Guest Writer for Wake Up World
We have become a quick solution society and we expect that healing ourselves should be a quick and painless process because that’s the promise made by many new age gurus. We are promised that we can easily take our consciousness to a higher level by thinking good positive thoughts which will cause those old painful memories to fade away. We are promised that all it takes is going within and releasing what no longer serves us. We are promised that if we follow some thought leader’s 30-day self-healing program, we will become free of our childhood wounds forever. We all want to fix what we believe is broken within us, but can these quick fix modalities really deliver on their promise? I don’t think so. Let me explain how emotional wounds hold onto us even though we want to let them go.
[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”110028″]
When we suffer a trauma that is too difficult to process, the emotion attached to the trauma gets absorbed into the body as an energetic imprint. When a similar event occurs that triggers that emotion, the imprint becomes stronger and starts to form an energetic pattern. These patterns are like blocks of tension stored within the body that let you know if your body is safe or unsafe at any given time. When you can feel a strong sensation in your body that feels tight or heavy, it’s your body telling you that it’s recalling a similar event where you felt unsafe and it’s warning you to protect yourself.
Most energetic patterns began to form in childhood when your emotional needs were not met. When emotional needs go unmet, you begin to believe you are unworthy of them and your survival begins to feel threatened. This is because feeling unworthy causes you to believe that you may not be accepted by the people caring for you and you are too little to care for yourself. As you feel your survival being threatened, tension builds inside of you causing your physical body to contract inward for safety. Whenever an unhealed emotional wound is triggered, the body goes into automatic survival response and contracts inward again, eventually creating a survival imprint within the body that acts as a guard against the world. As the body contracts with each new emotional trigger, the body becomes accustomed to this way of protecting itself. This means that even if you know on a logical level that the past is over, the body is still holding you in protection mode and will continue to do so until the emotional wound is completely healed and the body feels safe enough to release the energetic imprint. Until the emotional wound is psychologically healed and the energetic imprint is released, you have not fully healed. This is not always an easy task and cannot be accomplished with a quick fix modality no matter how promising it may sound. We are wired for safety above all else and you cannot break that code so easily. You can heal your childhood wounds, but you will need to heal them both emotionally and somatically. This means as part of your healing regimen, you need to convince your mind that the trauma is over and that you feel safe, so the body is no longer holding you in protection mode.
Unhealed wounds and the energetic survival patterns attached to them have a strong hold on us because of our attachment to feeling safe and protected from a world that may reject us. As different energetic patterns are formed, we form different parts of ourselves, each with their own specific emotional needs. These different parts are not bad parts of the self, they are simply unhealed parts of the self. These parts do not define who we are, but they do define how we feel about ourselves and our environment. Some of these parts may conflict with each other because each part is working to keep you safe. For example, if a part of you feels lonely and another part of you feels unloved, you now have two energetic patterns within you, both of which also have a safety component to them. If the part that feels lonely seeks an intimate loving relationship with someone so the feeling of loneliness can be satisfied, the part that feels unloved may sabotage the efforts of the part that feels lonely because it is protecting that lonely part from getting hurt. The part that feels unloved may not trust that a loving relationship is possible since that part of self either never felt loved or may have experienced losing love. Both parts of you want to feel loved and connected as these are natural humanistic needs, but when one part has trust concerns, it may block other parts from getting their needs met. Therefore, inner emotional conflicts cannot be healed with a quick fix. They can only be healed through learning and understanding what each part needs in order to feel safe.
Healing your inner conflicts takes getting to know all parts of you and healing the parts that need to be healed so they are no longer working against each other. It’s important to be gentle and compassionate with all parts of you as these parts are only trying to protect you, even though they may be preventing you from satisfying your adult needs. When a part of you wants to be seen and heard by the world and another part of you wants to run away and hide, you stay stagnant because protection is more important than desire. In other words, the need to survive is stronger than the need to thrive. If you have survival fear patterns within you, you may need to work intimately with these parts of you. You see, we are just emotional human beings with many different parts of us that have been formed over the years, each with their own emotional needs. It is important to learn how to balance the emotional needs of all parts within you and help these parts of you feel safe and loved.
A healer can facilitate healing, but it is you that does the healing work. If the modality is offered as a quick fix, be skeptical. Quick fixes can often make you feel worse because a quick fix does not take you deep within yourself so you can discover what parts of you need healing. When you use quick fix modalities, you may feel a sense of well-being for a little while, but eventually those energetic imprints will get triggered and you are back to square one and most likely feeling hopeless. Quick fix modalities cannot override survival fears. If an energetic imprint has a survival component, which most of them do, then you are wasting your time, effort and money on these so-called miracle solutions. A complete healing will take place when you heal each wounded part within you, so these parts are no longer in conflict with other parts of you. This is done by finding out what each wounded part needs from you and providing it to yourself. If a part of you feels unloved, bring love to that part of you and know that only you can do this. You cannot continue to seek love from anyone outside of you until you feel love inside of you; otherwise you are seeking security, not love. This can only lead to more emotional challenges. As each part heals and no longer feels unsafe, the associated contracted energy releases itself from the body, allowing energetic imprints to dissolve, providing you with more energetic balance which then leads to harmony and wholeness.
Another reason a quick fix modality may be challenging for you is because of what is known as “secondary gain.” Secondary gain is when you want to heal something in your life, but the healing may cause you to lose a benefit you receive by holding onto the issue. For example, you want to release some excess weight and you have tried everything under the sun for weight loss and you can’t seem to reach your weight loss goals. This might be because another part of you feels that if you reach your goal weight, you may be tempted to leave your current relationship which provides you with financial security. You may feel better about yourself esthetically, but you fear your financial future. With secondary gain conflicts, you don’t reach your goals because a part of you is afraid to lose the benefit that comes with keeping the status quo.
If you want to heal deeply and permanently, you must be willing to do the work it takes to heal both mind and body, as these are interconnected parts that affect each other. There are many studies that indicate how tension in the body which is caused by emotional stress leads to physical illness. Emotional stress will eventually cause your body to weaken. Energetic imprints can get so strong over time that your body won’t even know how to relax anymore. Your body will always feel constricted, causing you to block your energy flow which will lead to a very worn-down body. Take the time to get to know what you feel inside and start healing what needs to be healed. Your body will thank you for it.
If you would like to know more about healing unhealed trauma, you can get my free e-book “Healing Our Unhealed Parts” at www.HeartsInHarmonyHypnosis.com and download the book in pdf, ibooks or kindle format. To start your healing process, follow the exercises at the end of the book. These exercises are simple ways to get up close and personal with your deepest inner feelings.
May you and every part of you be blessed with love and acceptance,
Article sources:
- Hypnosis for Inner Conflict Resolution, Introducing Parts Therapy By Roy Hunter, MS FAPHP
- The Body Keeps the Score, Mind Brain and Body in the Healing of Trauma By Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
- The Mind Body Code, How the Mind Wounds and Heals the Body, By Mario Martinez, Licensed Clinical Neuropsychologist
- Answer Cancer, by Stephen C. Parkhill, Hypnotherapist
About the author:
Kelly Tallaksen is a board-certified hypnotist, hypnosis instructor for basic and advanced training, writer and lecturer on healing the shadow of the soul and reconnecting to our divine essential self. Kelly is trained in holistic psychology, parts therapy, age regression and spiritual healing. Kelly is a contributing author of the published book “The Art of Spiritual Hypnosis, Accessing Divine Wisdom” by Roy Hunter and offers her free e-book “Healing Our Unhealed Parts” on her website to help others understand how we are unknowingly controlled by parts of ourselves that continuously seek resolution, healing and safety and what steps are necessary to start healing the unhealed parts within us.
[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”110027″]
