ABSTRACT
Development - Legacy of negative childhood messages It can really impact on the quality of life when someone carries into adulthood, the negative psychological messages from their childhood, such as ‘Don’t be potent’, ‘Don’t be important’, ‘Don’t make it’. If the participant has internalised such messages, it can help to make this explicit in a drawing. Ask the participant to draw or mould an image of their child self as they felt in the presence of dominators or controllers at home or at school. (They may, for example, have experienced their childhood self as being in some way gagged, chained, in a straitjacket, pinned down like Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels.) Ask them how much they feel they have really broken out of this self image to become potent in their life. Sometimes there is some hidden resistance to owning and living one’s potency after many years of not doing so. If so, ask the participant to draw their fear of what might happen if they were to start to feel and act in the world in far more impactful and creative ways. Ask them to draw themselves as some kind of potent figure. If they are stuck, give them some ideas to start them off, e.g. an image of themselves as a particular type of animal or supersonic vehicle.
