Parks Inner Child Therapy
 

Parks Inner Child Therapy was developed by the late Penny Parks in the 1970s (although it has continued to evolve) after many years of working as a Psychotherapist herself, drawing on a variety of therapeutic models including Cognitive Psychology, Transactional Analysis, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. PICT was initially developed to help individuals overcome severe trauma and abuse in early life and has since been developed to help with unhelpful parenting and a variety of difficulties related to early life experiences.  

PICT is a structured but flexible therapy model, with a clear start, middle, and end, and results that are measurable. It provides quick long-lasting rooted change, without the need to go into details about painful memories or retell details again and again. It addresses the impact trauma or painful experiences have had on a person rather than focus on the details. In fact, some current problems might be caused by previous traumatic experiences which are not consciously remembered, and PICT can help to resolve these without knowing those details. 

The educational part of PICT explains how this type of visualisation-based therapy works, helps you understand where your beliefs about yourself, others, and the world come from, and allows you to reevaluate and address these initially, and further work helps remove these unhelpful beliefs and install new positive beliefs. It also addresses your self-talk and where this comes from, this can be an insightful and extremely useful part of the work, which in itself can be transformative. 

PICT allows time to really consider what you want out of therapy and the main areas for focus and attention. After that the main work begins to connect with your inner child, the younger you where the hurt and pain and unhelpful beliefs were generated and are stored. We then use a series of visualisation-based exercises to process pain and instill more appropriate beliefs, based on accurate information available to the adult you, whilst providing love and support. We will consider the ways in which your life will change when you achieve your goals and any impact this may have on your life. There will be times when I assign tasks for you to do outside of the therapy sessions, should we feel that would be beneficial to you. You might keep a journal and wish to discuss things that come up for you during the week. 

Often people are worried about engaging in visualisation work, and may say "I can't visualise" or think in some way they are doing it wrong. There is no right or wrong way to do it, you will see what you see and you will sense what you sense, in whatever way you do, and that's OK. It will be a different way for each individual. Of course, there might be moments when things might not go to plan, feel difficult, or might not make sense. However, everything that comes up within a session or outside sessions is important information we need to know. All information is important, it's telling us something. It's my job to help you consider this and explore what this is about and help you work through it. 

Many people find PICT to be a gentle and light approach, and often document changes made in their lives throughout the process, as well as after the therapy work is complete. There will of course be difficult moments and at times it might be painful and emotional, which is to be expected. However, there will also be moments of clarity and understanding, moments of laughter and joy, and very often many wow moments. 

PICT will be tailored to your pace and your own individual needs. With my training background in Psychology, I am able to draw on a variety of additional areas to help meet your needs also. PICT allows an individual to give the pain and hurt, any guilt or shame, and unhelpful beliefs back to whomever it was learned from, allowing them to be their true selves, who they were meant to be had they not experienced those difficulties. After that, they can learn to live the life they want and thrive. 

For further information about PICT you can click on the additional links at the bottom of this page, or contact me with any questions you might have.

Additional Links

Penny Parks Official Website- http://www.ppfoundation.org

What is PICT-https://www.ppfoundation.org/pict.aspx

What happens in a PICT session- https://www.ppfoundation.org/pict.as