Gifts From The Child Within - A Recovery Workbook

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The Concept of the Child Within

“…the child symbolizes the pre-conscious and the post-conscious essence of man.”

—C.G. Jung

When I was a little girl, my family lived near a reservoir called Puddingstone Dam. It was used for recreational fishing, boating, and swimming by the local communities. On hot summer days my Mother, two sisters, and I would wait for Daddy to come home from work then head off for our favorite swimming spot. The water deepened gradually where we swam, so I was able to “fake it” for many years. You see, I was almost nine years old before learning to really swim.

I will never forget how much I wanted to please my Father by swimming across the roped-off area. Even my younger sister was swimming and diving off the raft out in the deep end by three years old! I desperately wanted to receive the praise and smiles she was commanding from Daddy. I was so afraid to bring both my feet up to kick that for many years I would keep one foot on the bottom while kicking on the surface with the other foot making it look like I was swimming. Then one summer Daddy decided to test me. He literally picked me up and threw me into the deep water. I immediately learned to swim with both feet kicking high!

What I remember most about this swimming episode was not the trauma of how I learned to swim but my “feelings” surrounding the need for Daddy's approval. As a child, I would have done anything he asked to get his approval—and I did. He was a big-hearted, self-engrossed alcoholic and I bought right into the typical codependent, self-effacing, self-sacrificing role of the child adult, later becoming an adult child.

Through my adult years, I studied, researched, analyzed, have been analyzed, and worked with my personal childhood trauma resulting from living in a dysfunctional family. I learned a great deal about my child within and the different concepts for healing and recovery. During the 1980s to present, I have been fortunate to experience and clinically introduce a healing process which directly addresses the phenomenon of healing the wounded inner child. Whether seeking recovery from drug or alcohol abuse, codependency, victimization, physical, emotional or spiritual abuse, or the trauma of living in a dysfunctional family, Re-Creation Therapy™ may be the long awaited guidance for which you have been searching.

Can you remember your childhood? Can you consciously recall a particular age and sense your emotions at that time in your life? If you were asked to close your eyes and visualize yourself at the age of five or twelve, could you sense or see yourself at this age? Can you imagine the surroundings where you grew up and/or the emotions you felt? Can you remember the qualities you liked or disliked about your mother, father, relatives, teachers, or friends during your childhood years? There may be several different memories within each year of your childhood. All these, as well as, the ones you do not recall are held tight within your subconscious mind by your child within.

As we become adults, we learn to put aside our childhood, believing it to be over and that the past no longer matters. However, the child within us still plays, laughs, cries, yells, desires attention and needs love. Our inner child is usually adventuresome, curious, fearful and nervous, inventive, caring and compassionate; but most importantly, it is a part of us. The experiential exercises, visualizations, and techniques within this book will help you rediscover your child within, which in turn will lead you to forgotten memories, unfulfilled dreams, past woundedness, and outmoded beliefs which may be blocking a more creative, successful adult life.

Conceptual Background

The concept of the inner child is not a new one. When renowned psychotherapist Carl G. Jung talked of the “inner child archetype,” he was referring to the universal unconscious mindset found within the “Collective Unconscious.” However, Jung also noted an individual inner child, a child which actually exists within each adult. Jung explained, “The child motif is a picture of certain forgotten things in our childhood…. [it] represents the preconscious, childhood aspect of the collective psyche.”

One noted psychoanalyst of the 1950s, Eric Berne, spoke of the aspect of the “child” as one of the ego components in his Transactional Analysis (TA) process. The other two ego components of TA are the “parent” and the “adult.” Berne's TA theory of human personality demonstrates how each ego state directs our individual lives. Berne's intent was to find “the briefest, most economical way for his clients to increase their autonomy by reawakening their potential for awareness, spontaneity, and intimacy—capacities which are inherent in all of us, but which are sometimes limited as a result of the stresses and traumas of growing up.”

Many feel Berne's personality theory to be a close glimpse of the child within concept but disagree with Berne's labeling the inner child an “ego state.” Perhaps the word ego is too strong when describing these three personality components and the term “aspect” might be more suitable to denote the fine line divisions between the adult, parent, and child selves. These three aspects are parts of our personality and are linked to an “inner core”—the higher spiritual-self—which is most readily connected to the child within.

Charles Whitfield, doctor and author, introduces the “healing nature” of the child within through the recovery process found in the widely emerging Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoA) groups. In his book, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families, Whitfield states,

“When the Child Within is not nurtured or allowed freedom of expression, a false or codependent self emerges. We begin to live our lives from a victim stance, and experience difficulties in resolving emotional traumas. The gradual accumulation of unfinished mental and emotional business can lead to chronic anxiety, fear, confusion, emptiness and unhappiness.”

We can recapture our emotional stability and independence-of-self by allowing ourselves to remember, experience, and communicate with this hidden child within who learned so aptly to adapt to his or her environment as a means of tactical survival. During a workshop I attended (May 1990) Whitfield commented that most alcoholics start out being a “child adult” learning to cope with many adult responsibilities as a child, then later, they become an “adult child.”

There are many therapists who have given us insight into the concept of the child within, one such master of hypnosis is Milton Erickson. Erickson was one of the earliest founders of the child within concept via his renown work with Hypnotherapy. His research and clinical work with literally thousands of patients has revealed truly miraculous techniques and methods for healing and recovery.

One of Erickson's more noted case histories exploring the child within is that of “The February Man” in which he draws on psychotherapeutic age regression techniques. One of his methods surrounding this important work is the hypnotic tool of “reframing” (developing new frames of reference for the past). Erickson demonstrates just how inseparable the mind/body phenomenon is in this case of a client who has a fear of being able to adequately raise her child-to-be because of her lack of secure familial ties in childhood.

During therapy, Erickson introduced to his client's “subconscious mind” a friend, a confidant. This fatherly figure was brought into the age regression sessions while she was in a hypnotic state. Over a succession of meetings, Erickson repeatedly employed techniques of age regression incorporated with an amnesia effect so his client would not recall this fictitious acquaintance in a conscious waking state of mind. The use of age regression facilitated Erickson's success in generating past real-life memories which were intertwined with the use of indirect hypnotic suggestions regarding the fictional “February Man” (later named because he had met this client in the month of February).

Erickson demonstrated perfectly with this case that there is no separation of mind/body—for change in belief structure precedes the body's experience. In other words, belief precedes experience and change. When Erickson's client firmly embraced on a subconscious level that she had been aided and cared for by the February Man in her childhood, she was able to re-create her fear and apprehension into stability and confidence in her ability to raise her unborn child.

Re-Creation Therapy™ employs a form of Hypnotherapy which incorporates the main theme of age regression and reframing employed by Erickson. This process can be executed alone by using self-hypnosis (autohypnosis) or with the assistance of a Hypnotherapist. This emotional release therapy introduces tools to acknowledge, meet, and communicate with one's inner child. A new frame of reference is established which brings with it a clear, enlightened view of who you are becoming.

You can release...