Healing Your Lost Inner Child: How to Stop Impulsive Reactions, Set Healthy Boundaries and Embrace an Authentic Life

Good book

This book changed my life for the better. I am grateful to have found this beautiful work of love. I really appreciate that Mr. Robert Jackman shares himself and gives personal accounts and recollections of his childhood as I felt that framework allowed for me to connect more deeply with the content of the book.The book is filled with so many wonderful lessons and it reflected back to me things that I was not consciously aware of before, it shed light deep into my heart. I am an avid reader and this book is one of the best if not the best books I have ever read, it touched me so profoundly. So many little tidbits of love lessons through this great work. It really shows that Mr. Robert Jackman has really put his heart and soul into this creation. What a magical peace of love this book is.

Psychotherapist Robert Jackman’s book offers an empathetic and easy-to-follow guide to healing the inner child for all of us wounded—those new to the world of recovery and those already healing. Like Jackman, one of my particular wounds grew from parental alcoholism, and even after years down the road of recovery, I discovered many “aha!” moments as Jackman teaches us to acknowledge both our wounds and our strengths as we re-connect to and integrate with our wise, authentic, and grounded selves. In particular, the author’s explanations and lists of common and repeated coping mechanisms, such as intellectualization, avoidance of conflict, and rejection of help, reawakened me to my occasional retreat into such defenses, and his telling the stories of other wounded adults—including his own—both reinforces the sad universality of trauma and offers us reassurance that we can, indeed, become our true, authentic selves once more. Jackman provides many exercises to help us in this process, including telling our own stories and setting new and healthy boundaries that overcome past impulsive reactions and strengthen our autonomy and fearlessness. He also asks us to create a timeline of wounds incurred from birth to age 20, an exercise that led to the personal revelation that my defensive ”smart-ass” responses to many situations grew from my deepest wounds in adolescence. Jackman’s Healing Your Lost Inner Child is a godsend to any and all wounded adults, no matter where we are in our recovery.

I highly recommend that you purchase the companion workbook with the book!! It allows you to truly sit with all your thoughts writing them down as the author knows how to get you to answer complex questions to get to the bottom. Robert Jackman quickly becomes your friend yet also the inner child. I have had the opportunity to read and be a part of many books on my own or through counseling/mentoring with others and after 30 years I can say this will forever be my go to when I meet with others! It truly is life changing and is written in a way that you know it becomes part of you and can easily be returned to quickly to remind you of how to grow from triggers!! When you are finished with the book the companion workbook continues to help you navigate the changes you are learning to make!! Up till the very last page you will be learning how to make purposeful conscious choices! So thankful for this author and how he put the book and workbook together!!

This book is helping me tremendously with my food addiction. I read it, worked it, wrote a lot and lost weight almost effortlessly. There is much work to do but this is the best self-help book I’ve ever read!

Really enjoyed the book recommended by my therapist. It was eye opening and a great start to healing myself and working on my issues. My only drawback is the amount of times the same message is re-said. I’m sure it is of value for people that need that to ingrain but it hurt the momentum of the progress a little for me. Nonetheless I have recommended this book to a number of people as I do find it of value!

Many of the points in this book hit home right away . Strongly recommend

People who have ongoing issues with depression, anxiety, self-destructive behaviors or destructive behaviors that damage relationships, who feel helpless and also confused by their repeated patterns will find this book most helpful. It will not only give steps toward enlightenment as to what is behind their defeating feelings, thoughts, and behaviors but also clearly takes the individual step by step toward developing and implementing tools that will lead to embracing an authentic life. A psychotherapist of many years specializing in the field of trauma, Robert Jackman has developed a masterful and coherent guide that is empathetically written and does not miss a beat to capture where the individual may be in the process of self-examination, discovering reality in a new way, and developing functional responses. Robert Jackman talks directly to the reader, reassuring that it is not a straight road but one that is taken courageously with lot of hidden twists and turns. He supports the reader from beginning to end. As a retired psychotherapist, I found reading it very helpful and only wished I would have had this book to read 30 years ago as a training guide.Joanne Kittel, Psychiatric Social Worker

great book if your willing to put in the work

Very disappointed by this book. After the too long first part of blah, blah, blah explaining the problem, I was waiting for a bit of concreteness but it never came. The author recounts her own life, that of other patients, and throws out generalities. A lot of fog in the end, which shows how little real knowledge there is of the subject. The only positive aspect of this book would be a little inspiration if you know absolutely nothing about the subject...

I am a woman in my 30s. My inner child, as I know now, has been in charge of all my life. I have come to understand that is why I have never "felt" like a grown up, or why I have never felt able to trust myself. Robert Jackman's empathetic and concise writing has supported me whilst I have learnt that "myself" has been in two warring parts for decades. I also bought the workbook, which I am still slowly plodding through even though I have finished the parent text. It is very helpful to have it confrm my understanding and to appreciate how much I have grown since I invested in this book at the beginning of the year.I highly recommend working through them simultaneously, because it has helped me face so many long buried truths about how my inner child was parented and what the impact has been on me as an adult. It has been absolutely invaluable because it hasn't felt like a "self-help" book, more an investment because it has felt like with Jackman's guidance, I have begun a meaningful conversation with my inner child for the first time and I honestly feel unburdened, because if you commit to this book, you are committing to hearing yourself. You will not regret it.

If you want to understand yourself better, become a better version of yourself or to just find some sort of peace in your life then this is a must read book.

Great self help book which helped deal with a lot of childhood truths.