The Reparenting Guide on Healing the Patterns to Your Childhood Wounds
How you can heal 4 negative childhood patterns and overcome self-sabotage.
Healing childhood wounds offers a healthy antidote to overcoming self-sabotage patterns.
A childhood wound is an emotional pain or a negative belief that a part of us internalised due to a traumatic past event or the relationship we had with our parents or caregivers when we were young. The quality of our adult life gets lowered when we carry the burdens of an unhealed childhood wound. The wound may be invisible but it continues to scar us today.
We are in self-sabotage whenever we undertake actions that hamper our ability to experience greater happiness and long-term success in life. For instance, a tendency to over-react with anger can be harmful for our relationships. Very often, the root cause to our negative patterns and beliefs can be traced back to the past; such as, in our childhood.
When activated, the childhood wound bleeds into the relationships that we have with our loved ones today. Carrying a wound affects our beliefs, career choices and our life decisions negatively. We can also be passing on our childhood wounds to the future generations.
Until we tend to the wounds, our inner child is likely to cry for attention. She (or he) goes into a sudden rage when activated. No longer does she want to stay hidden as she attempts to take control. Introducing drama into our life, she now takes over with running the show.
We may start off with little idea that the root cause to our outbursts or self-sabotaging patterns today are coming from her cries. Hence, creating awareness helps. From paying attention, we work on uncovering and healing the childhood wounds that we have.
Healing 4 Common Patterns of Childhood Wounds
For a start, learn to identify 4 common patterns of childhood wounds and check to see if you have them…
1. Abandonment Wound
If you’ve often felt lonely, left behind or left out and rather insecure, your inner child may have an abandonment wound. When you were young, have you ever perceived that you were abandoned or were you actually abandoned by your parents or caregivers? If so, it could explain why you have deep fears of being left on your own and why you can become clingy and needy today.
Sabotage Pattern: Tendency to quit on relationships on suspicion that the partner is going to leave anytime soon and tendency to abandon projects early.
2. Guilt Wound
If you’ve often felt like you need to take care of others and generally can’t seem to set boundaries, you may have a guilt childhood wound. As a child, you may have been made to feel bad for asking for things and believe you are not deserving. As an adult today, you try to over-give or be “good” to make up for the guilt. Yet, when you do so, your efforts are not appreciated. It is also when you guilt-trip others. This doesn’t satisfy you either.
Sabotage Pattern: Tendency to be around those who make you feel guilty.
3. Betrayal Wound
When you generally don’t trust life and have a tendency to be suspicious about others, you may have a betrayal childhood wound. It may be that your parents weren’t able to fulfill promises or have failed you in some way. In order to compensate, you can find yourself needing to exercise control. However, it’s just not possible to control everything. An inability to exercise control over everything can create a sense of vulnerability and causes you to feel insecure.
Sabotage Pattern: Tendency to attract people who would betray you or who fail to keep promises.
4. Neglect Wound
When you often feel unsupported and have deep fears of being rejected and “not important”, you may have a neglect childhood wound. You have deep fears about “not being seen” and you bottle anger on the inside. This can cause you to have sudden outbursts.
Sabotage Pattern: Tendency to attract situations where you are “unseen” or unappreciated.
Tend to Your Childhood Wounds with Reparenting Presence
Obviously, become aware if you have the tendency to be in self-sabotage. Identify the repetitive patterns that keep you stuck. Work on healing your childhood wounds, so that you can be free of old patterns.
In his book The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk shares that it is vital to work on releasing negative patterns from the body for healing to take place. Thus, I recommend looking into using a somatic method (for example, EFT tapping offers a psycho-somatic approach) for healing disruptive childhood wounds. Even though there may be one dominant wound, it’s also possible for anyone to have more than one wound pattern. Find out what yours are.
“The emotional wounds and negative patterns of childhood often manifest as mental conflicts, emotional drama, and unexplained pains in adulthood.” ~Unknown
Being present matters. Our inner child needs to know that we are going to be around, whether we are helping with abandonment, guilt, betrayal or neglect. Through reparenting, we create a healing space with loving assurance and for reaching better understanding. Transformation begins from the inside-out. It is how we can truly let go of the past and enhance our ability to move forward.
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