Inner Child and Anxiety: Why You Feel “Not Enough”

Have you ever had a moment where your anxiety spikes and you think, Why am I reacting like this? This shouldn’t be a big deal.

I want to gently offer a possibility for you to consider. Sometimes the anxiety isn’t about what’s happening now. Sometimes it’s about what your system learned then.

Not “big T trauma.” Not the kinds of experiences that need specialist trauma treatment.

I’m talking about the quieter, everyday moments that can shape a child’s emotional world. Criticism, pressure, emotional dismissal, having to grow up too soon. Things that look “small” to an adult but felt enormous to a child who didn’t yet have choice, language, or support.

This is where inner child and anxiety often connect.

If you’re reading this and thinking, ‘Okay… that’s me,’and I want to take action now', you can explore hypnotherapy support in Sydney and book a free initial consultation.

What does ‘inner child’ actually mean?

The idea of the “inner child” has been around in psychology for a long time. Carl Jung wrote about the child archetype in the early 1900s, and later authors like Dr Charles Whitfield (Healing the Child Within, 1987) and John Bradshaw (Homecoming, 1990) helped bring inner child work into the mainstream.

When we say “inner child” in therapy, we’re not talking about a split personality or a spirit living inside you.

The inner child is a psychological metaphor for early emotional learning — the younger reactions and protective patterns that can still show up when you feel stressed or unsafe.

This concept is not mystical. It’s not weird. It’s just a helpful way to describe how subconscious emotional patterns can still get activated in the present.

In other words, it’s the part of you that learned emotional “rules” early on, like:

• what felt safe to feel

• what didn’t feel safe to say

• how to get love, approval, or attention

• how to avoid criticism, conflict, or disconnection

Those rules can stay with you, even when you’re grown, capable, and doing “fine” on the outside.

So just to be really clear: your inner child is not a separate “person” within you. It’s an old emotional pattern showing up in the present.

For example, you and your partner might have a minor disagreement but you feel deeply hurt or rejected, like it hits a much bigger nerve than the moment explains. With your adult mind you might know, “This isn’t a big deal.” But your emotions are running off the charts.

Often, that’s because your nervous system is reacting to something older — a familiar fear of rejection, criticism, or not being enough.

So where does this old wiring come from?

Small-t Experiences (When It Felt Big to You)

We’ve all heard the phrase: “Other people had it worse.” But your nervous system doesn’t work on comparison. It works on meaning.

In therapy, you might hear people talk about “big-T” and “small-t” trauma. Big-T trauma is often used to describe major, overwhelming events (the kind that can feel life-threatening or deeply destabilising). Small-t experiences, on the other hand, are moments that might not look dramatic from the outside but they still felt confusing, overwhelming, or emotionally unsafe to you at the time causing anxiety and stress.

A lot of people minimise what they went through because it “wasn’t extreme.” But this isn’t about comparing pain. It’s about recognising that a child’s nervous system can interpret certain experiences as too much, especially when support, reassurance, or safety wasn’t there.

Because here’s the thing: childhood impact isn’t measured by how dramatic it looks to an adult. It’s measured by how safe (or unsafe) it felt to the child.

Small-t experiences that often shape anxiety patterns

• being criticised often (even “for your own good”)

• being the “good kid” who didn’t make trouble

• feeling like emotions were inconvenient in your home

• walking on eggshells around someone else’s moods

• being praised for achievement, not for being you

• being the responsible one far too early

• feeling unseen, unheard, or “too sensitive”

None of this means your parents were “bad.” Sometimes it’s just what was passed down. Sometimes it’s cultural. Sometimes it’s stress. Sometimes it’s a lack of emotional skills.

This isn’t about blaming anyone. It’s about understanding why your nervous system responds the way it does.

A child doesn’t analyse context. A child asks one question:

“Am I safe, accepted, and loved as I am?”

How Childhood Emotional Patterns Become Adult Anxiety

Here’s the part that makes so many people exhale with relief. Your anxiety may not be random. It may be a pattern.

When a child experiences uncertainty, criticism, or emotional disconnection, they adapt. They become hyper-aware. They try harder. They stay small. They stay helpful. They stay perfect. They become what the environment rewards.

And those strategies can look like success on the outside while feeling like anxiety and self-doubt on the inside.

Common “inner child → adult anxiety” translations

• Criticism in childhood → fear of judgment, perfectionism, imposter feelings

• Emotional suppression → anxiety, tension, difficulty expressing needs

• Being the responsible one → overfunctioning, burnout, guilt when resting

• Unpredictable environment → hypervigilance, scanning for danger, overthinking

• Feeling unseen → people-pleasing, fear of being “too much,” low self-worth

This is often why someone can be competent, capable, and high-achieving… yet still feel like they’re bracing for something.

Signs Your Anxiety Is an Old Pattern

When anxiety feels bigger than the moment, it often a sign that it isn’t about what’s happening right now. It’s about what your nervous system remembers, not as a story, but as a pattern. Your brain is a pattern-making machine. When certain emotions and situations happen together repeatedly, the brain learns the shortcut. There’s a well-known neuroscience principle often summarised as: “neurons that fire together wire together.”

In plain language: repeated emotional experiences can strengthen particular pathways, so your response becomes automatic.

That’s why you can logically know you’re safe but still feel anxious in your body. Your adult life often follows those early rules until you update them. Your adult mind might be saying, “This is fine.” But an older emotional part of you is bracing for what it learned to expect.

Signs it might be an “inner child” anxiety reaction

If you recognise yourself here, take it as information, not a diagnosis.

You may notice:

• your reaction feels bigger than the moment

• your body goes into fight/flight/freeze quickly (tight chest, racing thoughts, urge to people-please or withdraw)

• you feel a familiar spike of “I’m in trouble” or “I’m not enough”

• you start over-explaining, apologising, or trying to “fix it” fast

• a small misunderstanding feels like rejection

• you feel younger than your age emotionally like you want to hide, shrink, or get approval

When anxiety hits, try asking yourself gently: “What does this feeling remind me of?”

Not to dig up the past, just to notice whether the emotion has an old flavour.

Because your adult life can follow those early emotional rules until you update them. And the moment you recognise, “Ah, this is an old pattern,” you’ve already created a little space for change. And you can change them without blaming your past and without making your story heavier than it needs to be.

How hypnotherapy can support Inner Child work

Inner child work is really about understanding and soothing old emotional reactions, so they don’t run your life today.

At its core, it’s the process of reconnecting with the parts of you that may not have received the care, safety, reassurance, or emotional support you needed when you were younger. Not because you’re “stuck in the past” but because those early emotional rules can still show up in the present as anxiety, self-doubt, people-pleasing, or feeling “not enough.”

When we bring compassion to those younger patterns, something shifts. You can become more resilient to emotional challenges as an adult and less likely to feel pulled back into old reactions when stress hits.

Where hypnotherapy for anxiety fits in

Hypnotherapy can be a supportive approach for anxiety and self-doubt because it works with the subconscious patterns that drive automatic reactions like overthinking, scanning for danger, people-pleasing, or the “not enough” story that won’t switch off.

And it doesn’t need to involve re-living the past or blaming anyone. This work is fundamentally about self-empowerment. It is about helping you feel more resourced in the present, and helping you respond from your adult self, instead of from old protective reactions.

One reason subconscious work can feel so impactful is that your emotional mind responds strongly to imagery, language, and felt experience. That’s why approaches like hypnotherapy often focus on building safety, confidence, and new emotional associations from the inside out. It helps your inner mind create new emotional associations, so your present isn’t being run by old rules.

And if anxiety is something you’re living with right now, this is also where hypnotherapy for anxiety can be a supportive next step.

RTT, “I Am Enough,” and the Root Cause

A lot of anxiety isn’t really about the moment in front of you. It’s about what that moment means to your nervous system — to your sense of safety, your self-worth, and that older part of you that’s been trying to protect you for a long time.

Marisa Peer, the founder of Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT), is one of the voices who has helped popularise the idea that much of our anxiety and self-doubt can trace back to a quiet, persistent belief: “I’m not enough.” Her “I Am Enough” work, shared through her book and teaching, is essentially an invitation to stop living like you have to earn your worth.

Because when “not enough” is running in the background, it doesn’t just stay as a thought. It becomes a way of moving through the world.

The “root story” underneath anxiety can sound like:

• “I’m not safe unless I’m perfect.”

• “I have to earn love.”

• “If I upset someone, I’ll be rejected.”

• “My needs don’t matter.”

Approaches like Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) can help you explore and shift these subconscious beliefs, so your nervous system isn’t stuck running old scripts, and your present isn’t being shaped by old emotional rules.

When to Seek Extra Support

This article is about small-t patterns and anxiety-rooted responses. If you’re experiencing severe trauma symptoms, dissociation, frequent flashbacks, or you feel unsafe, it’s important to seek appropriate professional support.

If you ever feel unable to keep yourself safe, please contact emergency services or a crisis support service in your area.

Ready to Feel Calmer and More Like You?

If this blog helped you understand the link between inner child and anxiety, you don’t have to figure out the next step alone.

You can explore hypnotherapy for anxiety & self-doubt and see if it feels like a fit. I work in person in clinics in Balmain and Five Dock as well as online Australia-wide.

You can always book a free initial consultation and we can discuss how I can support you and if this kind of work is the right next step for you.