I have made and used puppets therapeutically for fifteen years in my ongoing recovery from an eating disorder. I am not a trained psychotherapist nor a professional puppeteer, at least not yet. This article is an expression of my experience making and using puppets as part of my own healing process.
When I was introduced to the “inner child” in my first therapy group, it was suggested that we each buy a doll to represent our “inner child”. The inner child is a therapeutic method used in accessing the feelings experienced in childhood. It involves reparenting the young part of us that experienced childhood trauma including incest and abuse. I bought a baby doll but was unable to relate to her in a nurturing way. Instead, she elicited anger and I couldn’t use her. However later as my therapy progressed, she became a symbol of my spiritual inner child.
Instead, I became inspired to make an inner child puppet after watching a puppeteer on the Mr. Rogers Neighborhood show on public television. She manipulated two large puppets that looked and acted exactly like real children and thus the idea was born.
My puppets have helped me speak and find my voice. They helped me name, recognize and feel emotions that I have forgotten and repressed since childhood. They also helped me recognize habitual negative thought patterns associated with the feelings. I grew up in a family that did not talk about feelings. The predominant feeling expressed was anger, which frightened and inhibited me. I retreated into a fantasy world and creativity to express my feelings, which may be why puppetry works for me. As a result I am now more aware of my feelings and can verbalize them better.
The first puppet I made was my healthy inner child. She is extremely verbal, direct and happy. As therapy progressed I found myself overwhelmed and devastated by a conglomeration of unintelligible intense painful suppressed feelings. In an effort to differentiate one feeling from the next I gave each new feeling a personality and a full character emerged as an inner child. I have many characters, children as well as adults, some male and some female. They represent different stages of growth from the crying baby through teenagerhood and on to adult. Because thoughts and emotions come and pass quickly, I constructed the puppets in such a manner that I could change characters quickly to accommodate the pattern of feelings and thoughts that arose. By identifying an emotion as an inner child puppet character I was able to get some distance from and able to experience emotions without having to run away from them. This was how I came to know and experience shame, abandonment, loneliness, terror, fear, rage, sadness, hopelessness, and despair. Thus my puppets helped me to access my unconscious in a non-threatening manner.
I was determined to face these feelings and knew I had to refrain from overeating to feel them. All my life I had been using food as a way to medicate myself so I wouldn’t feel. I knew it was these intense feelings buried deep in my unconscious that were driving me to overeat. Painful as it was to not overeat, I was determined and attended Overeaters Anonymous for support.
As time progressed, I learned more about myself through dialoguing with the “inner children” Also more characters emerged from my subconscious, such as the ballerina. My involvement with psychodrama helped me to look at these feelings in a more unified way and to experience the strengths and beauty of the healthy inner child – the whole child. One of my characters, the wise woman (strong nurturing adult) was made real to me in psychodrama. In addition, I think puppets can be used to help one focus and cultivate positive thoughts and behaviors. Puppets can also be used as a substitute for people in acting out individual psychodramas.
I believe puppets are powerful tools for transformation and can bring new dimensions to adult psychotherapy. Puppet use is experiential and integrative. It involves the visual and tactile senses as well as speech and body movement. It can externalize and bring perspective to a situation. Puppetry brings out playfulness and lightheartedness and connects us with the child within. Puppets are non-threatening and can create a buffer between the event and corresponding emotions. The experience can be similar to watching a play and identifying with the main character, but not having to relive the trauma. Puppets can be useful in cognitive therapy, psychodrama, inner child therapy, role-playing and behavioral modification. It’s less threatening to have your puppet try out a new behavior first, like writing an article to be part of this book.
