Would You Bring a Goddess to Therapy?

Have you ever brought a goddess with you to therapy? Would you want to?

Therapy is a place where we can explore our inner landscapes, discover patterns and dynamics that are happening in our lives, and plant the seeds of change. It can be a place of healing and self-discovery, helping us to live lives that are richer, more connected, and closer to our goals.

Involving the Body and Imagination in Therapy

There are countless styles of therapy, but in my opinion, the best ones are those that can facilitate the healing that a client’s body and nervous system already know how to do—already want to do. In my experience, healing often lies beneath cognitive awareness. Though thinking, talking, and analyzing have their place in therapeutic work, I find that working with images, body sensations, and the imagination can be much more powerful for creating change. Once the inner world changes, things in the outside world simply start to fall into place, often without even really thinking about it.

So much of the time, the issues we are working on in therapy are rooted in the nervous system. Our reactions and beliefs are often based on what we think will make or keep us safe, and not necessarily based on what we want. We may have never had the space to discover what it is that we want, but even if we do, we find ourselves turning away from it, withdrawing, even fighting the very thing we’ve been trying to move toward. Some part of us feels unsafe moving toward that goal, and our conscious minds often have no idea what that is.

So we explore body sensations, which take us into our imagination. We uncover parts of us that may be hidden or exiled. These are often younger parts; parts that suffered or were afraid or felt unheard or needed a parent we didn’t have. For many people, it is incredibly healing to go in and interact with those younger selves, to re-parent the inner child in the way that we needed then and still need now. But in some cases, it’s too big, too scary, too hard to do alone.

I’ve found that, especially for those who were parentified children—children who, in one way or another, had to take care of their parents rather than the other way around—this exercise can feel impossible. They’ve always taken care of themselves, and now they still have to do it all these years later? They’ve been responsible all their lives, and now there are inner children they have to be responsible for? In these cases, I find, reparenting doesn’t feel quite as healing.

Bringing Divine Energy into Therapy to Facilitate Healing

Here’s where envisioning the archetypal energy of a goddess might provide some support in therapy. The divine feminine energy you choose to work with could be Quan Yin, Buddhist goddess of compassion, who can hold you in her wide, safe arms and cry with you. She could be the Hindu Durga, a warrior goddess who strides in on a lion and destroys her enemies with a single look. Maybe you resonate more with the Irish Brigid, bright red-haired goddess of wisdom, poetry, and springtime fire, who can help you uncover what you need to learn about yourself.

The divine energy you work with in therapy doesn’t have to be a goddess, either. Sometimes it’s a god, angel, spirit guide, pet, or ancestor. Sometimes it’s the pure energy of compassion or love. Parentified children often feel very isolated in all the work they are doing, and these archetypes can remind us that we are not as alone as we sometimes feel. It’s fair enough that some of the things that have happened to us are too big for our human hands to hold. That’s what the gods and goddesses have always been there for: to be larger-than-life energies that comfort us when we are lost and lonely.

How We Can Support Our Inner Children in Therapy

We might think we need to come into a therapy session and tell our inner children something wise or true. But that’s often not the case. In my experience, inner children need to be witnessed and understood, not lectured at. I’ve seen massive shifts happen when an adult can say to their inner child, I am so sorry this happened to you, and I wish I knew what to do.

When the adult feels just as lost as the inner child, an archetype that represents love, protection, or compassion can come in and hold the adult and the child together, reminding them that they are not alone. It is an exercise in imagination, and it might seem like a small thing. But it can go a long way toward rebalancing a nervous system that has been wanting to heal—wanting help and support—for a long, long time.

Use these 15 journaling prompts to support your inner child healing journey.