work in the first place. Many months ago, I had an energy healing session with a friend and mentor of mine. In it, I discovered that there were parts of my childhood that still haunted my subconscious. The session forced me to examine my feelings of loneliness, awkwardness and discomfort around “fitting in.”
I think about that session often because it made me realize that even if I’m not actively thinking about my childhood, it is impacting me on some level. I now have so much more compassion for my younger self. Seeing myself from that perspective for the first time opened me up in a way I hadn’t anticipated. I have a new understanding of how these childhood wounds encourage me to keep myself small in my relationships.
When the Well + Good article first appeared in my news app feed, I knew it was important to dive in. This also happened to coincide with my mom sending me pictures from my youth (some of which are showcased in the feature image for this post). I asked her for these photos to help remind me of my teenage self. I wanted the flashback imagery to help me write a book in which the main character is a teen girl very loosely based on me.
To be clear, I usually avoid looking at photos from this period at all costs, but I forced myself not to shy away this time. Confronted with these photos, I realized that so many of my fears during that time period (that I was ugly, didn’t fit in, wasn’t popular) weren’t founded. It inspired me to reach out to my fourteen-year-old self. I wanted to let her know that the things she feared weren’t true and they wouldn’t hold her back. I detailed these thoughts in a letter of self-love and acceptance that I’ve shared below.
This is one of the healing techniques that the article suggests, and if this assignment calls to you, I recommend giving it a shot. The impact for me has been subtle but essential. I’ve found that when I work to remove insecurities and hurt from my past, I’m better able to connect to myself and the people I love and care about. I trust my feelings. I believe the things I contribute to my friendships and marriage are important and valued. The negative self-talk stops harming me, and I give myself permission to be the biggest, brightest version of who I really am.
Because I can identify the ways I have limited myself in the past, I’m able to avoid repeating the self-defeating cycle in the present. When I spend less time trying to repress the past to avoid feeling humiliation and shame about how certain things went down, I open myself up to use my energy in a more productive way. That can look like anything from manifesting my ideal sex life to opening myself up to new friendships and experiences.
Perhaps you will find that something similar happens when you participate in inner teen healing. You won’t know until you try. In the meantime, you can see how I tackled the assignment below. Best of luck on your healing journey! I hope it brings you an abundance of deliciousness in the bedroom, during your next friend date and whenever you connect with the people in your inner circle.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Yes, Misstrix to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.