HOW OLD IS YOUR INNER CHILD?

HOW OLD IS YOUR INNER CHILD?

I met a 44-year-old woman last week. Beautiful. Brilliant. Accomplished. But when conflict arose in the room, she shrunk. Her voice trembled. Her eyes darted for safety. And I didn’t see a grown woman anymore, I saw a scared 9-year-old girl, bracing for punishment instead of conversation.

That was the moment I remembered, that chronological age doesn’t always match emotional age. Sometimes, your birth certificate says 38, but your inner child is still stuck at 11, the year your parents divorced.

Or 7, when you first learned that pleasing others earned you love. Or 16, when heartbreak taught you to shut down, not speak up.

So let me ask you, how old is your inner child? The version of you that shows up when: you're rejected? you're not chosen? you're not heard? You're misunderstood. Is that version 5? 13? Still crying in a locked bathroom? Still trying to earn love with perfection?

We don’t heal by growing old. We heal by revisiting the ages we emotionally froze, and gently offering that younger self the language, the compassion, the safety they never had.

Because emotional intelligence isn’t just about maturity. It’s about re-parenting your younger self with tools your caregivers never gave you.

If your inner child is still scared, still pleasing, still fighting, still silent. It’s not because you’re weak. It’s because you survived. But survival has an expiry date.

And healing begins when you finally sit with that child and whisper:

“You don’t have to do it alone anymore. I’m here now. I’ve got you.”

So again I ask: How old is your inner child? And what do they still need?

Yours in Emotional Intelligence,

Oyinkansola Alabi,

The Emotions Doctor