Tho wound-reduction is unique to each person, there are at least seven
things all recoverers have in common.
1) The six
psychological wounds affect each other. For example, shame, distrust, fear,
and reality distortion combine to promote difficulty bonding and loving –
which promotes shame and fear. The silver lining is – reducing (vs.
"curing") each
wound makes reducing the others easier over time.
Empowering the resi-dent true
Self to lead (goal #1) reduces all five other wounds simultaneously
- tho each condition needs specific healing efforts.
2) Each wound is the result of a group of
personality subselves interacting: typically
Guardian
subselves who distrust your Self or other Manager subselves (like the
Nurturer) focusing
narrowly on calming, comforting, or protecting one or more shamed, guilty,
scared, or lonely young
Inner Kids from new
discomforts.
3) Each main recovery goal is
composed of
subgoals. This makes progress more easily identified, and the overall
healing process less overwhelming. How long do you suppose it might take an average person to make significant progress on all
six of these healing goals (vs. "achieve them")? Do you see why true recovery from
false-self dominance and other wounds is an ongoing multi-year project?
4) The overall recovery theme is helping the personality subselves who cause
each wound to (a) meet each other and your true Self and (b) agree on common
life goals; (c) relax old
perceptions and security-strategies; and (d) risk letting your Self and other
Manager subselves make
significant life decisions. That frees Guardian subselves to shift to
new personality roles
(functions).
5) True wound-recovery rarely (never?) occurs without evolving
a serene
faith
and an interactive relationship with, a nurturing, loving (vs. jealous,
punitive, vengeful) Higher Power. Such faith requires (a)
wanting to become
self-aware
and often (b) some kind of enlightened spiritual (vs. religious)
mentor/s, encouragement, and inspirations.
Reality check: try to find someone in true (vs.
pseudo)
wound-recovery who is an atheist or agnostic...
6) Note this paradox:
thinking
and
communicating effectiveness is hindered by psychological wounds - and are essential to reducing them. That means
that recoverers benefit from working patiently at
Lesson 1 and
Lesson 2 at the
same time and
balancing them with other life
goals and priorities.
Because our media ceaselessly urges typical Americans to be excessively busy and
avoid self-awareness, healing progress requires recoverers to want
to replace some current life priorities and activi-ties with commitment to
these two Projects. Typical false-selves will strenuously resist this, until
they trust the benefits of doing so and the resident true Self and other
Managers. A final recovery theme is...
7) Wound-recovery is
wholistic and organic, like growing a garden. It yields
progress and rewards in different areas, in fits and starts. Some people choose a
structured recovery plan ("I'm working on conver-ting my excessive shame
to self-respect and self-love this month.") Others evolve an unstructured healing experience
without clear, explicit goals. Though the latter may take longer, the end
results are the same:
a calmer, clearer, more focused, spiritual,
enjoyable and productive daily life based on living from your
true Self; and...
increasing clarity on, and acceptance of, your strengths, limits, and
your life's purpose.
Where is your (your subselves') comfort zone between
structured to unstructured recovery now?
Over time, effective wound-recovery usually works best by using an array
of resources like these:
Types
of Recovery Help
Resources
for recovery from "toxic parents," "dysfunctional childhoods," and "child(hood)
abuse"
have exploded since the 1980s, though few of them use the Inner Family
(personality subself) concepts so far.
Options include ...
and
many more.
Most have national or local Web sites and some have online groups;
Art, dance, music, and massage therapies and workshops;
Personal
journaling, retreats, and focused meditating;
Spiritual/pastoral, exercise, and nutritional counseling;
Various public and private agency or hospital inpatient
programs - typically two to four weeks, usually with an aftercare-option.
Choosing Effective Help
§Four key sources
of recovery help are lay and professional people
(e.g. coaches, counselors, clergy, and therapists), the media
(e.g. authors and speakers), and recovery programs and groups.
Each of these can range from ineffective to effective in
promoting true wound-recovery. How can you evaluate potential
resources?
Common traits of effective helpers include…
(Ideally), they have some years'
personal experience wound-recovery;
They know the difference between
high-nurturance and low-nurturance
relationships,
families, and
groups;
•They accept the
realities of
personality subselves
and psychological wounds,
(this is unusual);
They are steadily self-aware and are usually
guided
by their true Selves, or are working at that;
They have specific, realistic
ideas about recovery goals
and the healing process;
•They promote using
nurturing
spirituality as
a vital part of the process;
know the difference between
true bottom and pseudo bottom, and
they know...
how addiction
recovery relates to reducing psychological wounds.
§Implication:
to evaluate potential helpers, the recovering person must
understand all these traits and topics.
Reality:
most lay and professional people will lack some or all of these
requisites, so their ability to help will vary.
There
are other effective
ways to recover besides inner-family therapy - e.g.
EMDR and
Voice Dialog.
Another vital question: How
do you judge whether wound-recovery is working?
Symptoms
of True
Recovery
This YouTube video
previews what you'll read below:
Common symptoms of true
(vs. pseudo)recovery
from false-self dominance are...
A growing
spiritual faith in a benign (nurturing)
Higher Power and increasing personal aware-ness and
serenity - even in
crises and conflicts; and...
Increasingly experiencingthe
pleasurable
symptoms that your
Self (capital "S") is guiding and harmonizing
your personality subselves; and...
A growing clarity on your special gifts,
limits, life-purpose, and priorities; and...
Increasing abilities to make spontaneous,
win-win short-range and
long-range
decisions, and to calmly trust these decisions despite uncertainties;
and...
A growing number of
high-nurturance relationships,
work and social settings, and activities;
and...
Increasing comfort in
choosing responsibility for your own
life, and compassionately giving others responsibility for theirs;
and...
More true-recovery signs...
A cleardecline in daily ambivalence, uncertainty, confusion,
and self doubt, a decrease in sending other people
double (mixed) messages and an
increase in thoughtful decisiveness; and...
A risingreflex to
laugh
appreciatively (vs. derisively) at personal, human, and Nature's
foi-bles, sillinesses, and ironies; and...
A growingacceptance of
personal rights and of other people's equal rights
- and
responsibil-ities. An enjoyable symptom of this is increasingly-effective
assertion and
problem-solving; and...
Increasing awareness and
serenity inambivalent
and anxious situations; and declining (a) rigid, black/white
thinking, and (b) needs to compulsively
control feelings, relationships, and events,
without undue anxieties.
And you can feel confident recovery is "working"
when you notice...
A growing ability to
feel and
exchange true
self-love and mutual
love
every day. This includes a growing empathy and compassion for
others who are unaware of being dominated by a pro-tective
false self; and...
Spontaneous genuine
forgiveness
of your subselves and other people for past "mistakes" and betrayals;
and you notice...
Suspicions, jealousies, biases,
scorn, and resentments gradually become empathy, compassion, and
firm assertions of your
primary needs, values, opinions, and
limits with
adults and kids who frustrate, hurt, disappoint, or irritate you;
and you will notice...
Increasing periods of genuine
centeredness, balance, happiness, hope, productivity, con-tentment, energized
peace, resilience, focus, clarity, and firmness of beliefs and actions
- specially amidst change,
crisis, and conflict; and
also...
An increasing
attitude
of gratitude for recovery; human and spiritual support; and the
beauty, wonder, richness, and opportunities of daily life on Earth.
For more on what to expect from effective wound-recovery (harmonizing your
subselves), see this.
Sometimes
as a
Grown Wounded Child (GWC) breaks old protective denials and starts to
recover, other family members get
interested and start their own healing. When wounded mates both
make per-sonal recovery a high priority, their relationship
can grow specially rich and strong.
Other times, wounded, insecure kin
and/or partners are threatened by
the recoverer's new attitudes and behaviors, and their
false-self behaviors increase.
This eventually requires the recovering
person to
choose between continuing to heal or ranking key others' insecurities as
being more important. The latter
enables others' denials, and is usually a symptom of pseudo recovery.
Premise - ignoring or paying only lip-service to wound-assessment
and recovery steeply raises couples' odds of eventual re/divorce
or daily misery. Recall the premise here
thattrue phase-2 recovery
can only begin after a GWC hits true
bottom - i.e. exceeds their
personal tolerance for inner pain, weariness, and hopelessness.
Are you significantly dominated by a protective false
self? Patiently study Lesson 1 here to find
out. If you'reconfused and unsure as you
investigate this, consider consulting a qualified professional
trauma-recovery clinician - e.g. a veteran degreed, licensed clinical social worker,
pastoral counselor, clinical psychologist, psychiatrist, or counseling-psychology major
who has studied (and/or is in) true recovery from false-self
dominance.
The scope of major U.S. societal problems, including
divorce; and the
existence of the multi-billion dollar "mental-heath" industry, testify to
the epidemic of psychological wounds that most average Ameri-can kids and adults
bear. This is probably equally true in other countries.
Based on 32
years' professional research, this nonprofit Web site proposes that growing up in a
low-nurturance family
environment causes typical young children to
survive by developing a
and up to five
related psychological
wounds.
This five-page article:
defines true and
pseudo recovery from psychological wounds,
overviews
recovery goals for each of the six wounds, using inner-family therapy as a
framework;
describes seven
recovery themes to guide the process;
hilights typical
symptoms of true wound-reduction; and...
summarizes the many types of recovery help
that are increasingly available.
See self-improvement
Lesson 1 and
Lesson 2
for vital perspective on how, when, and why to choose false-self wound
recovery. The
guidebooks for these two Projects integrate the key Web articles in this
nonprofit, ad-free site .
What would you like to do with what you just
learned?
Options: invite selected
people to view this introduction to wound-recovery
basics, and
note these options for
relating well-enough to significantly-woun-ded
adults and
kids.
+ + +
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?
The Web address of this
5-page article is http://sfhelp.org/gwc/recover.htm
Premise - 
