Workshops and Special Programs

Healing Your Past – Inner Child Workshop

While growing up, we go through five developmental stages. Beginning with infancy, we progress to a toddler, then a pre-schooler, a school-age child, and finally an adolescent.

In each stage, our developmental needs must be met for us to successfully move to the next stage. If these needs are not met, our adult lives are contaminated with:

• Codependency
• Narcissism
• Trust issues
• Addictions
• Impulsiveness
• Compulsions
• Intimacy disorders
• Thought distortions
• Emptiness
• Spiritual bankruptcy
• Offending behaviors

If you can relate to any of these issues, then inner child work will help you heal. Our seven-week experiential workshop series is based on John Bradshaw’s popular book The Homecoming. It takes participants back through these stages to learn what needs weren’t met in childhood and how they can meet them now.

Finishing this unfinished business helps us recognize and connect to the frozen feelings of the past. It teaches us to champion and nurture our inner child. This heals old wounds from the past. As a result, many of us experience a new freedom. We sense a new power and creative force in our lives. And we come to know a stronger spiritual connectedness than ever before.

We begin our workshop series with a weekend of childhood exploration. We revisit what it was like to grow up. We look at our experiences and feelings as a child in our family. We see how we might have been wounded. Then we spend the next five Wednesday evenings taking a deeper look at each developmental stage – one stage each week. We learn what happens in healthy families versus unhealthy families. And we take a look at how this affects us as adults.

We spend the last two Wednesday evenings learning to champion our inner child with the four Ps of therapeutic change. They also happen to be the four Ps of healthy parenting:
Potency – Giving our inner child a new sense of power and strength
Permission — Giving our inner child new permissions, new nurturing rules
Protection — Protecting our inner child from unhealthy people, situations, and behaviors
Practice – Practicing these skills to build healthier relationships with ourselves and others

If you’ve never experienced the healing power of inner child work, please join us for this special workshop. Through education, guided imagery, and interactive exercises, we will help you reclaim and heal your wounded self.

The initial weekend workshop will be followed by seven weekly group sessions. Participants are required to commit to the entire workshop series. Anyone who hasn’t been a client at New Leaf Center is required to see a workshop facilitator for an individual session before the workshop begins. The fee for an individual session is $160 and is not included in the workshop fee.

WHEN:
Friday and Saturday, Sept 6 and 7, 2024
Initial Weekend Workshop: Friday, 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.  (Light lunch included on Saturday)
Weekly Group Sessions, September 11 through October 23, 2024
Every Wednesday evening for seven sessions. Group sessions start at 5:15 pm and last approximately 3 hours.

WHERE:
New Leaf Center

FACILITATORS:
Jackie MacKay, M.A., LMHC, NCC, CSAT, Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Lisa Cajella, M.A., MBA, RMHCI, CSAT Candidate, Registered Mental Health Counselor Intern

COST:
Initial Weekend Workshop: $500 per person
Each Group Session: $95 per person
A deposit of $500 is due at the time of registration and covers the cost of the initial weekend workshop. Payment for the weekly group session fee of $95 is due each week.

Read what past participants
say about this workshop.