I am writing my story to illustrate how deep the wounds of survival reside within all of us, and how they play out in our lives over and over again.  As unconscious creators, we attract what we fear most.  Remember, we live in a state of survival with fear being the primary emotion.  These wounds play out without the knowledge that they even exist.  We all have the ability to attract any relationship we desire as long as we stay in awareness.  The more we understand why we do what we do, the greater our ability to heal and become the powerful creators we were meant to be.  In the end, if we want healthy, intimate and deeply loving relationships, then it is extremely important to heal these wounds.

It was in 2013 that my husband, now ex-husband, demanded a divorce.  I remember feeling completely blindsided and confused.  After all, I had committed my love to him for life.  I thought he felt the same way.  Lately, I had been feeling his anger, but I thought it was because we were having financial difficulties.  I had convinced myself that was the reason.  In my mind, a married couple of 17 years would want to talk it out and come to some sort of resolution.  Don’t the vows “for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health…” mean anything anymore?  Obviously to him, this was not the case.  He had already come to the conclusion that the marriage was over without my knowledge or input.  There was no resolution.  He had made up his mind, and constructed a case against me.  I remember feeling surprised and confused at his attitude as he attacked me with the news.  There was absolutely no compassion.  I felt cold and sick to my stomach.  At this point, he felt like a boss rather than a husband. 

 I was being fired!

 I have stated in other articles that the subconscious mind is very powerful.  It imprisons us in negative patterns of behavior or drama.  Yet, at the same time, the universe is always presenting us with opportunities to experience wisdom through a more expanded viewpoint.  We often aren’t aware of this bigger picture.  Even if we were able to get a glimpse of this expanded version, we would soon find ourselves being sucked back down into this physical reality and its drama, because of the subconscious mind, which processes information at about 4 million bits of information per second.  That’s Fast! Our subconscious is our habitual mind, and the one that we allow to run our life.  In the story above, my subconscious mind was very much at work.

Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, from Joe Vitale’s book, Zero Limits, calls the subconscious mind the inner child.  He suggests that we need to befriend our inner child in order to change our programming.  This appears to be true, as it is common practice for psychologists to urge us not to suppress old memories that rise up, but look at them without judgment, face the emotions that are attached, learn from them and let them go.  The inner child is aptly named as it is programmed pre-birth to six or seven years of age.  Our subconscious mind, or inner child, downloads everything pertinent to the environment in which we live that deals with our survival upon this earth.  We can liken the subconscious mind to an operating system of a computer.  If there were negative emotions of fear being expressed in the child’s environment at the early stages of life, then the subconscious mind would download this information as a truth.  Patterns of behavior emerge, as the wounded child must find a way to survive.  Later, when an event causes a trigger, or negative emotion, this downloaded information is automatically set into motion in order to keep us “safe”.  The inner child reacts as it truly thinks it is saving us from death.

My intuition tells me when there are explanations for upsetting events in life, as well as solutions.  These explanations seem to appear at the very time they are needed.  In this case, my sister happened to call and tell me about a noted neuropsychologist by the name of Dr. Mario Martinez.  Following this lead, I immediately downloaded his audio book titled The Mind Body Code.

In his research, Dr. Martinez has discovered that each of us has been wounded by what he calls the three archetypal wounds: Abandonment, Betrayal and Shame. He believes these wounds are formed in the early stages of our life from traumatic events.  These events are frozen at the age the child experiences the trauma, and are sealed in specific locations of the body.  He terms these occurrences as “Bio-symbolic”.   At this early age, Dr. Martinez states, the child is extremely susceptible to these wounds because he or she lacks adequate protective skills, and the child's boundaries of self and non-self are undefined.  These wounds not only affect the emotions of the young child, but also their nervous and immune systems.  The body reacts as if it is being physically wounded.  In life, when a wound is triggered, we first feel it in these “bio-symbolic” locations and then begin to revert back to the age at the time it occurred, initiating the fight or flight response.  He also states that these wounds have a temperature to them.  Betrayal is hot representing the anger of being deceived.  Abandonment has a cold temperature representing the fear of being left by oneself, and Shame is hot representing embarrassment or humiliation.

The good news is that these wounds can be healed by what Dr. Martinez calls “the healing fields” prompted through the mind and body.  He states that one must bring up specific emotions and opposing states of mind associated with each wound.  For instance, the healing field for betrayal would be loyalty and trust, for abandonment it is commitment and love, and for shame it is honor.  Each of these healing fields has a “feeling” to them when experienced.  In other words, we must look for an event in our life when we experienced complete trust, commitment or honor, and re-experience these emotions and states of mind through the body to create healing.  We cannot just think about them.  Healing cannot occur exclusively from the brain.

In my understanding, these events come from the downloaded beliefs of our parents and our culture.   As children, we recreate these beliefs through events that allow us to experience the same wounds our parents did, in some way.  We must remember, we create our lives consciously or unconsciously.  Even as children, we unconsciously participate in the outcome of our lives through the beliefs we have downloaded.  The soul within us is an experienced creator no matter the age.

 

Dr. Martinez states that we are never victims, however, we can be victimized. There is a difference.  What we think and do about it distinguishes the victim from the creator.  I believe we write the script as soul, and play it out with other souls that agree to be part of our play.  Dr. Martinez calls this co-authoring.  He also states that there is always wisdom behind each wound.  In my life coaching work, I always have my clients look at the wound to understand what it taught them, and how they unconsciously implemented this wisdom in their life, as well as how they can consciously use this wisdom now. 

Upon working with these wounds, I began to see the major implications they have in a client’s life including choices made, people attracted, etc.  In my case, my husband demanding a divorce triggered all three wounds.  The emotion of fear stood out the most.  Many beliefs came quickly to the forefront of my mind: I am not good enough, I am unlovable, I am all alone.  Remember, earlier I stated that I felt cold and sick to my stomach.  This led me to believe “Abandonment” might have been triggered first.  As I meditated on this wound, a forgotten memory rose up to the surface.  I not only visually remembered this event but also felt the power of its influence.  I never realized how a young child must feel when he or she is emotionally wounded, until now.

I was about four years old when it happened.  Looking back as an adult, it doesn’t seem like much, but to the child the whole world collapses around them.  I remember my Mom, my aunt and all the cousins went to an amusement park for the day.  As we arrived, I saw a clown with balloons.  For some reason, I was always intrigued by their color and how they floated.  I was even intrigued by the colorful clown.  I stopped for a moment to stare.  When the clown offered me a balloon, I turned to look for my mom.  She was nowhere to be found.  I started screaming hysterically.

At the moment I re-experienced this memory, I felt intense fear rise up, but I immediately became the witness or the observer of this event.  From this point of view, I could see a lifetime of patterns appear as they formed a sort of grid.  I saw the connection to the men in my life and how they played into my wound.  I also saw that this wound was formed energetically through my parents who unintentionally taught me that the world was unsafe, due to their early life experiences.  I could then see how the magnetic influence of this negative emotion created abandonment over and over again throughout my life.

I went back into my body to feel this fear at its “bio-symbolic” locations, and let it move through the affected areas by simply focusing on the pain.  It takes ninety seconds for the chemical reaction of an emotion to dissipate.  I felt it not only in the area of the stomach but also in the heart and throat.  Suddenly, I remembered what I told myself, which was “I can’t do what I want or someone will leave me.” This realization helped me to understand that the grid, I had seen at that moment, pointed to every event in my life that was relevant to this abandonment wound.

In the latter part of my marriage I was starting to pursue activities I really loved, just like my four-year-old self had when she stopped to look at the balloons.  I truly thought it was safe, but the pattern from the wound re-emerged anyway. The truth is, I had attracted a man who was destined to leave me from the beginning because the wound was already in play at the time we met.

To begin healing this wound, I brought up the feeling of love and commitment from prior experiences I had created throughout my life.  Every one of us has a background of both positive and negative events simply because we live in a world where polarity exists.  We just never focus on the positive side, given that seventy to eighty percent of all our thoughts are always negative.  I began to meditate on these memories in order to recall how they felt.  I could then place these feelings of love and commitment over the areas this wound affected.  After a few minutes a feeling of expansion moved throughout every cell of my body.  I felt elated and weightless.

It is important to note that the healing fields take time and practice.  One might feel this elation for short periods of time but then our subconscious mind will take over, since the pattern of the wound is deeply engrained within our brain and body.  To change these patterns, we need to make a habit of moving our thoughts and emotions from the negative to the positive.  We must also keep remembering we cannot just mentally think about it, we must consistently recreate these positive feelings of love, commitment, loyalty, trust and honor in our body until we feel joy on a permanent basis no matter what is happening around us.  This understanding is key since our emotions are the attracting magnet.  

In my experience, all three wounds exist, with one wound being dominant.  For me, the other two wounds were triggered soon after the news.  Shame came when I was blamed for the breakdown of the marriage, and betrayal came when his promises of life long love and loyalty were broken.  Each had an old memory attached. Even though I felt victimized, these wounds were triggered because of old buried traumatic memories that I created unconsciously long ago.  All wounds surface throughout our lives and through various circumstances.  Each event we experience that corresponds with these wounds becomes more and more dramatic until we are “blindsided,” forcing us to finally pay attention in order for healing to occur.  Of course, some people may never pay attention to the triggers. They just keep chalking it up to poor choices, suppressing their emotions until one-day disease surfaces.

 

Earlier I wrote that each wound has wisdom.  In understanding of “The Law of Attraction,” we create conflict in order to point us in the direction of what we really want.  Why do we create conflict?  I often explain it by pointing out that we can only know what is light by first experiencing darkness.  Remember, we live in a world that contains polarity.  There is also a scientific explanation for this.  Our brains are hard-wired to pay more attention to negative conditions in order to keep us safe.  This came from the time in our history when we were hunters and gatherers.  Unfortunately, to this day, we still scan for perceived danger because of our conditioning.  We constantly are experiencing psychological threats through the media which keeps us in our limbic, or paleo-mammalian brain, home of our automatic and emotional responses.  We often neglect our logical mind because we are in a constant state of survival.  These wounds are never logical.  The truth of the matter is, we do have the ability to change it.  However, it takes time, diligence and constant awareness to recognize when these old patterns emerge.  Each time they surface we can make a different choice to stop these automatic responses.  This will eventually create a change in our neurological patterning not only in the brain, but also, more importantly, in the body.  Following through with this practice, brings freedom and ultimately joy.

Upon contemplation, I realized the wisdom I learned from these wounds was about being authentic at every moment, no matter the circumstance.  It was also about trusting in my intuitive abilities, as there were inconsistencies throughout the marriage that I had dismissed.  I had used this four-year-old experience to survive rather than follow my inner desires that would expand and elate me.  I operated out of fear not trust.  However, as I re-experienced these wounds over and over again through different relationships, I finally was forced to call out “uncle” and seek the healing that was needed.  I am now giving up this survival point of view and am determined to trust in my intuition in order to move toward what “feels” right for me, rather than what I was conditioned to do.  I can now remember many instances of creating my life the way I truly wanted except for my relationships.  This survival pattern is not uniquely mine, but deeply ingrained through all of us.  It is downloaded into our subconscious upon entering this physical dimension.  It’s not only cultural, but is present in the mass consciousness of the earth.  Until now, it never occurred to me that I could have a partner who truly accepted the authentic me, beginning with the little girl who was once intrigued by the colorful balloons.

Dr. Martinez also mentions that we must heal these wounds to create self-confidence, joy and self-love before we can ever truly love someone else.  Until then, we blindly attract relationships that are designed to complete what we often lack such as loyalty, trust, commitment, love and honor.  This belief only sets us up for doomed relationships.  However, once we recognize how these wounds are expressed, we can begin to work on them with our partner as long as they are in agreement and recognize their own wounds.

Today, I experience a deep sense of joy rising up from within, which continues to grow as I continue to heal these wounds.  The question is: why do we come into this life to recreate these wounds?  Perhaps it is necessary to clear and heal them in order to learn how to stand in our authentic selves at all times.  I believe, these wounds point us in the direction of our true self or our soul.  The truth is we all have a calling deep within that can never be contained.  It eventually rises out from under the garbage of negative beliefs and memories that these wounds created.   Continuing our unconscious need to survive out of fear can only end up in self-destructive behavior or the continuation of the wounds, by attracting the same relationships over and over again.  Constantly ignoring the soul’s expansion will finally end up in disease.  In short, by clearing these wounds our rewards will be freedom, happiness, health and the attraction of beautiful and healthy relationships.

 

Article Written by Roni Antonio, November 2014 revised in 2016
All rights reserved

 

Sequel: Armageddon: the Aftermath of a Divorce and the Journey into Love