Befriending our wounded parts

Today’s offering is a practice to help us to befriend the wounded parts of ourselves, those raw or vulnerable spots that we often push away because they’re painful or bring up shame.

Perhaps you’re noticing a wounded part of yourself for the first time, or maybe you’ve been caring for it for a while.

Perhaps sometimes you’re able to be tender with the wound, but maybe today you notice yourself wanting it to just go away, or you’re tired of it, or you’re angry with it. These days happen to all of us, even if we’re sometimes able to befriend the wounded part. Sometimes the wound is just too much or we don’t have capacity that day.

On those days, a meditation like this one can be helpful. My intention is to help bring an energy of tenderness and love to your raw spots, to hold them with you, with this practice.

As you read this, see if you can allow yourself to be held and soothed by these words of compassion.  You can also imagine me holding out a hand, palms up, as a gesture of befriending and accepting these vulnerable places in you.

Sometimes it’s overwhelming or too much to befriend our own wounds, and we need others to befriend them first, to show us tenderness and acceptance so we can soften to them ourselves.

So just imagine me holding out my hands to you in a friendly welcoming gesture; or if it feels right imagine me holding your hand, or even holding you in a gentle hug. 

It’s okay that there is a raw spot here. We all have wounds and vulnerable places.

We all have parts that have been burdened by shame, by fear, by the experience of not being accepted for who we are or the behaviours we’ve done. 

It’s also natural for us to have Inner Critic parts that push away those vulnerable parts, that want them to go away.

In this moment, you can practice being understanding and tender with your own Inner Critic, too. Notice if you have a part of yourself that’s being hard on you. Notice if there’s self judgement or self aversion coming up in the mind. Just name that, gently. We can befriend the Inner Critic, too, because it’s actually just trying to keep us safe, although it’s doing it in a way that may not be helpful in the long run. But it’s trying to protect us.

In this moment, try putting a hand over your heart and just saying to the part of you that’s being self critical: “I see you’re just trying to protect me in some way.”

Breathe slowly around and into the heart space, softening the body in tiny, tiny amounts.

Whatever is here, we can be tender with it together.

Even the guarded, harsh parts in us, we can meet those parts with tenderness.

And sometimes when doing this practice it’s really hard and we just even can’t find that tenderness coming in enough… 

If that’s happening for you, you can say “this is a moment where it’s really hard for me to be tender and loving with myself. This is a moment of suffering.” We can even just validate that it’s really hard, or not possible to do at this moment. Validating where we’re at can be enough, to soften just a micro amount.

Befriending our wounded parts can be a lifelong process if we have trauma. Over time, our wounds become scars. The truth is, they never fully go away. They don’t disappear. But with ongoing care and healing, they become places where we also grow in awareness, resilience, and compassion for self and others. As the poet Rumi says: “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”

May we keep coming back to practices of bringing the light in, and befriending the dark places, again and again and again, together.

Why emotions matter: The language of attachment and healthy relationships

Attachment science shows that the ways we relate our adult relationships are shaped by our earliest family and generational patterns. Specifically, how our parents and caregivers related to emotions; and if they shared, didn’t share, or how they shared, emotional experience.

Do you have any of these tendencies?

• To get triggered in relationships and either withdraw from conflict, or escalate conflict quickly

• To push your feelings down and not process them or fully understand them

• To get overtaken by emotions or spiral in negative stories about them

• To dismiss the importance of yours, or other’s, emotions

• To overfocus on feeling some emotions but not others (sadness but not anger, for example)

• To not share your feelings openly in relationships and avoid emotional intimacy

• To not know how to share emotions skillfully in a way that promotes closeness and trust

…Then you’re not alone!

Generally, we as a collective culture are in our early stages of learning emotional fluency and safety.

Often, our parents and ancestors were too busy surviving in the material world to be able to care for emotions. It wasn’t their fault.

But the consequence is many of us are lacking in emotional awareness, emotional safety, regulation, and expression - or we’re trying to do these things in our relationships but we need a little support!

What happens when we don’t process our emotions? They get stored in our body!

Much like undigested food, undigested emotions create stagnation and toxicity.

This is not metaphoric toxicity, it is literal. If we live with unprocessed fear, anxiety, anger, resentment, sadness - these emotions create stress hormones and muscular tension that gets stuck in our bodies.

Over time, you may notice symptoms such as anxiety, depression, getting triggered in relationships, lack of intimacy in relationships, too much conflict in relationships, chronic pain, and more.

Recent science even shows that digestive and skin issues can be linked to unprocessed emotions.

Counselling provides a safe attachment relationship in which old, and new, emotions can be processed and cared for together. We humans are extremely relational creatures. When we feel together, we heal together.

When you invest in your emotional health, you, your body, your mind, and your relationships all benefit for the long term.

Mutuality mindset: the key to healthy relationships

A core principle of a healthy, securely attached relationship is mutuality. Mutuality is the rule of “it has to be good for me AND you.”

Practicing mutuality is crucial with the big decisions in relationship. What may be less obvious but just as important, however, is acting with mutuality in the small interactions. Each time we engage with each other, can we try to do it in a way that’s good for me and you?

It’s challenging because the little, daily interactions are subtle but complex, and happen hundreds of times each day.

For example, conflict commonly happens when partners come home from work and trigger each other. Has this happened to you - barely a minute has gone by before one or both of you is frustrated and upset?

Here’s a mutuality practice to create daily interactions that are good for both you and your partner/friend/colleague/family:

1. Check in with yourself and get clear on your emotional, mental and physical state, and your needs and capacity before you interact.

2. Don’t expect that the two of you have the same capacity or needs.

3. When you meet, clearly communicate where you’re at internally, and invite the other person to do the same. Clarify capacity and needs for both people.

4. Talk about and negotiate how you’re going to engage in a way that is good for both of you before you engage.

Adopting a mutuality mindset builds safety and trust. Talk about mutuality in your relationships and frequently ask the question: “what does it look like if both of us get cared for?” Be proactive about creating moments that work for both of you.