The Most Important False Belief of All

Inner Bonding is a process of healing our false beliefs about our worth, about what we have control over, etc, etc.  All of these false beliefs run our lives.  They are untrue premises, and if we base our decisions on something that is basically untrue, the outcome is not likely to be very satisfying.

There is one false belief however that is at the deepest core of our wounded selves.  It is the desperate false belief of the heartbroken, lonely child inside, that there is no way out of the pain.  That he or she will just have to feel this pain forever.  That there is no way to be comforted.  This is the belief that underlies our suffering.

Like many people with deeply wounded parents, I did have no one to go to for comfort.  Not for the deeply healing, loving, gentle, heart level comfort for the things that hurt.  When I was a baby, I was nursed for about 3 months, and connecting with my mother's body gave me a way to get relief, but once I was weaned, there was none.  For so many years of doing Inner Bonding, all my little girl wanted was for me to hold her and comfort her.  She was not interested in doing much of anything else because she believed that the only option she had, which was better than nothing, was to medicate the pain by being held by me or by a man.

I did hold her and it did help, but I did not really understand how to get to the deeper level of her pain.  I thought she needed comfort because she did not get it before, not because I did not know how to really help her.  I was the same way with my own children.  I thought that the purpose of comfort was to make the pain go away and indeed I would get very frustrated with my real children when it was not enough.

Now I have come to understand the deeper level of what giving comfort means.  The intent to make the pain go away, paradoxically, does not help.  Often we do Inner Bonding from this place.  The intent to embrace the pain, to understand it, to accept it does.

What my little girl was actually feeling was deep heartbreak at not being received, at knowing that her parents were not capable of giving her what she needed.  I knew this from birth.  What she needed was for it to be okay to feel this and at the same time be comforted by me.  Then the pain could be healed, because it was the belief that she was alone with this without any possibility of comfort that was keeping it stuck.

I was talking about this with my ex-husband, and he told me that, growing up Catholic, he was told that the only sin that could not be forgiven was the sin against the Holy Spirit.  I had no idea what that meant until he explained that the sin against the Holy Spirit could be interpreted as refusing to believe that God had the power to heal.  "That's the same thing I am talking about in my new column, the same false belief," I replied.  In some way, this fundamental premise was understood.

I don't want to give the impression that it's all healed now, because it is not.  It is a layered process.  There is a remaining very small, hard, deep, very old, possibly soul-level part of me that still believes that she cannot be healed, that her pain and terror can only be contained and avoided.  But now I can hold onto knowing that this belief is false, and that I can keep reaching out to her, keep loving and embracing her and that is exactly what I came here to do.