Our Childhood Experiences can leave wounds and scars that make their presence felt in clever little ways, long after we’ve “grown up”.  If you find you have difficulty having healthy relationships or being successful at work, this may be what’s holding you back from having the life you want. A difficult past doesn’t have to cast a shadow over your life.

Our lives can be forever changed if we experienced a dysfunctional or traumatic childhood. Children who felt the pain of abuse or neglect or the loss of someone they loved continue to suffer even when they are adults. Sometimes we don’t recognize the signs of abuse, neglect, or some other kind of trauma or dysfunction in our childhood. Other times we tend to block out the memories or minimize them because of the pain we feel.

Your wounds may not be your fault, but your healing is your responsibility for living a happier, healthier life.

Why we don’t feel our feelings?

It is normal to add more layers to the Writing on our Wall as we move through life. The original wounds become compounded with misplaced guilt and shame we tend to put upon ourselves. Or we might minimize the experiences to the point whereby we try to normalized them by saying things like, “Oh this happens all the time to many others, so it’s probably just normal.”

Our childhood emotions such as anger and sadness are painful and crying or confronting others, or telling our family secrets was often not acceptable when we were a child. We learned to suppress our emotions, rather than feel and process them. Sometimes it is difficult as an adult to feel things fully, but as a child, this process is even more difficult.

Emotions are Energy…. if not processed they become Stuck Energy

We carry our childhood wounds with us into adulthood, and they affect our relationships, careers, happiness, health. They will continue to affect everything in our life until we process them and heal them beginning with feeling our feelings fully.

For most of us we have not been taught how to process these emotions at the time the experience occurs. When this happens, the energy of the emotions becomes stuck in our mind and body. Instead of healing from the wounding event the energy remains in our unconscious, and will continue to affect our life until we take steps to erase and replace the old experience that caused the original wound. We refer to the old experiences and their associated emotional energy fields as the Writing on Our Walls.

We all have Writing on our Walls

Even the most loving and attentive caregivers wrote on our walls.  There is no shame and blame in this because they too have writing on their walls back through generations. So, we really need to stay focused on the writing, not where it came from.

The Writing on our Wall has lasting effects that show up in our sense of self and our ability to love ourselves. For example, a well-meaning parent or caregiver may have said something along the lines of, “It’s okay, don’t feel bad, you’ll be OK.” This of course, was their attempt to soothe us when we started to cry. The truth is, feeling bad can be good for us. Sometimes we do need to feel bad and to know that it’s OK to feel bad! Feeling things fully means that we need to think about why we felt the way we did.

Ride Your Emotions to Freedom

When the shadow of the past experiences come up for you, and it will from time to time, learn to sit with your emotions. Simply observe them, not attempting to change or avoid them and any discomfort.  Allow yourself and your body to respond the way it wants or needs to. Go ahead and cry if that’s what you feel. Even yell and get angry is that what’s you feel. Expressing your emotions in a productive way, harming none, get’s the energy of the emotion moving and processing the experience. This will also free you, opening you to receive the message and wisdom of the message. Ask yourself: “If this emotion were going to say something to me, what would it be?”

Many of us, including myself, spend many years absorbing the blame for our abusive and dysfunctional families.  As children and adults, we exhaust every possible avenue to “get love.”  Some were fortunate in the sense that they acknowledged that the events in their childhood were not right. They removed themselves from the situation and chose no contact. It is common for many, to invoke a childhood survival skill even before they fully understood how important it was to do so.

Erase and Replace What’s Written on Your Wall

The good news is that you can heal from your childhood experiences. My childhood experiences and memories stayed with me long after I grew up. I could stand on my own two feet; and I was very successful in some areas of my life, but emotionally, I was still reeling from the stifling effects of a less than stellar upbringing.

It took me years before I was able to feel things fully, to admit to myself the truth of all that happened. Of course, that was years ago. However today, using the process of self discovery and Energy Psychology techniques you can move quickly through the pain. You can be free to create the life you want most.

As I set about overcoming my own childhood wounds in adulthood, one insight lay at the heart of all my efforts. I came to understand that I was not the sum total of my stories and I was not my wounds. It was time to let them go, and to forgive myself and the others. My heart knew the truth of who I was.  I only needed to listen to my heart.

You Deserve to live a Happy and Joyful Life

Whatever childhood experiences that you went through, know that you are loved. Just keep reminding yourself of this one truth every time that old shadow shows up.  Know that you can change the Writing on Your Wall and align with truths about who you really are. I promise you it will be a very rewarding journey. In closing, I would have to say the biggest take away for me on my personal journey was to be very mindful of what we write on our children’s wall.

… Blessings and Love, Christina

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