Every person has spent a full year being every age up until their current age. The experience of being each age lives on within our memories. Therefore, in one sense, we have not one inner child, but many. Ideally, we would be aware of being every age, living every day with our entire being, with all of our experience. The problem is, many people have suffered some degree of emotional trauma at some time during their lives. If, for example, at the age of four, your mother died and there was no one to take her place for an prolonged period of time, the experience of being a four-year-old may become locked away in your subconscious mind, protected by an ego defence. This defence is erected by you in an attempt to avoid any further emotional pain. In this state of guardedness, however, nothing can get through to the four-year-old inner child so it can be healed. Only when a person reaches adulthood and becomes aware of the hurt four-year-old, can the healing begin.