Clearing our wounds is one of the most liberating gifts that we can give ourselves; it makes us free to be whomever we are in the moment, and opens us up to the process that enables us to reach our full potential. Not clearing our wounds leaves parts of us stuck at that time when that trauma occurred and holds us back in the past.
We concurrently are every age we have ever been; we are simultaneously all the ages of our childhood, teens and adulthood altogether at the same time. When we are fully integrated, this works well for us, allowing us to be anywhere in our personality forged throughout the spectrum of ages, from childlike and giddy to responsible and serious, as the current moment requires.
"We are every age we've ever been. We need to heal our 'younger selves' in order to be healed in our adult lives."
However, when we have blocks in our system from unprocessed trauma, wounds or abuse, that aspect of ourselves remains stunted at the age when that trauma, wounds or abuse occurred. We literally hold that fragmented and disassociated aspect of our younger self in our bodies, frozen in time, but active in our energy field.
We carry the imprint of that unresolved trauma in our energy field, replaying it over and over again in our lives, as a repetition wound, in an unconscious way trying to heal.
Unconscious repetition wound healing is very common, and is a very painful to heal old trauma.
Consider the daughter who grows up watching her violent alcoholic father beat her mother. When the daughter is old enough to leave home she does with her relationship with her father unresolved. The trauma of what she experienced remains in her body and she is compelled to replay the dynamics of it over and over, in an effort to heal the original wound of her relationship with her father. She meets a man who reminds her of her father and they marry. She leaves him after realizing that he, too, is a violent alcoholic, and she heals a little in the processing of that. She meets another man and she feels she has ‘known him all her life’ and they marry. In time, she realizes that while he is sober, he, too, is violent and she leaves him and heals a little in the processing of that. What is happening is that she is healing deeply embedded wounding in her own energy field (now lodged in her body) caused by the original wound of the father’s deep disregard for his daughter (and wife) by being violent in front of his child. Whatever wounding that caused the father to behave in this way has been left unprocessed and, in turn, was delivered through his behavior into his relationships in his family.
"When we clear wounded patterns from our younger years, we are freed from repeating them in our adult lives."
Clearing wounds like this via unconscious, repetition wounding, is the body’s way of clearing out the toxicity of trauma in the system, but it can take a lifetime to clear and can be very painful as one relationship after another is clouded by the dynamics of the original wound. In essence, the daughter is attracted to men who remind her of her father precisely because she wants to heal her old relationship with him. Until she clears the original wounding out of her body, she can’t hope to have satisfying, rewarding and successful intimate relationships unless she dates men to whom she is not attracted.
Clearing our wounds in a conscious, healing way, therefore, is a much more efficient, less-traumatizing and successful way of healing.
Everyone has some emotional baggage, but we don’t need to carry it around in our bodies, attracting other people to fill the shoes of people with whom those wounded dynamics began. We can be free of those compulsions by healing those fragmented parts of ourselves through Wound Work. See more here.