S2 EP225 – Wounded Self and Inner Child

Transcription:

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Very often people who are working with Inner Bonding become confused between the wounded self and the inner child, so today I want to bring clarity to this confusion.

The inner child is our true soul self, the spark of the Divine within created in the image of love and expresses with both feelings and words. This is the immortal aspect of us within us.

The inner child is created by spirit while we create the wounded self. The wounded self is what we needed to create as part of our survival. The wounded self, made up of all the false beliefs we absorbed, is a thought process, thinking programmed thoughts that create many of the painful feelings of our inner child. The wounded self is all about trying to have control over getting love, avoiding pain, and feeling safe. 

Inner Bonding is about developing a powerful, spiritually connected loving adult who can heal the false beliefs of the wounded self and free our soul, our inner child, to be all we came here to be.

And this takes time and practice. As far as I know, instant healing of your wounded self doesn’t exist. Some common questions I receive from clients and others practicing Inner Bonding are: 

“How long will it take me to heal?”

Or, “I’ve been practicing Inner Bonding for 6 months now and I still get stuck in my wounded self. What am I doing wrong?”

Or, “I’m not sure I’m doing this process right. I keep doing the same self-destructive things over and over, even though I’m dialoguing every day.”

I constantly reassure my clients that there is nothing wrong with them and they are not doing the Inner Bonding process wrong just because they are not where they think they “should” be.

One of the major challenges in life is the struggle between our loving adult and our wounded self. This struggle has often been symbolized as the conflict between God and the Devil. While our wounded self is certainly not a devil, it is our dark side – the aspect of us that is disconnected from spirit.

Healing the wounded self through developing the spiritually connected loving adult is a lifetime process. It does not happen fast or easily. Dealing with the struggle between our wounded ego and our loving adult is why we are here. Life on this planet offers us the opportunities we need to further develop our ability to love. By coming up against the adversity inherent in life, we have many moment-by-moment opportunities to choose who we want to be. Because we have all practiced being our wounded self for most of our lives, it’s a major challenge to shift out of our intent to control and into our intent to learn about loving ourselves and others.

It’s helpful to imagine practicing Inner Bonding like parenting an actual child. You know that you can’t just spend some time with your child and then expect the child to suddenly be grown up and ready for life. You know that being a loving parent to your child is a daily commitment, not something that happens in a few months.

It may also be helpful to you to see the Inner Bonding process like physical exercise. When you start an exercise program, you know that you will make progress only as long as you are consistently doing the exercising. You know that if you stop, you will lose ground very quickly, but that if you keep at it, you will gain in strength and health. Practicing Inner Bonding is like that.

Practicing Inner Bonding will eventually become as natural to you as your addictions were in the past. But like anything that is worth learning, it takes a lot of practice. Because life keeps presenting us with new challenges – new situations in which we need to learn about what is loving to us – we can continue learning about loving as long as we live.  

Becoming conscious, which means being able to choose the intent to learn and take full responsibility for our feelings, instead of going on automatic pilot and choosing the intent to control, is perhaps THE major challenge in life. Huge challenges come up for all of us when we are alone and lonely, when we are ill, when we lose someone we love, when we are in relationships, and when there is conflict. Because staying open to learning and taking responsibility for our feelings and wellbeing is such a big challenge, you might occasionally revert to your old addictive patterns for years. But don’t get discouraged! This is par for the course. You WILL see small changes along the way, and you will eventually have much more conscious choice over your intent.

One of the things that can get in the way of healing the wounded self is that the wounded self is often threatened when you open to a healing process. Sometimes, you might experience backlash from the threatened wounded self.

This is what was occurring with my client, Maria. Marla had been diligently practicing Inner Bonding for about six months before attending a five-day Inner Bonding Intensive. On the third day of the Intensive, after doing deep work with some of her false beliefs and with discovering her true essence, her heart opened and she felt, for the first time, the deep peace and joy of spirit in her heart and soul. “Wow!” she said. “This is better than any drug! I love this! This is how I want to feel all the time!”

Many of you might have felt – at workshops or in special moments of grace – that ecstatic feeling of being one with spirit – and one with everyone and everything. It is the very best feeling ever – better than sex, better than food, better than any drug, even better than being in love!

When you are experiencing this feeling, it feels like it cannot possibly ever end. Yet it does end. It ends because we all have a wounded self that wants to thrive and stay in control. And the wounded self thrives on negativity. Negativity is the food of the wounded ego.

Since the wounded self is the part of us that wants to control everything and is based on the lies we learned and the lies we concluded as we were growing up, it cannot thrive in the face of love and truth. Fearful of not existing, it comes forth with its lies, and these are the lies that came up for Maria:

• “You can feel that way in a group but not by yourself.​_
  
• “You can access your spiritual guidance when you are with Margaret, but you are not capable of doing it on your own.
  
• “If you stay in that open state, you will be too vulnerable to being controlled by others.
  
• “If you keep your heart open, you will not be able to stand rejection, and you will be taken advantage of. Better to be safe and protected.
  
• “I’ve gotten you through life all this time. What makes you think that your spiritual guidance, who you can’t even see, will guide you right? How can you even be sure it is there? You are just making all this up. It is just a crutch. It is not reality.”

Maria’s wounded self, programmed with hundreds of false beliefs, went on and on, wanting to move her back into fear, anxiety, anger, and depression. These feelings are food for the wounded self. It does not have any power without them.

The more you learn to love yourself and move along in the spiritual journey, and the more you embrace your soul essence and connect with your guidance, the more threatened your wounded self is regarding losing itself. It is important to understand this, so that you can learn how to manage your wounded self rather than become your wounded self.

The way to manage your wounded self is with deep compassion for how frightened this part of you is of losing control. When you are fully open to spirit, you are in surrender to being guided rather than relying on your limited mind. You are using your mind to access truth rather than relying on your mind for truth. To the wounded self, this feels scary and out of control.

The primary motive of your wounded self is to keep you safe. It has no trust that listening to your guidance will actually keep you much safer than relying on your mind.

The way that the wounded self eventually starts to let go is when you take the risk of listening to your guidance and taking loving actions – over and over. When you have enough experiences of guidance being there and caring about your highest good and knowing what is best for you, the wounded self starts to feel safe enough to let go of control.

The spiritual journey of moving from being guided by your wounded self to being guided by your higher self, from unconsciously trying to protect against pain to consciously opening to learning with your guidance about what is loving and in your highest good, and taking loving action, is what gradually heals the false beliefs of your wounded self. The more you practice consciously opening to your guidance, the easier it will eventually become for your soul to guide your thoughts and behavior rather than your wounded self.

One of our challenges in healing our wounded self is learning to have compassion for our wounded self rather than judging ourselves for our wouondedness. The loving adult is compassionate, while the wounded self is judgmental, and you can get caught in a negative circle of acting out from your wounded self and then judging yourself for it rather than learning about your false beliefs that fuel your self-abandonment.

I often hear from my clients and others who attend my Intensives and my Masterclass:

“I hate my wounded self. I just want to get rid of her!”
“My wounded self is ruining things for me. I wish he would just go away.”
“Maybe if I just ignore my wounded self, she will stop acting out.”
“Of course I judge my wounded self! How else can I get him to do things right?

Your wounded self is judging your wounded self, and what might happen when you judge or ignore your wounded self? It might resist and act out more.

It is very important to see who your wounded self really is, which is the scared part of you that had to learn – with your various addictions – how to control your feelings, control others and control outcomes in order to survive. It’s the part of you that had to ignore and repress your feelings in order to get through your childhood. It’s the programmed part of you that absorbed – from your parents, teachers, friends and relatives, media, and religious training – lies about you, others, God, and about what you can and cannot control. It’s the part of you that feels separate from your Source, and therefore feels alone.

It is important to see this part of you as a wounded child and adolescent who is doing the best he or she can to survive. You would not have gotten through your younger years with some sanity without your wounded self. Now, as an adult, this part is causing your problems because it is continuing to treat your inner child the way you were treated or the way your parents treated themselves. Now, this part needs healing. But healing does not happen through judging your wounded self.

You cannot heal your wounded self with your wounded self, and it is your wounded self who judges and ignores your feelings and makes others responsible for you. You cannot heal inner abandonment with further inner abandonment. The only way to heal your wounded self is to fully embrace this part of you with a deep compassionate intent to learn.

The fears and beliefs of your wounded self that lead to your dysfunctional behavior will get healed only through learning about them and bringing in the love and truth that you have always needed. You will continue to act from your wounded self as long as you feel unsafe. And the more you judge and ignore yourself and hand over to others the responsibility for your safety, the more unsafe you will continue to feel.

We feel safe inside only when we feel seen, heard, and accepted with love and compassion from our loving adult. We do not feel safe when the only source of love and compassion is from another person. It is not safe to be dependent upon a person, because that person can always leave or die or be in a bad mood. You will feel safe only when there is a reliable source of love – which is you as a loving adult bringing love in from your Source of love. You will continue to feel unsafe if you have made a person your Source of love.

Your wounded self will not be willing to let go of its negativity and various addictions until there is a strong, compassionate, spiritually connected loving adult willing to learn the truth and take the loving action necessary to create inner safety. Once there is a consistent, compassionate loving adult being guided by spirit and acting in your highest good, the wounded self will feel safe enough to begin to let go of control.

A key to healing the wounded self is choosing a compassionate intent to learn about your wounded self, rather than continuing to ignore or judge your wounded self. The old saying, “What you resist persists” really applies to the wounded self. The more you resist loving this part of you, the more this part of you persists.

Sometime people confuse the part of you who wants to control, which of course is your wounded self, with your inner child, believing that your inner child wants to control you.

For example, my client Greg was having a problem connecting with his inner child – his soul essence. Often, when someone is having a problem connecting with the feelings and desires of their inner child, it is because they are not really open to learning about their feelings. Greg and I explored this. 

“Greg, there must be a good reason that you don’t really want to know what your inner child is feeling and wanting. Is there something you are afraid of?” I asked him. 

“Yes,” he replied. “I’m afraid that he is going to want me to do things that I don’t want to do. I’m afraid he is going to be demanding of me.” 

“So you believe that your inner child wants to have control over you?” I asked him. 

“Yes, I’m sure he wants control over me. And you know that I hate to be controlled,” he answered. 

“So when your son was born and cried to be fed or changed or held, did you see that as his wanting control over you?’ I asked. 

“Oh no, not at all,” he answered. “He was just letting me know what he needed.” 

“So what is the difference between your son and your inner child?” I asked. 

“I think that my inner child is more like my son is now. Now at 10 he is often very demanding, and I sometimes end up feeling controlled by him,” he said. 

“Okay, so let’s take the analogy of your son and bring it inside. When your son was a baby, he was just being his natural, true soul self and expressing his real needs. Now at times he is being his wounded self and making demands on you. Inside, you also have your soul self and your wounded self. But because you are afraid of being demanded of by your wounded self, you are not tuning into your soul self, and are therefore ignoring your very real needs. Just as you need to set limits with your son when he being demanding, so you need to set limits with your own wounded self when he is being controlling. But this does not mean that you ignore your son’s real needs for caring, attention, compassion, acceptance, and understanding. And it doesn’t mean that you ignore his needs for help in various areas. Yet you continue to ignore your own real needs for nurturing, acceptance, compassion, caring, as well as for good food and exercise and rest and playtime. And then you work him to exhaustion and then wonder why you end up feeling alone and empty.” 

“So you are saying,” he said, “that while my wounded self may be demanding, my soul self is not. And I don’t need to be controlled by the demands of my wounded self. But what if my soul self wants me to just quit my job and go play? Then what?” he asked.

“Greg,” I said, “you are confusing your wounded self with your inner child. Your inner child would never demand that you become irresponsible to yourself and your family. Your inner child, your soul self, just wants an opportunity to express himself, but not at the cost of becoming irresponsible.” 

“But what if my inner child doesn’t want to be married and work? What if I really want to just travel around and not be tied down?” 

“Your inner child is not a part of you that would ever demand that you act in a way that is not in your highest good, a way that is not in alignment with your soul’s values. You would never feel good abandoning your family to just go play, so your inner child would never demand this. But you are not going to know this just by my saying it to you. Would you be willing to really open to learning about your feelings and needs and see what happens?” I asked. 

Greg was willing, and soon discovered that his fears of being controlled by his inner child were totally unfounded. Instead, he was able to start taking loving action on his own behalf and bring much more joy into his life. 

People often ask me what kinds of things they should say to their inner child. There are no rules about this; however, it’s very important to remember that the words are less important than the energy, and the energy comes from your intent.

Sometimes people try to memorize words in order to do it right. But this is generally coming from a wounded self who wants to control. The problem here is that our real intent is always communicated through our energy, so when the “right” words are coming from your wounded self, they will not be experienced as loving by your inner child.

On the other hand, when you are truly operating as a loving adult, your energy will be loving rather than controlling, so even if you don’t know what words to say, whatever you do say will be experienced as loving.

Having said that, it is always helpful to have role modeling to learn loving ways of speaking to our inner child. Few of us have had adequate experience with seeing people treat themselves lovingly. Here are a few examples of things you can say to your inner child throughout a day. But be sure when you say them that you are truly in your loving adult connected with your guidance. Your inner child won’t feel loved or reassured if your wounded self is saying these statements or asked these questions, and the wounded self can mask as the loving adult. It is only your loving adult who has the authority to tell the truth and reassure your inner child, and we are a loving adult only when we are open to learning and connected with our spiritual guidance. So here are some examples, and none of them are written in stone: 

• “I’m learning how to be here for you more of the time, and to stay tuned into your feelings. Your feelings are very important to me.
  
• “I love you and your happiness is the most important thing in the world to me.
  
• “Thank you for guiding me with your feelings.
  
• “Your creativity amazes me.
  
• “It’s truly okay for you to feel this anger, even if it’s at me. I won’t stop loving you no matter how angry you feel at me. It’s okay for you to yell at me.
  
• “It’s okay to cry. You are not alone. I’m here for you.
  
• “It’s okay to make mistakes and to fail. You are lovable even if you make mistakes or fail. You don’t have to be perfect for me to love you.
  
• “You don’t have to do it ‘right.’  I will continue to love you no matter what you say or do, even if you say or do nothing at all.
  
• “You are so inherently kind and loving. Thank you for being you. I feel so blessed to have you as my true soul self.
  
• “It is a sacred privilege to care for you.
  
• “Your value is not in your looks or performance. Your value is in the loving being that you are.
  
• “Our guidance knows your worth and loves you deeply. Others cannot know your worth, so I am learning to stop making others responsible for defining your worth.
  
• “It is not your job to take care of others. It is my job to take care of you, and I want the responsibility of taking loving care of you.”
  
• Other people’s feelings and behavior are not your fault.

You can also ask your inner child questions, such as:

• “What would you like for dinner tonight?
  
• “What do you feel like wearing today?
  
• “Who would you like to spend time with this weekend?
  
• “What would you like to do this weekend?
  
• “What kind of vacation do you want to take this year?
  
• “What kind of exercise is most appealing to you?
  
• “Are there creative pursuits that you want to be doing
  
• “What are some of the things you’ve always wanted to do but have never done?”

The loving adult can also ask questions such as: 

• “What are you feeling right now?
  
• “What do you want or need right now?
  
• “What do you need from me right now?
  
• “Am I letting you down or not taking care of you in some way?
  How?
  
• “Have I been ignoring you? Discounting you? Controlling you?
  Judging you? Making another responsible for you? Numbing you out with addictions?
  
• “I know you’re feeling anxious (or some other painful feeling). What am I telling you right now that is causing this anxiety (or depression, guilt, shame, anger, aloneness, emptiness, jealousy, and so on)?
  
• “How do you feel about the work we do?”

As you learn to talk lovingly with your inner child, it is very important for you to tune into what he or she needs to hear from you and the unique kinds of statements and questions that help your inner child feel safe enough to open to you.

I hope that now you have a clear understanding of the vast differences between your wounded self and your inner child, and what the responsibility is of your loving adult.

I invite you to join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership. 

And, I invite you to join me for my 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my new book, “Lonely No More: The Astonishing Power of Inner Bonding” and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.