Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions people actually send, answered plainly — including the ones about what this site cannot do.
What is the inner child, as this site uses the term?
A way of describing patterns you carry from earlier in life into the present — how you respond to disappointment, what you do when someone goes quiet, whether resting feels allowed. It is a reflective metaphor, not a medical diagnosis, not a measurable entity, and not proof that anything specific happened to you.
Is this therapy?
No. The Inner Child Healing is an educational self-reflection platform. Nothing here is psychotherapy, treatment, assessment or crisis care, and reading it does not create a professional relationship of any kind. If you are struggling to manage something safely, a qualified professional is the right place to take it.
Will the free check tell me what happened in my childhood?
No, and it is not built to. Eight questions cannot establish anything about your past. The check points to one reflection area that may be worth exploring right now — safety and reassurance, permission to have needs, boundaries, self-trust, rest without guilt, or play and emotional expression.
Do I need to give an email address to take the check?
No. There is no email field, no account and no payment on the free check. Your answers stay in your own browser and are never sent to us or to any analytics service.
What is the Inner Child Map, and what does it cost?
The Inner Child Map is the paid part of the site: a personalised, interactive self-reflection and reparenting practice built around your result. It is $9 as a one-time purchase. There is no subscription and nothing renews.
How is the paid product different from the free guides?
The free guides answer the question you searched for and give you real, usable exercises — nothing is held back to force a purchase. The Map is different in kind rather than in quantity: it is interactive, it adapts to your result, it keeps a private record of your own patterns over time, and it ends in a personal playbook rather than a reading list.
Where is my private writing stored?
In your own browser, on the device you used. Journal entries, reflections, letters and boundary notes are never uploaded, never placed in a URL, and never included in any analytics event. That also means clearing your browser data clears them, so export anything you want to keep.
Can inner child work make me feel worse?
It can bring up strong feelings, particularly the letter and memory-adjacent exercises. Every exercise on this site can be skipped, and several carry an explicit note to stop. If a practice consistently leaves you worse rather than clearer, stop it and consider talking to a professional.
Does this site assume my parents did something wrong?
No. Childhood is one influence among many, alongside temperament, later relationships, culture, health and current circumstances. You will not find a guide here that tells you your parents caused a present-day difficulty, because that is not something an article can know.
Do you diagnose attachment styles?
No. Attachment appears only as an educational framework, explained and cited. We do not run an attachment quiz and we do not assign anyone a style, because a short questionnaire is not a valid basis for that.
Who writes this?
The Inner Child Healing editorial team. We do not claim clinical credentials we do not have. Where a factual claim about psychology is made, it is sourced to a recognised authority such as the APA, the NHS, NIMH or peer-reviewed research, and the editorial policy explains how that works.
What if I am in crisis right now?
Please contact your local emergency number or a crisis line in your country immediately, and if you can, tell someone you trust. This site is not crisis care and should not be used as a substitute for it. There is a short page of guidance at /crisis-support/.
Can I get a refund on the Inner Child Map?
Yes. If it is not useful to you, email us within 30 days and we will refund the $9. We would rather do that than have you keep something that is not helping.
Still unanswered? Email us. If it is about how the guides are sourced, that is set out in the editorial policy; if it is about your data, it is on the privacy page.