Working creatively with clients and their ‘inner child parts’

The ‘inner child’ is the childlike, usually hidden part of a person’s personality. It can manifest as a playful creative part of the self and/or as a fearful, hurt and angry child, left holding shame, guilt, rage, loneliness and more, due to their adverse childhood experiences. Terrence Real, in his book ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ observed that whenever there is an inner lost vulnerable child part, a harsh child part will emerge as a consequence. Connecting with one’s own inner child parts can be both very painful, as well asvery rewarding and healing.

This training will help to illuminate the missing experiences of the ‘inner children’ and illustrate how we might be able to facilitate a client to learn to recognise their ‘inner child parts’ as essential to their wellbeing. We can foster an understanding that these inner child parts need support, compassion and healing too.

Together we will

• Explore how the ‘inner child parts’ get created
• Gain knowledge about the developmental stages and concept of missing experiences
• Exploring ways of externalising the inner lost and harsh child parts
• Gain confidence in resourcing the client to undertake this work
• Explore how we can use creative means to communicate with the ‘inner child parts’
• Practice using different creative resources to facilitate a client’s development of compassion for their own ‘inner child parts’

The course is a mixture of guided and experiential learning. Theres will engage an actor / or use a recording of a role-play to help demonstrate the theory as well as give an opportunity to reflect on your practice.

Theres Fickl is a counsellor with 25 years experience of working with people with trauma-related mental health issues. She creates a supportive learning environment and uses creative means in form of drawings and diagrams to illustrate complex ideas in a way that they can be understood. Theres will share from her work with her own clients to help deepen the theoretical knowledge. Theres engages an actor to help demonstrate the theory in role-plays.

Host or Publisher Greater Manchester Rape Crisis