When the Inner Child Comes Knocking.

Sometimes, it happens that I start getting really interested in a topic that had seemed “obvious” before. That’s what happened recently when the term Inner Child started calling to me.  And so, like I usually do, I ordered a bunch of books about it. 

Of course, most of us have heard of our “inner child.” I feel like I’ve sometimes resisted the term. It almost feels like a regression, meaning childish instead of childlike. 

But something about the term has been pulling at me. It’s been feeling more & more like a call to the kernel of the original me, a spontaneous, playful part that can get easily flattened out.   

And so, because the call felt insistent, I let myself buy some books by the art therapist Lucia Capacchione. 

I spent a few wonderful hours absorbed in her book The Art of Emotional Healing, which has “over 60 exercises for exploring emotions through drawing, painting, dancing, writing, sculpting, and more.” 

In the book, Lucia is basically talking about expressive arts, something I’ve felt a kinship for a long time. This is art that’s not trying to be “good.” It’s play. It’s getting your feelings out. It’s using your fingers to paint. Or tearing up pieces of paper to make a collage when you’re feeling fragmented. 

Here’s what Lucia says about expressive arts: 

“To express emotions, we have to feel them first. How do we know what we feel? And after we’ve felt our emotions, how can we express instead of suppress or repress them? 

One answer is: through the expressive arts.”

I love how Lucia talks about how expressive arts are a way to BOTH reveal our feelings & then get them moving.

I often have moments where I can’t quite grasp exactly what I am feeling. It’s building inside. But I don’t have the right words for it. It’s then that playing with colors or journaling feels really useful. 

Lucia continues: “Those of us working in the field of expressive arts therapy work in an interdisciplinary way. It has been demonstrated that, when the arts are used intermodally (that is, to say, in combination, or alternating between one and another) they become a powerful vehicle for experiencing, identifying, and communicating one’s true feeling. Many expressive arts therapists combine two or more forms: dance and storytelling, for instance, or music, poetry, and art.” 

I found this description of “intermodality” or using an interdisciplinary approach to expressive arts so interesting! 

For example, I have done both journaling & painting/mixed media on their own. 

But it would be interesting to see what happens when they are combined. Drawing is intuitive, non-rational. And writing is verbal. And combining them would provide more connections. 

This also made me wonder if this has something to do with bilateral stimulation, something I’ve been hearing about a lot lately, and that’s also a key part of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy.   

I also loved how she talked about how different mediums are more or less suitable for different feelings.  

For example: We may want to use clay (which we can punch and cut) or use crayons that we can really scratch with when we’re working with anger. 

Here are some things that have worked for me in the past : 

• Sewing when I am feeling emotionally wounded. 
• Using found objects like acorns as stamps for mixed-media projects when I want to engage my sense of wonder. 
• Writing angry letters & either shredding them or burning them safely.    
• Doing photography to feel present when I’m feeling too “in my head.”  
• Letting myself explore a symbolic image that is calling to me. This newsletter I sent many years ago includes a painting I did of a mountain lion when I was going through a period of intense anger. The mountain lion stood for owning my anger.  

There’s something to be said for using arts and crafts in a symbolic way. For example, sewing something when someone has been really unkind to me feels like actually making stitches in my heart. 

After a long time, I felt really absorbed by a book!

If you are feeling overwhelmed by feelings or swamped by the intensity of life generally as a sensitive person, this is a great book.  

It’s also the kind of book you can dip into, as needed, a lovely “full of ideas to try” kind of book to come back to again & again. 

Ritu Kaushal is the author of the book The Empath’s Journey and a Silver Medal Awardee at the Rex Awards, co-presented by the United Nations in India. Find more about Ritu HERE.

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