Why Primal Work Matters to Me — and How It Changed My Life

A short interview with Jheel - Primal therapist, facilitator, organizer of Primal Retreat in The Netherlands.

1. You have a passion for Inner Child healing. I am curious to learn what is it that touches / inspires you about this work?

What really touches me about inner child work is how deeply it speaks to the world we’re living in right now.

We live in a time of technology, speed, and individualism — and at the same time there is so much loneliness, disconnection, division.

Disconnection from ourselves, from each other, and from nature.

For me, this work is about coming back to the essence of relationships - to self and to one another. Reconnecting with our hearts, our bodies, our emotions — especially the vulnerable parts that this world often ignores and replaces with efficiency and performance.

I feel that part of my work’s purpose is to help remember what our hearts truly long for. And that longing is love. Connection. Belonging. Presence.

We are deeply relational beings. The idea that we’re meant to be fully independent is, in many ways, a myth.

So much of what we struggle with in life has roots in our early relationships — in childhood — when our nervous systems, our sense of self, and our way of relating to the world were formed.

Wherever we weren’t seen, supported, protected, or where pain happened without repair, a part of us got stuck there. And that part is often still living inside us today.

In primal inner child work, when we reconnect with that child who still feels alone, overwhelmed, or abandoned, something profound happens.

We don’t erase the past — but we change how we relate to it.

And that creates real freedom. The freedom to finally grow up, to own our lives, and to respond to life from choice rather than repeating the same patterns that have been passed down for generations and that do not work today anymore, nor bring true fulfillment.

2. What was it that had you decide to jump into the Primal inner child healing process? Where were you at that particular point in your life?

I was at a real turning point in my life.

I had just ended a six-year relationship and realized — very clearly — that I had recreated my parents’ relationship almost copy-paste, especially the issues, the conflicts. I saw myself being very reactive, and eventually falling into deep depression. Seeing that was honestly shocking for me, and I knew something had to change.

At the same time, I wasn’t in contact with my mother. That was a big pain in my heart. Whenever we tried to reconnect, it ended in fighting and more hurt. I carried a lot of resentment and anger toward her, and I didn’t know how to move through that.

On the outside, my life looked fine. I was working in a corporate job, earning good money, very functional, busy, traveling. But on the inside, I felt lost. I didn’t really know who I was or what I was capable of. I experienced so much anxiety and shame on a daily basis. I still felt like a little girl, unconsciously looking for someone to save me.

Even though there were joyful moments, there was this constant feeling inside of me — is this really it? Is this how my life is going to be? And I just couldn’t accept that.

So I started searching for something different. For answers. For a way of living that felt like mine, not just the model I had inherited from my parents or the society I grew up in.

And in that sense, joining Primal was a continuation of something I’d always had in me — this rebellious part that left my country at 19 and refused to fully settle for a life that didn’t feel true.

3. After doing the program, what changed, what did you learn? How has it practically impacted you in your life?

One of the biggest changes for me was how I started seeing my parents.

I began to see them as humans — not just as my parents — and I noticed I no longer felt the need to change them.

During Primal, I was able to finally express and move a lot of built-up emotions toward my parents — anger, even rage, grief, pain. And that brought a deep sense of liberation, like dropping a huge weight off my shoulders. A huge burden I carried around for years.

Those emotions can still get triggered at times, but there’s much more space around them now. I don’t get lost in them the way I used to — they’re no longer running the show.

Today, I have loving relationships with both of my parents. I still sometimes get activated, but I can see the activation for what it is and step out of it more quickly. I can come back to the present moment, meet myself with compassion, and feel that compassion for them as well.

It no longer consumes me the way it used to.

I also learned something very important: insight without action doesn’t change much.

Once I understood how my childhood shaped my personality — the masks I was wearing, the ways I was forcing myself to be someone I wasn’t — I knew I was going to live differently.

So I left jobs that looked “safe” from the outside, and which would have made my mother proud, but weren’t aligned for me. I chose what I’m actually passionate about.

I left or changed relationships and friendships where I was shrinking, feeling not nourished, or repeating old patterns. I stopped drinking alcohol, I took up activities that truly nourish me (dancing, for one!) and started living much more intentionally and taking real care of myself.

I can be the loving caring adult to myself now that I often longed for from my parents or wished for in my partners. When I could truly feel love for myself and my body, and connect to others from that place of self-compassion, my relationships started transforming.

None of this happened overnight. Nor is it complete. But since Primal, it’s been a deep, ongoing process of transformation — one that keeps bringing me closer to myself.