Forget healing your inner child; heal your inner teenager instead

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Welcome to Creatives Anonymous, a weekly newsletter that explores what it means to be a modern-day creative. It inspires, encourages, and empowers readers to take back their creative power.

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When many embark on a journey to recover our creativity, we’re often told we’re healing our “inner child.” 

Julia Cameron makes this comparison throughout The Artist’s Way, emphasizing that our inner child is synonymous with play. In the context of creativity, your inner child represents your sense of exploration, fearlessness, and risk-taking. 

As creatives, we not only need to heal our inner child, but we also need to heal our inner teenager. 

Healing your inner teenager means reclaiming your sense of identity. 

Your inner teenager is about realigning with who you are. It’s about embodying the most authentic version of yourself. It’s about rediscovering what makes you who you are and leaning into it unapologetically. 

There’s a reason we associate teenagers with being rebellious—it’s because that’s when we’re actively shaping our identity. We’re questioning everything we know, discovering our interests, and forming our own opinions and beliefs about how we see the world. And a lot of these beliefs and views carry us through to adulthood. 

We often don’t realize it until adulthood, but we develop the foundation of our core being when we’re teenagers. 

We have the best, most authentic sense of self when we’re young. We know exactly who we are and don’t need to succumb to societal pressures to fit in and be like everyone else. We’re more in tune with our interests and don’t have to worry about making the “wrong” decisions or seeking approval from our peers or social media. 

When we’re teenagers, we’re ok being the weird one, the misfit. We embrace being labeled as the outcast. However, that shifts when we become an adult. We can choose to reinvent ourselves and no longer lean into that label, striving to fit in instead of standing out.

At the same time, there is more pressure to fit in, whether it’s our opinions, what we wear, or how we look. We’re ostracized, criticized, and judged if we’re different from everyone else. It becomes harder to live authentically without shame, fear, or embarrassment. So, we succumb to it, hiding behind a mask until our personality eventually gets stripped to where we no longer know who we are. 

At some point, we get tired of hiding. We get tired of drowning in the sea of sameness and being another face in the crowd. And we get tired of not having a secure sense of self.

But it’s not impossible to realign ourselves. It takes a lot of inner work, observation, courage, and self-awareness. It involves us journeying back in time to find out who we used to be and try to become that person again. It means revisiting old work and old work. It means exploring questions like, “I really liked doing X. Why don’t I do that anymore?” It means paying attention to what lights us up and chasing our curiosities. 

Whether it’s getting back into a hobby you put off to climb the corporate ladder or designing a space and wardrobe to reflect better who you are on the inside, healing your inner teenager gives you a chance to develop taste, personality, and a unique POV. You become a more interesting person because you aren’t afraid to show that you have interests. 

When we heal our inner teenager, we tune out the noise and have unwavering conviction in our decisions and interests. It means being bold enough to share our opinions and thoughts, no matter how different they might be. Healing our inner teenager is about building self-trust, feeling safe, and courageously showing up exactly as we are.  

CREATIVE CORNER

• 🎞️ What I’m Consuming: I rewatched Jobs, the 2013 biopic on Steve Jobs, and got SO inspired by the themes presented in the movie.

• 💡 What I’m Loving: I never thought I’d admit this, but working out. They just opened a Planet Fitness in my neighborhood, and I’ve already been there quite a few times. It does WONDERS for my mental health and creativity.

• 🎨 What I’m Working On: Documenting December memories

• 💭 Weekly Musing:

Thank you 💕

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I’m so grateful for all of your support!

Alexa Phillips is a writer, brand strategist, and multi-passionate creative. She is the founder and Chief Brand Architect at Bright Eyes Creative, a creative studio that helps creative brand leaders build media-first brands that position them as tastemakers by breaking through the noise with content that’s impossible to ignore. 

Where to find me:

• Check out my new offer, Media Multiverse Plotting Calls, where I can help you plan your entire media ecosystem for 2025 in 60 minutes.

• Listen to my recent podcast episodes here.

• Subscribe to my other newsletter, The Underground, a weekly zine where I teach brand leaders how to break through the noise and leave their mark through media, marketing & brand strategy. 

• Grab my Brand Realignment Workbook to help realign your brand to build your dream business.