Inner Child work has been recommended by therapists and healers all over the world especially currently in our expansion and awakenings. We are all doing the work of meeting our inner child and acknowledging the stories being ran by them from past hurt, neglect or abuse that we’ve gone through as children that is supposedly wreaking havoc on our current lives. Doing hours of meditation and possibly hypnosis then cognitively sorting it out with our therapists or our journal are already a really noble and honorable effort on our part, yes. However, I feel like, and this is my personal insight, that not a lot of us are taught how to continue to develop that inner child connection after we check-in or have the big discovery of the stories they’ve been carrying. At least not in the body. Huge release and then crickets. Maybe some of us continue to explore the inner teenager with rage and oppression. Or maybe some of us still find that lack of zest after the big release.
I suspect the missing outlet here is PLAY. Here’s how I realized that. After my daughter’s exposure to play therapy for her select mutism and reading up on how parents can utilize the tools and concepts from Play Therapy, I quickly saw how play is the way children communicate AND it’s how they handle emotional distress. If you give a child the time and attention to play, they end up feeling so much better. For example, we can work with them to play role-reversal to help neutralize how powerless they could’ve felt during a traumatic experience that occurred. By doing that we give them the opportunity to be the powerful one by just exaggeratingly (yes I possibly could have made up that word) pretending and having those emotions play out themselves thus leaving the body and closing the vicious feedback loop of powerlessness. Because most kids don’t typically know yet how to upfront say “I’m feeling sad/afraid because of this…” Here’s where we can utilize play to have them reconnect to their brilliance and fill their cups. It’s actually quite fascinating if you could see this be done in real time.
So how can we implement this truth to our own inner child and in our own lives and why would we even try?
Let’s back track a bit. I am a huge Julia Cameron fan and love her work in The Artist Way. After going through the curriculum three times in my life, each transformation embellished the simple truth that my inner artist is my inner child because somewhere along the way we were shamed to express ourselves/ our art. And now we do the work to dismantle a lot of the walls we put up as guards to shield us away from more shame. In the lens of healing the inner artist, we must take ourselves out on artist dates to explore new things and let ourselves be open to inspiration so that we could create again and again because that’s our right. That’s why we are here as humans. To create! Hold that thought.
Back to play therapy and adding this notion of our inner child being our inner artist, we can see the link between our birthright to be creative and express ourselves and the importance of play used to integrate life itself can truly offer a child an opportunity to flourish.
Wow. Let that sink in for a moment.
We can flourish in our lives by inviting in more play– Creative play.
Reparenting yourself can be so confusing but what makes it less confusing is being so playful with your daily tasks and life that you don’t even have to ponder whether it’s good enough or not. It simply is. Ahhh… such a fucking relief.
So what now… Journal and ask yourself: how can I make today’s tasks more playful? How can I make this fun for myself? Maybe start a list of what your inner child/younger version of yourself liked to do. What brought you joy as a child? Is it singing and dancing? Making art? Coloring outside the lines and making your siblings or parents laugh? Whatever those activities are, do them more often on a regular basis.
Maybe start reading parenting books if you’re analytical like me and get turned on by knowledge and wisdom from other people that have been there. Actually reading any parenting book, helps me acknowledge and repair my own psychological patterns that stemmed from my own childhood.
And if you have the absolutely beautiful honor of being a parent yourself, look to and play with your kids. They are our greatest teachers.
I hope this article from my heart has inspired you to move into a more fun space for you and your inner child. If it did please let me know via DM or email me at hello@sparklebychoice.com. I would LOVE to hear about your inner child/artist journey.
Until next time!
