Emotional wounds from early life lie right at the core of our self-limiting beliefs and behaviour patterns. But through expanded awareness they become the key to our personal growth and the fulfillment of our soul’s purpose.
For many of us the starting point of personal growth is our awareness of a sense of discomfort or dissatisfaction with our life as it is. We may feel unhappy, anxious or distressed about our lack of success in relationships, health or finances. Or we may feel a deep yearning for greater fulfillment and meaning. Perhaps we may notice a pattern in how we habitually react to certain types of events or people or situations.
A common default reaction to all this is to suffer in silence. We fail to see our own capacity for growth and positive change, and we don’t allow ourselves to believe in the possibility of a better, more joyful, abundant life. Instead of facing and dealing with our discontent, we focus our energies on avoiding the discomfort, denial and numbing out. Life becomes an endless escape into distractions or even harmful addictions. As a result we become enslaved to mediocrity and our inner light is dimmed. We feel trapped in habitual patterns of behaviour which are far from what we truly desire for ourselves and which continually undermine our ability to achieve our goals and dreams.
Acknowledging these feelings of discontent is our first vital step in the journey of personal growth.
Unconscious emotional blocks limit us and keep us stuck
These patterns are primarily the result of unconscious emotional blocks which limit us and keep us stuck. However, the emotional blocks are themselves symptoms of unaddressed emotional wounds – typically ones we sustained in early life. Everyone has them! Some of us may have experienced continually repeated emotional pain over time; others may have had more dramatic, traumatic experiences.
Painful experiences in our formative years trigger instinctive psychological defense mechanisms that are biologically programmed to protect us from the perceived causes of our pain and ensure our emotional survival.
This happened to us at a stage in our development when we lacked the maturity and internal resources that would help us to understand and deal effectively with our painful experiences. What mattered to us was how to alleviate the pain, but we were deeply dependent at that young age on compassionate and empathic adult support and guidance. Out of an unfulfilled need to feel validated and safe while in a state of deep distress and confusion our young minds began to form assumptions and draw conclusions about ourselves and about our life.
The child instinctively blames himself or herself for any feelings of emotional pain
A very young child cannot consider the possibility that his or her parents or adult caretakers are fallible, just human beings with imperfections that are sometimes misguided and capable of immature behaviours. Because the child is so dependent on these ‘big people’ for his or her survival and well-being there is a compelling need to assume that they are perfect – because if they are not, how could I possibly survive!
Core beliefs and guiding beliefs
Based on this insight, we can easily understand that the subjective mind of a vulnerable young child instinctively blames himself or herself for any feelings of emotional pain or distress! If I’m not experiencing feelings of love and acceptance by mom or dad (or other significant adult), it can only mean there’s something wrong with me! Thus are formed our negative core beliefs, like: I’m not good enough; I’m unlovable; I’m bad; I don’t matter; There’s something wrong with me; I’m unimportant; I’m unwanted). These negative core beliefs provide the foundation for powerful guiding beliefs (I have to hide my feelings to keep myself safe.; I have to please people to gain acceptance; I have to perform well to prove my worthiness; etc. etc.). Although such beliefs may have served as our best available psychological strategies at the time, for most of us they have evolved into our default personality and are clearly no longer serving us as adults! Habituated since early on into these beliefs and instinctive behaviour patterns, we unconsciously allowed them to become our very identity. We unwittingly trapped ourselves in the belief that This is who I am!
It is this unconscious condition that can limit the quality of everything in our life.
Our Essential Self becomes eclipsed. We live our lives through this ‘ego persona’ constructed out of our own unconscious defense mechanisms, believing it’s who we actually are! We’re unaware of being stuck in the past and we continue using these adaptive protective mechanisms in situations where it’s inappropriate and wonder why our lives are not happy, flowing, successful and fulfilling.
The importance of objective support
When we begin to work on ourselves the support of a mentor, life coach or therapist can be invaluable, offering us perspective and objectivity that can be extremely difficult to access on our own.
You WILL get past this! It will happen through healing your relationship with those ‘parts’ of your psyche that still tend to become activated by the deep fears of re-experiencing the pain of your early life wounds. These parts of you are desperate to survive at all costs and are therefore easily seduced by fear. But they are not who you really are! They are your ‘ego’ – not your core, essential Self. They need your loving acceptance, your compassion and your acknowledgement for wanting to keep you safe. They need the reassurance and validation that you may not have received as a child. These ‘parts’ of you are not to be rejected or crushed. They have their place, and they will have a more relaxed, joyful and fulfilling role to play when your core inner wounded part is healed.
The power of body-mind healing techniques
This healing process happens firstly through self-acceptance, with deep compassion and validation. Then we begin to access and finally release the trapped, traumatic and painful feelings that we have rigidly suppressed and forced into hiding.
I have found body-mind or energy psychology techniques such as EFT tapping and Matrix Reimprinting to be extremely powerful in accomplishing such healing. Through a combination of energy work to provide emotional release together with deep cognitive processing, most people experience radically transformational healing in relatively little time.
A permanent shift in your emotional being, supported by the replacement of old dis-empowering beliefs and thought patterns with new, empowered ones will open up a radical new sense of self. You’ll find yourself attracting new levels of joy and abundance into your life.