Day 20: Meet Your Wounds

Step 1: Read The Concept Guide

Step 2: Do The Guided Practice

Today’s Concept Guide

I have two dogs. A 7 year old, small breed white Maltese Bichon – Rocky and a 2 year old big black German Shepherd – Wolfie. When we brought the German Shepherd home, our Maltese Bichon was already 5 years old, he was the only King of home. Then comes this 3 months old Wolfie, who is still triple the size of a 5 year old Rocky…and on his first day, Wolfie declared a war for territory. 

Our small dog has never faced this situation, he was the only King and now his was intimidated by this bigger dog. In few months, Rocky, who had been a quite and lovely dog for 5 years, he began to bark all day. So much so that my clients would hear, even if I’d use a directional microphone. And I’d get annoyed. I’d pause the consultation, go out and take that dog and put him in the yard. 

But this continued for a long time and I was fed up of Rocky and his transformed behaviour. I’d do all tricks to stop his barking. It would work for a while, but then his barking resumed. 

Until, I started addressing the real cause. Rocky’s barking was his dysfunctional behaviour – a saviour part. But the real cause was his feeling of ‘being intimidated’ ‘helplessness’ which was caused by the presence of the big dog around him – those were Rocky’s wounded parts. 

It took a while to make them friends, but once they became friends, rocky’s barking stopped. When he stopped feeling intimidated, his reactive dysfunctional behaviour of barking stopped automatically. 

Real healing does not happen without healing the wounded parts. 

The Symbiotic Relationship of Saviour – Wounded

Well, if you look at the second image in this post, you’ll see that the emotions like shame, guilt, sadness, frustration, helplessness…they are on extreme left or in deep Red zone. While anger and blame are close to yellow, toward the right end of the red zone. 

Now think of it like this…

Our wounded parts live in the extreme red zone. While the saviour parts also live in red zone but closer to the yellow zone – they are ‘reactive’ saviour parts like anger or blame. But the some saviour parts are ‘preventive’ saviour parts that live in the green zone – they are addictions, distractions we use etc. they ensure that we are busy and don’t feel pain. 

Can you understand one simple thing that the saviour parts of you simply exist because of the wounded parts?

If you wouldn’t feel helpless, you won’t need to feel anger, if you didn’t feel shame or guilt, you won’t need to blame, if you don’t feel emptiness, you wound’t need distractions like TV or addictions like alcohol. All of dysfunctional saviours exist because there are deeply wounded parts on the deep red zone. 

You can rewire the saviour parts easily with the process I will share in coming days. But as long as there are wounded parts still feeling those emotions of shame, guilt, helplessness, you will produce new saviour parts…maybe not as dysfunctional as anger or blame, but still new will come up. 

You can’t use logic to heal wounded parts. And for that, it might be helpful to understand the anatomy of a wounded part. 

Anatomy Of A Wounded Part

Most wounded parts were created when we had no resources to deal with a situation or when we were not strong enough to analyse a situation. For example you are a kid and an authority like a teacher or parent tells you that you are a worthless kid. 

We have no way of knowing if we are worthless or not at that moment. So two things happen at the same time. First, we are hurt, as this is an obvious assault on our self-esteem. We feel humiliated, that energy of shame is there but we don’t know what to do with it…(because by then mom and dad have taught that crying is bad, don’t cry) we neither express that energy nor it is process in our system. It gets lodged in the system and that’s the birth of a wounded part. But even worse is the second thing – that voice of teacher or parent then becomes the voice of the wounded part, and that part takes on the belief – I am not good enough. 

So a wounded part has essentially two things – trapped emotional energy + beliefs it took from that experience which created the original wound. 

Simple communication would not work there because communication can only appeal to logic, not to emotions. Try explaining logic to your 4 year old kid…logic won’t stop crying or other form of emotional expression.

Enough of concepts, let’s get a direct experience of the wounds.