Adnan Malik’s inner child writes him a letter

KARACHI: Adnan Malik is an artist. Be it his productions, social causes or social media posts, he knows how to put pen to paper. Having spoken about his own battles with mental health before, Adnan Malik posted an insightful caption on Instagram recently, accompanied by two pictures, one of him as a child, and as an adult. Titled ‘Here’s looking at you kid”, the post delved into his past, and a particular session from therapy.

“A breakthrough moment 2 years into therapy was when inching towards the end of a session, hand on my heart, inner child & adult both activated, a penny dropped,” he wrote. “For years I had been taking my wounded inner child into relationships looking to heal him. But now my therapist had alluded to the fact that relationships were not spaces to carry unhealed trauma.”

Like so many of us, Malik too, was afraid and insecure of who was going to take care of his inner child then. “It took a few seconds & then my right hand clasped my heart. A fat tear shot down my cheek. I took a deep breath into my belly and answered beside myself. “I will take care of me” The words dropped out in front of my mouth like uncomfortably large, tangible objects. I could see their outlines and sense their weight,” recalled Malik.

Moving on from the moment of realisation that he was going to have to take care of himself, Malik shared with his followers some key points he learnt during a course on Self Development. “One of the most tender exercises in the course was writing a letter from our young selves to current selves about what they NEED from us.” Malik went down to list some things his younger self wanted to say to his current self. These included the need to show up whole, the realization that we cannot change people but we can change ourselves, and to not set any pre conditions for love.

Malik concluded his personal note with a question for his followers. “What are some of the things your inner child would say to current you in a letter?”