Dec
11
A Whole New Layer of Healing
ByI have been on a healing journey for the past 11 years of doing Healing Codes, and I thought I’d experienced significant healing.
Every area of my life got better: health, relationships, and career.
However, since taking a marriage class on How We Love, and discovering the work of Dr. Jonice Webb on Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN), I’m seeing that there is a whole new layer of healing possible. There is a depth and breadth of emotional experience that I had not realized was possible.With The Healing Codes, we focus a lot on healing memories. Eleven years of working on memories got me to the point that I couldn’t remember much more.
The new layer of healing opened up when I realized that what now has to heal is not something, but a lack of something.
The lack of attunement to my emotions. The lack of validation of my experiences–good or bad. The lack of being shown how to navigate the difficulties of life.
The lack of nurturing. It’s also called Type A Trauma (the Absence of nurturing, as opposed to Type B–Bad trauma such as abuse). Type A trauma is just as bad as Type B, but it’s harder to put your finger on. (And Type A is always present in Type B, so if you’ve had significant healing for Type B, you still need to heal from Type A.)
Search your memory. Do you have lots of examples of having your family ask you:
- How do you feel?
- What do you want?
- What do you need?
- Why are you angry, or sad, or hurt?
I didn’t. Actually can’t remember one single time when any of those questions were asked. I do remember a few times when I had experienced a trauma, and it was completely ignored. In fact, in one instance, my mother was concerned more about what my father would do when he found out what happened to me, than what I was feeling from the trauma.
It’s not my parents’ fault. How could they give me something they never even knew they didn’t have?
And how could I give my own children something I never even knew I was supposed to have?
How do you heal something you don’t know you were
supposed to have?
You do it through awareness, and relationship, I believe.
Now that I’ve become aware of CEN, I can do something about it. And I’d like to make you aware of what you may also have missed, but just couldn’t put your finger on.A friend (who no doubt grew up with CEN) told me she would watch Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons to get pictures of what healthy relationships look like. She was filling her heart screen with images of healthy ways of dealing with life’s crises, images that were not part of her personal experience.
I think that’s a great idea. Finding healthy marriages, friends, families and examples from books and other media can “stock the well” of Love Pictures to use when trying to heal CEN with Healing Codes.
If you have a vague sense of chronic anxiety, or emptiness, or emotional flatness … or more intense feelings of depression, hopelessness, despair–CEN could be the cause.
Good news: You can heal that. Don’t worry about finding memories when doing Healing Codes. Just put in the prayer of intention, “from childhood emotional neglect” or “from never having my feelings/experiences validated,” and find a positive focus of a healthy relationship, or a memory when your feelings were validated, when doing your Healing Codes.
And something more: check in with yourself and your emotions periodically through the day. Take the Love Styles quiz and find out what injured relational pattern you developed from your past experiences. Just start noticing, and healing what you notice.If you do this, I believe you, too, will experience a whole new level of healing and relating. You can come to a place of feeling alive, feeling your feelings, feeling the warmth of connection, and seeing the bright colors in your world. Your joy will increase, along with a more solid sense of yourself and your own value.
And if you would like help with this, feel free to check out my Healing Codes Coaching site and consider getting some coaching and custom Healing Codes. I’m forging the trail ahead for you!
thanks diane, for the valuable information you post on your blog. may God continue blessing you in all aspects of your life! “
Thanks, Giselle, and may God bless you and your dear family also!