Turning the Hourglass: Children’S Passage Through Traumas and Past Lives

By Christine Alisa

Turning the Hourglass: Childrens Passage Through Traumas and Past Lives, is a collection of stories written from the childs point of view. It is based on the therapeutic model that Christine has developed which includes Gestalt Therapy with Children and Adolescents and Regression Therapy. Emerging through these true stories of children are poignant words that draw the reader into the childs world. Whether it is childhood trauma of abuse, difficulty with divorce and parenting variations, pre-natal, birth or past-life patterning, the stories unfold with children conquering their problems and developing into the lovely young people that they truly are. Various symptoms and behaviors ranging from issues such as a diagnosis of ADHD to severe anxiety and depression are lifted from the child as these healing stories guide the reader through each journey.

Parents who realize the benefits of alternative therapeutic techniques for their child or are searching for a method that truly works, teachers and therapists will find this book enlightening as they discover a powerful method of working with children. Awareness is raised about children, their plights and their enduring strengths inviting us all to acknowledge those who have such a small voice in our world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477275610

Christine Alisa

Christine Alisa is a compassionate healer who has worked with children, adolescents and their families for over twenty-five years. She is a Marriage Family Therapist with a private practice in Southern California where she lives. She has trained therapists in the United States, Europe, India and Brazil in the Regression Therapy she has developed with children and adolescents, which includes the extensive experience with Gestalt Therapy with Children and Adolescents.

Book preview

AuthorHouse™ LLC

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2012, 2013 Christine Alisa, MS. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/06/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4772-7563-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-7562-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-7561-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012918571

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Acknowledgements

There are several people who have helped, supported and guided me through the process of birthing this book. I especially want to thank Dennis and Brianna Merkley for their love and unfailing encouragement. I am very pleased with the cover design Aaron Izbicki created and his help with the images. I am grateful for all the editing assistance I received from Joy Parker, Karen Knutsen and Sally Curry as well as Karen Knutsen’s gift of the title for the book. Thanks go to Dr. Morris Netherton for reading my chapters before publication and to Allen Page who identified the early stages of a book unfolding years ago.

Foreword

Today the world of children has been reduced to the brain and brain chemicals. Drugs are given to ‘balance’ these chemicals and change the child’s behavior. There are an ever-growing number of diagnoses that are given to children to indicate brain dysfunction and validate the use of drugs. Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Disorder Hyperactivity Disorders are but two of these to be found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV. Is it possible that as these children grow to teenagers and young adults the use of prescription drugs has contributed to the current epidemic of drug abuse?

Christine Alisa does not believe in medicating children, rather in providing them with a therapeutic process that addresses the underlying issues that stimulate the child’s behavior. She gently expands the boundaries of the child’s world by guiding the child to places where healing experiences can change their lives. The child experiences the power of love, resolution and change by engaging the total person in a complete process of self-discovery. Parents are relieved to see the changes that occur with the child. Furthermore, they are happy to learn that there is no blame or accusations as part of this process. ‘Blaming the parents’ is not a message that anyone gets when engaging their child in therapy with Christine.

As you read the many experiences of her young clients, remember, they are real. They happened under her gentle and skilled guidance in sessions sometimes intense, often fun and always focused on the child.

We are all glad this book is finished and available for all to read and enjoy. Thank you, Chris!!

Morris Netherton, Ph.D.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Overview of the Therapeutic Process

Chapter 2: Jason: How I Beat the Bogeyman

Chapter 3: Nicole: Things That Got in the Way of My Funny Bone

Chapter 4: Peter: Living Other People’s Dreams Is Not For Me.

Chapter 5: A Family

Chapter 5—A Becky: Unfrozen

Chapter 5—B Emily: Crazy No More

Chapter 5—C Daniel: I Found My Voice

Chapter 5—D Vicki: My True Self

Chapter 6: Marcos: Holding Time

Chapter 7: Alexis: Dyslexia and Dancing

Chapter 8: Scott: The Fight is Out of Me

Chapter 9: Katie: The Worst Year of My Life

Chapter 10: Michael: I’m Nobody’s Punching Bag Anymore

Epilogue

Introduction

The popular label of the day for children is ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADHD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. These labels and others such as Dyslexia or Learning Disabilities have the potential for creating a crippling effect on children, causing them to believe that there is something intrinsically wrong with them. Though parents and therapists alike struggle to help these children by giving them additional academic help, finding outlets for their restless energy, initiating a reward program for following directions and staying on task in school along with a variety of therapeutic techniques to help the children feel more comfortable being themselves, many children fall through the cracks. They become part of the medicated society, taking their place with the millions of people in our country who are dependent on some kind of drug. It is time to stop using labels like this and other derogatory labeling, of children, and it is my hope that this book enlightens adults to that possibility.

In this book you will read the stories of a select group of children told in their own words. I saw these kids in my private therapy practice over a period of years. By reading about their experiences and watching the therapeutic model of therapy that I developed in action, it is my hope that the reader will be touched by their individual journeys.

My goal in writing this book is to validate these children, their experiences and their pain, to give a charge of energy to the importance of childhood injuries and the amazing power of human resilience and tenacity. Many traditional therapeutic techniques are defined and discussed only in adult terms, and therapists and psychiatrists often are quick to give labels to children, describing their backgrounds and issues not in terms of the unique human situations involved, but only through standardized mental health diagnosis and theoretical jargon. Medications are prescribed to ‘ward’ off the abhorrent behavior, rather than finding out what is at the root of the problem and utilizing creative strategies to eliminate the need for those behaviors. The labels these professionals attach to children end up becoming attached to their identity. In this primarily medication based treatment model, the problems of children are often misdiagnosed, and treatment consists solely of behavior modification and medication. Our Western society is not meeting the psychological needs of our youth as I see it, but rather programming them to believe that they will never be truly whole.

When I first considered writing this book. I began by compiling my cases with the goal of describing the progression of the therapeutic process I use. My hope is that if the reader can ‘hear,’ in the child’s own voice, a description of how their lives changed, these stories might open adult hearts and minds to my alternative approach to therapy. I want the reader to have a sense of the inner world of the child and the struggles that drive their symptoms and behaviors rather than just seeing the child from an outside perspective as just his or her symptoms and negative behaviors. By giving these children a voice and telling these stories from their perspective, as I perceived they would speak, I invite parents and therapists alike to come along on a journey where I describe the details of these children’s therapeutic process in a loving, heartfelt way.

I have always been a child advocate since my early years as an elementary school teacher. My heart became strongly connected to children from the first day a young child called for my help on the playground. I have answered that call to the best of my ability in the many years since, after I became a child/adolescent therapist/healer and trainer of therapists.

Children have had a hard time having a voice in our society. They are often ignored, abused or misguided. Some readers may have had childhoods similar to those described in this book. Others may know children who are experiencing the same traumas, sorrows, worries, sadness and anger in these pages. My goal is to give a voice to those who need an advocate to speak about their inner world. I strongly believe it is time for ‘another day’ to dawn, one in which respect, honor, healthy limits, guidance and expression for children takes on a higher priority in our world. The future of our Earth and its people will be deeply nourished by healthy untroubled young people who, from their own wholeness, are able to contribute to the wellbeing of all of us. So please ‘hear’ the children to whom I have given a voice in this book. I ask you to listen with an open heart and to celebrate the healing that has taken place in these lives before you.

Throughout each story I include what I call ‘therapist notes’ to help the reader understand my model of therapy as it pertains to each individual session. In these notes I attempt to clarify and re-define the child’s experience and my method of therapy. I hope they are helpful. I invite the reader to listen to the child’s words even though those words may not be immediately clear. As each story unfolds so does an understanding of what is happening in the therapeutic process. Even as a therapist, I am not always clear about what the children are telling me. As the reader journeys with the children hearing their language, he/she is living the children’s story at a deeper level. Please allow that level to emerge.

My greatest goal in writing this book is to open the eyes of professionals and parents alike to a different form/technique of therapy that has brought about positive results in my practice. These pages are directed at the parent who observes behaviors in their children that they don’t understand or for which traditional therapy does not seem to have the answer. It is for the grandparents or stepparents who are now raising children who have suffered abuse while not in their care. It is for all those adults who love children and want their futures to be fuller, with more time for happiness and fulfillment. This book is for all those who work with children and do not want them to be labeled or medicated. It is for the child therapist who finds blocks to progress in the course of therapy and is looking for a new approach that might break through these blocks and create healing.

Additionally, this book is for any interested adult who feels ‘called’ to find out more about how to use regression therapy, how past-life, pre-natal, and birth experiences might have a significant effect on the fears, behaviors, and problems of children and adolescents. I describe more about how I used regression therapy in the chapter entitled Overview of My Therapeutic Model. Whether you believe in past lives, or interpret the stories presented here in this book as helpful metaphors created by the unconscious mind, I invite you simply to believe in the power of story to heal. If you believe these stories are a work of imagination, I celebrate the healing power of imagination. Whatever your individual belief system may be, I am not asking that you change it, only that you be open to the value of these stories. In my experience it is of the utmost importance for the children and adolescents to share with someone the stories that seem to be right at the surface of their minds. For example, when a child shares a nightmare with someone older, she or he relieves the anxiety around that nightmare. When a loving adult listens to the child’s nightmare, this means that she or he is no longer alone with that terror. The sharing expresses and releases the fear and validates the fact that we need each other to heal. This kind of sharing is key to my work. Amazing healing can take place when the energy that a child holds inside is released and set free after being witnessed by someone who has really heard him or her.

Since humankind began to develop, we have used storytelling to describe our hopes, dreams, nightmares and the fruits of our imagination and the inner workings of the mind. If you wish to interpret some of the past-life stories children share in this book as the work of imagination that is your choice. However if tapping into the imagination of children has such profound affects, who am I to dispute it? It is my hope that the reader will keep an open mind and contemplate the possibilities.

Since I consistently strive to create a setting of enjoyment and safety during therapy sessions, children eventually are willing to share stories and traumatic experiences with me that are not always nice, not always clear and not always fun. However, this very act of sharing is what gives them the ability to release the negative feelings attached to these stories and the negative feelings they have about themselves. They can utilize the therapeutic techniques and/or anger release tools that I incorporate into my work and describe in these chapters to ‘move’ their fear and uncertainty out of their minds, souls and bodies. This process enables them to drop their dysfunctional behaviors or symptoms more easily, and I have found that it is easier to do this as children, than as adults. Adults have had more years to repeat and hold onto the negative patterns making it harder to let these patterns go. However, when these images and stories arise in children, they don’t always need to analyze them or figure out how these stories are ‘like’ their current life. They don’t even need to make sense of them. They can simply drop the damage and the debris, the triggers for their repeated negative behaviors, once the reasons for these behaviors are brought to therapy, once these stories are told and their repressed experiences shared.

My work is simple, direct and always child-centered. What this book cannot convey are the looks on my young clients’ faces when I truly hear and witness their very deeply felt stories. The written word can’t capture the gleeful moments when we go from a story about a person dying to moments of shared laughter and joy at just being together in the same room playing a game and deeply connecting. My own inner child comes out to play with these children and I feel blessed to have been in their company.

Foremost, I am their guide, offering them my reassurance that nothing they will say to me ever will frighten or confuse me. I watch for subtle changes in their tone of voice, in their energy level, their hesitancy or their comfort level, and I respond to those changes. The children with whom I work tell me by their focus—their words, body language, and facial expressions—whether we need to continue or stop for now. I respect them and in turn, they respect me. When I decide it is time for them to work on their birth, prenatal, past-life or early childhood stories, it is my choice in the session, but I always give them my full attention when they make their own choices of how they want to spend the rest of the session together. If they choose to create a puppet show, my dramatic spirit rises up to engage with them. I put my full energy and attention into whatever they desire, just as they are actively willing to open up to me about things they never knew existed inside of them. We engage in a process of taking turns, of playing and having fun. There is a give and take to our sessions together, an ebb and flow, both non-verbal and verbal. This kind of therapy is like a dance where the partner who is in the lead changes as the dance progresses.

What I have discovered during the work I have developed is that the burdens children have been carrying for as long as they can remember can just suddenly drop off. Throughout the years, I also have worked in partnership with many loving and dedicated parents, who have supported me and worked with me. They have trusted me with their loved ones and felt joy in the progress we have achieved. I am grateful for these abiding guardians of the children/adolescents who have let me into their lives. With determination and patience, I have witnessed ‘backpacks full of pain’ drop off the shoulders of children and lighten their lives.

There is no mystery here. What you will read about in this book is just hard work and trust in a dynamic and healing therapeutic process and a belief in the inner strength of children. Through hardship, toil and perseverance we can prevail, and these children you are about to meet have done just that. Welcome to the bravery of spirit and the joy of youth.

CHAPTER 1

Overview of the Therapeutic Process

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a framework on which to build an understanding of my therapeutic model. Each child’s journey of healing in the following chapters describes more in detail the therapeutic process and how it benefited each life.

Background

My experience as a child therapist began with my training in Gestalt Therapy with Children and Adolescents, based on Dr. Violet Oaklander’s work. Her renowned child therapy techniques have impacted countless therapists and children throughout the world. I spent years immersing myself in her book, Windows to Our Children, and utilized her teachings with every child I came across during my internship and when I began my private practice. I learned how to use the format of her work along with the mediums and exercises she introduces in Gestalt Therapy with children.

As I continued exploring other therapeutic models, I began to incorporate Past Life Therapy into my practice. After my training with Dr. Morris Netherton, and study of his book, Past Life Therapy, I began using his techniques in my work with adult clients and found that these sessions brought about positive results. I went on to be Master Trainer in the Netherton Method of Past Life Discovery and Integration. When I began to use Past Life Therapy in my practice with children, I experienced the same positive results that I had with my adult clients. Thereafter, my therapeutic approach involved the combination of all my trainings and experience. By combining the methodologies that have influenced me, and the creation of my own framework, I feel I have developed a unique approach to helping children heal.

Beginning

The beginning of the therapeutic process always includes developing an environment of trust and safety for the child. When I establish a place where they can express themselves without judgment, they begin to feel safe. When I ‘follow’ a child’s interests, choices and inclinations, sometimes I am literally following a child around the room, responding and validating his or her interest in something in my therapy office. This process is particularly true for very young children. It is as if I am shadowing them as they move from one activity to another. Being truly with a child gives them chances to experience control with me, and what we do during our sessions and their sense of trust in me grows. By allowing them to express their resistance to some of my suggestions, they know that their opinions will be respected. However, I am also careful to establish clear boundaries so that they know the limits of our therapy sessions. There is no confusion or mixed messages.

Rules

When I start working with a child, I establish a few ground rules. They are:

1.   We both get a choice. I get to choose an activity and they get to choose one.

2.   We clean up our activity before we go on to another, and put everything away at the end of the session.

3.   They cannot destroy my room or throw things for the purpose of breaking them, accidents not included. I tell them that I hope they begin to feel that my room is theirs as well as mine. Therefore, we both want to take care of it.

4.   I do not tell their parents or guardians what we do during our therapy session; it is confidential. However, they can tell if they want. Sometimes I will request permission to tell their parents something that I feel would help both the parent and them, but I will only do this if they say it is all right. However, I do have to tell if they inform me that someone is hurting or abusing them, or that they want to hurt themselves.

These simple rules give the children a structure that provides safety and consistency. When these two elements are present, children can explore the darker parts of their lives with the assurance that this exploration is done inside a capsule of healthy boundaries. The children and adolescents I see begin to depend on these rules. Often children will come to me at the beginning of our session and say, Remember, last time we didn’t have time for my choice and you said I could have my choice first? I honor their choice and thank them for remembering. My philosophy about children is that if you speak to them with the same respect, as you would give to an adult, using clear ‘kid words’ that they can comprehend, they will not only understand me but also feel respected by me. I never talk down to them because I believe and expect that at some level they know and understand what I am saying.

Therapeutic Mediums

The mediums I use in my therapy work include sand trays, clay, drawing and painting materials, puppets, dramatic skits and play using dress-up costumes, role playing, creative imagination stories, ‘Oogla’ (a malleable substance made of cornstarch and water), therapeutic games and games just for fun. Sand tray work consists of two containers full of sand and shelves full of objects and small figures that can be placed in the sand to make a scene. In the following chapters, I will show how each child uses some or all of these mediums in the therapy we do together. As you read each of their stories, you will become familiar with how I use these mediums/tools.

The Process

The model on which I base my work is having the child doing two things at once, creating their own story in a particular medium and helping me to create mine. For example, I have two sand trays that sit side by side. One is for the child and the other for me. Nearby I have shelves full of small figures typical of those found in many child therapy offices. I ask the child to create a scene using the figures while I make a scene of my own. They can select whatever they want from the shelves while I select certain specific items for the purpose of my own story. While they are creating their scene, I start to talk about mine, asking them to help me with my scene by answering my questions. This is the directive part of my work. Then when they have finished with their scene, we talk about their work. If we are immersing our hands in malleable clay, I may ask them to make something in particular or whatever they want while I create a scene with my clay. Once again, I ask them to help me with my clay figures while they continue exploring their own clay creations.

Therapistsandtrayscenepg.16.JPG

The same type of process can be done with drawings, puppets, small plays or games. I tell them that they can both work on their own creation and help me with mine at the same time. In all my years of doing this work I have never had a child who said they could not do two things at once, nor have I seen any of them have any trouble doing so. The only variations I have seen is that some children become so involved in my scene that they want to add pieces, change my clay creation or add something to my drawing. They begin to feel that my ‘story’ is now their own and that, of course, is my goal. The stories come from the children’s own background and events in their lives. With his or her help a story forms that may include a birth, a traumatic experience or a metaphor that is similar to her/his life.

Once I have completed my creation I embark on a story. The child, meanwhile, continues to enhance their creation. The mediums I work with often put children into a kind of altered state, one of deep concentration, as they are drawn further and further into manipulating the medium. An artist can tell you, that while they are drawing, painting or sculpting, they tend to go into a ‘zone,’ a place where they are so caught up in the process, that their hands know where to go because their right brain is totally engaged. This is the state that children enter when they work with the mediums I offer. They also share their own scene, clay creation, painting, drawing, etc., which becomes part of the therapeutic process as well. Often the child will create just the thing that they need to add to the story I am building. Other times, they create scenes that are an expression of where they are in their lives, their hopes, dreams, fears and wishes.

Children and artists are not the only ones who move into an altered state while using these mediums. While I was giving a workshop to a large group of therapists who wanted to learn how I work with children, I gave them all a piece of clay and a simple clay board. They had a bit of water in case the clay got hard. I asked them to just ‘feel’ the clay, move it around in their hands, let the clay speak to them, tell them if it wanted them to make something or just explore the texture of the clay. I spoke to them about my work with children and gave a demonstration with one person on how I work with my process. The rest of the group still had the clay in their hands manipulating it during the whole time I gave the demonstration, for about an hour. Afterward, we had a sharing time where many told me their experiences with the clay. They described having memories from childhood that they had not thought about for years. As they manipulated the clay, they shared about past traumas in their childhood or past-life experiences that seemed to pop into their mind. Many were moved by these perceptions, which gave them a deeper understanding of how the medium, itself, can induce a rich altered state. By listening to my words and the questions that I was asking the demonstration participant, they entered the world of untapped, emotionally charged revelations. This altered state is a vehicle for doing regression work with children and adults, a technique that is non-threatening and that brings material to the surface with ease and grace.

When I work with my child and adolescent clients, we begin in a quiet way, with no conversation so that the child can enter the realm of the altered state. At the point where I begin to sense the child’s affect, his absorption in what he/she is doing, I begin my story. I may start by describing my scene, which might involve the birth of a baby. I make a mound of sand in the tray with a baby inside and say, This is the mom’s tummy and the baby is being born. Or I might say, This clay figure is a mom and this baby figure is being born. This is a story that happened a long time ago. I encourage the child to help me by answering questions that are simple, concrete and direct. I continue to manipulate the figures in my scene as the child answers my questions.

When I first introduce the story process, I often talk to the children/adolescents about the conscious and the unconscious mind. For younger children I usually tell them that they have two minds, the one that they are using with me—the one they use everyday to talk, learn and play—and another mind, a deeper mind, that is kind of like the mind they use when they are dreaming at night. Younger children understand nightmares and have often had them, so I tell them that it is like being asleep but having your deep mind have a good dream or nightmare.

With children who are a little older, and certainly adolescents, I explain the two types of consciousness by drawing a picture of two circles that overlap a bit. One represents the conscious mind, which we use every day, the mind we are aware of, and the other represents the unconscious or subconscious mind. I might use the example of the sleeping, dreaming mind with them as well. I tell them that the unconscious mind has thoughts and information that the conscious mind does not know about because these kinds of thoughts can bother a person. For example, I once worked with a boy who lived in California, earthquake country, and was afraid of earthquakes. He literally had nightmares about earthquakes. When he was small, he had experienced a minor earthquake, could not forget it, and, kept worrying that it would happen again. I explained to him that fear stays in the unconscious, deeper, dream mind and that this mind cannot do anything about it. However, if we tell someone else the stories that come from that mind and the conscious mind hears us talking, it can figure out what to do about these fears. The conscious mind can problem solve, but the unconscious mind cannot. It just goes around in circles. However, if we can create a story to let the conscious mind know more about something like our fear of earthquakes and where that fear came from, then the conscious mind can overlap with the circle of the unconscious mind. At that point they can both share the same information and can begin working together to help deal with the fear and solve the problem. This description of the unconscious vs. conscious mind is used in adult regression work, as developed by Dr. Morris Netherton.

Engagement

Everything in the work I do is about playing. Playing brings the therapist and child together using child language. When a therapist ‘follows’ a child’s play, lets them hold the reigns for awhile, children feel a sense of joy at getting an adult to do what they want them to do (within reason, of course). These kinds of activities build a sense of control over their environment that many children need. It is the child’s feeling that they lack control that often drives their symptoms or behaviors.

This relationship of playing together is one of the most healing experiences for children. For years we have known that play is the