A Wound With A View
How Unhealed Trauma Affects Everything We See…
What if you knew that everything you see in life, first went through the filter of your deepest core wound? For many people, and for much of my own life, this has been the case. Unless we have practiced presence and worked to acknowledge and heal our wounds, we may be experiencing life through a distorted lens.
Have you ever known anyone who approaches life with guns blazing, ready to defend themselves from everything? You may feel like you must tip toe around them to prevent provocation. Perhaps you know someone who sees life in a very negative light and regardless of what good may be happening, they are always waiting for the other shoe to drop. What about people who have all the capability in the world, but cannot put one foot in front of the other to make anything happen for themselves?
There are countless examples of behaviors that people exhibit that do not reflect a reaction to their current circumstances. This isn’t just a “personality”, as we were once made to believe. These are wounded people, with traumatized children working through them. They may have been highly victimized as a child, and the energy in their body still provokes an immediate reaction to any perceived threat. As you can imagine, this is not good for anything. It is bad for the physical body to be in constant fight or flight mode, it is bad for the emotional body dealing with the intense highs and lows, and it takes a toll on their lives and relationships.
We all have a vital flow of energy moving through our body and helping to give us life. When we are children, our energy bodies, like our physical bodies, are just developing. If 4-year-old me has a scary traumatizing experience where I was not supported, loved, and made to feel safe, that trauma imprint lives in me. Anytime I have an experience in life that triggers my trauma, it adds another layer. Soon I develop a personality around this trigger to help me cope with this event I couldn’t understand.
This is why when it comes down to it, I believe we are always reacting from a place of our initial core wounds.
Realizing this in myself has helped me to understand and have compassion for people who see things so differently. There are times in my life I have struggled to understand how my parent, friend, or a stranger cannot see something that I find so obvious. It also helps me to forgive myself for and reconcile with decisions I made in my past, that the me now would be mortified by.
Unhealed, we are all moving through life looking outward through the lens of our wounds. When we understand this, we can empathize with people and not take things so personally. If we do take things personally, the reaction may be coming from our own wounded inner child.
As adults, we can and should be empowered to heal our childhood wounds so we can live fully and freely in the present moment. To do this, it takes self-awareness above all. Being able to observe our thoughts from the seat of the soul, and recognize when our ego reacts, is self-awareness.
When we live from this space of self-awareness, we can be more present in life. We can notice when our thoughts are creating unnecessary suffering. We can let go of our need to defend against or be provoked by the behaviors of others. We can understand why people may be viewing the same situations, through different lenses.
Though our stories and behaviors may look different, our essences are the same. To accept ourselves fully, permits the acceptance of others. It doesn’t mean we should tolerate behaviors we don’t agree with. We can and should be empowered to set boundaries. Acceptance means we can walk away and not take other’s behaviors personally.
Meditation helped me become aware of my reactions to life and gave me understanding and empathy for myself and most importantly, my inner child. I gave my inner child space to be heard, felt, and soothed by me. I practiced this time and again with various imprints of my traumatized child energy, and the pain and reactivity left my body.
My capacity to love grew exponentially.
There is nothing more valuable than bringing the body back to its vital, energetically balanced state. From there, we can all see each other and meet each moment with presence and understanding. We are all one.
When you finally heal your inner child wounds and are fully connected to your soul self, life gets easier. When the “whole you” are steering your ship, there is a greater trust in the process of life. You allow more. You live more. You love more.