It is as if, due to the lack and inability to express ourselves, we’ve become victims of the emotions we’ve been stuck with since childhood (i.e. helplessness, fear, separation, anger).
Over time, these stuck emotions become solid (yet unconscious) beliefs about ourselves. They give rise to our deficiency stories or core woundedness: “I am helpless,” “I’m afraid – I don’t know what’s going to happen,” “I can’t connect,” “If I express my anger, I’ll do harm,” “There is something wrong with me,” and so on.
That particular relationship, and the emotions that got stuck through that relationship, create such a wound on the somatic or emotional-physical level, that they leave a mark on our behavior. Through this wound, we identify ourselves with and get lost in the story/belief that was created about ourselves. From then on, because what happened has already happened and is irreversible, the wound lives on and deepens itself through the reflexive long-term repression of emotion stuck in the given relationship.
We try to cooperate in our relationships by becoming victims of our own repressed emotions and wounds; we think that as broken victims, staying within the safe rules of helplessness, fear, separation, and repressed anger, we no longer have to relive the trauma suffered in the former relationship and can avoid reliving the root wound. Not realizing that we are constantly in a state of suffering due to identification with our victimhood, strong repression, and avoidance.
Due to the unconscious identification with victimhood, another (also unconscious) belief operates in our system. We believe that if the role and ‘safety’ of victimhood cease, we will become unable to defend ourselves, which for the child who suffered former trauma, is equivalent to death or cessation. This belief also serves to identify with victimhood; i.e., to maintain our imagined safety. Exactly as it should be, perfectly, unconsciously, and innocently -the way it was supposed to work for us as a child- by protecting ourselves from trouble and unusual emotions.
However, what once seemed to work, has conditioned our behavior and now only causes suffering and repression/suppression, limiting our ability to feel and think.
Compassionate Deprogramming is a very loving approach. It is precisely its loveliness and the desire for safety found in true freedom that inspires us to question, discover, and eventually let go of the role of victimhood with renewed vigor.
During the beginning of the process, for short periods or moments, it is possible -as a guiding first step- to have clear insight and see the unreality of victimhood. We see that it is nothing more than a self-consolidated misbelief about ourselves, behind which there are only the stuck emotions of a child.
Through the process of self-inquiry, and out of deeper and deeper compassion and awareness, we come to see more and more of this simple misbelief being solidified into a ‘fact’; by seeing it, it falls away from us easier and easier. This of course, leaves us with ever deeper freedom, presence, self-confidence, and self-love.
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