How To Transform Your Family Of Origin Wounds Part 1
The Link Between Childhood and Narcissistic Relationships
Even if we didn’t have narcissistic parents our childhood can present many wounds which require healing. This has been my personal experience after going through a second narcissistic relationship – and realising just how much more I still needed to heal and clean up.
As such I would like to share the intense healing focus I placed on my childhood wounds, in order to make enormous changes within my healing journey and my life.
My parents are not narcissists, and in many ways I was very fortunate. My parents were always supportive, they backed everything I wanted to achieve. I always had a roof over my head, food on the table and was fortunate to grow up with parents who had high levels of integrity and were very decent and upstanding people. I was always taught good manners and great morals. ‘Doing the right thing’ was a high value in my family.
However, and this is important to understand, not all parents did a perfect job. Emotional intelligence has only been recognised very recently, as well as the effect family messages have on a child’s subconscious – and how powerfully this affects that child’s life thereafter.
Absolutely, if one of your parents was a narcissist there was a great deal of abuse regardless of whether or not your survival needs were met. It’s vital to realise that even non-narcissistic parents were not skilled and trained in creating healthy mirroring.
It was a very rare parent in any family who taught the essential messages of establishing a healthy sense of unconditional self-love and self-acceptance.
I know that many of you – if you didn’t have narcissistic parents yet suffered narcissistic relationships – will relate to my story, and I know that those of you (and there are many) who did suffer a narcissistic parent will as well, because in reality you suffered a great deal more than I did.
Even though my parents were not narcissists, my circumstances were ripe for me to get enmeshed in future narcissistic relationships.
Conditional Love and Emotional Distance
My childhood was very performance based. I learnt that I was loveable for ‘how well I did’, and that recognition and approval was forthcoming with achievements or if I was complying to certain standards.
My parents were very busy – they always worked hard to provide. My mother was immaculate and she did not tolerate any mess or disarray. We were not able to be ‘just children’. She made it a point to have us clean, perfect organised and in bed when Dad came home – ‘seen and not heard’.
She played the role for a man who needed his meals cooked, the house spotless and the children wonderfully behaved, or out of the way so that he could unwind and relax. Of course she was doing what she believed was how the perfect mother and wife should be.
My mother never seemed to have time for deep personal conversations or just ‘hanging out’. I found that I could not spend time with my mother bonding, getting emotional support or just ‘being loved’.
My father’s attention was very engulfing. He tended to take over things in my life, was always pushing me to be better and had very high and exacting standards. I certainly did not feel loved or accepted just for being myself with him. He was also unavailable for emotional advice and support.
As I grew up I had the quandary of always acknowledging my parents cared for me, supported me and were there for me practically – which I was very grateful for - but I never felt understood, emotionally supported, ‘held’, ‘cared for’ or ‘listened to’ when I felt I needed them the most.
Interestingly after my first narcissistic relationship, my mother, when I was broken down to suicidal point, was incredibly loving and supportive. She was a ‘rock’ to me. I felt like I had the mother I always wanted, yet when I started to recover I felt our relationship went back to being strained and distant again.
I had always felt there was some underlying resentment or competition between my mother and myself. I felt that she did not support my work, did not understand it and was not proud of me. I felt that every time I tried to gain her approval I was shut down and the subject was changed. I felt that I did not have a loving bond with her at all.
There was a great deal of pain with my father as well. I was often deeply hurt by my father not protecting me when I was abused, attacked and set on by the narcissistic partners I had in my life. I would feel devastated when he would state things such as “It takes two”, and would even encourage me to ‘patch things up’ and would put materialism first regardless of the abusive, pathological lying and insane behaviour that he was well aware of – including abuse by proxy, threats and even physical damage, as well of as course the emotional agony of these relationships.
I was mortified that he was not protecting his only girl child, and putting my soul and emotions first. I felt violated, unprotected and totally devastated.
Time To Really Heal!
Understandably I knew I had big Family of Origin wounds.
After my second narcissistic relationship, and I hit the ground again – I knew I had to go deeper and REALLY look at these.
I knew I had to go back into my childhood and authentically heal. If I didn’t I was simply going to again end up in another narcissistic relationship, and keep playing out the subconscious patterns of never feeling good enough, not being unconditionally loved and supported, and being emotionally deserted, unprotected and devastated.
Also I had to totally own and heal my own fears of connecting to love and accepting love – hence why I was attracting love partners who were extremely damaged and personality disordered – who were not genuine and not capable or available to authentically love, connect and support.
So in I went…with the full intention of becoming healthy Mother / Female and Father / Male energy within myself to heal these wounds determinedly.
The healings that I have created in the new mini-program are exactly these healings I worked out how to do on myself.
So that is what I did – I went inside, fully went into ‘what had hurt’ with my parents, claimed these wounds and started to shift them.
What I found was nothing short of incredible. There were many specific incidents that came up when I went ‘inside’. Some of these were so painful that at times I rocked, wailed and howled to let them go. Wounds with our parents are incredibly deep and powerful. The process at times was intense, and profoundly freeing.
I also found deep, genetic, ancestral and DNA belief systems that completely explained the relationship my parents and I were playing out together. I worked on these wounds with my Mum and Dad solidly for a week.
Because I do so much Quanta Freedom Healing on myself (I get through shifts very quickly) – it only took a week of a few hours a day to really do the work. Besides I was ready – I was totally ready to do whatever it took to be free of these wounds, and meet them with every ounce of authentic vulnerability and love I had for myself.
I had had enough of living out the results of these wounds in mind-bendingly painful love relationships.
I simply could not go on doing that.
The Miraculous Shifts
These were the results of doing these healings on myself.
The day after completing the healings Dad came over to my house. Normally I would feel like I needed to keep my distance. His energy could be very powerful and overwhelming and would have me ‘on guard’.
This was my ‘normal’ and something I had always felt even since a young child. From a very early age I had felt my father’s energy as intimidating, harsh and uncompromising – very ‘my way or the highway’.
When I was playing out my ‘normal’ truly I didn’t realise how ‘abnormal’ it was, as I was so used to feeling like that (the same applies for all of us).
Immediately I was aware of a completely different experience. He felt ‘softer’.I felt softer. I wanted to give him a hug and a kiss, and I didn’t feel engulfed or threatened by his presence. The energy felt completely different, and I wanted to connect to him. It felt safe to do so.
A couple of days later I had another incredible experience. My Mum walked into my office and I got up to say hello. She grabbed me, hugged me told me she loved me and how proud she was of me.
What was miraculous was this: it was exactly what I had seen in my inner vision when I did the healing shifts with her – and now it was happening in person. I had NEVER had an experience with my mother like that before – at least not one I could ever remember.
From that day onwards my mother and I started going out for lunch together once a week. We now chat like girlfriends. I can talk to her about anything – and she listens. I love her and connect to her now dearly.
Both of my parents are now completely different in my experience – they have changed. But the only reason they changed is because I changed. I changed my inner programs that were playing out our ‘stuff’.
Every week now I have a card night with my parents. It is our regular date and we love these nights. These nights are incredibly loving and fun, and I can’t believe how fortunate and blessed I am now to create a relationship with my parents that I have never had before.
For the first time we are an authentic loving family - and they are in their 80s. They are not going to be around for much longer, so how incredibly fortunate I am to be able to heal ‘us’ before they leave the planet.
I feel so blessed to have been able to achieve this. Truly it was worth every ounce of narcissistic abuse I endured to reflect these wounds back at me (just this alone) – and I am determined now to love them and spend as much time with them as I can before they pass away. That is a definite cherished value in my life.
Another notable experience has been their reaction to my emotional authenticity. As a part of my dedicated healing journey I made a firm commitment to myself to be emotionally authentic with everyone in my life. This meant speaking the utmost truth of what I needed or how I felt. No more ever sitting on emotions, bottling up and not expressing honestly who I am, or what I feel.
I announced to everyone in my life that is what I was going to do - with love of course. This level of emotional intimacy has extended to my parents, and it has been incredible how I can now speak up lovingly, rather than walking away with angst.
My parents are now exactly the same with me, and we experience an incredible template of honesty, trust and connection. We have a true relationship of emotional intimacy – knowing how we feel, what we need and honouring each other.
It is so beautiful!
The other day my father did a slip up (clumsy and not thinking) and I was in tears of absolute gratitude and love (not pain) when I was able to tell him honestly how I felt and he immediately apologised, and then the next day told me again how sorry he was.
My response was “Dad I love you so much please don’t feel bad”. Once upon a time my father would have much preferred to be right than happy, and would not have let go of his pride and apologised.
More Powerful Shifts
The changes as miraculous as these have been, have not stopped there.
I already had a wonderful relationship with my son – and that has deepened even more. I also previously had incredible difficulties having friendships with men. I have had many insecure or controlling partners projecting their beliefs on to me that men are not to be trusted, and it is not ‘okay’ to have male friends (which I had previously accepted).
Now I have wonderful male friends who I can be really authentic with, and trust and I certainly don’t struggle with the old anxieties and fears I had around men – and the fears of being engulfed, threatened or controlled by them. That was my previous ‘Dad stuff’.
Certainly male friends will never again be an issue in my life regardless of whether I am single or in a relationship.
I also have created new female friendships which are connected, warm, real, vulnerably honest and engaging – as well as deepening existing female friendships.
These sisterhoods have none of the ‘distance’ and ‘angst’ that I really didn’t realise I played out previously. I am no longer operating at that old level of ‘normal’. I know how much more I connect at true heart level, and how natural and free this feels now. The old model was my previous ‘Mum stuff’.
Healing these wounds has been nothing short of incredible – I think you can understand from what I am sharing just how powerful this is.
What Is Really Important In Our Life
I can’t even imagine what it must be like for you, if you know you don’t have the ability to mend certain family relationships. I understand that if you have narcissistic parents or family members, it is very hard for you – because regardless of how much you heal and shift, relationships with narcissistic people aren’t healthy.
This is the fact of the matter all of us need to accept, regardless of who the narcissist is. Of course this can be hard to accept if this person was a spouse or partner, but even more devastatingly so when this person is a family member – especially a parent – which we have all been conditioned to believe is supposed to love, nurture and care about us.
Truly my heart goes out to you.
The truth is healing Family of Origin wounds needs to be first and foremost about yourself. It is about releasing your wounds so that you can be whole and healthy and free – and so that you can relate to yourself, others and life in healthy and whole ways – in order to attract and maintain healthy relationship with people who do have the ability to add healthily to your life, rather than detract from it and hurt you.
When we heal ourself, there may be people who we know we need to do No Contact or Modified Contact with, because our first commitment in life is to honour, love and commit to our own emotional wellbeing.
When we heal our wounds this becomes much easier to do – because when we do become whole, we act as healthy people do – which is with the utmost self-love and self-respect.
Then we can drop the fears of what other people are or aren’t doing – or the losses we may have experienced, or the material, or the ‘practical’ or what other people think. We realise what is really important in life, which is creating a healthy life of genuine love, and this always starts by loving ourself first.
We realise that how we appear to others, what we have and status and acquisitions are only egoic. They do not provide us with happiness. Who we are being in life is the only path to true happiness.
When we wish to claim Who We Really Are, our goal is to create many wonderful authentic feelings to share as genuine love – and we realise that everything in our life which is authentic and of value is created from this platform.
None of the drama, fighting, pain, pathologies or angst of toxic relationships is worth anything – it is not worth the approval, security or materialism we may feel we need to ‘complete us’…it just isn’t real life, and we certainly don’t have to accept it as such.
We do have the power to create authentic love and living, because there is an entire world of resources to do that with, once we get the resources within ourself aligned, loving and authentic.
This is never reliant on what certain people in your life past or present are or aren’t choosing to do.
My parents did not need to shift – I wasn’t doing my healings for that response. I had no expectation or attachment to those outcomes. It was not about trying to gain their approval or love, it was simply a firm commitment to heal myself and set myself free.
The wonderful thing is that people (including my parents) who did have the resources to meet me at this more authentic, loving and higher vibration did – and continue to do so every day. This is the vibration I am committed to living at – being the healthiest I can be on the inside and co-creating connections with others at this vibration of emotional authenticity.
Since doing these shifts I have made some hard decisions about other people in my life who don’t vibrate at authenticity, and that’s okay. I wish these people all the best on their journey – but I am no longer doing relationships of ego and scapegoating – because life is too important to me to allow my vibration to be amongst narcissistic or non-authentic tendencies.
Next week I will share some information about the specific shifts in the new mini-healing Program and what the integration of divine Female and Male energy really means.
It will be wonderful to share with you how Female and Male energy affects us, and how all of us can integrate the Female and Male within in healthy ways to enhance our ability to love, accept and believe in ourself as healthily integrated and whole human beings.
I know this information will fascinate you, as it has myself, and can explain so much as to why we may have struggled to really partner ourself, feel complete – and how we have painfully tried to chase and gain these painful missing parts of our childhoods from outside of ourself – which of course has been a big factor in playing out co-dependent and painful behaviours and relationships.
Thank you for reading this article and please feel free to post any comments or questions below.
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