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Thjis YouTube clip provides perspective on what you'll read here:
This is one of a series of articles in Lesson 1 in
this Web site - (a) free your
true Self
to guide you in calm and conflictual times, and (b)
reduce
significant false-self wounds. This article assumes you're
familiar with...
the intro
to this educational Web site and the premises
underlying it,
I
have worked as a family-systems therapist with over 1,000 typical men, women,
couples, and some of their kids since 1981. Many of them have been in
troubled and/or
divorcing
biofamilies, single-parents, and
stepfamilies.
I
now believe there are
up to five interrelated
reasons why
millions of U.S. couples divorce
psychologically or legally. Perhaps the most powerful and least known of the
five is the psychological effect of
low-nurturance
childhoods on typical mates.
My research suggests that if
young kids get too
few of their psychological and spiritual needs met,
they automatically survive by forming a multi-part personality. This causes several related psychological "wounds":
excessive
shame, guilts, and
fears;
major reality
distortions and
trust problems, and for some...
difficulty
bonding with some
or all other people.
Unseen, these psychological wounds seem "normal."
They significantly
stress relationships, careers, parenting, and physical and mental health.
Our media uses the vague term "mental illness" to refer to what this site
calls "false self wounding." See this brief
research summary and this reprint on
U.S. parents' lack of "baby
knowledge."
Over
80%of the
many hundreds of troubled women and men I've consulted with since 1981 have
clear
symptoms of significant psychological wounds - and most didn't
(want to) know
it. Once such wounds are understood and admitted, they
can be greatly
reduced (vs. cured) over time.
Lesson 1
here shows you how.
perspective on your true
Self and "false-self dominance;" and...
six
psychological wounds many parents bear and pass on to their
vulnerable kids without knowing it.
What Is a "Grown Wounded Child"
(GWC)?
Premise: families exist to fill key
physical, psychological, and spiritual needsof adults and kids - i.e. to
nurture. Depending on many factors,
families (like yours) range from "very low nurturance"
to "very high nurturance."
High-nurturance families and organizations display a set of observable
traits. A GWC is an adult who survived
unintended deprivation of too many of these
~30 nurturing factors by their early-childhood
caregivers. Usually their ancestors were significantly
neglected, wounded,
and unaware too, and didn't know it
or what to do about it. Family trees show clear symptoms of inherited wounds and adult unawareness.
Adults who got enough of the factors
often enough (a subjective judgment) can be called
Grown
Nurtured Children, or GNCs. "Significant childhood
neglect"
has
occurred when a child or adult has "too many" of the six
psychological wounds below, in someone's opinion. Ultimately, each adult (i.e.
you) must decide what "too many" is.
About
Personality "Subselves"
To
understand "false-self (psychological) wounds," you need to know how human
personalities develop. Here...
personalitymeans "the evolving
values,
beliefs, traits, reflexes, talents, and limitations that make every
person unique."
Child-development
researchers propose that while our personality or character
changes across our life, our core beliefs, values, perceptions, and
priorities are largely "set" by the time we're about six years old. So
how well
our developmental needs are met in our early years has a profound
effect on how our neuro-hormonal system develops, who we partner with,
the work we choose, and our health, productivity, and longevity.
Positron Emission Tomography
(PET) shows
living brains
at work. PET images show that many different brain areas may act
concurrently to produce the simple experience "I see my hand." Different
interrelated parts of our brains and neurological systems automatically
process and cause sensory stimuli,
emotions, thoughts, short term and long-term "memories," and so on.
Our amazing brains compose "meaning" from interpreting information from our six senses
and accumulated knowledge. One brain area decodes meaning from abstract concepts
("Is Frank telling the truth?"), and other
areas do
"logical" analyses ("Martha's frowning, so she must be mad at
me.").
Different brain regions decode colors, visual patterns, shapes,
movements, temperatures, touches, sounds, and
smells. Decoding meaning from a specific person's facial expression
or voice dynamics acti-vates networks of many different brain areas (modules)
without our awareness. Different brain centers control hormone and antibody
productions, others direct our muscle-cell activity, and sleep, eating, diges-tion, and
elimination cycles.
So "you" are an astounding interconnected network of
many
organic "mini-computers" programmed by Nature and your early and ongoing experiences.
Though we have one body and one brain, and feel like "one person,"our
personality is naturally
determinedbya dynamic group of semi-independent parts or
subselves(brain
regions).
The primal ability of our brain to adapt to the
environment by developing specialized regions (subselves) has been described as multiplicity,
fragmenting, and splitting. Does this modular-personality concept make sense to you?
If so, note an implication: having a "split personality" is
normal!
About Your
Self
Many philosophers and average people agree that we each have a
self. There has been rich and rau-cous debate about what that is,
across centuries and cultures. For our purposes, I and
other thoughtful researchers propose
there are conceptually two types of
human self which regulate our
perceptions,
personality, and behaviors
every moment.
Ifour early-nurturance needs are filled well enough, we seem to automatically
develop a part of our personality which acts like a talented
orchestra conductor, athletic coach, or chairperson our
true Self
(capital "S"). This subself has
clear, realistic, wide-angle, long-range vision. S/He consistently makes effective (healthy,
balanced) minor and major decisions based on history and the dynamic input of our five
or six senses and other subselves.
Ideally, our
subselves (brain regions) are steadily directed and coordinated by
this naturally-skilled
leader. When
that happens, kids and adults commonly report feeling
some mix of calm or serene, center-ed,
grounded, light, "up," clear, firm, alive,
alert, aware, compassionate, strong, resilient, focused,
open, sure, confident, decisive, positive, and purposeful
- even in a crisis.
But
...
If young kids
aren't
nurtured well
enough, their brains and personalities seem to automatically develop a different kind of
self (small "s"). Their trueSelf seems
overwhelmed
or blocked from growing able to direct their actions
by a group of well-meaning but limited, impulsive subselves
who want to control the person - i.e. to survive.
This is like a
violinist, tuba player, and lead tenor pushing their conductor off the podium and
fighting over who will lead the orchestra.
If not nurtured well enough, our
personality evolves with different parts of it in
competition, rather than in consistent harmony.
When did you last experience "confusion," "seeing both sides," "changing
your mind," and/or an
inner argument.
Enter the
"False" (Pseudo) Self
Kids and adults (like you) can range between grounded, centered, and "together"
to "crazy and hysterical" depending on (a) the
environment (situation), (b) how many
subselves are vying for
control, and (c) how much their dominant subselves' values and perceptions conflict. This set of squabbling
personality parts becomes our false or pseudo self.
If
someone has been governed by a false self most of their life,
they define that as normal. The idea that there is
another Self
within them that - if allowed to - can consistently make better life
decisions, sounds like low-grade science fiction.
A common
first reaction to
this personality-subself idea is anxiety about "being crazy" or having a
"multiple personality." Since about 1980, psychiatrists and social
psychologists have guesstimated that about 5% of Americans seems to have extreme
personality splitting.
Once called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD),
this condition is now
dubbed "Dissociative Identity Disorder"
(DID) by the American Psychiatric Association.
The common clinical word for being controlled by a false self is dissociation.
Research
repeatedly finds that highly-dissociated ("fragmented") people were
subjected to extreme neglect, abuse, abandonment, or other
trauma as young children. Their nurturance deprivations were profound. The great majority of us don't have anywhere close to this degree of
personality splitting -
and do have some.
So in this site,
a Grown
Wounded Child (GWC) is an adult who
survived a low-nurturance childhood by developing a protective,
short-sighted, reactive false
self.
We GWCs live some, much, or all the time
dominated by a
protective group
of short-sighted
Inner Kids
and
Guardian subselves. We're usually unaware of this,
though we're pretty quick to spot false selves controlling other people -
specially ex mates, and "toxic" parents and coworkers.
Significant
false-self dominance has powerful
personal, marital, parental, and social
implications. I
suspect that many (most?) people who are addicted, obese, abusers,
depressed, homeless, "mentally ill," divorcing, self-neglectful, bigoted,
terrorists, anti-social, paranoid, delusional, criminal, homicidal, and
suicidal are
unaware trauma-survivors ruled by well-meaning false selves.
What's your opinion?
Reality
Check
When you're undistracted and your
Self is
guiding your personality, clarify your reaction to these
ideas with the
statements below. A = "I agree; D = "I disagree," and
?
= "I'm not sure" or "It depends on (what?)":
Families exist to nurture (fill
the needs of) their kids and adults. (A D ?)
Some familiesare more effective at nurturing than others. (A D ?)
How much psychological and
spiritual nurturance a child experiences in their first four to six
years greatly affects how their personality develops.(A
D ?)
Normal
(vs. pathological) human personalities seem to be composed of
semi-independent "subselves" or "parts." They
are probably specialized brain regions. (A D ?) If you're curious or skeptical about
subselves, read this perspective and
letter, and then try this safe, interesting
experience.
Normal personalities range from
fragmented and disorganized to steadily harmonious, locally or over time, depending on which
subselves guide
them. (A D ?)
The concept of a true Self and a
false self sense to me.
(A D ?)
I want to learn more about (a)
family nurturance and GWC wounds, and (b) whether psychological wounds
may be affecting me and my family. (A D ?)
This Lesson-1 article describes "Grown Wounded Children"
(GWCs) - women and men who survived significant early-childhood abandonment,
abuse, and neglect and inherited up to six psychological
wounds.
It proposes that normal personalities are composed of three types
semi-independent "subselves," including a wise "true Self." Until typical
GWCs take proactive steps to reduce their wounds ("recover"), they're often
ruled by a well-intentioned "false self," causing many personal problems -
including unintentionally wounding young people in their care.
The article closes with a status check on what you believe about these
concepts, and an array of useful next steps.
Pause, breathe, and reflect - why did you read this article? Did you get
what you needed? If not, what do you need? Who's
answering these questions - your
true Self, or
''someone else''?
This
article wasvery
helpful somewhat helpful not
helpful
>>
The Web address of this
two-page article is
http://sfhelp.org/gwc/gwc.htm
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