“We nurture our creativity when we release our inner child. Let it run and roam free. It will take you on a brighter journey.”
~ Serina Hartwell
I loved creating my Inner Child Therapy Worksheets and I invite you to enjoy the art journal exploration excerpted from the worksheets below.
Because negative emotions become trapped in the body, you might only able to keep a life-affirming statement running in your mind for a few minutes before you revert back to your habitual negative self-talk. Commonly known as positive affirmations, statements such as, "I love myself," do not often take hold when you are holding onto trapped inner child emotions.
Finding the "antidote" statement that will change the structure of your emotional body is essential to emotional healing. Yet, you must take care not to simply wallpaper a new positive judgment over top of a negative judgment. It is important to release negative emotions first to make room for new positive truths to take hold.
After negative emotions are released, an antidotal healing statement will usually arise from your true self. Once you find a healing statement that has a strong positive energy charge of truth, you are likely going to need to practice saying this new truth all day, every day, for at least a month or more.
Sometimes it takes well over a month, and even a year or more to reverse a lifetime of conditioned inner child negativity. Saying, "I love who I am." Or, "I am worthy of love," over and over until it becomes a regular believed truth in your muscles, cells, body organs and tissues takes time, practice and effort.
Art Journal Exploration - Finding Your Inner Child's Power Statement
Paint a background in your art journal that expresses your inner child's sense of innocence, hope and power. Sense into where your body feels pain and ask it, "What do you need to hear in order to feel better?" You will have one or more inner child "power statements" that fill your body with energy, hope, strength. Once you hear your body's affirmative message, write it down on your painted background.
Embellish your inner child's power statement with details and images, and spend time repeating it, looking at it, and asking it to find a home within your body. Imagine this new power statement flowing in through the top of your head and filling your body with colour, light, and healing.
Excerpted from Inner Child Therapy Worksheets