WHAT AM I SENDING OUT INTO THE UNIVERSE?
I’ve been reading through the revised edition of John Bradshaw’s book Healing The Shame That Binds You and considering his idea of toxic shame. In the Homecoming video series and his book, John reveals many of his childhood wounds. He openly talks about specific things that happened in his childhood and explains how those experiences are now categorized as abusive.
In the preface to the revised edition, he writes,
At the time the material on shame was tremendously helpful to me personally, but I had no idea of its impact on the public.
He goes on to say,
In the intervening years, I’ve enriched my understanding of the importance of healthy shame in forming our sense of identity, in guarding our honor and dignity, in safeguarding our spirituality and in forming our conscience.
To me, the keywords here are enriched, at the time and intervening years. That tells me that once he healed his wounds, the material read differently to him.
I’ve found that too. When I go back and re-read books, I understand the information differently because I’ve gathered a pile of additional information and have healed many of my childhood wounds. That means I’m no longer viewing the idea from the same wounded place I was when I first read the book, so my mind is open to new perspectives.
Here’s the thing about what we think we know as I understand it. Our understanding of an experience was formed at the time of the experience, with the level of understanding we had at the time. So, if we were seven years old when something happened, we have a seven-year-old’s perspective of that memory. Only when we revisit those memories from an adult perspective can we either resolve the hurt feelings through an adult perspective of what happened or, if we keep using the memory as a reference, we’ll contribute to the initial trauma by adding more emotional filters and additional narrative.
For example, when my grandfather beat me until I peed myself, I didn’t know that what he did was abusive. I definitely thought my grandfather was mean, but I wasn’t capable at the time of forming a narrative that said I was abused or attaching the label of abuser to him. In fact, that memory was buried deep in my body and only resurfaced during a regressive hypnosis session in a psychologist’s office. In other words, I learned that my grandfather was abusive when I was older. If you haven’t yet read my first post, where I describe that experience, you can do so here.
My body remembered the beating, but my conscious mind didn’t. I didn’t know that this memory would surface during my regressive hypnosis session that day. I was there trying to heal a phobia that my psychologist and I assumed was attached to the first surgical experience I had as a ten-year-old. If you haven’t read about my first surgery, you can do so here.
As it turned out, we didn’t figure out which experience was at the root of my phobia, so the phobia wasn’t resolved. Instead, we discovered there was early childhood abuse trapped in my body.
Initially, it was the pain of his hand on my arm that I remembered. During the hypnosis, I recalled the twisting of the skin on my little arm as his hand, in a tight grip, moved on my arm while his other hand was beating my bum. My psychologist had to calm me down several times during this regression and remind me that I was safe in his office and that this was only a memory because he could see the fear I was feeling. My body tensed, my temperature rose, and there was a look of terror on my face.
In my mind’s eye, I was watching the memory like a movie, feeling the same intensity of fear I felt at seven years old. I remembered my grandmother cleaning me up saying, there, there, child. I remember asking her what I did wrong, but I don’t recall her having an answer.
Since that regressive hypnosis session, I’ve recalled that memory several times, and every time, my eyes fill with tears, my heart feels heavy, and I feel sorry for little Penny. While I think it’s important to get all the yuck out, I wonder if sometimes, when we do reflective work such as this, we make things worse rather than better. Am I releasing more emotional pain and healing a little more every time I recall that memory, or am I adding intensity to the narrative, creating a bigger issue?
THE MIND’S PROCESS
As I understand it, the mind’s process works like this:
We have an experience, form a conclusion – which is another way of saying we form a narrative - at the level of understanding we had at the time, then store that narrative in the filing cabinets of our mind. These narratives are used as references by the mind’s process.
I like things simple, so I use only three cabinets:
The first cabinet is neutral, where all the experiences that don’t have emotional content are filed. For me, these are everyday kinds of experiences. Examples are going for a walk, reading a book, watching a movie, or going out for dinner with friends and family.
The next cabinet is the LOVE cabinet, where all the positive memories are housed. These are times when I felt loved, excited, happy, joyful, and purposeful. This filing cabinet also houses all of my accomplishments and success stories.
The third cabinet, the FEAR cabinet, houses all the painful experiences. This is where the skeletons and the wounds are. These are the experiences where I felt abused, bullied, belittled, and berated. There are intensely scary memories in here, partly because these memories are the most referenced.
Every time our mind’s process references and agrees with a prior experience, we add another narrative to the file. The similar emotions we felt are attached to both experiences and are intensified.
I think of it as adding another colored filter to that file. That file could get incredibly thick if we have hundreds of similar negative experiences.
These are how emotional walls are built.
The mind’s process will always justify itself to itself, so the more often we revisit a negative experience without resolving it, which to me means understanding it from a different perspective and letting go of the negative emotions attached to it, the more we become entrenched in that thought. Academics like to use the term cognitive bias. We all have them, but not all of us are willing to admit we have them, nor are we willing to reassess our biases to see if we might have been mistaken or if the new information might change them.
Facts change when new information becomes available.
You know the saying – birds of a feather flock together. If we continually regurgitate the same ideas – say, categorizing specific experiences as trauma or labeling people with disorders – the idea, or story, becomes so rigid it eventually becomes a brick. Bricks are then mortared in, and the wall becomes harder to penetrate.
Unless I’m willing to let go of the hurt feelings stored in my body, I won’t heal, and to do that, I have to feel it all over again. I don’t know who came up with this, but I think it’s true:
You have to feel it to heal it.
My point is that the more we agree with a story, a narrative, or an idea, ours or someone else’s, the stronger and more powerful that idea becomes. If that idea has a ton of negative energy attached in the form of negative emotion, then what are we collectively sending out into the universe?
Great article. I really like that comparison of the 7 year old’s memory with the adult memory. Thank you.