Core wounds, aka inner child wounds, are lingering emotional injuries or traumas that often originate from unhealed (and often unacknowledged) neglect and/or abuse in our youth.
These unhealed wounds, although stemming from past experiences, can profoundly influence our current behaviors, views, and relationships. They're often, despite being subconscious, the drivers of our choices in life and in love.
Some causes of core wounds include: abandonment (physical or emotional), betrayal, neglect, invalidation of one's worthiness, or being repeatedly shamed. This can lead to low self-esteem as an adult, anxiety, depression, fears of abandonment or rejection, difficulty trusting others, self-sabotaging behaviors such as addiction, perfectionism or people-pleasing behaviors to prove one's worth, and even physical ailments.
You can see why addressing and healing these wounds is important for both individual and relationship health!
By addressing these wounds (preferably with the help of a mental health professional), we gain greater self-awareness, improve our emotional well-being, develop the resilience and strength to face current challenges, improve our self-confidence and trust in ourselves, gain compassion for others and their woundedness, and are able to stay present in the here and now—as opposed to responding to current situations from an inner child's sense of neediness, lack, or distrust.
To quote William Faulkner: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
That is why we must excavate those buried wounds, face them, and heal what needs to be healed. Our well-being depends on it.