I recently started noticing lots of posts about "inner child work" on social-media platforms—and then one of my favorite podcasters shared that she was going to a technology-free retreat to work on hers. What in the world is an inner child? I wondered. And why is it on so many people's minds?

Mental-health experts told me that one's inner child is the metaphorical part of themselves frozen in childhood, still clinging to the emotions, beliefs, and memories they had at that time. People who endured difficult experiences when they were young—like abuse, neglect, or losing a parent to illness—may have a wounded inner child driving their adulthood choices. Here's what else I learned:

• To figure out if you might benefit from inner child work, it can be helpful to ask yourself these questions: Do you often feel like a victim? Do you let others dictate how you feel? Do you frequently relive experiences that already happened?
• A mental-health professional can teach you how to reparent yourself, which means making sure you feel the love and safety you lacked during childhood.
• Inner child work can yield a number of benefits, including the capacity to have healthier adult relationships, a new sense of autonomy and competence, and the ability to be more spontaneous and playful.

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