Understanding Core Wounds

If you’ve ever felt stuck in the same emotional patterns, you’re not alone. Many of these patterns are rooted in what therapists call core wounds—early emotional injuries that affect how safe, loved, and valued we feel.

• Core wounds are emotional imprints often formed in childhood—not only from major traumas, but also from subtle, repeated emotional experiences like being ignored, criticized, or emotionally unsupported.
• These emotional injuries often lead to core beliefs about yourself—such as “I’m not good enough,” “I don’t matter,” or “People will always leave me.”
• Both the wounds and the beliefs that grow from them can deeply influence your relationships, your self-esteem, and your ability to feel secure in the world.
• Healing involves recognizing these patterns, connecting with your inner emotional experience, and building self-compassion and emotional safety.

Core wounds aren’t signs of weakness—they are reflections of pain that was never fully seen, acknowledged, or supported.

Core Wounds vs. Core Beliefs

Understanding the difference between core wounds and core beliefs can be a powerful part of healing.

• A core wound is the felt emotional pain—like feeling rejected, abandoned, invisible, or unsafe.
• A core belief is the meaning we assign to that pain—such as “I’m unlovable,” “I have to earn love,” or “It’s not safe to trust anyone.”

Example:
A child who was frequently left alone might carry a core wound of abandonment. To make sense of it, they may develop the core belief: “People I love will always leave me.”

As adults, these beliefs often operate in the background, influencing how we connect, protect ourselves, and interpret the world around us.

Reconnecting with Your Inner Child

One powerful way to begin healing core wounds is through inner child work—a therapeutic approach that focuses on the younger parts of you that still carry emotional pain, unmet needs, or outdated beliefs formed early in life.

You might notice your inner child showing up when:

• You feel a strong emotional reaction that seems bigger than the situation.
• You struggle with people-pleasing, perfectionism, or fear of being “too much.”
• You feel shame, panic, or unworthiness in moments of vulnerability.

Core Idea

The inner child represents the emotional and psychological part of you that developed in childhood. It holds your earliest experiences of love, fear, safety, rejection, abandonment, and more. Even as an adult, these parts can quietly shape how you feel, react, and relate to others—especially when those early needs went unmet or unacknowledged. By tuning into these younger parts of yourself, you can begin to unlearn the core beliefs they’ve been carrying—and gently replace them with a sense of safety, self-worth, and inner connection.

What Inner Child Work Involves

Recognizing your inner child: Tuning into emotional reactions that feel intense, tender, or out of proportion—these are often signals from younger parts of you.

Identifying unmet needs: Gaining clarity on what was missing—whether it was comfort, protection, connection, or feeling truly seen.

Reparenting: Learning to offer yourself now what you didn’t receive then—things like self-compassion, boundaries, and gentleness.

Healing core wounds: By validating and attending to your inner child’s experience, you can begin to shift the core beliefs that grew from those early wounds—beliefs like “I’m not lovable,” or “I have to be perfect to be safe.”

Inner child work isn’t about blaming the past—it’s about creating the emotional safety you didn’t get to have, so that healing becomes possible.