The inner child

Our inner child is the aspect of our psyche that keeps all our trauma but also the qualities of our essence, the potential of our soul. To heal this younger part of us means to transform the pain from the past, to love ourselves, to connect to our unique essence. It also means to reparent our inner child, start taking care of her needs and learn to set healthy boundaries. In other words, we can give to ourselves now the love, attention, safety, emotional comfort and support that most probably were not available to us as children.

Primal therapy was developed by the American psychotherapist Arthur Janov in the 1960s who helped people express their repressed emotions in a safe environment, connecting to their authentic self.

Childhood deconditioning

The process of healing childhood trauma is based on Premartha and Svarup’s childhood deconditioning therapy. It consists of 10 individual sessions in which we go back in time from 12 years to the prenatal period, exploring and gradually transforming the childhood adaptations – the layers of false selves which the child had to develop in order to survive and belong to the family. These coping mechanisms no longer serve us but, in our adult life, we very often identify with the wounded child, the abandoned child, the angry child, the helpless child. Moreover, we tend to judge ourselves in the same way as our caretakers used to judge us.

When we connect to our inner child, we open space for our essential gifts such as wisdom, vitality, joy, freedom, courage, trust, spontaneity, creativity, settling healthy boundaries. We connect to our needs. We connect to our self in the present, to our resources.

The structure of the process is as follows:

1. Meet your inner child – guided regression
2. Understanding the inner child – re-awakening the implicit memory
3. Feeling your the child – exploring the childhood conditioning and re-discovering the qualities of the essence
4. Liberating the inner child – a body-oriented session for releasing blocked energy
5. Exploring the emotional and energetic boundaries in the family
6. Catharsis session 1 – working with anger in a safe environment
7. Catharsis session 2
8. Healing the inner child – completing the interrupted reach-out movement to the parents
9. Integrating the inner child – birth
10. Integrating the gifts of the child

It is recommended that we have a session once a week. Sometimes additional sessions are required e.g. if we touch upon a traumatic experience that needs more time to process.

In this process, I work with resource-oriented approaches, trauma-informed approach Compassionate Inquiry developed by Dr. Gabor Mate, arttherapy, gestaltherapy, guided meditations, vizualizations.

I’ll be happy to support you in this healing journey back home to our true self.