How to deal with core wound when it's triggered

[Loving Radiance]

Hey there.

Core wounds are used to keep the identity safe. They are e.g.,“I am not wanted”, “I am not good enough”, “I don’t belong”. These beliefs are reinforced by self-sabotage & self-deception.

There are unconscious ways of upholding the core wounds:

1. Select: confirming people, situations, own state of being for homeostasis of belief

2. Provoke: poking not-belief-fitting situations or people to react, to make them align to your belief

3. Distort: warping own reality when 1 & 2 didn’t work to make it fit to self-image, especially when reality doesn’t confirm core belief

 

Now to my situation:

I have the core wound or fundamental belief of "I'm not good enough".

Thing is that it gets activated when I reach out to situations, people and things which feel good to me, but I think I don't deserve.

A current example is me wanting to meet a date who I find so breathtaking that this core wound is triggered. I feel resistance just thinking about planning and writing to meet up.

I notice that when I follow this old pattern of avoidance, I will end up validating my core wound. I feel by not writing at all I would be provoking the same old situation to show up.

A friend of mine wrote about these wounds that they just get smaller with time the more experience one gets and doesn't react to the belief. In that sense it's like the pain body by Eckhart Tolle.

I like to step out of the autopilot mode. Can you offer help?

[Kksd74628]

@Loving Radiance

1. What means that you are not good enough? 2. What means that you don't deserve something? 3. Who said that you are not good enough and what is the argument? I would start this journey to unwrap this case by first contemplating these questions and only after that I would start thinking ways to help the situation. Before change can be made the thing which should be changed and to what should be clear, because without that you don't know what you should do and you most likely would make mistake in that.

Understand that you are doing as well as you could with that which is being given for you. It is not your fault, if you didn't have life needed to act smoothly and friendly towards others for example. You can only do best with the resources you have and therefore actually you haven't made any mistakes in your whole life, because every moment you did that which you thought to be the best possible choice or otherwise you would have done it differently. That being said you are good enough, because you couldn't be better.

I can explain this as well and as broadly you want, but I will leave it to that, because I don't know how deep analysis you want to this situation

With love -joNi-

[Loving Radiance]

@Kksd74628 It isn't rational and it isn't something to be reasoned with. I see how it comes from my childhood experiences. It isn't aligned with reality, but I create my reality according to that belief.

 

@JonasVE12 You are the first one I can think of who knows how to go about what I stated in the OP.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Loving Radiance

[Kksd74628]

@Loving Radiance

Many people say the same that some things such as feelings aren't rational, but of course they are. When you see your favourite food you may start crying and people think that it is irrational, but only reason it seems like that is, because you don't know the rationality behind it, which could be like that you have sad memories about eating it in the past.

All I said was just to make you think where that belief comes and when you know that you can start working with it. Yeah, of course I could have just said do that or have this mentality and I could have been lucky and it would have been just what you needed to hear to fix the problem, but I don't want luck to take place in my helping style and that is why I progress calmly when I help. Hope you understand what I meant .

 

[Loving Radiance]

@Kksd74628 Yeah I get you

[JonasVE12]

@Loving Radiance I had those feelings for a very long time too. I tried everything to get rid of it, but it wasn't until I began stepping into tension and being very vulnerable in the process that I started healing my wounded heart. Whenever you feel resistance in your body, try to love it and see it as something that will lead you to freedom once you confront it. Those feelings are really painful to confront, but once you do, consistently and systematically, you will heal yourself. 

The most powerful way to release these feelings is through a daily approach practice where you approach 5 people daily and practice opening your heart, stomach and ground the vulnerability that comes with it. You can do low tension approaches the first few weeks. The goal is to let go of reactivity in your body, become vulnerable, let feelings come up and let go of them until your heart is open naturally in that amount of tension, and you connect with people from this space openly and joyfully. You increase the tension systematically. After a while of opening your heart, confronting the feelings and stories that lie in it in relationship to a degree of tension, you are ready for higher level tension approaches. Each day you grow 1% and you become more confident gradually. It is the goal to approach women eventually while being direct. So being able to say they are sexy while staying in your body, grounded and open in the heart. 

A lot of healing happens through conscious letting go and pro-active vulnerability

The other part is interpersonal mirroring. As you approach people and let go of resistance in your body while you do so, you will get more and more positive reactions and external reality is affirming that you are healing and giving you the mirroring that will confirm this. Eventually, those things you initially struggled with become a non-issue. When thinking about hitting that girl up for going on a date, you will become excited instead of reactive. Dates are supposed to be fun. Because you approached so many people, you just become embodied and relaxed naturally because you developed your ability to handle tension. Your nervous system has adapted and a new balance has been put. You have let go through doing all the consistent work. 

And the intention with this practice is to clean up how you feel about yourself, so that should always be in the back of your mind. You are approaching to trigger your stories, and let go of the reactivity in your body. And not to get girls or approval. Subconsciously, you want approval, but you have to let go of that as well. You have to deeply understand that when you go up to a girl to interact with her, it is purely to be in the moment, get in touch with how you feel, how she feels, and to become one with her. Getting out of your mind etc. If she reacts negatively, cool, that is more to release on. 

And do this practice with all people. Old lady at the bus stop for example. You want to become so free that you can flow with anyone, anywhere. Groups or people. 

You want to really let go of theory and avoidance. Put your body into tension and you will grow. And your stories will go away. 

If you want you can PM me, I have good videos that you can watch that explain this practice more in depth and with a lot more nuance. 

[Gesundheit2]

@Loving Radiance

It seems the tension that is arising in expecting/by imagining the real life scenario is too big to handle for now, so I would:

1. Avoid looking at the wound when it's triggered. It's just pointless, maybe even harmful.
2. Only examine at rest and when feeling ready.

If it feels hard to examine the thoughts/emotions even at rest, then maybe consider taking a break from everything related to them (basically any triggers) for some time (going on a retreat is optimal, ime), then come back to this later and baby-step your progress.

[Wiggling Wally]

@JonasVE12 Great post.  I too have this belief. I care less about it’s origin and more about its impact which is not always discernible. Your practice of tension awareness and challenge are great tools which I will adopt. Thanks. 

[Loving Radiance]

@JonasVE12  Thanks alot! I can clearly imagine doing this.

@Gesundheit2 The taking baby steps is something I got to focus more on in this work forget it so often

[PepperBlossoms]

For me, it has helped to notice when I am getting triggered and to try to see what triggered it and then at least come up with a list of my triggers to have some sort of sense of things.  Then when I am getting hint that the trigger event is happening again, I can at least identify it and may try to soothe myself and say, "it is okay, I don't need to react to this physically and emotionally right now.  I will just let it happen and wait awhile to see how I feel and think about this later."

We can't hide from everything that is going to trigger us so just being able to come up with a game plan for when we are around something that would typically trigger us an alternative action we can take in place of what we have been doing.

It can take a long time and come randomly to try to fully make sense of why we get triggered the way we do but at least deciding how we want to react to the trigger event, even if we still don't seem to understand why we are triggered yet, can be helpful.

Sometimes we feel we can't do something and sometimes it is interesting just to try it anyway just to see what happens and where that leads us.

[Loving Radiance]

@PepperBlossoms Thanks!