Inner Child Work
Offered virtually in California, D.C., Virginia, Maryland, Texas and Illinois.
What a session actually looks like
A session is quieter than the phrase suggests. We might follow a present-day overreaction back to its original age, and notice where that younger part lives in your body. Guided imagery — one of the most instrumental tools in my clinical career — builds the internal places where a younger part can be met safely. Some clients draw the younger version of themselves before they can say anything about her, which is expressive arts doing what it does best. Over time, the adult you are now becomes a steady presence the younger parts can rely on, which is the honest meaning of the word reparenting.
Doing this from home carries a quiet advantage: your own space, your own art supplies, and sometimes the actual objects and photos from the years we're visiting. The younger parts tend to come forward more easily on familiar ground.
You will not be asked to perform dialogue with an empty chair, and nothing here requires you to find the whole idea comfortable at the start. Skepticism about talking to a four-year-old version of yourself is reasonable, and it usually lasts until the first time a part answers.
Do I need a terrible childhood for this to apply?
No. Plenty of inner child work is about what didn't happen — the comfort that never came, the attention that went to a sibling or a crisis, the feelings that had no audience. Children in loving families still draw painful conclusions when the timing of care doesn't match the timing of need, and those conclusions keep operating until someone goes back for them.
Somewhere in an old photo there's a younger you — four years old, maybe seven — who needed things that didn't arrive on time. Inner child work is the part of therapy that goes back for her.
The internet has turned the phrase into workbooks and thirty-second videos, and underneath the trend sits something clinically real: structured work with the youngest parts of your nervous system, done in relationship with a trained therapist.
I'm Logan Brantley, a licensed clinical social worker at Soul Works Healing, and this work sits close to the center of my practice — over video, in California, Illinois, Texas, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.
What is inner child work, actually?
Inner child work reaches the parts of you that formed early and still carry what they experienced — the fears, the unmet needs, and the conclusions a small person drew about herself before she could evaluate them. It's a focus that several modalities can carry, and in my practice it runs through somatic parts-work, where the framework comes from Internal Family Systems: the younger parts are the ones IFS calls exiles, the ones other parts of you have spent years protecting and avoiding.
A workbook can introduce you to these parts, and plenty of people start there usefully. The deeper repair tends to happen in relationship, because the original injuries happened in relationship — a child concluded she was too much or not enough based on how the people around her responded, and those conclusions change most easily around a person who responds differently.
Questions people ask about inner child work
Is inner child work evidence-based?
The honest answer is that inner child work is a framework rather than a single tested protocol, and the modalities that carry it — IFS-informed parts work, somatic processing, expressive arts — have growing evidence bases of their own. What the research supports most strongly is the mechanism underneath all of them: early relational injury revises through corrective relational experience.
Will I have to talk out loud to my inner child?
No. Some clients eventually find speaking to a younger part natural, and plenty do the entire thing through imagery, art, and body awareness. The connection matters and the format doesn't.
Can I just use a workbook?
You can start with one, and I mean that without condescension — noticing your younger parts at all is real progress. Where workbooks stall is the relational repair, since a book can't respond to you. If the workbook got you partway and stuck, that's a normal place to begin therapy from.
Which states can you see me from, and what does it cost?
I see clients over secure video in California, Illinois, Texas, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. — and if you move or travel between those states, we keep working, which most online therapists can't offer. Sessions are $160, $200, or $250 on my equitable three-tier model. Superbills provided; I partner with Thrizer. The first 20-minute consultation is free.
Appeasement that has gone all the way to self-erasure runs through the center of my practice, whatever name clients arrive with for it. The training behind the work is somatic parts-work through The Embody Lab, accredited Brainspotting, doctoral-level expressive arts, and the mind-body coursework I teach graduate clinicians at Bastyr University. When I tell you the reflex can be retrained, I'm describing work I supervise in detail every week.
About my experience with this work
