Childhood Wounding

 

Throughout our childhood, we are being programmed by our caretakers and communities to fit into society. We are programmed to do what we can to gain love and acceptance. We split off, repress, or disown parts of ourselves that society finds challenging or unacceptable.

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Childhood Wounding

 

Childhood wounding, a great deal of time is spent in early childhood and young adulthood conforming. It’s traumatic to question one’s true identity and then discover it, but then feel it necessary to keep it secret from one’s inner self, the outside world, and one’s own family. Our childhood programming overview, we all begin in this state of relaxed and joyful bliss. Once our needs are met, our state of relaxed and joyful bliss is sustained. Otherwise, as our need becomes increasingly unmet, negative programming begins. Our unmet need causes fear and pain. In our infantile ignorance, we have no idea how to change it and restore our feeling of safety. We adopt primitive coping mechanisms. At the same time throughout our childhood, we are also being programmed by our caretakers and communities to fit into society. We are programmed to do what we can to gain love and acceptance. We split off and repress all these old parts of ourselves that the society finds challenging or unacceptable.

Those of us with good enough caretakers get by, those who don’t have their lives handicapped. We have the illusion that we have the freedom of choice when it comes to choosing our lives. However, our unconscious has an agenda of its own. Our primitive old brain has a compelling non-negotiative drive and programming to restore us to the original blueprint. To restore us, the damage done in childhood as a result of unmet needs must be repaired. The way the unconscious does that is to design the life that would give us where our caretakers have failed to provide. Every transaction of pleasure and pain in childhood has scarred us. We always try to replicate these transactions as we scan our environment for a suitable life partner. This image of the internal program that can make me whole again, I call the internalized program. Consciously, we will only seek positive traits. Unconsciously, the negative traits of our caretakers are in our internalized programs. These traits cause the painful experience we now seek to heal.

Through conflict, we become aware and grow. Click To Tweet

Our unconscious seeks to restore us with a program that reminds us of our caretakers. In other words, we look for programmed circumstances that replicate the same old deficits that hurt us in the first place. When we fall in love, we do so with someone who is the sum total of all our caretaker’s characteristics. We end up in careers and life circumstances that recreate the essence of our caretaker’s lives. This guarantees more of the same pain and wounding that we experienced as children until we learn to recognize this and move into a more aware way of living. Otherwise, we experience the hurts of our childhood all over again and wonder why life and love hurts. Why is it great that we experience this conflict? It’s because of the conflict that we become aware and we grow and make new choices. This is a natural selection mechanism. Everything in nature is evolving by overcoming a challenge. This can be seen as conflict or emergence.

Conflict that leads to higher levels of organization or emergence is a sign that the psyche is trying to survive to get its needs met and become whole. It’s only without this knowledge that conflict is destructive. Simply changing circumstances without emergence does not solve the problems. We may change our partners, jobs, houses but we keep our programs, carrying them forward into the next relationship, house or job. You can do this by undoing the fundamental negative childhood programs. The Cave Allegory that Plato, a famous philosopher, in his book The Republic has his teacher Socrates recount the allegory of the cave. A group of people has lived chained up in a deep cave since birth, never ever seeing daylight and seeing only a hill. Behind them are a partial wall and the fire between the prisoners and the partial wall. There are various statues manipulated by hidden groups representing all the forces that program and influence us behind the partial wall that the prisoners cannot see.

 

The prisoners see the shadows cast by the statues moving and they think they are real. Most people mistake the products of the delusion, generalization, distortions and projections as real and reflecting reality. They mistake the internal map of the world for the real world. These prisoners represent people who never asked questions about their lives. They have never realized the mental models that are controlling them. One of the prisoners is freed from his bonds and forced to confront the reality of the fire and the statues themselves. This is what happens when one day you wake up and something shocking happens like you lose your job or someone close to you dies. You’re shaken out from your trans-state or default mode and forced to see the world that’s truly is. The prisoner faces pain and confusion initially because his eyes are not used to the light. He then realizes that he’s seeing the reality for the first time as opposed to the shadows formed by the fire and the statues he previously saw.

He now accepts the fire and the statues as most real. This stage in the cave represents beliefs. He is still unaware that there are greater things waiting for him from the world beyond this cave. Like the prisoner, the first step, the freedom is when you begin to wake up from your dream state and your default modes. Next, this prisoner is dragged out of the cave into the world of sunlight where his eyes are blinded initially. He can only look at shadows and at reflections. Finally, he can see what is real. Trees, flowers, houses, and so on. He sees that these are even more real than the statutes were and that those were the only copies of these. He has now reached the cognitive stage of thought. He has caught his first glimpse of the most real things as they are. When the prisoner’s eyes have fully adjusted to the brightness, he lifts his head and sees the sun. He understands that the sun is the root cause of everything around him, the light, his capacity for sight, the existence of flowers, trees and other objects.

When you wake up from your dream state and your default mode fully and see the world for what it is, you become fully capable of choosing. The only true choices you can design and build new default programs and habits after you have awareness and clarity. Otherwise, even if you hit all your goals and targets, you are simply repeating the same old tired formula. This is the only way to have forward movement in your life. This is a secret that most programs do not address. Even after you achieved all your goals, there’s certainly a feeling of lack and inadequacy. Often, we build up things in our mind. It comes down to making that one single commitment. Let me ask you this. As we have been talking about this, you probably thought of a commitment you needed to make. Maybe it’s a tough conversation you need to have. Maybe it’s an action you need to take. What is it for you? What’s the thing that’s going to move your needle?

Nothing really happens inside the comfort zone. Click To Tweet

It may push you outside of your comfort zone, but all the important stuff happens outside of your comfort zone. If you feel uncomfortable thinking about this, fantastic. Embrace it. That’s right where you should be. Nothing good happens inside the comfort zone. What is the next single commitment that you need to make? If you want to live a life by design, you want to be courageous and not live by default and not be in overdrive. These are the three questions you need to answer if you haven’t already answered them. Number one, what would your ideal life a few years in the future look like? You can pause for a while and take your time to answer this question and when you have and then you come back and look at number two. Question number two, if you continue what you’re doing now, will you feel fulfilled a few years in the future? Quickly answer this and then get ready for question three. Question number three, what commitment will you now make to your ideal future? When you’ve answered this, you can come back to the blog.

Now that you’re clear about the questions you need to answer to live a life by design, the next obvious step is the practicality of implementing this on a daily basis. For example, how will your everyday life change from what you are currently doing? How will your daily decisions be different based on the answers to the questions we discussed now? How will you manage your time so you’re giving attention to the things that matter most? It’s all dreams and visions unless we take our 30,000-foot view of our ideal life and bring it down to practical daily actions. To make positive change and break the rhythm and the routine that isn’t serving us, we have to change. Go ahead and answer the three questions. I can’t wait to see what new breakthroughs you will make.

One lucky audience that posts a review on iTunes will win a private confidential consultation and coaching with me on discovering your soul’s purpose. I will lead you on a personal journey to discover the unique mind-body psychosomatic map of your life. You will get a detailed report and a personal 45-minute consultation with me. I will help you design the life that works so you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The more clear you can be about how to organize your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you step into your true potential, stay on track, and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen? Feel free to reach out to me to ask your questions at DrSundardas.com. Your life is a gift. Design it and do what matters. Join me each episode as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams.

 

Important Links:

• The Republic
• DrSundardas.com
• iTunes – Your Life By Design Podcast