S2 EP283 – Healing from Identity Dysregulation

Hi everyone! Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Today I’m speaking about the difference between who you might think you are and who you really are.

We all developed a wounded self. Our wounded was necessary for our survival – it was a survival mechanism. But if we only see role models of the wounded self, we come to believe that this is who we are. Did your parents or caregivers know the beauty of their soul essence? Did they see you who you really are, or did they project their wounded self onto you?

I had no experience with being seen by my parents. My parents had no idea who I was. They thought I was not smart, they thought I was not responsible, they couldn’t see me as being kind and empathic. I have a very kind and empathic nature. I’ve always been extremely empathic – they could never see that. They implied over and over that I was somehow bad.

My mother didn’t want me to go to college. There was no need for me to go to college. She just wanted me to get married and have kids. And she believed that I couldn’t learn life skills, she didn’t teach me anything. She didn’t teach me to cook, she didn’t teach me to clean, I don’t know how she expected me to get married and have kids without having any life skills, but for some reason she did not want me to have these skills, so she seemed to make it a point of not teaching me anything.

My dad did teach me some, but not my mother. My dad taught me things like how to fish and how to do mechanical things, I’m really good with mechanical things, things like that. But I didn’t learn the basic life skills from my parents, and they saw me as crazy for my spiritual beliefs.

In fact, I was seen as crazy for my spiritual beliefs for a long time. It’s only now with what’s happening with so many people opening to their spirituality that I feel like I’m more normal for my spiritual beliefs, but for a long time I was told by my parents that there was really something wrong with me.

And even though I got almost all A’s my mother just couldn’t see me as intelligent. And my father unfortunately ended up seeing me as I got into my teen years as a sex object – he couldn’t see me. I was actually quite repressed sexually at that time. I had not learned to be a sexual being because of what was happening in my household regarding my father’s abusive energy sexually, and my mother’s complete inability to talk about sex, and so my father couldn’t even see that I was struggling with my sexuality.

He would talk to me about not getting pregnant when I was like 12 years old and I had no idea even what he was talking about. I didn’t even know much about how people got pregnant! And so I mean, I was just not seen.

And what happens when you believe that you’re your ego wounded self is that you just don’t know that you have this beautiful soul essence. You have no way of knowing that when your family operates from their wounded self and you absorb their wounded selves, then you believe that this is who you are, you are your wounded self.

And a lot of challenging things happen when you believe that you are your wounded self. We absorb many core false beliefs that result in our wounded feelings. Our wounded self is the home of our false beliefs and when we operate out of these false beliefs, then we treat ourselves in unloving ways which result in wounded feelings.

These core false beliefs are things like you’re inadequate or you’re unworthy, you’re unlovable, you’re wrong, you’re bad, and then how do you treat yourself? If that’s what you think of yourself? if you think of yourself as unworthy and unlovable and somehow inadequate and not good enough, how are you going to treat yourself, and then you treat yourself according to that false belief that you’re inadequate and unworthy, and then of course, because you’re treating yourself that way, it’s a vicious circle and you keep on feeling inadequate and unworthy.

And so all the ways you abandon yourself and try to get love and avoid pain come from these false beliefs. And it’s a vicious circle, it just reinforces the fact that you believe you’re your wounded self and that you believe that that core shame false belief that there’s something wrong with you, that you’re somehow not good enough.

And that’s a very hard way to go through life, to go through life thinking that you’re your wounded self, thinking there’s something wrong with you and not being able to access who you really are, which is the soul that you were born as the spark of the divine that is perfect with your own individual gifts.

So if you’re defining yourself from your wounded self, then you’re not defining yourself by who you truly are. And one of the results of practicing Inner Bonding is that you learn to define yourself by your true soul essence.

Now, all the controlling behaviors that end up ruining our relationships are the result of not knowing who you are, when you believe you’re your wounded self and you believe you’re not lovable, then of course you want to control others into seeing you as lovable and worthy, giving you the attention and the validation that the wounded self needs to feel okay about itself, and that becomes a love and approval addiction.

And when you get into a relationship, you’re going to try and control with your anger, your caretaking, giving yourself up, your withdrawal to not be controlled, and of course, all of these controlling behaviors end up ruining relationships. And that’s why so many relationships end up in divorce, if people knew who they were, if they knew who they are in their essence, they wouldn’t be trying to control somebody else into seeing them as lovable and worthy.

And so in order to heal, you need more awareness of your wounded self and your intention to control. Don’t forget, in Inner Bonding, there’s only two intentions, the intention to have control over getting love and avoiding pain and feeling safe, or the intention to be loving to yourself and then be able to share your love with others, just those two intentions to control or to love.

But for most of us, as we were growing up, the intention to control is deeply programmed within us, and most people aren’t even aware that they’re trying to control. And so one of the things that needs to happen to heal this identity dysregulation is to become aware of the wounded self and the intention to control.

Being aware of your intention gives you so much more power. It’s very empowering when you open to learning and you become aware of the fact that you’re trying to control. It was really shocking to me when I first started practicing Inner Bonding because as I’ve often said, I was a caretaker and I thought that that was loving.

And it was really shocking to me to find out that caretaking is a form of control. Giving myself up, being compliant are forms of control to try and get love and avoid pain because I didn’t know who I was. I had no idea who my soul was until I started practicing Inner Bonding and learned to connect with my higher guidance and learn to see my soul through the eyes of my higher guidance.

One of the things that can be helpful in terms of becoming aware of the wounded self is to give your wounded self a name, the name of your parents or whoever you most absorbed, whether it’s your mom or your dad or a sibling or a friend or caregiver or a grandparent, This is helpful in becoming aware of your wounded self.

For example, my mother was kind of hysterical and very critical. So if I find myself going into that kind of victim state or getting critical, then I can say, oh, that’s Charlotte. (That was my mother’s name.) “Oh, I’m being Charlotte right now.”

And that’s really helpful in becoming aware of all the facets of the wounded self because it’s easy for me to see what my mother was doing; it’s not always so easy to see what we do out of our wounded self. And so if you name your wounded self after the person that you most absorbed or a number of people that you most absorbed, then it can be helpful for you in terms of becoming aware of when you’re operating out of your wounded self and your intention is to control.

For example, my father’s name was Izzy, and when my father was in his wounded self, he was also very critical, and he had a kind of mean anger. Now, I don’t go to my father that much in terms of my wounded self, but occasionally, I can hear that in my own voice and say, “Oh, that’s Izzy working through me – through my wounded self. I’ve absorbed that.”

But because my mother was also a very angry person, if I get angry, it’s very easy for me to say, “Oh, that’s the Charlotte in me.” And that just opens up a lot of awareness when I can name who my wounded self is patterned after. Now, of course, the way out of all this is to practice Inner Bonding, to develop your loving adult, your spiritual connection, get to know your inner child who’s your true soul self, and heal your wounded self.

Your wounded self gets healed as you become aware of your false beliefs and go to your higher guidance for the truth. And the more you operate out of the truth coming from your guidance, and the less you operate out of the false beliefs of your wounded self, the more you heal and become more whole within yourself.

It’s very helpful to do an Inner Bonding process while out in nature, because nature has a very high frequency. Go out in nature and open to your higher guidance and ask your guidance to show you your soul, your inner child. Ask your guidance to help you define your inner child as a beautiful child of God with all of your individual qualities.

The soul in all of us is love because God is love and we are a spark of God, a spark of the divine. And so as you’re defining yourself, you say, “Well, I am love, and I am compassion, and I am caring, and I am honesty.” because this is who you are in your soul.

I am grateful, I am generous, I am creative, whatever it is. And you also have individual gifts – each person has individual gifts. They may be artistic, they may be musical, they may be in like what I do in helping people, they may be in landscaping, they may be in some form of designing, they may be in critical thinking, what are your gifts? What brings you great joy to do?

Sometimes people feel that if something is easy for them, it’s not worthwhile. But if something’s easy for you, it means that’s one of your gifts. And why not express that? Why not think about expressing what brings you joy? Because when you express your gifts, that will bring you joy. 

Be prepared for this to be a process. There is no instant healing, it all takes practice. It’s not easy to be aware of being in your wounded self because most of us have been operating, as I said, as if our wounded self is who we are.

The more you learn to be present with your feelings in step one of Inner Bonding and practice Inner Bonding whenever you feel any of the wounded feelings such anxiety or depression or guilt or shame or anger or aloneness or emptiness or jealousy or envy, the more you will be creating the new neural pathways in your brain for the loving adult.

Now, one of the things that’s so important in owning who you really are is owning your goodness. Soon after starting to practice Inner Bonding – and at that time I didn’t think I was good, I had been trained to think that I was bad – I asked my guidance, “What does it mean to be a good person?” And here is what she said to me.

“A good person never deliberately sets out to do harm to somebody and get pleasure out of it.” Now, we all inadvertently do harm to others, and when I do harm to others, I feel bad about it, I feel sad about it, I certainly don’t get pleasure out of it. Now, this was very eye-opening to me because I knew that I would never deliberately set out to hurt somebody and get pleasure out of it.

So people who do that are not loving human beings, they’re not good people. There’s an evilness there, like if somebody gets lots of guns and deliberately goes into a school and start shooting people. That’s deliberately deciding to go ahead and hurt people and get pleasure out of it. That’s dark, that’s what evil is.

But I would guess that those of you listening to this are good people. I would guess that you don’t sit down and deliberately think about how you want to hurt somebody and then go do it and get pleasure out of it. Certainly the wounded self in all of us might fantasize about hurting somebody who’s hurt us, but that’s different than deliberately planning it, and going to do it, and get pleasure out of it.

And so I want to encourage you to start to see yourself as a good person, as somebody who wouldn’t deliberately set out to hurt others. This has really, really been helpful for me because I used to try to prove to others that I was a good person, and once I owned that I’m a good person, I don’t have to prove it anymore.

And if somebody doesn’t think that I am, that’s their problem. I know I’m a good person and I want you to know that you’re a good person. It’s so important to own your goodness so that you don’t have to prove anything to anyone or get anyone to see you as good and worthy of love.

When you define your own goodness and you define your own worth, you don’t need to prove anything. You don’t need other people to define your worth for you. You don’t need other people’s approval or validation to know that you’re okay. And so owning your goodness is so important.

Now, you can’t define yourself from your wounded self. Your wounded self doesn’t even know that you have a soul. Your wounded self thinks that that’s who you are and doesn’t even know that you came in as a beautiful spark of the divine. So only your higher guidance has the authority to define you.

It’s really important to take that authority away from your wounded self, to take that authority away from other people and give the authority to define yourself to your higher guidance. And this is one of the reasons that it’s so important to learn to hear your guidance and remember the two secrets to accessing your higher guidance, which is about your frequency.

One is eating a clean diet to keep the frequency of your body high enough, and the other is to be in a true intention to learn about loving yourself. When you are in a true intention to learn about loving yourself, your frequency goes up, and when you’re eating clean, organic, non-processed foods, then your body doesn’t have to work hard to deal with the processed foods, and that keeps your frequency high enough with your intention to learn to access your higher guidance.

And I cannot emphasize enough how important this is. You cannot see your true soul self without being able to see who you are through your higher guidance. You will continue to have identity dysregulation, which means you’re identifying yourself externally through your looks, through your performance, through how your wounded self defines you; that’s identity dysregulation because it’s not true.

It’s so important for you to learn to see and define your beautiful soul, and I assure you that you have a beautiful soul. It’s not possible for you not to because your soul is a spark of God, a spark of the divine, a spark of the love and perfection that is the divine, so how is it possible for you to be anything other than beautiful and wonderful and good?

It’s not possible, and so when your wounded self tells you you’re not good enough, that’s identity dysregulation, it’s not true. Your wounded self has no access to your higher guidance because the intention of the wound itself is to control, and that keeps your frequency very low. But when you shift your intention, consciously shift it to learning to love yourself, then your frequency goes high enough along, like I said, with eating well, to be able to access your guidance.

Now, like anything worth learning, it takes time to do this. And I do it best out in nature, I’ve talked about that I walk in the mornings with my dog out in nature, and nature has a natural high frequency, of course, it’s a part of God, part of the divine. And that frequency helps me to have a high enough frequency to access amazing information from my higher guidance.

And very often when I walk, I do my Inner Bonding process, I check in with my little girl, “How are you doing?” If she’s doing fine, then I go right to my guidance and I say, “What would you like to tell me? What do I need to focus on? What do I need to pay attention to?” I really encourage you to bring that practice into your life.

You can learn to connect with your spiritual guidance with my 30 day video course, Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom. This course is powerful in helping you learn to connect with your higher guidance and define your true self. So I really hope you consider taking this course, Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom and learning to define your beautiful soul essence.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.