The Wound the Split and the Belief which can rule our lives

My way of doing therapy is to go directly to the core of my client's suffering, leaving the symptoms to be sorted out along the way. It is at the core where the fundamental healing occurs, so why not attend to that at the start?

I can bring you directly to that place in a very short time and show you how to affect profound change there, and in a very simple way.

The way it happens is this:

1. we get wounded in our Feeling Being which is the core of our personality

2.we fragment into antagonistic parts of self.

3. we create “beliefs” to live by which “explains” our difficult adaptation to life.

4. we become addicted to playing an illusory "Role", where we become our own jailer and self abuser.

Basically, as children we are vulnerable and dependent, and inevitably become somewhat injured, regardless of how benign or hostile our childhood situation actually was. In an attempt to understand and prevent a recurrence of this wounding, we assume beliefs about ourselves, and those who around us. These beliefs are usually negative - "I must be a bad person to have been treated this way. I must not be worthy of good treatment." Or "I deserve all the harsh criticism; Etc, etc. Then we split off the parts of self which are most painful and life a life burdened by internal partitions.

Strangely enough, our wounds are directional locators, which, over a lifetime, require us to seek out people who will continually re-enact the original wounding for us, even while our conscious mind is fighting the good fight to prevent their reoccurrence. There is a subtle genius at work here. This enactment of the Law of Attraction (see my critique of The Secret) is purposed to allow us to eventually attend to the core wounds - and the pain we try to avoid by hiding the wounds, by divorcing ourselves from them.

We are all hurt and offended by a lack of attention or love from those around us. Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether or not we are or were loving towards others (another interesting question which I will deal with below), a fact remains: In reaction to this absence of care, we are wounded in our Feeling Being, which is the core of our personality. We live a life thereafter in the mood of (existential) shame (the opposite of self-love and respect).

Then, invariably, we fragment into antagonistic or dissociated parts of self. some aspects of self become "favoured" while the difficult parts become "disowned".

The (inner) Child - Subconscious, becomes conflicted with the (internalised) Adult- Conscious mind, in a self protective survival gesture, which requires it to challenge and contest the will of the parenting we have inherited from our environment.

We create beliefs to live by, such as "I am not good enough for good treatment", and then create favoured "stories" which then "explain" our difficult adaptation to life.

We also fragment into sub-selves or sub-personalities (as described in Voice Dialogue Therapy, for those who might be familiar with that modality). We tend to prefer one aspect over the others: your Inner Critic, your Perfectionist, your Pleaser, your Responsible Parent, your Doing Self, your Caring Self, your Lazy Self or your Critic/Judge Self.

We also gravitate towards one favoured disposition in life, be it the Conqueror, the Loser, the Beggar, The Martyr, the Saint, the Genius, the Rebel, the Rogue, the Lover or the Adorable One.

We feel we need to excuse and accept the "bad parent(ing)" to which we have been subjected because a child cannot tolerate a situation where is feels it is at the mercy of a bad parent. Therefore a child concludes that it (the child) must be the cause of the rough treatment, because it(the child) is a "bad person", deserving of mistreatment.

This negative treatment experience takes a position in our psyche as a part of our own"adult" self, (along with an internalised "good parent(ing)). But the child/innocent/primitive aspect of us is then minimalised dismissed and ignored and relegated to a subconscious state. It no longer participates in a conscious loop of active involvement in what goes on in the person's life choices. It now fights an underground "guerilla war" of sabotage and subversion, in a desperate effort to be heard and to taken care of. There is a strong argument afoot that this subconscious hidden self is the real ruler of our lives. Although mysterious and hidden from view, it definitely has enough power to permanently sabotage our lives until we make peace with it.

This self-division also shows itself in preferences we develop towards different functions in ourselves, the presumed "safer" places and ways of participating in life. Some people will become comfortable with their intellect, but terrified of their emotions. Others will become comfortable with their emotions, but horrified of physical life. Yet others will become comfortable and grounded in their body, but alienated from their intellect, etc. We fervently hope this strategic maneuvering will sooth the primal wounding, and prevent such pain from occurring again.

We are simply attempting to protect ourselves and our most vulnerable parts, yet the self division is a serious compromise, and has serious consequences. As a result, we no longer operate our body-mind and emotions as a loving, powerful and unified entity.

At a deeper level we become infused with a sense of shame about ourselves, and a conviction that we are not good enough, unworthy of proper treatment. This self-loathing is the cause of 95% our eventual problems in life.

So, once we have acquired a wound and its corresponding beliefs about people and life we go about manifesting those negative beliefs. We have internalised the "bad parent [or parenting]" inside us. Our complaints about our present situation, whether it is our job, or a relationship or even about public figures are actually a direct reflection or echo of what we are doing to ourselves in every moment (although, once again, that doesn't justify destructive actions by others).

Perhaps your father was a stubborn and rigid man who would never admit fault. Perhaps your mother was a compliant and submissive woman. It is a fair guess that if you disliked these qualities in them, that those very same qualities are or were active in you. It is a well known fact that we often dislike those qualities in others, which we dislike most in ourselves.

In the example of a partner that we claim isn't attentive to us, it usually means that we have internalised the "bad parent(ing)", which was inattentive to us. And consequently in our lives, we not only don't attend to our own needs but we deeply believe that we do not deserve to have people pay proper attention to us. We have limited dialogue with the vulnerable, childlike part of ourselves, because it has long ago been disowned.

If our complaint is that a partner is violent with us, it is very likely that we are now violent with ourselves (which of course DOES NOT excuse their behavior).

On top of this, we create generalising secondary beliefs such as all men are untrustworthy, or all women are erratic, or all people are dangerous etc.

Our negative belief system tends to create the very thing the belief system is designed to help us avoid. We attract the negative thing to us. We actually manifest and re-create the original form of our abuse, over and over again. We have entered the realm of victim consciousness, where blaming and powerlessness abound.

Consequently, wounded people do not accomplish one of the most fundamental tasks, known in psychology, as differentiation. Differentiation means the capacity to negotiate the needs of the individual versus the need for cooperation with others. A differentiated person is able to negotiate the stress of being in relationship, while still maintaining and clear and strong sense of self.

So, it is necessary to be able to access our wounds and freely feel and communicate them -- not so much for a cathartic release of energy, or the social benefits of communicating with others, or some "magical" presumption of instant healing -- but for the reunion it represents in integrating and loving and accepting ourselves.

In order to heal, we not only have to address the original wounding -- evolve new thinking and actions -- but most importantly, we must come to love ourselves in a continuous act of personal unity and self-respect.

No one is happy or healed or genuinely functional without a significant degree of self love. Self love is quite different from selfishness or narcissism. Those are actually forms of dissociative social separateness, generated by the motives of fear, sorrow or anger.

And, finally, there is a deeper level, the evolutionary or "soul" question -- what life lessons or opportunities did this wounding experience eventually create for you?

And ultimately, a spiritual lesson can be glimpsed regarding the simple fact that we were so very susceptible to this wound-patterning to begin with.

If we had not divorced our self from Source- God- Goddess- Truth, wouldn't we have been continuously "parented" by higher spiritual reality? Wouldn't we have moved beyond and dealt with a wounding to the psyche rather quickly, regardless of what physical parents we were born to, if we had remained True to our Deepest Self?

At this point perhaps only one more thing needs to be said: that is that I have noticed that there are two types of responses that people characteristically make in response the the perceived limitations of their lives. Some people are inclined to try to fix the mechanics of their psyche and try to nut it out using the already limited power contained in within their egos; and on the other hand their are those who go in the opposite direction and try to have higher power accomplish the practical tasks involved in living in this world, yet neglect to ground the work in the practical theatre of their lives. It is my personal experience that both elements in some way shape or form, consciously or unconsciously, must be accommodated for significant growth to occur.

I will guide you and give you the tools needed to accomplish this "reunion" of self. And this addiction to an illusory role-play, where you are the unwitting self-abuser. You might say that this business isn't "rocket science", but it is indeed exquisitely simply and delicate and important work for every individual to accomplish in their lifetime.

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