One of the key parts of my work is seeing how we re-create painful experiences that we didn’t ever get to heal from.
I believe we re-create and repeat these experiences SO THAT we can give loving compassion to those younger parts of us and the feelings we felt, AND give them reparative experiences.
Just as a child who has been to school and was called, “stupid” by another child will often come home and say, “stupid” to their sibling or parents, to process, make sense of, have their feelings heard, and release that way of responding, so do we repeat things that were painful, so that we can process and release them.
This can most often happen in our partnerships and in our parenting.
We will often choose partners who will help us re-experience the things that we found most painful in childhood, so that those feelings can be heard this time, and so healing can happen.
The KEY of course, for this to be healing rather than just adding more painful feelings to the theme, is BEING ABLE TO SEE WHAT IS GOING ON and being able to listen and repair.
Here are some of the key ways we can see this:
The feelings are particularly big and painful and we feel immersed in them; as if they will always be there;
We ‘feel’ younger, or child-like;
We notice the theme and see that it’s familiar;
We have a charged phrase which relates to an experience of the past.
The charged phrase can often be a really helpful way in to this work.
For example,
“He never hears me,”
“She doesn’t care about me,”
This morning I was remembering a really painful experience I once had with a partner.
All those years ago, I was really sick, and had just made a huge life-change, which had helped me connect with core themes that I often repeated back then around being left and not being cared about.
We lived in a shared house, and the other house mates had a dinner party.
I was in bed, and he didn’t come to see me once throughout the evening.
I felt desolate.
Even though by this time I had already done many years of therapy, I didn’t have the way of working with it that I have now.
The charged phrase was something like, “He doesn’t come to me when I most need him.”
Nowadays I would be able to disentangle what was from the present and what was from the past, and to see how the younger parts of me were wanting to be heard and to experience something different this time.
What I love most about this inner work is that it is deeply psychospiritual ~ in that we get to move away from a sense of powerlessness and being at the mercy of the reactions and responses of others, to see the wisdom in our psyche, and the call we have to listen to the younger parts of us and give them what they most needed, so that we don’t need to keep on repeating painful things over and over again.
Another thing I love about this work is that the more I’ve done, the less I re-create those situations. The more I’m willing to have, do and be what I really want.
The more I’m living from my Soul, lovingly listening to the younger parts, rather than living from the younger parts, repeating patterns over and over and thinking I’m a victim of my circumstances.
We are profoundly powerful beings, when we realise that it is us that is doing the repeating, as a calling to hear and heal, rather than being at the mercy of other people doing things to us over and over again.
Even in the most painful of situations, we still have choice to be compassionate with the painful feelings and the younger parts.
I love seeing the themes in myself so that I can stop re-creating them.
I love supporting others find their themes so that they can stop re-creating them.
And I love helping people with finding their themes so that they can stop re-creating them.
If you’re interested in this work, one of the ways you can learn to do this yourself is in my Inner Loving Presence Process Course, of which I’m doing another live round soon.
You can find out about the course HERE and you can access a free taster of the course HERE.
If you want help in seeing your themes, my new immersive 1-1 offering is here; Free to Live from Love.
It includes 6 months of weekly sessions with me. Each week, I will walk beside you and facilitate you through my practices and processes – the first week is The Willingness Practice, the second is The Inner Loving Presences Practice, the third is The Inner Loving Presence Process, and the fourth is Conversations with Life.
I’ll help you set up your own regular Willingness Practice, Inner Loving Presences Practice, your antidote phrases to the charged phrases, and your belonging practices.
Message me if you want to know more about Free to Live from Love.
My dear friend and colleague Helena Mooney have started a new series on my podcast – we had our first chat yesterday, where we talked about mothering, inner ‘work’ and outer ‘work’ – I loved it!