How The Inner Child Keeps You Broke

Read on to learn how your inner child keeps you broke and how to reparent for financial abundance.

Are you suffering from terminal financial lack? Do you ever self-sabotage when you start to find success or happiness? 

There is a direct link between achieving your money goals and your inner child.  

Do you feel frustrated that after months or even years of applying positive affirmation, visualization, working hard, and other proven techniques, you still live paycheck-to-paycheck, unable to support yourself and your mission?  

After years of failed business ventures and working with my own Inner Child, I have discovered some reasons why your Inner Child may pose a challenge to manifesting financial abundance.  

We’ll be discussing some of those challenges in this article, plus I’ll give you a few tools you can use beginning today to help your inner child let you (the adult) take back control of your financial well-being.  

Okay, now you may be thinking I have heard about this inner child thing, but what does that have to do with moving from broke to abundance? 

The short answer is A LOT.  

Your inner child is very real; she/he makes most of your “adult” decisions.  

She most likely controls all your relationships, and yes, that also includes your relationship with money.  

The inner child is the part of our mind that some people call ego or emotional mind; I prefer to use the inner child because, as you will see, this part of our mind acts exactly as a 5- or 6-year-old would.  

But first, how can you tell if your inner child is controlling your life? 

Signs That the Wounded Child is Controlling Your life  

According to Barbara Hunson, there are a few signs to look out for; here are a few; 

• You distrust yourself or others 
• You worry excessively 
• You are a people pleaser seeking for approval 
• You have weak boundaries or very rigid ones 
• You are energized by conflict 
• You are addiction-prone 
• You are a high achiever, driven to be perfect, terrified to fail 
• You are afraid to state your opinion 
• You stay clear of strong emotions, yours or others 
• You feel something’s very wrong with you 
• You’re dependent on routine, dislike change, and are afraid of the unknown 
• You’re highly critical of yourself and others 
• You stay too long in unhealthy situations.  

These are by no means exhaustive, but they should be enough to help you decide if a 6-year-old is in your driver’s seat. 

How Your Inner Child Develops

I won’t go deep into how your inner child develops. That would be a whole different article.  

All you need to remember for now is that every age you have been is within you. 

As a child, when something went wrong, you automatically thought it was your fault and believed there was something wrong with you.  

Because “it can’t possibly be the adults,” can it? So, it must be me, the child.   

This seems ridiculous to us as adults because we know our parents can often be wrong. 

However, when you’re a 6-year-old child, your parents seem to have everything figured out; you trust them and want to please them, so you naturally imagine the fault always lies with you.  

Once the child starts to believe that there is something wrong with him/her and that it could cost her the parents’ love, she tries to fix it. 

In order to fix it, this child comes up with a plan that if he/she could just do everything right, then the parents would love her and wouldn’t punish her.  

The problem is that it is practically impossible for a child to always do everything right.  

So, at some point in your childhood, you got fed up with all the “mistakes” your child-self was making, so you decided you didn’t want anything to do with this child; you pushed her aside and went on with your life.  

But she never left. She’s still here with you, making every life decision with you. And perhaps sabotaging your attempts to create success and happiness.  

Since we’re discussing wealth today, let’s get into how your inner child might be keeping you broke. 

As the saying goes, awareness is the first step to achieving change. 

How The Inner child is keeping you broke 

Your Inner Child Keeps You Afraid 

Fear is the biggest obstacle between the financially abundant life you want and your current circumstances.  

It’s why we procrastinate, fail to start the business, refuse to leave the job we hate, and fail to ask for the raise we know we deserve; it’s why we undercharge, feel stuck, get paralyzed, give up…

You get where I am going with this. 

What does this have to do with your inner child? 

Well, whenever you feel fearful or scared, it’s always your inner child that is feeling scared.

It’s not YOU, the adult.   

Let me say it again, THE ADULT IS NEVER AFRAID, but it has disconnected and isn’t there for the child who lives in fear.  

This tender little child experiences the world as a place of danger and fear; it’s always ready to defend or attack in order to “survive” and keep you safe. 

Consequently, one of the inner child’s tactics for keeping you safe is to make sure you remain on familiar territory, even though what’s familiar is broke, paycheck to paycheck, or a job you hate. 

That is why as soon as you start taking action towards increasing your income, the inner child (aka the inner critic) begins to emotionally manipulate you by sulking, complaining, throwing temper tantrums, and criticizing you in order to get you to give up on any attempts to build a successful life.  

The harder you try to push through the fear, the louder your inner child discourages, blames, and criticizes. “You’ve messed this up before, you’ve tried 100 times, and it never works” your inner child will keep hammering you down because it knows you will give up. 

If you have kids, you know this; sometimes, it feels easier to give in to your child just to get them to stop. 

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that this is the stage where most of us get paralyzed by our inner child and freeze.  

Your Inner Child Causes Resistance 

If you’ve ever set a new income goal, you know your whole self is often not entirely on board for such disruption! 

It tends to look something like this: 

You decide you want to increase your income, you set a goal, and make a plan. You’re so fired up, and of course, you begin taking action on the plan for a week or two. 

And then…crickets! 

• You get too busy (I just don’t have the time) 
• You procrastinate (I’ll do it later) 
• You defer money-related decisions (You, do it, you decide)  
• You lose interest (This is boring, it’s not my thing)  
• You become forgetful (Oh, I really meant to, but I forgot…) 
• You feel paralyzed (I just can’t think or get going) 
• You find reasons not to act ( I can’t because…) 
• You are impatient (This is taking way too long)  
• You keep taking classes, but nothing changes (Oh, look, another seminar) 
• You continually run into naysayers (Others constantly say, “You can’t do that,” That’s not possible…) 

See where I’m going with this? 

If we distill this behavior further, we find our subconscious at the helm.  

Our subconscious, which is connected to our inner child, is always watching, sensing, informing, and reacting.  

That inner child remembers all and sees all but remember she lives primarily in fear, and her main priority is to make sure you stay safe at all costs.  

So, when we attempt to create a new financial possibility, i.e., make six figures every month or whatever your desired income goal is, the inner child takes over and springs into actions powered by fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.  

The inner child can create such a paralyzing resistance that we become unwilling to move forward or make bold, grown-up moves in our finances and businesses. 

Consequently, the only way effective way to unblock the resistance and to get back into the driver’s seat of our finances is to reparent this part of ourselves.  

So how do you reparent your inner child?  

How to Reparent Your Inner Child for Abundance 

Build a Relationship 

You may have already spent time working through issues in order to heal the wounds of your past but still don’t feel a profound sense of self-love.  

Perhaps you still have an emptiness that you cannot fill and think you need more healing.  

Maybe you have tried clearing your money blocks using several techniques, but you are still stuck at a certain income. The answer lies in spending more time talking to your Inner Child.  

Like a parent would with a physical child, have a continuous daily relationship with your inner child. Just 10 minutes a day will bring you the self-love you have always desired and will fill your Inner Child’s need for connection. 

When you love yourself and your inner child, achieving your financial goals will become much easier. 

Discuss your money goals before taking action  

Since your inner child sees herself as a part of you, he/she deserves to be consulted before any big actions are undertaken in order to feel safe.  

One of the things we forget when moving along the path of creating more abundance is that even though we may be ready to make a change from broke to financial abundance, our Inner Child may not be.  

If he/she is not ready, it is because we have not discussed it with him/her and/or done anything, such as making agreements to take care of the emotional or physical pain that may come as a result of the change. 

However, when we have the discussion, our inner child will feel much safer and will therefore offer little to no resistance to the change; just be sure to follow through on any promises you make to her.  

Use Positive Self Talk 

Your Inner Child hears every thought, feeling, and word you speak about yourself.

In fact, what you speak about yourself, you speak about him/her.

That’s why the key to changing your self-image from broke to abundant lies with your Inner Child.  

Talking to this Inner Child using positive self-talk backed up by agreements and follow through will change self-hatred, low self-esteem, and self-worth into self-love. 

If your Inner Child feels that an opportunity for financial abundance will cause him/her to be blamed, she will block it.  

For example, if your mission is to become a teacher, but you are someone who rescues others.

Your Inner Child may block any efforts you make to set up workshops, write articles, or create courses. 

She may create situations where you end up helping everyone else but have no energy left to work on your dream. 

This happens because you may be used to getting your love and acceptance from giving too much energy to others in an attempt to fulfill their needs and don’t leave enough in reserve for yourself.

Your inner child knows you won’t give yourself love and acceptance, so she uses the energy to get it from others. 

You may also fear being rejected if you don’t have all the answers or fail to meet someone’s needs.

Your Inner Child knows that that fear will result in you feeling guilty. When you feel guilty, your Inner Child experiences that guilt as you blaming him/her. Your Inner Child experiences blame as rejection and abandonment. 

Last Thoughts

Remember, your inner child is not bad; she only wants to be loved and to feel safe within that love. The love she is most interested in is that of you, her parent.  

When you give this love freely, your inner child becomes your ally.

Imagine that inner child, so forceful and willful working on your team; you become literally unstoppable.

And moving from broke to abundance becomes much more effortless! 

If you enjoyed reading this article, consider signing up for our free money mindset training. It shows how to clear your money blocks and earn what you deserve.