Bringing Gentle Awareness to Your Core Wounds
Healing core wounds is a process that will help you gain tremendous insight into your behaviors and beliefs. Often we develop a lens of the world through our early experiences that shape our belief system and how we view others and ourselves. Healing your core wounds will also help you gain freedom and make better decisions in your life — choices based on desires, not on fears or a need for protection.
One might ask, “What is a core wound?”
Core Wounds
Well, we all have some, or at least one. Sometimes we are aware of them, but more frequently, we are left unaware that they even exist. They tend to hide in the background running the show as our subconscious beliefs and fears spend energy trying to protect us from feeling those very same wounds.
Core wounds are unmet needs that we had in our early years that, when repeated over and over, become a part of who we are. We internalize our early experiences and make up beliefs around sensations and emotions that we feel repeatedly.
If you felt unloved at times as a child and unable to fully understand what was happening in your home, perhaps unable to process and work with the sensations and feelings that came up, then that feeling gets tucked away into your body and we attach a core belief around that feeling. Then, when it shows up in your adulthood, those feelings are familiar, but you’re unsure why.
Due to that uncertainty, we seek to confirm the belief about ourselves to be true, even if it was formed a long time ago. Here is a list of some core wounds, but you might find that you have one that is not on this list. If you get quiet with yourself, your inner voice might clue you in on your wounds or fears.
*I AM UNWORTHY OF LOVE
*I WILL ALWAYS BE LEFT
*I AM NOT ENOUGH
*I AM UNDESERVING
*IT'S NOT SAFE TO EXPRESS MYSELF
*I AM BAD OR FLAWED
Now that you’ve identified your core wound (or have started to clue into your inner voice), you may be wondering how you can begin to heal your core wounds.
Healing Your Core Wounds
First, we have to recognize them in our world, our bodies, and our experiences. Often this is like going to the roots of a tree because they were planted first, and we grow out of these experiences. We have to go back in time to trace feelings and experiences to moments when they were first created.
They often show up as patterns and feelings that seem to be on repeat. We even look for ways to prove they are true, often recreating painful situations that only confirm this belief inside of us. But healing them is not only possible; it is paramount if you want to make healthy changes in your life.
Ironically, feeling the wound through the support of others is exactly how we begin to heal them. No one wants to feel the depth of their pain — who wants to go there? I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to rush into their suffering. But it’s the avoidance of that wound that blocks people from living a full life. Many of us are left unaware that repeating the same painful patterns in our lives becomes more painful or just as painful as the wound itself.
For starters, we can’t even begin to heal if we don’t feel safe. Our bodies won’t allow it. We need to have a safe environment and safe people around us who are open and present for us. It’s our human ability to sense safety, and if that’s not present, chances are we will stay in some survival mode and hide out in a “protector,” like perfectionism, workaholism, shopping, drugs to numb the pain (the list goes on and on).
It’s a way of our own body protecting us from feeling something overwhelming when we just can’t handle it. For me personally, workaholism and overachieving were the perfect protectors. I thought if I look great on the outside and do what I think I need to do, achieve, or find success, then I must be doing this game called “life” correctly. Even positive things like working out or being successful can be distractions from the pain we have under it all.
We live in a culture that pushes us to think that if we reach a goal, we will be happy. There is nothing wrong with working or being successful. It's when we overcompensate in an area to protect ourselves from something deeper that is going on. That’s when we want to pause and see what all the busyness is really protecting us from feeling.
We also need these protectors to help us survive until we reach the point where we are ready to peel back the layers and start getting curious about what we have been avoiding all along.
I often say it’s good to befriend your protectors as they are there for a good reason. We can’t be in our pain or fear all the time, and we all need ways to cope. When we can shift to a calmer place in the presence of people who can be there for us, we can start to explore what core wound is running the show from behind the scenes.
As this curiosity comes, we can connect the dots to when this wound was created, how it shows up in our lives, and what behaviors we do to prevent us from feeling it (our core wound protectors). Many of these behaviors can be at the root of codependency and other addictions we need to avoid the pain. We can run away, freeze, people-please, and fight out of terror felt by our nervous system, which is literally just trying to protect us.
When we were younger, if our experiences were scary or painful, we stored them in our bodies. That’s what is referred to as embedded memories. Others can think of it as trauma. They stay in our bodies, and we have these protectors that pop up to help us not deal with these harder sensations until we feel called to heal them.
Healing them is also an awakening process. A process of returning home to the parts of yourself that needed tender love and care that perhaps you didn’t get when you needed it back then. Healing them can also take time. There is no fast track to healing, just a surrender (a constant surrender to your process) as you develop more and more compassion for how you developed, how you adapted, and why your beliefs are the way they are.
Healing means depending on healthy support and sometimes facing shame or self-judgment. I often see everyone talking and writing about “healing” or having a “spiritual awakening.” From the outside, it can look like all love and light, but it’s going through uncharted territory. It’s something that cannot and should not be done alone.
If the wounding happened at a very young age and the core wound is deep, you need a loving presence to help you navigate that work. Neuroscience even gives us the best evidence! It’s the presence of loving people that holds the space for you to heal. In that process, we integrate the experiences that created the wound and move them from embedded memories to something we can no longer tolerate and then make sense of it.
From there, we start to form this deeper compassion for ourselves and become more gentle. We create space inside ourselves and expand our awareness from being in the wound to someone who can now tend to the feelings around the wound when it shows up.
It’s a shift that happens slowly and over time. Our body has to literally feel safe, and we cannot fake this. It’s not linear, and it can feel as though you're stepping into the unknown. It's better to think of the healing path as a spiral that has ups and downs but is in flow as it unfolds and reveals more information and opportunities to get curious.
Other people can be your lantern and help guide you so you feel supported. I sometimes think we can run away from these wounds and need to for good reasons, but they end up showing up regardless, and it takes a brave person to begin their healing journey. The journey, however, is so worth it. The shifts that I see clients go through are nothing short of miraculous.
Begin Healing Your Core Wounds
I know it’s easier said than done when it comes to locating your core wounds. Sometimes, they will feel abundantly obvious to you, while other times, you might have to dig deeper to really understand certain patterns. Either way, my mini-course, Understanding Your Core Wounds is a great place to start when it comes to working on healing your core wounds.