Six Weeks--Six Steps

Six Weeks—Six Steps

By Sharon Clark Pearson

“I have 6 weeks worth of money and 6 weeks worth of time to do this Inner Bonding thing. Will it work?”  So I challenged Margaret in my first session in her Inner Bonding group.  I giggle hysterically now when I remember those lines!   Of course, I had no idea just how hurt I was, just how much fear, pain, and aloneness I suffered as a baby, a young child.  If I had “known” how destructive my environment and caregivers had been, I would not have survived them! 

As a child I learned to glory in my toughness, my resourcefulness.  I was a Texas cowgirl for heavens’ sake!  I loved my bullwhip and target practice on trees, the same trees I loved to climb!  I hated dolls as a child, and would rather have had a live bear or panther to tame than some teddy bear.  Cuddling was for sissies.  And as I learned in that first year in Inner Bonding work, I hated dolls because they represented my early history of vulnerability and pain.  More than a year into my work in the group, I actually threw the doll I used (as my focus tool) across the room — because she would not talk to me, and communicate with me.  Any wonder why? Ha Ha!  I was willing to deal with a sweet happy self, but not with a scared, hurt, fearful child.  And, as long as I continued to reject her, I hurt.  I could be creatively hurtful to others too, even if I did not intend to be!

When we hurt, we often hurt others.  Usually, we do not mean to be hurtful, but any wound or fear that we have not addressed with loving care will be projected out as well as turned in on us.  We are usually engaged in a survival strategy/defense we learned when we were young, through what was modeled for us, or what was done to us. 

Inner Bonding gives us another strategy… a strategy for thriving and not merely surviving.  As we become aware of our pain/fear and begin to honor and respect it and learn from it, we begin healing.  When we learn to take 100% responsibility for it, we grow and mature. 

All of us as humans would have been greatly helped if there had been at least one compassionate witness to our pain and fear when we were little.  We would not have ended up with some of our most destructive thoughts and behaviors if a witness had actually intervened in our behalf.  In fact, many of us get stuck in the child’s fantasy that someone will be a witness, will care, and will intervene in our desperate need.  We sit in our pain as a small child waiting for what we did not have and needed—as all children do. 

But, the fact is this… even if someone shows up as that for us as an adult, it still will not work for us, unless we become present as an adult and align ourselves to the compassion being expressed, the loving care being expressed.  If we as a lost child simply use the “other” person as a fix, we are lost forever.  If we do not enact Love, we are stuck forever.  No other adult can love us as we can because we live inside our own skin. Only we have our lives emblazoned in our brains, bones and tissues.  Besides that, perhaps you have learned by now that no one else wants the job you yourself are refusing—to love and parent your child, to heal your life.  Do you want to be healed?  That is a really good question! What are you willing to do?

What we all must learn eventually, because that is the way the universe works, is that all the things, people and processes we use as “fixes” will fail us.  Only LOVE can be counted upon and comes in many ways.  For example, I used to pray for God to just fix me.  I did not get the fixes I wanted, all of which looked pretty spiritual to me!  For example,  “help me be more patient,” or “help me be more forgiving.” 

What LOVE taught me--over time, and again and again-- was that I needed first to learn to be more patient with myself before I could extend that grace to others.  I needed to address and heal my pain before I could forgive my “weakness” -- vulnerability (which I hated) before I could forgive another’s limitations or hurtful exchanges.  I needed to recover from toxic shame before I could stop shaming others.  I needed to recognize my courage in the face of the severe challenges I had survived.  I needed to learn about and own my power, take responsibility for my own safety, sanity, and security. In other words, I had a lot of healing and growth to accomplish – and I had to be patient with myself in the process. 

It takes more than 6 weeks to undo the hurts of a lifetime.  And it took a lot of learning to move into compassion and loving action that heals and recreates life.  So, as you get in touch with your pain and fear, pat yourself on the back!  You are accomplishing the first step of Inner Bonding!  You are way ahead of many shut-down, numb, lost, hurt and angry, hurtful people who do not have a positive way to heal, grow, and learn to live in abundance and discover joy.  And, if you do experience or cause pain, you have a way to truly learn from it and create good out of it, for yourself and others. Hurt people hurt people.  But it is also true that helped people help people.

Do not throw your “baby” across the room or try to stuff her back into a can as I did!  Your process will be much more easier if you can manage to open to compassion!  “Take heart” and do your work, heart to heart, big to little, through the six steps.  Become what your whole true being really wants to become, your best self.  Bless you on your journey!