S2 EP291 – Violence and the Abandonment of the Self

Hi and welcome to the Inner Bonding Podcast. I’m Dr. Margaret Paul, and today we’re diving into a topic that is both deeply personal and tragically collective: Violence – and how it stems from the abandonment of the self.

When we hear the word “violence,” we tend to think of war, abuse, shootings, and physical harm. But violence doesn’t begin on the outside.

It begins within, when a person disconnects from their own soul, their own feelings, their own inner child.

In this episode, we’ll explore:

• What violence actually is
• The link between self-abandonment and harmful behavior
• How our wounded selves react with violence – toward others or ourselves
• How Inner Bonding helps us prevent, heal, and transform violence from the inside out, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Let’s begin by exploring what violence is.

Violence is more than just physical force. It’s anything that violates the soul – through force, threat, blame, control, or neglect.

This includes:

• Physical harm
• Emotional abuse
• Controlling behavior
• Shaming, gaslighting, criticizing
• Even internal violence, like harsh self-judgment

Most violence begins with emotional disconnection. When a person suppresses their pain, ignores their inner child, and lives from their wounded self, they may lash out, shut down, or manipulate others to regain a false sense of power. Unhealed pain becomes projected pain. Disconnection from your true self becomes destruction toward others. And so, the abandonment of the self often leads to violence in all its forms.

Self-abandonment happens any time we turn away from our own feelings and needs.

In Inner Bonding, we identify four common ways people frequently emotionally abandon themselves:

One way is you ignore or suppress your emotions, staying focused in your mind instead of in your body where your feelings are, perhaps telling yourself things like:

• “It’s not okay to feel this.”
• “This is too much. I can’t handle it.”

Did you learn as you were growing up to dissociate from your body, becoming unaware of your feelings? This happens for most of us when there is too much pain for our little bodies to handle. Then, even as adults when our body is big enough to hold and lovingly manage big pain, we continue to believe we can’t handle the pain. 

Another way you might be abandoning yourself is you judge yourself harshly, perhaps telling yourself things like:

• “You’re weak.”
• “You’re unlovable.”
• “You’re not adequate.”
• You’re not good enough.”

A third way you might be self-abandoning is you turn to various addictions, such as food, alcohol or other substances, work, scrolling, shopping, porn – anything to numb pain.

And another common form of self-abandonment that has major negative consequences in relationships is making others responsible for your feelings, for your self-worth, and for your sense of safety, believing that:

• “You have to love me, so I can feel okay.”
• “You have to behave, so I don’t feel abandoned.”

Each of these is a form of inner violence – a denial of the truth, worth, and experience of the soul, your beautiful inner child.

As a result of these forms of self-abandonment, you might feel anxious, depressed, angry, guilty, shamed, empty, alone, jealous and envious. Then, instead of taking responsibility for your own self-abandonment that is causing these feelings, your numb them out with further self-abandonment.

You might then take medications for the anxiety and depression, which can sometimes lead to external violence. Some research suggests that some mass shooters were on medications for anxiety or depression, which can have side effects that lead to violence. 

You might also be physically abandoning yourself by eating sugar, processed food, and factory-farmed food filled with pesticides and GMO’s that wreak havoc with the microbiome, the seat of the immune system, causing an imbalance that create toxicity that goes up the vagus nerve and into the brain, causing anxiety and depression. Then you might further emotionally self-abandon to avoid these feelings, or take drugs to avoid them, rather than learning how to take responsibility for your feelings by learning what they are telling you, and healing your false beliefs that lead to self-abandonment, by developing a strong spiritually connected loving adult who can take loving actions on your behalf, which is what the practice of Inner Bonding is about.  

And over time, all this inner abandonment creates a desperate need for control. The ego wounded self is all about control, believing that controlling your feelings and others creates safety – a huge false belief greatly contributing to violence. The wounded self doesn’t know how to feel or process pain. It only knows how to:

• Try to avoid pain
• Try to control outcomes
• Blame others, or
• Defend against perceived threats

When we’re operating from the wounded self, we may use aggression, manipulation, withdrawal, or people-pleasing – all in the name of survival.

But this doesn’t heal the pain. It only exacerbates it, because it’s all the result of self-abandonment. Violence is what can happen when the wounded self tries to escape or control pain, instead of learning from it and lovingly managing it.

And it’s not always just outward. Some of the most intense inner violence is through chronic shame and self-loathing coming from harsh self-judgments, or emotional isolation. But all these forms of inner violence can lead to outer violence.

We hurt ourselves the way we were once hurt, and then, if we don’t heal, we might pass it on with violence toward others.

Most people who are violent toward others were once violently treated or emotionally abandoned as they were growing up.

They may have been:

• Physically or sexually abused
• Neglected
• Shamed for emotions
• Raised in authoritarian or chaotic homes
• Ignored, ridiculed, and unloved

These early experiences leave a wound that festers – unless it’s healed.

Without inner work, such as Inner Bonding, children who don’t feel safe often become adults who don’t know how to love themselves or others.

That doesn’t excuse violence. But it helps us understand that violence is learned – and it can be unlearned. Unless it’s coming from sociopathy. Sociopathy is now often called anti-social personality disorder. Sociopaths can be violent because they are born with a part of their brain missing, the part capable of having a conscience. They are incapable of remorse and can do great harm without any remorse.

Some of the most widely known violent sociopaths are infamous criminals and cult leaders who displayed extreme disregard for others, lack of empathy, and manipulative or controlling behaviors. Here are some often-cited examples:

Serial Killers such as:

• Ted Bundy – Charismatic, manipulative, and responsible for the murders of at least 30 women in the 1970s.
  
• Jeffrey Dahmer – Known as the “Milwaukee Cannibal,” he murdered and mutilated 17 young men and boys.
  
• John Wayne Gacy – The “Killer Clown” who murdered 33 young men and boys.
  
• Richard Ramirez – The “Night Stalker,” who terrorized California in the mid-1980s.

Cult Leaders such as:

• Charles Manson – Leader of the “Manson Family,” orchestrated brutal murders, including that of Sharon Tate.
  
• Jim Jones – Founder of the Peoples Temple, responsible for the mass murder–suicide of over 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana. One of my good friends from high school died in Jonestown, along with her husband and two children. They tried to escape but were caught and forced to drink the poison ‘cool aid.’ Her parents were friends with my parents, and their daughter who died was their only child. So very sad. 
• David Koresh – Leader of the Branch Davidians, whose apocalyptic cult led to a deadly standoff in Waco, Texas.

Then there are the dictators and political figures. Some authoritarian leaders have been described as sociopathic due to their violent disregard for human life:

• Adolf Hitler – Initiated World War II and orchestrated the Holocaust.
  
• Joseph Stalin – Soviet dictator responsible for mass purges and millions of deaths.
  
• Saddam Hussein – Iraqi dictator known for torture, executions, and genocidal campaigns.
  
• Vladimir Putin – while not formally diagnosed as a sociopath, he displays many sociopathic characteristics.

Sociopathy needs to be diagnosed early in a child’s life, and both the child and the parents need training so that the child doesn’t turn out to be a murderer. Children who harm animals or people early in life may be sociopaths. One of my clients told me that her sociopathic son, who is currently in jail, tried to choke her when he was just two years old. This is a sign of sociopathy.  

So how do we stop the cycle of violence – in our relationships, in our communities, and within ourselves?

The answer is that we must return to the true self, our soul, our inner child, who we’ve abandoned.

And the practice of Inner Bonding gives us a framework to do just that. By becoming aware of your feelings in Step One, you can learn to move toward them rather than try to avoid them, and want to learn from them rather than judge them. Notice when you’re anxious, stressed, angry, shut down, or reactive and remember that these feelings are signals from your inner child that you are abandoning yourself.

Then, in Step 2, open your heart to learning about how you are treating yourself or what you are telling yourself that might be causing these feelings.

In Step 3, dialogue with your inner child, your feeling self, asking:

“What am I telling you and how am I treating you that’s causing these feelings?”

When you discover your self-judgments, your emotional neglect, the addictions you are using to numb out, or that you are giving your inner child away to a partner or others to try to get the love, approval, and attention that you are not giving to yourself, go deeper into the part of you who self-abandons, your young or adolescent wounded self, and ask:

“What are you trying to control, or avoid feeling, or protect against?”

Here is where you become aware of the deep subconscious or unconscious false beliefs about yourself, and about what you can or can’t control, and about others, and about spirit or God that is causing your self-abandoning behavior, that then may be leading to various forms of violence.

Then, in Step 4, Open to your higher guidance, and ask:

“What is the truth about these false beliefs, or this false belief?” and
“What is the loving action toward my inner child?”

If you are really open to learning and you haven’t been eating junk food and processed food, you will begin to hear wisdom – calm, clear, and kind. Since we have so few role-models of loving action in our society, your guidance becomes the role-model.

Then, in Step 5, you need to take the loving action. If you don’t take the loving action guided by your higher self, your inner child will still feel abandoned, and your wounded self might then act out in ways that harm you or others.

The loving action could be:

• Speaking truthfully to a partner or friend without blaming
• Soothing your body and nervous system with vagal breathing, holding a doll or stuffed animal that represents your inner child, or hugging yourself with kindness and compassion
• Taking space rather than exploding
• Apologizing with accountability
• Practicing forgiveness
• Eating better
• Getting exercise
• Getting more sleep
• Doing an Inner Bonding process anytime you feel anything less than peaceful and full inside.

When we reconnect with our own soul and learn to take loving care of our inner child, we no longer need to control or hurt others.

And we no longer tolerate inner or outer violence as normal.

It takes courage to stop running from pain. It takes a deep desire to heal and evolve as a loving person, which is why we are here on the planet. It takes courage to decide that you will work toward no longer abandoning yourself and learn to love yourself.

This is the work of Inner Bonding. This practice creates the new neural pathways in the brain for the loving adult – the part of you that can learn to love yourself and share your love with others. The loving adult is generally not violent. It’s the ego wounded self that is violent.

As you do this work, the violent wounded self loses its grip. Not only do you stop hurting yourself – you also stop hurting others. You stop needing to act out violently because you are filled with love rather than with fear.

And you begin to bring peace into the world – not by trying to change others, but by becoming whole within.

Violence is a symptom of deep disconnection – from self, from soul, from love.

But the good news is this:

Healing is possible. Peace is possible. Wholeness is possible.

It begins when you choose to stop abandoning yourself.
When you treat your own heart and soul with compassion.
When you speak to yourself with truth, not judgment.
When you hold your inner child and say:

“You are not alone. I’m here and spirit is here and I’m learning to love you.”

Thank you for joining me today.

I invite you to practice Inner Bonding not just to reduce pain, but to end the inner war that fuels so much of the world’s violence.

You can begin to learn to love yourself rather than continue to abandon yourself with my 30-Day home study Course that teaches Inner Bonding: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.” I hope you give yourself the gift of this very powerful course.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.