After you do some inner-child work, read some stories about what other successful people did to heal. One book I read was saying (more or less) “so what if you had a bad childhood. You are an adult now. Don’t let what happened in the past take away form what you want to do now, and in the future.” The book didn’t say, don’t do inner child work. It said do some but get into adult mode where you are in control of your now and your future. It warned about getting stuck in the past.
While you don't want to get "stuck" in the past, you do have to identify what lessons that healthy people get in their childhoods that you missed out on, and what bad lessons you got on doing dumb things or believing false things that healthy people aren't subjected to, and get some "remedial education".
Conflict avoidance, extreme anxiety, controlling and manipulative behavior, distancing or hiding behavior, or other types of counterproductive behavior and thought patterns are generally things that the people displaying them have been in the habit of doing since childhood, and at that time there seemed to be a perfectly good reason for acting and thinking that way... reasons that either never existed in reality or no longer apply today. Generally you won't even notice you're doing it, or you'll think that there's nothing wrong with it or nothing you could do about it (you're just that way, you were born that way, etc.) until you take a look at your original motivations and see them as illusory or outdated.
So you don't so much put your childhood "behind you" as you learn, today, the things that you should have learned then but didn't.
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
