How I became a child psychotherapist

This photograph was taken at the book launch of my book on AOD. Three therapists all sitting together. The woman on the left was a psychologist who worked for many years. She specialised in working with children. After I completed my psychology degree I was fortunate enough for her to take me on as an ‘apprentice’. Which was very kind of her and it was a once in a  life time opportunity to get some gold standard training in child psychotherapy. 

I came and worked at her play therapy institute for two years and her approach was a psychoanalytic one. So not only did I get training in working with children, I also got to see the psychoanalytic approach in practice.

It also had another effect in that it impacted my understanding and psychotherapy with adults. Given the opportunity to see children in a therapy setting for two years, learning about their psyche and how it works of course gave me an excellent understanding of how the Child ego state works in all of us. I watched the raw Child ego state in front of me for two years, how it thinks, feels and behaves

Put a child under stress and and it will have to adjust its psyche and its perception of self and others in some way. One has seek to understand that adjustment then you will know the motivation and agendas of that person (as a child and later as an adult)

 

 

 

Much of the work was in the group therapy setting so I also saw children interacting with each other. Again I saw how the Child ego state interacts with others in a raw form. This of course allows me to understand adults better when they are interacting. Of course their interactions are also mainly governed by their Child ego states but unlike children they can encrypt what their Child ego state says and does with the Adult and Parent ego states.

What a psychotherapist with adults must do is break the encryption of the Child ego state therefore allowing the therapist to see and understand the real motives and agendas of the client.