How to Heal Your Core Wounds

As children, we’re completely dependent on our caregivers for everything. We need them to provide us with food, with shelter, to protect and teach us. Unlike many animals, we can’t survive on instinct alone. Human beings have evolved to depend on each other. For most of human history, to be excluded, forgotten or abandoned would have meant certain death and so we’ve evolved to be incredibly sensitive to inclusion, exclusion, approval and disapproval as a matter of survival. Our subconscious mind, which doesn’t think in words, is saying “if people like me then I’m safe and won’t be abandoned”.

As children we go through a long phase of identity formation and ego centrism that places us at the centre our own world. We tend to interpret everything as being about us. If our parents don’t see us, don’t listen to us, don’t approve of us, we tend to think it’s because there’s something wrong with us, and this is experienced as a feeling of shame. This internalised explanation for why our caregivers, family and friends don’t approve of us, don’t love us, is what gives rise to what are sometimes called ‘core wounds’. This is a deep feeling of hurt that takes the form of primary and secondary negative beliefs. The most common primary beliefs being, “I am not good enough”, and “I am not important”.

Sometimes we respond to our core wounds with depression, losing our motivation and feeling hopeless, but at other times, in fact, more often than not, these beliefs cause us to seek approval and improve ourselves. Some part of us is hopeful if we’re smarter, fitter, funnier, or more successful, that it will dispel the pain by proving to ourselves and others that we are “enough”.

You may think you don’t have these core wounds or negative beliefs because you’re not aware of having these thoughts, but the truth is, most people have these wounds, and for most people, they are subconscious. The evidence of them is found in the presence of secondary negative beliefs.

For example, what do you imagine arises from the observation that we only receive the approval and affection we want and need when we’re seen as beautiful? If we were praised for our looks, or criticised for our looks, we might form a secondary belief like, “I’m only worthy of being loved if I’m beautiful”. Following from this, we begin to think that being beautiful would make us happy. This thought gives rise to a desire for people to like the way we look, and a fear of people finding us unattractive.

The desire to be liked for our looks, which we associate with worthiness, can give rise to more specific desires, like wanting to dye our hair, do our nails, have new clothes, diet, exercise and so forth. When we’re unable to do these things, we may become anxious. If we think we’ll never be beautiful, we may become depressed. We may feel jealous of people we think are more beautiful. We may feel either proud of our looks and seem conceited, or we may feel embarrassed or ashamed and both are proof we find our sense of worth in our appearance.