Take a moment and think back to your childhood. Do you ever remember being gazed at with love by either of your parents? Do you remember being held by one of them, looking into their eyes, and seeing the love pouring out of their eyes as they looked at you?

I have no memory of ever having this experience as a child, and there are no photos of me with either of my parents where they are gazing at me with love. Most of the people I work with have not had this experience.

At a recent Intensive, one of the participants asked if she could be held as a child and gazed at with love. A facilitator was happy to do this for her, and the participant later reported how healing this was for her, making it easier to gaze at herself with love.

Both our inner child and our wounded self need us to gaze at them with love.

Our inner child needs to be gazed at with love in order to feel seen and cherished, and our wounded child needs to be gazed at with love in order to heal the core shame false beliefs of not being good enough.

One of the major issues that perpetuates core shame is that our wounded self is programmed to be like the wounded selves of our parents or other caregivers. As a result of this programming, our wounded self may continue to ignore our feelings, judge ourselves, turn to addictions, make others responsible for our feelings, and act out in many unloving ways – just as our parents might have done with us and/or with themselves.

As long as our wounded self ignores and judges our inner child, we will continue to cause our inner child to feel unworthy. For our wounded self to stop this incessant negative internal dialogue and unloving behavior, he or she needs to be embraced, gazed at with love and treated with compassion. We also need to place firm limits on self-judgments and other addictive ways of avoiding learning from and taking responsibility for our feelings.

All of us have acted out from our wounded self in ways that we are ashamed of – in ways that we might have learned from our parents or other caregivers.

As long as we continue to shame ourselves for our unloving, protective behavior, we will perpetuate our core shame. In order to gaze with love at our wounded self, we need to fully accept that we learned our unloving, protective, controlling behaviors for very good reasons: this was our role-modeling, and these were our survival mechanisms that we needed as we were growing up in order to feel some sense of safety.

It can be difficult to gaze at our wounded self with love when we refuse to accept the parts of ourselves that are like our parents or caregivers when they were abusive. Even if you have never acted out in abusive ways the way your parents or others might have, this part of you is there and needs to be embraced, acknowledged, learned about, and accepted. If you have acted out in abusive ways, the challenge to love your wounded self is even greater. But without love, this wounded aspect cannot heal.

Denial Will Keep You Stuck

As long as you deny the wounded parts of yourself that are like your parents and other caregivers, you will have a hard time being devoted to Inner Bonding out of fear of finding out something you don’t want to know. It is only by bringing these parts of ourselves to the light of acceptance and love that we can heal them and pave the way for our true essence to blossom.

It takes deep courage to lovingly face our wounded selves, but the payoff is so worth it!

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."