I am so grateful for this thread. My mom was very abusive emotionally and mentally and my therapist kept trying to talk to me about my "inner child" last year and I cringed every single time. Like oh great, psycho babble. I just wanted to get on with the getting better stuff. The meat and potatoes of therapy, not my "inner child".
I'm working the 4th step now and my inner child is completely freaking out on me. I have all of these memories of abuse from my childhood and I'm wondering what my part in all of it was. My mom used to call me trash and has always told me that I keep her from being happy, as a mother myself I know there is NOTHING that a child can do to make any parent say those things. Being born was my only role in the dysfunction as a child.
When I was working through the earlier steps and developing a higher power, my sponsor helped me with the suggestion that her higher power views her the same way that she views her children. So I think I'm actually working through my inner child stuff via my higher power. I think my inner child needs a higher power more than my current adult self does, or maybe that's the whole point. I freak out and my higher power gives me comfort. My higher power loves me without condition and always has. These things happened to me and they weren't my fault and they no longer need to define who I am today.