photo @wayne.marcus
CORE WOUNDS
KNOW YOUR WOUNDS; KNOW YOURSELF
AN ESSAY BY DR. IRWIN JAY ASHER
I make a difference.
I was born to shine.
Family and friends love me.
My life is insignificant.
I am a mistake.
I am a disappointment.
Core wounds will leave you vulnerable to others who may want to define you as less than. In a competitive world, it’s important to know who you are and who you are not – and why.Core wounds develop in childhood and demand attention in adulthood. Letting go of negative messages will allow you to heal your heart and help you find your true self.
Rabbi David WolpeThe New York TimesJuly 2, 2023 “All of us are wounded and broken in one way or another; those who do not recognize it in themselves or in others are more likely to cause damage than those who realize and try to rise through the brokenness.”
Core wounds are stored in our Inner Child; each of us has an Inner Child. The Inner Child will speak to you about every joy, every hurt starting from day one. Mark Wolynn, in his book, It Didn’t Start With You: how inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the cycle, explains how we carry more than our own baggage. That is, we are not necessarily born free. We may very well be born with a preordained history. Grandparents, who survived the Holocaust, may be talking to us through our genes. Parents who escaped a Latin American dictatorship may not want to ruminate about their past, but their experiences are with us. First, we have to hear the Inner Child. You may very well have to STOP, sit quietly, meditate perhaps, and listen to what the Inner Child is telling you. Second, we must hear the messages. The messages may be uncomfortable. We may run from the challenges as they become clear. But, he who runs runs into a wall. Third, work to change negative messages into positives. Awareness may come slowly. It did for me. Be patient with yourself. Be kind to yourself. At every moment of enlightenment, I found a book that helped me move forward: my journey began with Charles Whitfield’s Healing the Inner Child. Before I read Whitfield’s book, I lived with the memory of my second grade teacher telling me I would not succeed. It was the time of IQ tests. I was a dreamer, creative. Creatives don’t do well on IQ tests. When she reacted to my score, she scarred me. It took years of negative responses to life’s challenges to learn to fight back. To kick her words out of my psyche. I remember in college contemplating the newly created Peace Corps (1961). I said to myself, You can see the world on someone else’s dime. When I realized you had to take a test, I walked away from the challenge. I thought of my second grade teacher; she’s laughing at me thinking I can make it into the Peace Corps.
Let’s look at eight points Whitfield makes:1. Acknowledge your Inner Child. That I did after reading his book. I sat quietly and tried to remember childhood messages that told me who I was and was not. My parents acknowledged my creativity. They honored it. They set an example for my brothers. I blessed them for not asking me to be different, to follow a ‘man’ pattern.2. Validate what happened: Yes! Remember as much as you can. The messages that people of importance sent to you will challenge your positive outcome unless you confront them. Teachers praised how properly I dressed and color-coordinated every day. Their words gave me the courage to find my way in the fashion world.3. Identify any form of neglect. If you were neglected for any reason, the message were…you’re not okay. Make yourself okay by facing your demons. Whatever voice of your childhood that is whispering in your ear – you’re not okay, shout back. Get your truth out there. Feel the truth in your bones.4. Embrace your emotions. If childhood messages make you sad, feel the sadness. Embrace the joys and the sadness. Embrace and let go. Make your core a secure place of positives. Turning negatives into positives ‘R’ Us.5. Identify current manifestations of past hurts. Nothing happens until you identify the ‘happening’ that told you that you were okay, or not okay. Although my second grade teacher’s message lived inside me, it took years before I identified its impact.6. Take steps to fill the gap. Therapy comes to mind. Sometimes you need someone smarter to help you find the path to liberation. I believe in group therapy. Find a group or start a group.7. Mend the hurt by helping others. That’s why group therapy is so powerful. As you are learning from the people who are ahead of your learning curve, you are helping those who haven’t gotten as far as you. I’m thinking of Anne Bancroft and The Miracle Worker.8. Heal and release your Inner Child. I believe it takes twice-as-much energy to be negative as it does to be positive. If you let go of negative messages and you present positives to the world, you will have much more energy. Try it, you’ll like it.
Core wounds account for how we act and interact; how we respond to life’s challenges, how we internalize adult trauma, and how we pick a life partner. As a couples’ counselor for twenty-six years, I would often say to clients, “Your picker is broken.” If your picker is broken, look to your Inner Child for answers. Core wounds allow us to enter, or remain in, relationships that are unhealthy. Ask yourself: Did my parents set a healthy example of a loving relationship? Do my past dating partners scream out to me: Look who you’re dating, you CAN do better. Reach higher. In graduate school we learned that we pick a life partner based on unresolved issues with one parent. In my case, I had a strong mother and a passive father. I knew instinctively as a young person I could never play the passive role. So, playing the strong role, I found weak men. I stopped trusting my picker. I had to reimagine me in a relationship. Perhaps that is why I specialized in family therapy.
Core Wound Messages:• A voice in us says, ‘Don’t say what you’re thinking, you’ll offend,’ or, ‘Don’t send that letter, the recipient will take it wrong’, or, ‘Don’t go after that job, you know they won’t hire you.’ Until we stop and think of what is going on in our core wound (wounded inner child), we live the negative messages that repeat in our head. I have two cousins, husband and wife, both lawyers. The husband’s practice began to fade. He thought of going for a judgeship. He said, out loud, They won’t want me. His wife said, You won’t know for sure unless you try. Well, he tried. He now oversees one-hundred judges. Think: try! Surprise yourself.• Can you identify the emotional core messages from your childhood that shape your view of self, others, and the world – today? “You’re fat,” your mother said. What was her message? You’re not okay? When do you let go of that message? As a child? I don’t think so. As an adult? The question is: As an adult, do you even understand that that evaluation of your mother’s may not even be conscious. You just act out the script she planted in your core being; the inner child who holds all messages – tightly. “You’re not bright,” your second-grade teacher says embarrassing you in front of the class. She’s an authority figure; what do you do with her label? Children are free, loving and trusting. How does a seven-year-old let go of this core negative message? Childhood sexual abuse happens. An “uncle” may touch inappropriately. A father or brother may be inappropriately sexual. An adult may expose herself. I worked with a professional woman who insisted her young daughter sleep with her and her boyfriend. If the child bumped into the boyfriend’s erection, what is the message the mother refused to take into consideration? Parents argue, the child thinks it’s his or her fault. If I had only finished my carrots, they would not be raising their voices.A friend told me she grew up with her parents and mother’s mother. The grandma cooked. She would put dinner in front of her granddaughter, and say, “If you love me, you’ll finish all the food in front of you. How long did it take my friend to realize that her weight problems started with her grandmother’s messages? A long time. I could go on; you could go on. Every adult has their own, sometimes unique, story to tell about childhood trauma that lives on in adulthood.An aside: When I was seven years old and living in the Bronx, I was involved in a gas explosion. One infant died. When I was fifty years old, living near Gramercy Park in New York City, there was a gas explosion. Three people died. I stopped functioning. Con Edison, the utility involved, wanted to know why my lawyer was asking for so much in damages. They sent me to their Fifth Avenue psychiatrist. He pulled out of me, in less than sixty minutes, that I had never processed the seven-year-olds trauma. Con Edison paid, but I needed a year or more to begin to get back to myself. My career ended. That’s one of my unique stories of the wounded inner child. Have you told yours to ? A friend ? family ? A therapist.If you hide from your childhood trauma, it’s there working to subvert your moving on. If you face your childhood wound, it will teach you a life lesson. You will move on. I started by journaling. Then I found Charles Whitfield’s Healing the Child Within. I read it over and over again. Then I found a therapist. I had someone to talk to who understood and did not judge. What reading and studying and therapy taught me: You can heal from childhood trauma. Don’t look for a pill to do your work. And it is work. Make time every day to save the quality of your life. Meditate; be in the moment. Find that special person to talk to who understands.I got back to core wounds when I realized my neighbor, who had love bombed me to begin with, was a psychopath. A psychopath studies you like a biologist looking through her microscope hunting down the next killer virus. While I enjoyed her flattery, she was watching for my core wounds. When hate took over the love and attention, all my vulnerabilities were used against me. I found the books of Jackson MacKenzie, Psychopath Free and Whole Again. Both books worked miracles. They made me see I was dealing with a psychopath and tools life had taught me were not sufficient.
Besides the books I’ve listed above, here are some tips for healing emotional wounds:• Take baby steps. Be patient with yourself. You will get from A to B and beyond.• Each step along the way will bring emotional relief. You do not have to get to the end of the journey to feel healthy and strong and self-confident.• Be persistent. Don’t be discouraged. Enter your progress in a journal. Look each day to see how far you have come.• Set realistic goals. That’s another way of saying: take baby steps. Be kind to yourself.• If you see, in spite of awareness, you are still faltering, think of what happened as a learning experience. Think of Thomas Edison and all his “mistakes.”• Love yourself. My mother always said to me, Love yourself. It took eighty years before I heard her words. I can be a slow learner. Add self-care and self-compassion to your vocabulary.• Courage! Think of George Washington crossing the Delaware and saying to his men: Courage. Get in touch with your feelings. Feel the feelings. Learn.• Ask for help. I repeat, find someone, a friend or a therapist who will support your journey.In his book, Your Erroneous Zones, Wayne Dyer suggests putting Post-Its on your bathroom mirror or on your refrigerator door as a way to remind yourself of what is important. Here are some Post-Its ideas:• Emotional healing is possible• I’m taking one day at a time.• I am not in a race. I’m going at my own pace.• I am patient.• Emotional healing is hard work. I’m a hard worker.• I will feel the feelings. Be brave.• I am love.• I appreciate being me.
Finally. I grew up in the 40s. Movies taught me about life and love. I still learn from movies with meaningful scripts. I’d like to recommend “I Am Love” directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Tilda Swinton. It tells the story of a Russian woman who marries an Italian entrepreneur, and does all the right things. She keeps everyone comfortable. Except herself. It’s the story of a woman blossoming. The message applies to each and every one of us.
Ode to My Wound O WoundPortal to skin strataLiving on the river of ancient blood.What demons swim in that streamhunting for new calls to join this gang of invaders?
O WoundYou were so easy to managewhen I was young a kiss a bandage and weWere safe. But old age has filledthat pool with too many monstersimmune to healing potions and poison
O WoundAre you the final battlefield between skinand world the ill that will take me down?
Margo Stutts Toombs©
We learn, as children, to take care of skin wounds, as Margo shares. But, can we, as adults, learn to love ourselves and hug the inner child and repair the emotional wounds?
Rabbi David WolpeThe New York TimesJuly 2, 2023 “All of us are wounded and broken in one way or another; those who do not recognize it in themselves or in others are more likely to cause damage than those who realize and try to rise through the brokenness.”
Core wounds are stored in our Inner Child; each of us has an Inner Child. The Inner Child will speak to you about every joy, every hurt starting from day one. Mark Wolynn, in his book, It Didn’t Start With You: how inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the cycle, explains how we carry more than our own baggage. That is, we are not necessarily born free. We may very well be born with a preordained history. Grandparents, who survived the Holocaust, may be talking to us through our genes. Parents who escaped a Latin American dictatorship may not want to ruminate about their past, but their experiences are with us. First, we have to hear the Inner Child. You may very well have to STOP, sit quietly, meditate perhaps, and listen to what the Inner Child is telling you. Second, we must hear the messages. The messages may be uncomfortable. We may run from the challenges as they become clear. But, he who runs runs into a wall. Third, work to change negative messages into positives. Awareness may come slowly. It did for me. Be patient with yourself. Be kind to yourself. At every moment of enlightenment, I found a book that helped me move forward: my journey began with Charles Whitfield’s Healing the Inner Child. Before I read Whitfield’s book, I lived with the memory of my second grade teacher telling me I would not succeed. It was the time of IQ tests. I was a dreamer, creative. Creatives don’t do well on IQ tests. When she reacted to my score, she scarred me. It took years of negative responses to life’s challenges to learn to fight back. To kick her words out of my psyche. I remember in college contemplating the newly created Peace Corps (1961). I said to myself, You can see the world on someone else’s dime. When I realized you had to take a test, I walked away from the challenge. I thought of my second grade teacher; she’s laughing at me thinking I can make it into the Peace Corps.
Let’s look at eight points Whitfield makes:1. Acknowledge your Inner Child. That I did after reading his book. I sat quietly and tried to remember childhood messages that told me who I was and was not. My parents acknowledged my creativity. They honored it. They set an example for my brothers. I blessed them for not asking me to be different, to follow a ‘man’ pattern.2. Validate what happened: Yes! Remember as much as you can. The messages that people of importance sent to you will challenge your positive outcome unless you confront them. Teachers praised how properly I dressed and color-coordinated every day. Their words gave me the courage to find my way in the fashion world.3. Identify any form of neglect. If you were neglected for any reason, the message were…you’re not okay. Make yourself okay by facing your demons. Whatever voice of your childhood that is whispering in your ear – you’re not okay, shout back. Get your truth out there. Feel the truth in your bones.4. Embrace your emotions. If childhood messages make you sad, feel the sadness. Embrace the joys and the sadness. Embrace and let go. Make your core a secure place of positives. Turning negatives into positives ‘R’ Us.5. Identify current manifestations of past hurts. Nothing happens until you identify the ‘happening’ that told you that you were okay, or not okay. Although my second grade teacher’s message lived inside me, it took years before I identified its impact.6. Take steps to fill the gap. Therapy comes to mind. Sometimes you need someone smarter to help you find the path to liberation. I believe in group therapy. Find a group or start a group.7. Mend the hurt by helping others. That’s why group therapy is so powerful. As you are learning from the people who are ahead of your learning curve, you are helping those who haven’t gotten as far as you. I’m thinking of Anne Bancroft and The Miracle Worker.8. Heal and release your Inner Child. I believe it takes twice-as-much energy to be negative as it does to be positive. If you let go of negative messages and you present positives to the world, you will have much more energy. Try it, you’ll like it.
Core wounds account for how we act and interact; how we respond to life’s challenges, how we internalize adult trauma, and how we pick a life partner. As a couples’ counselor for twenty-six years, I would often say to clients, “Your picker is broken.” If your picker is broken, look to your Inner Child for answers. Core wounds allow us to enter, or remain in, relationships that are unhealthy. Ask yourself: Did my parents set a healthy example of a loving relationship? Do my past dating partners scream out to me: Look who you’re dating, you CAN do better. Reach higher. In graduate school we learned that we pick a life partner based on unresolved issues with one parent. In my case, I had a strong mother and a passive father. I knew instinctively as a young person I could never play the passive role. So, playing the strong role, I found weak men. I stopped trusting my picker. I had to reimagine me in a relationship. Perhaps that is why I specialized in family therapy.
Core Wound Messages:• A voice in us says, ‘Don’t say what you’re thinking, you’ll offend,’ or, ‘Don’t send that letter, the recipient will take it wrong’, or, ‘Don’t go after that job, you know they won’t hire you.’ Until we stop and think of what is going on in our core wound (wounded inner child), we live the negative messages that repeat in our head. I have two cousins, husband and wife, both lawyers. The husband’s practice began to fade. He thought of going for a judgeship. He said, out loud, They won’t want me. His wife said, You won’t know for sure unless you try. Well, he tried. He now oversees one-hundred judges. Think: try! Surprise yourself.• Can you identify the emotional core messages from your childhood that shape your view of self, others, and the world – today? “You’re fat,” your mother said. What was her message? You’re not okay? When do you let go of that message? As a child? I don’t think so. As an adult? The question is: As an adult, do you even understand that that evaluation of your mother’s may not even be conscious. You just act out the script she planted in your core being; the inner child who holds all messages – tightly. “You’re not bright,” your second-grade teacher says embarrassing you in front of the class. She’s an authority figure; what do you do with her label? Children are free, loving and trusting. How does a seven-year-old let go of this core negative message? Childhood sexual abuse happens. An “uncle” may touch inappropriately. A father or brother may be inappropriately sexual. An adult may expose herself. I worked with a professional woman who insisted her young daughter sleep with her and her boyfriend. If the child bumped into the boyfriend’s erection, what is the message the mother refused to take into consideration? Parents argue, the child thinks it’s his or her fault. If I had only finished my carrots, they would not be raising their voices.A friend told me she grew up with her parents and mother’s mother. The grandma cooked. She would put dinner in front of her granddaughter, and say, “If you love me, you’ll finish all the food in front of you. How long did it take my friend to realize that her weight problems started with her grandmother’s messages? A long time. I could go on; you could go on. Every adult has their own, sometimes unique, story to tell about childhood trauma that lives on in adulthood.An aside: When I was seven years old and living in the Bronx, I was involved in a gas explosion. One infant died. When I was fifty years old, living near Gramercy Park in New York City, there was a gas explosion. Three people died. I stopped functioning. Con Edison, the utility involved, wanted to know why my lawyer was asking for so much in damages. They sent me to their Fifth Avenue psychiatrist. He pulled out of me, in less than sixty minutes, that I had never processed the seven-year-olds trauma. Con Edison paid, but I needed a year or more to begin to get back to myself. My career ended. That’s one of my unique stories of the wounded inner child. Have you told yours to ? A friend ? family ? A therapist.If you hide from your childhood trauma, it’s there working to subvert your moving on. If you face your childhood wound, it will teach you a life lesson. You will move on. I started by journaling. Then I found Charles Whitfield’s Healing the Child Within. I read it over and over again. Then I found a therapist. I had someone to talk to who understood and did not judge. What reading and studying and therapy taught me: You can heal from childhood trauma. Don’t look for a pill to do your work. And it is work. Make time every day to save the quality of your life. Meditate; be in the moment. Find that special person to talk to who understands.I got back to core wounds when I realized my neighbor, who had love bombed me to begin with, was a psychopath. A psychopath studies you like a biologist looking through her microscope hunting down the next killer virus. While I enjoyed her flattery, she was watching for my core wounds. When hate took over the love and attention, all my vulnerabilities were used against me. I found the books of Jackson MacKenzie, Psychopath Free and Whole Again. Both books worked miracles. They made me see I was dealing with a psychopath and tools life had taught me were not sufficient.
Besides the books I’ve listed above, here are some tips for healing emotional wounds:• Take baby steps. Be patient with yourself. You will get from A to B and beyond.• Each step along the way will bring emotional relief. You do not have to get to the end of the journey to feel healthy and strong and self-confident.• Be persistent. Don’t be discouraged. Enter your progress in a journal. Look each day to see how far you have come.• Set realistic goals. That’s another way of saying: take baby steps. Be kind to yourself.• If you see, in spite of awareness, you are still faltering, think of what happened as a learning experience. Think of Thomas Edison and all his “mistakes.”• Love yourself. My mother always said to me, Love yourself. It took eighty years before I heard her words. I can be a slow learner. Add self-care and self-compassion to your vocabulary.• Courage! Think of George Washington crossing the Delaware and saying to his men: Courage. Get in touch with your feelings. Feel the feelings. Learn.• Ask for help. I repeat, find someone, a friend or a therapist who will support your journey.In his book, Your Erroneous Zones, Wayne Dyer suggests putting Post-Its on your bathroom mirror or on your refrigerator door as a way to remind yourself of what is important. Here are some Post-Its ideas:• Emotional healing is possible• I’m taking one day at a time.• I am not in a race. I’m going at my own pace.• I am patient.• Emotional healing is hard work. I’m a hard worker.• I will feel the feelings. Be brave.• I am love.• I appreciate being me.
Finally. I grew up in the 40s. Movies taught me about life and love. I still learn from movies with meaningful scripts. I’d like to recommend “I Am Love” directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Tilda Swinton. It tells the story of a Russian woman who marries an Italian entrepreneur, and does all the right things. She keeps everyone comfortable. Except herself. It’s the story of a woman blossoming. The message applies to each and every one of us.
Ode to My Wound O WoundPortal to skin strataLiving on the river of ancient blood.What demons swim in that streamhunting for new calls to join this gang of invaders?
O WoundYou were so easy to managewhen I was young a kiss a bandage and weWere safe. But old age has filledthat pool with too many monstersimmune to healing potions and poison
O WoundAre you the final battlefield between skinand world the ill that will take me down?
Margo Stutts Toombs©
We learn, as children, to take care of skin wounds, as Margo shares. But, can we, as adults, learn to love ourselves and hug the inner child and repair the emotional wounds?