You are not broken!
In this New Age movement, there are all different kinds of modalities, techniques, and books available to you for personal healing.
Quite a few of the ones I see are trying to sell something to you based on emotional wounding. Then these techniques are bought and tried to no avail….the wound still seems to be in charge of your life.
Carolyne Myss calls this identification with the wound ‘woundology’. She explains how people lead with their wounds in life. How I understand this is that the wound determines how we live and speak in every part of our life.
This is where her brilliant work of Sacred Contracts and survival shadow archetypes comes in to play. The four survival archetypes are Victim, Child, Prostitute & Saboteur. The original work of shadow archetypes comes from Carl Jung. Every human being has the four survival archetypes and they are neutral patterns of energy. They are not your personality.
I would like to share an example of the Victim archetype. One of my clients was telling me how depressed she had been feeling lately. She went on to explain the dynamics of her family and why they were so difficult. She felt like she didn’t have a say or control in her life because of external circumstances, so she couldn’t be the way she really wanted to be which was more loving and less angry.
She had tried everything she knew about protecting her energy field. These included putting a mirror around her, zipping up her energy, positive affirmations, meditation, and a few others. Every time she was around her family lately she still was extremely activated. She did not like who she was and was feeling frustrated when she interacted with them.
Her husband listened to her story and he thought she should cut herself off from them and then she wouldn’t get so upset. This sounds pretty logical, but does it take care of the underlying issue which is personal boundaries? She still wanted to be part of and belong to her family in some capacity.
As we worked together I explained what I have learned about family systems and how we can inherit certain tendencies. One of these patterns or tendencies is pleasing others and not speaking up and setting boundaries.
The Warrior is the light or opposite archetype of the Victim. She was using the language of the Victim like ‘Somebody has to do it, I have to do it alone and look at what they are doing to me’ these are only a few statements of Victim language.
The Warrior language is just like you would expect, ‘I will fight for and stand up for what I love and value’. The thing that is most valuable she was not standing up for or valuing which was herself.
We spoke about what it would sound like to hear the Warrior take over her self talk instead of the self-defeating language of her Victim. From there how could she set some personal boundaries within herself when she was around her family. And, it is very important as she did this to also notice how her body was presenting.
To be congruent in herself mentally, emotionally and physically, her body must follow suit. Keeping her feet straight, pulling her belly up and shoulders back, keeping her heart open. Giving herself the recognition that she does matter so she needed to stand like a Warrior then speak like one.
After we worked together she felt like she could do this, this being her. She felt empowered and was ready to take another step into her life. She gave me permission to share her story in hope that it might help others in the same situation.
We are human, we all have had things happen to us in our lives. Judging who had it worse is not fair or helpful to you. Your experience is individual and it matters. Take one step every day and look at how you are responding to your life. Can you be a little more understanding of you? Can you let go of one thread that ties you to the past and take one more step into your life?
Be your own Warrior!