A student was feeling hopeless when confronted with how much trauma happened in her childhood and asked how to come to terms with what seemed overwhelming.
Let me try to answer your questions the best I can.
Yes, your experiences and difficulties will be largely the result of your imprinting and past programming, so what to do with it now you ask? Just because the feeling is strong doesn’t mean the thought clearing process has to be difficult. What is needed is objectivity about thoughts and feelings. Once the feeling is detached from the thought it isn’t nearly as believable. There are several ways to detach from the grip of the feeling that makes the thought so believable. The trick is to change being run by our feelings that come from robotic thinking.
The first thing we need to transform is our perceptions and learn how our problems can be used as our next opportunity for growth. To begin welcoming in the automatic and repetitive thoughts that plague the mind. The thought you have, I am damaged goods, causes a feeling which is icky and feels hopeless and shrinking of person, but it is just a feeling. Start seeing feelings as only indicative of the thought that is no longer useful, not as something to fix or seek out an answer or solution in the outside world. When the mind has its rapid-fire…let it. Don’t fight it. Be curious about it as objectively as you can. Stand back and watch the mind do its thing. Say, look at my mind, it is very busy. Make that shift from thinking to sensing the sensations in the body objectively. Sensing quiets the mind. See if you can let go of fixing it at this stage. As you watch and allow, the mind will quiet down if even for a moment, long enough to notice it is very familiar, what is the thought that has gone unquestioned? Welcome it. Looking at it in this way will lead to more clarity about what you are saying to yourself about your situation.
I wasn’t treated fairly so I will always be damaged by that. Well… that thought may now be seen as something of which you may not want to use to create your future. Power is in the present moment, out of the past and future. The present moment creates the future. The only place we receive the support of nature. That is important to remember. This is how to avoid dragging the past into the future to see the past as gone and relish the present moment of observation. So at this moment replace the old painful thought with trust, openness, love, gratitude, and deep respect for all things. Let those thoughts create your future, and a calm, confident life. Learn to trust yourself, trust how the world works and since you trust yourself you can begin to trust others. The closed heart is the reason for stress, anxiety, overthinking, feelings of separateness, and devastation. It doesn’t create the safety your mind would like you to believe. The effects of the even worst childhood can be restructured but it takes work, or a mindset to watch instead of BE the thoughts. Then replace the old destructive mindset with an upgraded thought process. It takes courage to identify, face, and replace those old seductive patterns.
Love, Carol