The Biggest Healer of Relationship Wounds.

In this article I'm going to give you two things.

1. The psychology of how relationships wound us.

2. The most powerful tool to heal from them.

Intellectually understanding how to do something or change something is the first step. But lasting change happens when our beliefs, actions, and behaviours match what our minds understand conceptually. It’s like learning how to swim: reading a book on how to swim, why it’s good for you and the physicality it takes to be able to swim is a good first step. But reading alone will not give you what you need to be able to swim. And just like healing relational wounds, you will most likely need guidance in the water with you.

In order to heal from relational wounds, you need to understand these 4 concepts:

Parental influence and conditions of worth

Because we needed love and acceptance most prominently when we were young- our survival literally depended on our parents liking us- we adapted. We changed our behaviour, our feelings, and our actions to make sure they were more in line with what our parents wanted from us. During this process, we began to deny our own feelings and became increasingly disconnected to the truth of what was going on internally for us to make sure we fit to their wants and needs. This is the start of relational patterns, mal adaptive behaviour, coping strategies, attachment issues, anxiety, depression, the list goes on.

Unconscious beliefs and blind spots

There are different layers of awareness. The most obvious one is the one you can tangibly perceive through your five senses right now. Our unconscious is what's outside this awareness and runs parallel to it, beneath the surface of our conscious awareness. Our unconscious is a far greater driver of our patterns and behaviour than what we are consciously aware of. It was programmed when we were in developmental stages and is an accumulation of our parents’ thoughts, beliefs, and the messages that they taught us. These thoughts, beliefs and messages will have been both spoken and unspoken.

If we experienced inconsistent, distant, or dismissive messaging, we might have taken this to mean that there is something wrong with us and that we need to placate, or perform to prove our worth in order to get our needs met. We might also have gone the other way- we might have learned that others are not a reliable source for meeting our needs, and so became self-reliant instead. We might have learned that we are the only reliable resource for meeting our own needs and other people can’t be trusted or are not able to meet our needs. If we experienced engulfing, smothering, or overbearing behaviour from a parent, we likely developed beliefs that others are trying to control us, or take from us. We might feel the need to keep people at arms length and feel a repulsion to others when they get attached to us and we might feel the need to run.

These kinds of unconscious beliefs control the show of how we attach and show up in relationship. We will find that we have patterns and similarities in our relationship history even though we’ve been with different people. A general theme of how our relationships play out will be there. We often think it’s the other person that is the problem.

Locus of evaluation

In counselling, a person’s “locus of evaluation” is where you get your sense of worth and value from. An external locus of evaluation means you rely on other people’s opinions to decide if you’re good enough. You determine your worth based on the reflection of others.   Their approval, praise, or criticism carries the most weight. When your locus of evaluation is internal, you trust your own feelings and judgment about yourself to determine your worth. You measure your worth by what feels right and true for you, not by how others see you.

Projection

Projection is what you externally source from others to fill the gaps in your under developed internal space. There are “hidden” parts of our personality that we don’t always recognise. For men, the hidden feminine qualities are called the anima. For women, the hidden masculine qualities are called the animus. When we don’t recognise these qualities in ourselves, we sometimes project them onto other people. For example: A man might be drawn to a woman because she seems deeply caring, a quality he hasn’t yet allowed himself to own. A women might be drawn to a man for how strong, sturdy, and self reliant he is, qualities that she hasn’t been able to fully develop in herself. In simple terms, the things we strongly admire (or strongly dislike) in others can sometimes be mirrors, showing us parts of ourselves we haven’t yet acknowledged.

Understanding these concepts can show us what goes in to how our relationships and how they are shaped. Crucial for detangling and making sense of the systems involved.

The catalyst for change and healing comes from relating these concepts back to you and your individual life. It comes from looking at how they relate to your life and in turning them towards yourself.

How did your parents influence you? What were the messages you received? How did you have to adapt to their requirements of you? Do you base your sense of worth on what others think of you? What does that narrative sound like? Do you have any underdeveloped personality traits you might project on to partners?

This is the second piece. This is where the therapeutic relationship comes in. The practitioner will work with you in uncovering your individual belief systems and how they play out in your relationships. Through the therapeutic process you can pull what has been hidden in your unconscious into light- into words, and thoughts, and feelings. Not only that, but you will be held there in the safety and containment you need to process all this by the practitioner. A practitioner can give you the proper mirroring and messaging that you perhaps didn’t get in childhood to reprogramme and rewrite your beliefs. They will be able to "re parent" you. You can "internalise" or "borrow" the practitioners empathy and compassion- meaning in time you'll show yourself what the practitioner is showing you- non judgement, compassion, empathy and understanding. You'll start to trust your inner experience and allow yourself to fully feel, fully process, and fully let go of what is not serving you. You can connect back to what's true for you and release the burden of the conditions that you've been living in.