The Wisdom of the Inner Child
Your Inner Child is part of you. It holds secrets, hidden truths, and sometimes a clear-eyed view of the world that can be a joy to be reconnected with. But when a time-frozen aspect of the inner child assumes executive control and makes decisions from a place of pain or unhealthy emotions, it is time to seek a therapist.
Peter Mabbutt, President of the British Society of Clinical Hypnosis, invites you to join this exciting Masterclass which takes you into the world of your inner child and helps you to identify the difference between the adult self and the inner child.
This masterclass will also introduce you to your inner adult. You will gain insight into the triggers that lie at the root of anger, fear, anxiety, and jealous responses and acquire a set of transformational tools that will help you to assist your clients.
Peter will share experiences from his own practice and demonstrate the importance of building bridges between the inner adult and inner child. You will come away with insights into how you can help your clients and others lead a more balanced way of living and which brings healthy emotions, laughter, fun, and success into their lives.
You will also gain insights about how the damaged inner child can contaminate the inner adult, which sometimes give rise to unhealthy actions such as addiction and risk-taking behaviours. Healing the inner child will stop the contamination by time-frozen emotions which often creep in and influence adult decisions. You will learn to identify this from the words your clients use, particularly through the expression of generalised unhealthy concepts such as nobody loves me, I am a failure, and nothing I do is good enough. Healing the inner child will liberate the adult self and bring emotional comfort and closure to these old emotional pains.
The Masterclass will also introduce you to the concept of dysfunctional families. The wounded inner child has often experienced shaming of their emotions, put-downs, and the absence of a safe space place to grow emotionally.
We live in an increasingly multicultural world which can have impacts on our clients. Peter will explore the impact of growing up in different cultures and how adult expectations or childhood interpretations can create an imbalance between the inner child and inner adult.
So what are the key takeaway from this masterclass?
Peter will share the most important skills necessary to reparent the inner child. You will learn how to identify whether a symptom originates in childhood and if it does, how to build a bridge to the inner child and encourages them to open up and share their emotions with you.
Another key learning point is that indicators can sometimes be physical symptoms. This is often indicative of unconscious and repressed emotion. But once identified the treatment is similar to the way we comfort and heal a dysfunctional emotional part and or unhealthy behaviours.
Perhaps the most important takeaway is the skill of effective reparenting. The adult part of the mind is uniquely equipped to help the wounded inner child recognise their feelings and provide comfort and support to the inner pain. Sometimes reparenting is about giving the inner child permission to start the work of healing. But often, the therapist will need to teach the adult part the skills necessary for reparenting. The therapist will then remain as the mentor or support system as the adult part nurtures the inner child in the role of a loving adult or parent.
Empowering clients in this way is extremely rewarding. Therapists will have the opportunity to watch their clients grow up and heal in the safe space of the therapy room. As clients acquire the confidence to care for their inner emotional selves, they will begin to treat themselves with more respect and to engage with the people who matter in their lives in a more healthy and kind manner.