 Another really powerful way is to encourage them to make a take ownership of their own story that they wished they'd had instead of perhaps the more toxic one. You know, and I think that's another really important and very powerful therapeutic approach, which is called narrative therapy, which we could call storytelling. And encourage them to take ownership of a new story. Yeah. But of course, then they'll have to let go of the other one. And that often is the difficult part. That's the inner child work. Yeah, yeah. We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is the therapy show behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to the next episode of the therapy show behind closed doors with the fabulous and delightful Mr Bob Cook. I'm not saying wonderful this week. And what we're going to be doing in this episode, episode 69 is how to work with the inner child in the therapy room, which we do a lot of really. Yeah, I was thinking of the words exquisite is another word. I feel quite delicious today. I had a Pilates session this morning. So I feel sort of quite free relaxed. Yeah, delicious is a nice word. I like delicious delicious is a good word. Yeah, yeah. So I've been doing that and I've been teaching students supervision how to do supervision and supervision certificate. So I've had a good day. Getting to the subject. Yes. Well, I picked this one is that you're correct. I think most people listening will probably know what is meant by working with the inner child. Yeah, necessarily come from transaction analysis and where you talk about working with a child eager state. People know about what is meant working with the inner child. Just in case they don't. It means working with the younger self. Yeah, it was working in a developmental way. So, if you're a transaction analyst, you would think about the child eager state. So when you think of the inner child, you think about working in TA, you think about working with the child. But the next question, of course, the developmental question is, how old is the, you know, the the state you're going to visit. But generally working with the inner child means working developmentally with the younger self. So we're looking in the past. Is that how you see it? Yes, yeah, definitely. When people say working with the inner child. I don't often then go and talk about what age. No, the reality of course is that we're going to work with the past. We can work with the child in many different ages. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so three, six. Nine, whatever age we're going to regress to in the process. I mean, the client's going to go regress to. So even though people use that generic term in working with the inner child, I think more specifically it's interesting to ask what age we're talking about. Yeah. And usually my professional experience is linked to the trauma. So what age developmentally is the deficit or the trauma that we're talking about. And that's usually where we end up going to. Yeah. And the client will give you clues in the body language as well, I would imagine. So how young they actually are. Say a little bit more, I agree with you. Um, just, you know, I've had clients when we've been doing in-depth work where they kind of lift the feet up and they're curled up in a ball on the edge of the chair. And I don't want to say the fetal position, but you can tell that they're quite young by. Yeah, even the tone of voice that they're using might go high pitched. So with those clues, I mean, you can ask what the age are, but of course, if it's none verbal, you won't get much of a response. But the younger they are, does that then determine the transactions that you use, for example? Yeah. Yeah. I think my intention would be, I know we touched on this on the previous podcast about having a low calm voice and, you know, I might. Maybe lean forward into them a bit more with a more nurturing approach. And I would imagine that the younger the developmental work with the child that you're dealing with, the sentence constructions will become shorter. Yeah. And more based at the age that you're aiming to work with the child. You know, dependent on where the client is a lot of the time, they do go quiet. They don't know, you know, if you're firing questions at them, they shove their shoulders and, like you said, maybe being non verbal or they don't know what the answer is. You know, I can see that you're visibly upset, what's upset you, and they don't necessarily know what that is. That's absolutely correct. And there's lots of feelings. I just feel this way. So if you're working with the inner child, whatever developmental age we're talking about needs to be methodology of how to get there. The language we might use is regression, but we need to have some methods or methodology on how to get to the inner child. We can work out what we're going to do when we get there, but we need to talk about how we get there in the first place. Yeah. I'm still thinking about working developmentally within a child and go into the traumatic places we talk about. Do you have any particular techniques that you use or any particular ways that you think about methodologically in terms of how to get the client to go to those places? Other than, like, you know, using my voice and lowering the tone and things like that, often this happens naturally without me consciously attempting to regress. The more disturbed a person is, the more spontaneous regression there is. Yeah. And that's because they don't have such access to a healthy or robust adult. You know, the grass for an adult is more fragile. So they're more likely to have a spontaneous regression. I think there are other things as well as what you're saying. So I'll give a list of them. I think one of them is through relaxation techniques. Now you might want to call that hypnotic induction. Either way, helping the client relax. Or helping them actually through breathing exercises. Music is another way to help people relax. Helping a person relax is really important when you start doing this work, because if they are not relaxed, they're going to be more defensive and this type of work is going to be harder. Yeah. So relaxation is really important. Secondly, another technique a lot of people use, by the way, is what I would call guided fantasy. Other people might call imagery work. Other people might just save fantasy work. But these other another word might be used to some means the same thing visualizations. I know you do a lot of this visualizations. I have done in the past. I think the way that I use visualizations, if anything, is in conversation if they're talking about when they were younger is to get them to picture their younger self. Yes, absolutely. And then what will you do? It depends how the client reacts to that. But I'll kind of then, rather than leave them there if they're feeling uncomfortable or in an overwhelmed state, then maybe talk about what would you now want to say to the child at that age and kind of half in the present and half in the past if that makes sense. So there's lots of visualizations around. So for example, you could say, okay, we're going to need to go back and look at the trauma or whatever we're talking about in terms of deficits. So just imagine, for example, that part of yourself which is hurting and, you know, has pain, just imagine her or him, and let's go back a little bit. And as you sort of imagine him and her, I'd like you to just put a, perhaps that part of you in a safe place. Yeah. So find a particular safe place. And just tell me where that safe place is. You could have the safe place in this room or maybe a safe place somewhere else, but tell me where you put that part of yourself that hurts so much. That's what I mean by visualizations or imagery work. It's a way of taking the client back in a safe way. So they are in charge of the process. They take that part of the self back to a safe place wherever that is. You can say, oh, now where are you? Tell me a bit about it. And they might say though, I don't know, a place which they've been happy in their history or a safe container anyway, always safe place in the room. And now tell me a little bit more about where the hurt is. So you're going back gently and you're helping them take ownership of a safe place in the process. You're not just, I think it's really important to have them going back to a safe place or place which is really positive for them. Yeah, because often when they do go back, it is to the trauma and it is to the events and, you know, like you said, the hurt and the pain and the scare that was involved with that. Yeah. I like to take them back to a safe place and when they're in that safe place, often younger by the way now, developmentally, because they've started to relax, started to find a safe place, started to take that part of themselves which needs healing or hurt back to a different age. Yeah. Now, what would you say to that part of you that's hurting so much? Or what's happening at the moment when you think about that part of you that's been hurt? So you're taking them back to imagery or visualization. Another way is to get them to visualize someone who's quite powerful, somebody who they want on their side and or an ally or yourself as the therapist and get them to go back in time to meet if it was a, you know, dealing with abusers, you know, you could get the therapist to talk instead of you, instead of the client, sorry, the inner self to the user. So, you know, visualization work, imagery work, they're all important ways to help the client go back. Another, I think, really powerful way, by the way, is what I would call art therapy. Yeah. And often when you do art therapy, by the way, one tip is to ask the person to do the imagery or whatever we're going to talk about here with their non-dominant hand. Well, that's, I've not heard that before. Yeah, so I might hand it, but strongly. Yeah. So I then would encourage the person to do with the left hand. Now, some things happen once you start doing that. Often it takes the person back to the struggles that had anyway. I can imagine. Yeah. And there's quite a lot of books, books written about art therapy with the non-dominant hand and how that aids regression. So art therapy, I think, is a very safe and positive way to work with the inner child through symbolism, through, you know, or all those fragmented selves as they might write down on paper, for example. I like that way. And it's a good technique into regression. Yeah. I've seen art therapy done and witnessed it where somebody was asked to draw themselves on the page and how big they see themselves. And it was interesting that it was really small and just in the bottom court and things like that. Yeah. And then what you might do is say, OK, so that's really interesting here. How about you talk to yourself? Yeah. You know, you can take it further. Yeah. That's what we would call here, you and me would call it inner child work. Yeah. It's very powerful. Yeah. And, you know, it's, I suppose, you know, getting them to draw themselves and, you know, talk about how they feel being that size and, you know, that position on the page and the colours and all those sorts of things. There's so much that you can get from art, however it's done. But I've not heard about it being done with a non-dominant hand before. Yeah. And there's quite a few books written about that. Yeah. That's interesting. Because again, it kind of takes the pressure off when somebody's drawing things or, again, it's a safe space, really. Yeah. And if you do the non-dominant hand straight away, they ask, how can I, you will get in touch quicker with their vulnerable self. Yeah. As I said, I was earlier on in this podcast, I was doing Pilates this morning. And I'm very dominantly right handed and all the way through the, through my own body and doing some work or looking at, you know, stretches with the right and the left. And I felt more, I mean, it isn't about regressing when you do Pilates, but I could feel more vulnerable with the left side because it wasn't so much in charge. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that goes for a lot of us that one side is more dominant than the other and it's not just left or right handed. Like you said, it's literally down the whole body. Yeah. So if you can get in touch with the vulnerable self, that will lead to the younger self. And then you can encourage the person to, you know, not just talk about the trauma, but basically maybe talk to the different parts of the self. Yeah. Part of it with me when, when a client has regressed is to encourage them to be compassionate and show self love. Yeah, part of themselves because often there's a lot of guilt and a lot of shame and, you know, responsibility and could I have done it different and all those sort of things. Yeah. And I think one of the really most powerful techniques when you work with the inner child is to help the younger self have a different narrative. Yeah. Which is more positive. Yeah. What it often is, is the negative narrative of the parent, which they've taken on as their own, which actually is. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And that for me is a big part of any work that I do is talking about self love and compassion and visualizing that younger self and what, what maybe they needed then that they didn't get. See that's all in a child work. Yeah. You're doing it. Yeah. Another sort of technique or way of helping us get to the inner child is through what is often called narrative therapy, which is really storytelling. And through stories, you can really often get to the younger developmental part of the child. And, you know, that's lots of storytelling, not only telling stories, but another really powerful way is to encourage them to make take ownership of their own story. That they wished they'd had instead of perhaps the more toxic one. You know, and I think that's another really important and very powerful therapeutic approach, which is called narrative therapy, which we could call storytelling and encourage them to take ownership of a new story. Yeah. But of course, then they'll have to let go of the other one. And that often is the difficult part. That's the inner child work. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because we all, we all have our own narrative and we all have our own story about how things were and it does. It kind of seeps into our subconscious and it does become part of us. Absolutely. And often with a narrative therapy, you can get to their birth story. Yeah. And what they think of their name. And out of 10 to one Jackie, you know, if you go down that path, you will find amazing. It's very powerful. Amazing emotions about, you know, people's image of their own name, what that means and their stories and their birth myths and all that's in a child work. Because, you know, they are powerful the stories that we have around our birth. Oh, very, very, very much. Yeah. It lays the foundation for going forward. Yeah, and many people have been adopted have been fostered who had attachment lectures, who have toxic histories. They have such which stories about their own name. Yeah, it means for them. That's really a child work. Yeah. Because often when you talk into a client and say, you know, are there any stories around your birthday, you know, their initial reaction is, no, not really. But then the more you talk about it and the more you discuss it. It's kind of like, I remember that being spoken about or I remember that being said about, you know, when I was born and how I was born and what was going on at the time that I was born. Right, all that. And, you know, you know, it's funny you said that because I was given the name Albert, you know, and that was after my grandfather who was the black sheep with the family. And I'm sure, I'm sure, you know, that's, that's, and you get the whole story of why they've lived up to their grandfathers. Yeah. You know, script of being the black sheep, for example. Yeah. I wanted that name. I wanted, you know, we could go on on about the stories. That's really in the child work, I think. Yeah. And it is really interesting because it's like peeling back the layers, you know, from initially no, I don't think there was any stories to suddenly unfolding this whole narrative that they carried around for an awful long time. And they live up to it. Yeah. Yeah. Often called script theory and TA. Yeah. I've got a birth story and it is still with me now. Yeah. Yeah. So it's really important. Another sort of really important, I think, therapy that can be used to get back to the inner work we're talking about here is music therapy. Music therapy is so powerful. So that's not something I've ever used or seen used. No. Well, that would be something like, oh, picker, picker, you say to the clients pick up a sense of music or, you know, a tune or really would that you really like that's really important for you. And, you know, we'll play that and often it's so evocative. Because music does transport you back to an earlier time or, you know, memory or, you know, yeah, definitely. Yeah. So I remember I saying to this person, what's your sort of really a song that you think a lot about. She said, Oh, Release Me by Inglebird Hubbardink. It's a long, long time ago. I said, well, that's an interesting song. He said, Oh yes, I played it a lot in my history because I wanted somebody to release me from this hell. Wow. And from that, I found the music, by the way, it's a 1963 or something. I know it very well. It was played in ours. And we played that and it was so evocative. And, you know, what I'm saying is that it's a really never important style of therapy that you can use to get back to this. It's often very evocative. Yeah. Memories or scripts that clients hold and take ground with themselves, which aren't healthy. Yeah, and it's interesting when you're talking about music and, you know, the narrative and everything. Is it, is it always ones that we choose or are there things that are kind of put onto us that we carry around. That's right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, that we may take on which has nothing has made define us, but actually has nothing to do with us. Yeah, yeah. Because I can remember all the music that I remember from my childhood wasn't my music. It was music that my mum and dad played. Do you know what I mean that kind of, yeah, there are memories attached to it. You're right. Music can transport you to another place altogether. Yeah. It was my many, many years ago. Yeah. Such an evocative medium. And I suppose using any of the senses kind of gets you out of your logical mind. It bypasses a lot of the barriers when we use our senses. Yeah. So for people are very in their head or into intellectualize a lot. Yeah. Or creative techniques or mediums you can find like our therapy music therapy narrative therapy all these things. Yeah, will help the person move to a child. They're in a child and you can do the inner child work from that. Yeah. I think it all needs to be contracted for by the way this I don't think this is something you impose on something you won't be contracted for but you know the trauma the deficits the healing isn't in the presence it's in the past. So, you know, that's where we need to hand the head and all these techniques are very useful to think about in terms of working with the inner child. Yeah. Another another sort of real medium is often what is called sculpturing. I heard of that. You might not have done. No, but I was thinking as you were saying that you one of the things that I did with a client. That was kind of stuck and we were on the verge of something but not was using play do. Yeah, that's a really important play do sand therapy. Just something that they could play with and mold into something while we were talking that kind of took the pressure off them to a certain extent. So when you said sculpture I didn't know whether that was what you were meaning is. You took you to. Now, of course, sand therapy is eons history in terms of, you know, a mechanism to help people get back to their younger child and use so much and so much actually. I'm not sure if it does come from the Jungian world, but a lot of the Jungian therapists will use sand therapy. Yeah. No, not a clue. No. I'm sorry. But that would be if you went to a therapist to use sand therapy to help you get to the inner child for example, they would have a platform or maybe sand and not in the sand would be objects, maybe loads of say 50 or 60 objects it might be marbles it could be toy soldiers frogs it could be. You know, I enjoyed barking hunt and there's a smile and there's all these toys from history, but anything that would be evocative to a person's childhood would go in the sand train. The train might be we've got cats here and they're a little size of a litter tray if you like, it could be bigger, but we'll have all sorts of glittering objects there, which would be very evocative to the child. So, I remember last time I did some Sunday therapy, which was all about going back to my child. There were all sorts of miniature models and sort of shining objects and marbles and all sorts of things, model birds and there was trinkets and there was objects reminded me of the sun and there was flags and all sorts of things. And she said just range, range, range. Let's make a let's make an imagery out of this in your own way just pick some objects which really appeal to you. Yeah. Make any imagery that you want. Now, have you ever done this. No. Well, this is very evocative because straight away, but I did anyway and this is the you start. You attracted to the objects that often you play so much within your child, or actually appeal to those ages of your history. And then you make this whole model what might take you half an hour if you like to see into your patterns. And then with the therapist you start analyzing these things. Where does this come from that reminds you of and how come all this sort of not takes you straight back to your child. And then you would start doing the work for that. Which I would imagine is quite powerful. Extraordinary powerful. Yeah. That's interesting. He often come from young in archetypes the idea of so it's people who do some, yeah, some play listened to this podcast I don't want to do a disservice of that, because I haven't been trained in therapy. It was just a technique that a therapist use with me that I found very useful and have used myself with clients. And I think that's the key is it does bypass it when we're, when we're moving when we're using our hands or doing something creative it does bypass that, that barrier that people put up with. The thinking about things too much. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, there's a whole ream of things I'm an ex foster care and, you know, with some of the foster children that we have they would go to play therapy once a week, where somebody was trained. And, you know, it was literally like an Aladdin's cave in the room, you know where the children could pick what they wanted and they'd be talking while they're drawing or painting or playing in water or whatever it was. Yeah. So that is in a child. Yeah. Healing the trauma of a person's history. So the therapy room should have lots of things in it to use, but what you said it needs to be contracted the client needs some room to do in a child work. Yes. Yeah. So the people that, you know, you said you were a foster parent and you were just describing the play therapy and the therapist at work contractually with that, of course. And, you know, all people have been fostered have attachment it ruptures. I often have quite traumatic histories because of the abandonment and the stories that tell themselves and lots of other things to do with their birth. So what you described to me there was really evocative. I just imagine going to, you know, what you just described and playing with my playing with a fort or doing a drawing or doing some energy work or doing some work with Play Doe. And then the therapist will then do developmental work with the inner child to help the child heal the deficits that has been brought up through the work that's been done. I think that's the bit that I always liked. We were quite lucky with this one particular child that I was thinking about. I think he'd only been with us for six months when I had my younger son. And he was with us for like nine years. He was so my son was nine when he eventually left. But it was like he was reparented by doing things that I was doing with my younger son. You know, he would sit on the bed when we were reading bedtime stories. And if my little boy was finger painting, then he would always join in and do things. But it was a very natural state for him to be in rather than being the focus of the attention. And, you know, when children or adults are allowed to go back and fill in those gaps. That's really powerful. It's wonderful. You mentioned something there, which is really, really important within the child work. And that is that when you do when you do any child work or working developmentally with the child. What often will come up, of course, is the parent. Yeah, eager state, you know, in other words, through that play. They will, you know, bring up whether it's your art story, music, whatever we want to talk about, often the negative parent. The dialogue. Yeah. The person responsible for the trauma or the ogre. Yeah. And then it's up to the therapist to be able to help it possible. The child dialogue or express what's it all about. And then the therapist needs to offer the protection to be able to help the child. You know, the protection against the ogre, for example, or whatever it is, to help the child heal. Yeah. I think that's a really important thing going back to what you were saying at the very beginning was, you know, it being a safe space. Oh, you can't do this work. You can't do that in a safe place. And you know, it sounded wonderful. That's sort of environment that you were talking about with foster children and the play therapy. It sounded wonderful. Yeah. Yeah, and it did, it helped. But, you know, you speak to somebody on the street who doesn't really or hasn't had an insight into how it works. They think, well, so what are they getting from it if they're just playing? But it is, they get so much from it. And, you know, part of the thing with this particular child was having a free choice what he could do. Absolutely. It wasn't laid out that this is what we're going to we're going to play with the fort this week or whatever. You know, and the cars he would always pick the emergency service police cars or ambulance cars, which was a bit of an insight into some of the things that happened in his past. But giving a child or giving an adult in regression cart blanche to do what they want is powerful. Yeah, and it's almost magical. Yeah, yeah. And you have no no boundaries or no limits to what you're doing because we in life we often don't get that opportunity. Yeah. And you can also do what I would call spot in it in a child work. So if you're working with your clients in here now you might do work where, as I say, the visualization or through interaction or many of the things we talk about here where you may do some in a child work within within one hour. Yeah, the, you know, what we've just been talking about that which is this environment set up for the child to spend two three hours. That's a different sort of system. But a lot of the work that I did within our within our clients through again visualizations imagery, helping them talk to the ogres or toxic parents or the abuses in a very safe protective way. There's going to be some we really important healing going on, and then they can make, they can take ownership of a new, they can take ownership of a new future, or a much more healthy future, instead of one they've carried around with them. Yeah. I'm really enjoying this one Bob. Okay, there's just a couple of books which I think what all about inner child work on a really great book it's a very old it's probably back 20 I could give lots of books but I'm going to go to two quite old books but you very well known books, I think one is called homecoming by john Bradshaw. No. He was a TA therapist. They all seem to be those people. And I think not so if he was American, but he was, he wrote this wonderful book called homecoming, which is really about coming home. And in that he talks a lot about how you work with the inner child. And a lot of techniques system wonderfully accessible book about our therapist works and helps the client, regress and go to places where they need such positive healing. It's called homecoming by john Bradshaw. I think it must be 20 years old. When you go to never book, and I was thinking, well, what's that called and I can't remember but they're both by john Bradshaw. But the most the book I liked most was called homecoming, which has a lot of techniques in it. But there's such wonderful descriptions of the healing work that he did in the inner child domain we're talking about here. Well thank you for that Bob. I enjoyed it a lot. And thanks for allowing me the opportunity to talk opportunity to talk about all these therapies and techniques that we can use to get to help our clients have a different type of future. Yeah. And to let go of the traumas and toxicity that they carry around and define themselves by so often. So until next time when we will be looking at what is transformational in the therapy process. Well there's so much. What we're talking about here is really transformation. I was thinking exactly the same thing. Yeah. I'll talk a lot more than in the chat but if you're going to do any child work. It's all about transformation. What we need to talk about is how we tackle the parent in the service of transformational work. That's interesting. So until next time Bob. I could talk forever so I'm glad you've stopped me. Let's save it for the next episode. Come on. Speak soon.