Experts Praise Gifts From The Child Within

“Gifts From The Child Within is more than a well-written, well-researched guide to recovery from our childhood wounds. It is an exciting adventure in psychospiritual growth based on inner wisdom exercises that are a powerful addition to the archives of healing.”

Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., Author
Your Soul's Compass

“Gifts From The Child Within is a skillfully written book about a significant subject. Dr. Sinor describes a broad range of valuable tools for healing the child within each of us. Her extensive research has yielded an excellent choice of quotes from many important sources. A fine storyteller, she further anchors her message with fascinating stories and examples ranging from Grimm to her own Hypnotherapy practice. Most importantly, the book details many powerful processes that the reader can use for substantial benefits with self-hypnosis.”

Randal Churchill, CHT,
Director Hypnotherapy Training Institute
President, American Council of Hypnotist Examiners

“Gifts From The Child Within offers many techniques for therapists working with Adult Children of Alcoholics and is a therapeutic aid to re-discovery of self and subsequent change. This book is a useful tool for any therapist and a wonderful adjunct to one's therapy. Dr. Sinor has found a means within her book to award a ‘guide’ to the past and a ‘strength’ to continue into the future.”

Nancy New, Ph.D.

“Barbara Sinor has written a book that will help the violated and traumatized child within to heal. Recovery is a barbaric journey. Gifts From The Child Within helps guide survivors with repressed memories of trauma, as well as those with current memories of incest, through the healing process.”

Marilyn Van Derbur, Miss America 1958
Founder, Survivors United Network

“[we wish you] …the best of success with Gifts From The Child Within, we look forward to its impact within the recovery field. We are grateful for your contribution.”

Gerald S. Myers, President & CEO
Suzanne Somers Institute

“Dr. Sinor has bridged the gap for clients and therapists alike between the mere discovery of the inner child and the building of a true relationship with this most important being within. Gifts From The Child Within is an important and highly readable work.”

Rick Boyes, M.A., CHT, A Body To Die For

“Part of what makes recovery books useful for so many people is the array of diverse approaches offered in the self-help genre. In Gifts From The Child Within, Dr. Sinor shares her own story and unique vantage point in exercises and affirmations that seek to rework, rewrite, and re-create past, hurtful experiences that may interfere with present-day living.”

Nancy J. Napier, M.A., MFCC, Author
Recreating Your Self

“Gifts From The Child Within is a wonderful book that takes the reader on a journey into the soul via the ‘time-traveling machine of the subconscious mind.’ Dr. Barbara Sinor writes with sensitivity and clarity revealing her deep knowledge of hypnotherapy and transpersonal psychology. She invites you to become a participant by exploring your own childhood and reveals intimate and fascinating details from her own. Flowing and readable, this book is filled with stories, myths, information and revelation.”

Marilyn Gordon, CHT, Author
Healing is Remembering Who You Are

“[I am]…impressed with the focus and exercises found in Gifts From The Child Within. Father Leo Booth advocates the ‘whole person’ approach to therapy and healing, and always advises doing inner child exercises as integral steps to healing wounded spirituality…. this book is a valuable resource; it is definitely one we will add to our own reference library.”

Katharine Russell, Editorial Director Spiritual Concepts

“Gifts From The Child Within contributes to the much needed “wave of healing” currently happening in society. Dr. Sinor shows a sensitive understanding of how childhood distress and trauma affect us as adults; and she gives effective techniques for accessing the inner child part of us and for releasing blockages and emotions. These methods truly apply well to the recovery process and I am applying them effectively with ACAs and with others carrying emotional and behavioral scars from childhood. Thank you, Barbara, for your practical messages of hope for healing ourselves and for becoming more creative, happy adults!”

Barbara Lamb, M.S., MFCC

“Gifts From The Child Within is a sensitively written book totally free of the strain of self-pity found in many of the “wounded child” books. Dr. Barbara Sinor has given us an important self-help program based on her own healing experience, while keeping her work clinically sound and very well documented. The book is based on the premise that if we can accept, at least in part, responsibility the illusional reality of our past conditioning, we are then ready to re-create it into a reality for our present.

By following these guidelines perhaps we can stop the generational cycle of patterning that seems to have followed us from the beginning of time. Dr. Sinor has given us another, significant message overlooked by other writers, teachers and therapists. Not only does she show us how to get in touch with and love our child within, she helps us look further to recognize the gifts the child has to give in return. I highly recommend this book for the hypnotherapist, the counselor, the teacher and as a self-help course for people anywhere who are seeking the road to recovery.”

Lavona Stillman, Ph.D., CCHT
Stillman Institute for Research & Development

Gifts From The Child Within

Second Edition

A workbook for self-discovery and self-recovery through Re-Creation Therapy^™

Barabara Sinor, PhD

Gifts From The Child Within, Second Edition

Copyright © 1993, 2008 by Barbara Sinor, Ph.D.

First Edition 1993

Second Edition 2008

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
      __________________________________________________
                         Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sinor, Barbara, 1945-

       Gifts from the child within : self-discovery and self-recovery through re-creation therapy(tm) / Barabara Sinor. -- 2nd ed.

                   p. cm.

       Includes bibliographical references and index.

       ISBN-13: 978-1-932690-46-0 (trade paper : alk. paper)

       ISBN-10: 1-932690-46-8 (trade paper : alk. paper)

       1. Inner child. 2. Self-help techniques. 3. Psychotherapy--Popular works. I. Title.

       BF698.35.I55S56 2008

       616.89′14--dc22

                                                                   2007047234

Acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint the following:

From Emmanuel's Book II by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton, Copyright 1989 by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton. Used by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

“The Stubborn Child” and “The Three Lazy Sons” from The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm by Jack Zipes, translator, translation copyright 1987 by Jack Zipes. Used by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

Cover art: The Child Within by Paula B. Slater, M.A. All rights reserved.

Distributed by: Baker & Taylor, Ingram Book Group

Published by:

Loving Healing Press

5145 Pontiac Trail

Ann Arbor, MI 48105

http://www.LovingHealing.com or

info@LovingHealing.com

Fax +1 734 663 6861

Table of Contents

 

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction

Part I: The Child Within

Chapter 1 – The Concept of the Child Within

Chapter 2 – Reaching for Recovery

Chapter 3 – The Process of Re-Creation Therapy

Part II: Re-Create Your Own Reality

Chapter 4 – Shadows of the Light

Chapter 5 – Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Chapter 6 – From Victim to Victory

Part III: Adult Child Games

Chapter 7 – Codependency, Take Two

Chapter 8 – The Saboteurs

Chapter 9 – For-Giving

Part IV: Gifts from the Child Within

Chapter 10 – Faces of Recovery

Chapter 11 – The Present and Beyond

Afterword

About the Author

Index

Dedication

I dedicate this book to Richard and Cindy Sinor. In many ways you both have taught me that a family can continue to develop its support and intimacy for one another even when seemingly apart. As each of you read this book you may identify with your own child within. Bright-eyed Richie who was always ready to help with his younger sister and talkative little Cindy who never wanted to go to bed will always be with you. The unique inner child that you each possess will also forever be a part of my life. I have watched in expectation those two small children mature into talented young adults. This dedication is my way of saying “thank you” for allowing me to participate in the joys and sorrows of your past and present.

Remember what your Grandpa used to say? “Your family is the most important thing in life.”

He was right.

Barbara Sinor, Ph.D.
January 2008

Foreword

“Take her in my arms and love her? Why? I don't even like her!” my client sounded astonished and resentful. She wanted no part of the inner child and was aggravated by the implication that she was somehow responsible for her own dilemma. This client had been with me for three hypnotherapeutic sessions. The process of childhood age regression effectively re-created the feelings: A feeling of abandonment when her father died; feeling alone in the loveless relationship she had had with her father; and feeling the abusive entanglements of her mother's alcoholism. I had done a hypnotherapeutic interweave after each session. She seemed to be working positively through each stab of abuse and each scar of memory. But she simply would not accept that the inner child—her Beingness—had constantly given away her personal power in an endless, repetitive “trying to please everyone” type of behavior.

This client and I found the way out of the abyss of her denial and unfolded a vital spirit capable of successful interpersonal relationships. If Gifts From The Child Within had been available, I would have given her homework. From the first session she would have benefited from reading the exercises, the “Child Within Autohypnosis” visualizations, and the material in the chapter “Facing and For-giving Yourself.” I believe the reading of these sections would have helped facilitate her effective outcome from her hypnotherapy sessions.

To me there is a very important ingredient in Gifts From The Child Within. This ingredient is the knowledge that each individual must proceed through his/her life discoveries, or in therapeutic intervention at one's own rate, with one's own sense of how things are and with one's own resolutions. The therapist is ill-advised to mold and shape the individual toward a patterned behavior or personality cubby-hole—one which is controlled by the therapist based upon concepts rather than upon individualized actual experience emotionally constructed and attitudinally integrated by the individual through the life moments of choice and action.

Some years ago a client came to me after seeking help through every available avenue. Our therapeutic relationship flourished. He commented that he stayed with me and was able to withstand recovery because as he put it, “she keeps her cotton-picking hands off my psyche!” His inner child was so deeply buried he felt like his “entire being was in a tantrum.” By allowing him to go at his own pace and pretty much facilitate his own sessions, his child within cautiously emerged. After each session he functioned more capably in the world. Today he is free to love his child within and live fully.

Dr. Milton Erickson consistently had great success with clients from all walks of life, all ages, and with every conceivable kind of problem because he was able to enter the client's world and hear as the client heard. He did not impose nor force-feed his own view of how the world is or how the client should behave. Unfortunately many therapists impose their views and determinations upon their clients resulting in short-term help and eventual relapse. Dr. Erickson admonished therapists not to plan therapy but to allow the events of each session to guide the client's subconscious mind to direct the therapy. Re-Creation Therapy^™ accomplishes this task.

Dr. Sinor has a very pragmatic, yet creative application of the general ideas of Alice Miller. In her this book, she utilizes re-creation exercises which are useful for professional application and for persons learning a new way of being. I have seen Barbara's concepts at work in my practicum sessions for advanced hypnotherapy training. One previous student of mine demonstrated a re-creation exercise that she had learned while attending one of Dr. Sinor's seminars. I was amazed and delighted at the effective use of Re-Creation Therapy^™ and thankful that Barbara had created a readable, useful, and authoritative resource for us all.

As you read this book, you will find that Dr. Sinor presents a paradigm for empowering yourself or a client to solve problems working with body, mind, emotions, and spirit. We are all healing together on Universal levels. In this regard, Alice Miller believed that all of us are victims of “child rearing” and that most of the abuse to children is well intentioned. Parents raised their children the way their parents raised them. In the added Afterword to the Second Edition (1984) of For Your Own Good, Miller lists twelve points to amplify her meaning. These points include:

1. All children, for their development, need to be respected and taken seriously so that they can express their love, be loved in return, grow up with undamaged integrity, and with the ability to be responsive, intelligent, loving and highly sensitive.

2. When children are abused, exploited and not allowed to express their anger and pain, they suppress these feelings to the point that they have no memory of them.

3. As adults and parents, they then often take revenge on their own children and/or society because their childhood repression, though unremembered, exerts a powerful influence over them.

4. It is society in general and children in particular who suffer and pay the price for this. Yes society still sanctions abusive child rearing methods.

Gifts From The Child Within acknowledges these facts and Dr. Sinor quite honestly shares with us the pain of her own childhood; then like the golden dawn coming to a dark bleak morning, she also shares her own journey toward wholeness and presents a process for self-healing. It is a sensitively written book totally free of the strain of self-pity found in many of the “wounded child” books. By following the guidelines within this book, perhaps we can stop the generational cycle of patterning that seems to have followed us from the beginning of time.

Dr. Barbara Sinor has shown us how to get in touch with and love our child within; release negative emotions; re-create childhood beliefs and experiences; and to look further, in recognition of all the gifts the child within has for us who have the courage and wisdom to look within. This is indeed a valuable self-help book, a tool for the Counselor, Hypnotherapist, Minister, Psychotherapist, or Clinician. Dr. Sinor has given all mental health professionals an invaluable paradigm for use in Inner Child work. I assure you, the world will look much brighter after you read this book.

Lavona Stillman, Ph.D., CC.HT.
Stillman Institute for Research & Development
Santa Clara, California
First Edition, August 1993

Introduction

“Re-Creation Therapy^™ is a transforming process of reaching, touching, and accepting the child within us; the process continues with a releasing of blockages and emotions, and finally, the re-creating of past emotional trauma to re-form the creative vital force found within the adult.”

The above definition of Re-Creation Therapy^™ was written many years ago. I have worked with this enriching and rewarding process for over twenty-five years and have found a great personal sense of healing and recovery from the wounds of my childhood. In the late 1970s, while trying desperately to make sense of my negative childhood experiences, recent divorce, plummeting career, and general lack of motivation, I chose to study counseling.

Soon I realized that most of the women who came to the clinic where I was working were locked into their childhood conditioning and experiences. I began investigating my own inner beliefs and self-concepts and discovered that I, too, saw myself and my world through the eyes of my little girl buried deep inside me. I recognized this child within was still trying desperately to get the attention and approval she so desired from her parents.

During the early 1980s, I developed the basic principles of Re-Creation Therapy^™ through many hours of self-exploration and testing. The techniques and exercises in this book have evolved during my initial counseling practice and my own recovery years of being a child of an alcoholic father who demonstrated inappropriate behavior with my sisters and myself, as well as, a codependent mother. I have had the opportunity to introduce the healing techniques of Re-Creation Therapy^™ to many clients who have re-created their own negative childhood conditioning and trauma into new personal successes of recovery.

Re-Creation Therapy^™ is based on, and is an expansion of, the concept of the child within each of us. Working with the various methods and tools found within this book, your inner child becomes a messenger who brings long awaited information regarding the origin of your present beliefs, values, and motivations. Many of the suggested exercises and methods are derived from my Transpersonal Counseling background. As you discover and explore your child within memories and move through past experiences and emotions, you will appreciate how these transpersonal methods allow you to move with your own rhythms and direction. This type of guiding therapy encourages one to seek inner wisdom rather than a pre-set therapeutic directive. You will become aware of hidden childhood beliefs and emotions and begin to realize and use your adult “power of choice” and to learn how to re-create your own reality.

The past is but a memory locked within the subconscious mind. Recent research into the areas of human consciousness is bringing us evidence that “memory must be nonphysical, metaphysical or spiritual in nature.” In reading and experiencing this book, you will learn there are no time barriers to reaching your vast storehouse of memories. You can create a positive present by re-creating the past with the use of Hypnotherapy (or autohypnosis), Creative Visualization, and other Transpersonal Counseling techniques.

I choose to study and work with Hypnotherapy for it fills my spiritual needs in searching for my inner-most Self. Hypnotherapy is a rewarding and enlightening tool for self-discovery and self-recovery. If you have reservations regarding the use of hypnosis, let me assure you that hypnosis is a very safe journey inward to explore your own subconscious mind. You are totally in control.

Some of the most common misconceptions about the use of hypnosis are:

• I will pass out

• I won't be in control of myself

• My mind will be weakened

• I might tell the therapist secrets

• I may not awaken from the “trance”

• I will behave in an unacceptable manner

ALL OF THE ABOVE STATEMENTS ARE FALSE

Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy can:

• Induce relaxation

• Help control (or alleviate) pain

• Overcome habitual addictions

• Instill a sense of calm and peace

• Arouse latent creativity

• Release fears and phobias

• Reduce stress, both emotional and physical

• Create positive growth patterns

• Effect behavioral changes, and

• Employ age regression as an emotional release and healing tool

Add to the above list a most important outcome derived from hypnotherapy: The realization that you have control over and can manifest your own reality. That we “create our own reality” is becoming more and more evident to the expanded minds of today. We realize what we are at present is the outcome of what we have thought, acted upon, reacted to, and believed ourselves to be. We are today literally the sum total of our experiences, perceptions, and beliefs. With this belief, we become a co-creator of our reality and can choose to re-create our experiences, perceptions, and beliefs thereby shaping a reality by choice, not mere acceptance of what we believed we must accept. One of this therapy's highest rewards is this “consciousness of Self” in relation to God/ Goddess/All That Is.

In Part I of the book, I explain in detail the concept of the Child Within and urge the reader to explore and reach for this small voice inside. Along with various exercises to help this connection unfold, the basic foundations of Re-Creation Therapy^™ are presented. Part II and III delve into many of the core issues surrounding the blockages many of us as adults today have had to face because of our childhood experiences, as well as, offering many exercises, autohypnosis visualizations, affirmations, and other techniques to begin the journey of recovery.

I suggest you start at your own pace as you forge ahead on this healing journey taking the time to explore and feel the emotions which surface along the way. The last few Chapters address the avenues we can take to ensure our awareness of this healing jaunt and offer insight for the future. Remembering that our actions, thoughts, beliefs and values are all based upon our awareness of our reality, we can accept our reality as (at least partially) of our own making. With this knowledge, we can proceed to heal it—for in the final analysis, we all heal ourselves.

We are constantly testing ourselves and our reality. There is no finish line. There is no ribbon signifying an end to the race for recovery. It is an ongoing race. Our competition?

Ourselves.

Barbara Sinor, Ph.D.
Second Edition 2008

** The names and sequences of experiences related in this book have been altered to protect the anonymity of the people who have shared their stories.

Part I

The
Child Within