Why Inner Child Wounds Don't Heal In Therapy & What To Do About It

Valerie Alexander
Dec 3, 2025
4 min read

Updated: Dec 4, 2025

You've been to therapy. You've gained some insights. You can recognize patterns, describe your childhood, identified some of your triggers and intellectually understand why you react the way you do. Yet, nothing has actually changed. You are still attracting the same type of partner, still getting triggered in the same ways and the inner child wounds remain unhealed.

This was my experience too! I was in and out of therapy most of my adult life. Before I met who was to become my second husband I returned to therapy with one clear intention: heal my inner child wounds so I would never have to experience another toxic relationship.

Fast forward some years and a divorce later, I realized why therapy rarely if ever works to heal inner child wounds.

Reason #1: Therapy does not work directly with the unconscious mind.

Inner child wounds are not in our conscious mind, they are frozen in time in our unconscious, which drives 90% of our behavior.
The unconscious expresses itself through dreams, symbols, triggers, emotional reactions and in who we attract and accept as partners, not through logical talk therapy.
Therapy happens at a conscious level, the level of our everyday understanding. Our wounds are not cognitive. Our wounds are emotional, bound to other unconscious aspects and projected outwardly.
Because therapy does not engage the unconscious directly, the wound remains untouched and unhealed.

I became tired of interviewing therapists and talking about my childhood. Sometimes I thought I knew more than the therapist did.

Reason #2: Talk therapy stays at the cognitive level.

Gaining insight is good, but it won't heal a wound. You can understand a pattern and still be unconscious to it when it takes you over.
Talking about the wound does not heal the wound.
The unconscious does not change through reasoning or explanation. It changes through communicating directly with it, receiving and understanding its messages and interacting with it.
Cognitive understanding does not alter aspects in the unconscious such as a wounded inner child.

I was aware that I had an abandonment wound for decades and didn't know what to do about. I tried to be there for my wounded inner child and searched the internet hoping to find guidance about what to do when the wound was triggered. I did not find anything of use. One therapist recommended making a play area for the wounded inner child in the corner of my home. Others were just as lost as I was. I read long lists therapists had posted online of how to heal an inner child wound. Guess what the lists lacked? Working with the unconscious, where the wound actually is!

Reason #3: The therapist does not have the wound and if they do, they have not healed it themselves.

Some therapists have never experienced the wound.

They can't guide someone to where they have never personally been. Carl Jung said, "One does not learn psychology from books, it is learned from experience."
Inner child wounds do not exist in isolation in the unconscious, a matrix of other aspects are attached. Aspects such as the shadow and various complexes. Only someone who has had the experience of the wound and has healed the wound would know and understand this.

Some therapists have the wound and have not healed it.

Due to their own lack of healing, they may not believe you can heal. This can result in you quickly reaching a block due to the therapist's limitation.
They can only facilitate you going as deep as they have gone themselves.

On my healing journey I went to different therapist, analysts and counselors. I even resorted to going to psychics and astrologers, hoping my healing would show in the stars or in the cards.

During my second divorce I started Jungian analysis again. The analyst never identified my wound, but did help me in other ways, until he became inappropriate. I had had a dream about my mother I wanted to discuss in our session. He wanted to talk about everything but the dream. I did not give up and brought up my dream again. In an angry tone he yelled at me and said, "Why do you always want to talk about your mother?". That was not the first time he lapsed into unprofessionalism. In another session I shared with him that I had dreamed of a large yacht, the kind the Russian oligarchs have. He started rapidly blinking his eyes, like he had a tick, and told me he had very rich clients and started going on a tangent about knowing people with money. I let that slide, but after he yelled at me for bringing up a dream I had about my mother, I never saw him again.

I gave up on therapy. I did not have the desire to interview one more therapist. I was done! I resigned myself to try to live with the wound better, to try and make healthy decisions in spite of having an inner child wound. I stayed on the inner journey and had no expectation that I would heal the wound, healing it was not even my goal at that point. However, I did heal it! I reverse engineered the steps I took and saw there are just three critical steps AND anyone with an inner child wound can take those steps.

In short, the steps are:

Obtain awareness of the wounded inner child and the wound. Otherwise you will continue to be unconscious to it and taken over by it.
Become aware of the wounded inner child in your relationships. In this step you also identify your shadow aspect that accompanies the wounded inner child along with energy/feeling patterns known as complexes.
Choice point! This is the final step where you are faced with the choice as the result of being triggered. The choice is to go into the pain again or turn your back on it once and for all and reclaim your life. Step one and two prepare us for step three.

In order to help others heal their inner child wounds I created a self paced course where I walk you through the three steps. My approach is simple and practical. You need not know psychology, you just need to be willing to know yourself.

You can locate the course and a link to the syllabus HERE. If you want more support connect with me HERE.

I am here when you need me.