by Ora North
Crappy feeling: Why am I making myself smaller for other people?
Pain alchemy affirmation: I am hurt by my willingness to make myself smaller to accommodate others’ emotional needs. I know that by doing this I’m not truly helping them or myself. My relationships will be stronger and more meaningful when I fully show up as myself.
The goal of pain alchemy affirmations is to literally alchemize your pain into something beautiful and healing. These affirmations can help you use your pain for the purpose of healing, instead of just looking for healing to replace your pain.
Write down a few of your painful feelings, and craft your very own pain alchemy affirmations. Your first goal is to simply validate your feeling, and your second goal is to turn your pain into a healing tool.
Who’s Your Victim? Who’s Your Villain?
In your journal, use a page for your victim and a page for your villain. Write down everything you can about them both. What do they look like? How old are they? What are their habits, their favorite colors, their favorite kind of music? What do they like to wear? For your victim, what have others done to them? For your villain, what have they done to others? Describe each of them in as much detail as you can.
Don’t take it too seriously; this is an exercise that can feel oddly fun if you let it. Don’t judge yourself for your victim and villain. Look at them like interesting characters, and there’s no need to put a positive spin on them.
When you’re done, look at your descriptions. These descriptions are of two characters—characters that are like actors dying to get some screen time. How can you validate them without letting them destroy your life? How can you give them attention? What kind of safe expression can you give them? Do you need to embody and channel your victim with a friend? Do you need to write a dark story about your villain? How do they want to be seen?
Chapter 3:
Uncovering Core Wounds
The dead bird stiffened in my tiny hands, its gray-blue feathers larger and longer than my six-year-old fingers. It had hit the window of my grandparents’ cabin in northern Minnesota. I thought I could save it. I wanted to save it. I’d found a box for it, laid down a towel, put birdseed and water in it, and watched with eager eyes, hoping the injured creature would pull through. At first, it seemed like it might. It tried moving around a bit, and I monitored its breathing.
When my father found out I was harboring the injured chickadee, he was vocal about his disapproval. He told me that it was as good as dead and that I may as well leave it—that this was just how things went. I’m not sure if he was simply having a bad day when I found that bird, because even to this day he supports my Snow White leanings with critters, but on that day, he made me feel stupid. He made me feel stupid for caring about a creature that was likely going to die. I felt rejected, like my compassion and sensitivity were completely out of place in this world. I felt as unseen by my father as that dying little bird did.
The image of its lifeless body in my hands is one that lives on in the hollows of my chest. It was the first time I felt the sting of empathy, and the first time I felt shattering emotional pain. This is my core wound, the one wound that so many other wounds circle back to—the core foundational wound of being unseen and unaccepted as a sensitive being.
Everyone has their own core wounds, but as an empath, discovering your core wound is even more important. Since empaths are so sensitive and highly attuned to emotions, their core wounds can be magnified much more than the average person’s. Such intense wounding can create a foundation that’s been built on pain, and if your foundation is built on pain, anything you continue to build in your life afterward will have that same wounding running through it. This is why discovering your core wounds and working with them will reset the tone of your foundation and your life.
Your Core Wound
Each of us has our very own dead bird story. Each of us has our own unique core wound, and though the narratives may be unique to each person, they usually share a very common thread.
This common thread is the empath’s first experience of feeling like they are too sensitive for this world and that their sensitivity is unwelcome or unseen. When was the first time you remember feeling emotional pain? What’s the first memory that comes to mind? There may be a few, but try and focus on the earliest possible memory. How old were you? Who was involved? Where were you?
This core wound is an incredibly important foundational event that you’ve built the structures of your emotional pain upon. In most cases, many of us are building onto this foundation for the entirety of our lives without even realizing that it’s all connected and traceable to our childhoods. Our pains can often feel very separate and unrelated to those of us who aren’t actively involved in our emotional self-awareness. We fail to see how each new pain is simply further adding to our structure, using those original blueprints of emotional suffering.
Once we can look at our emotional pain structures like an architect might look at a building, understanding the form and function of each piece, we can clearly see the source of our feelings and consequently see where we can break it down to build something better.
A lifetime of struggle because of a dead bird? Seems a little much.
Just as a stone cast into a pond creates ripples much bigger than the stone’s initial impact, the same goes for our core wounds. The core wound simply sets the stage, the emotional tonality, and every action after that either affirms or denies that tone. If you had parents and family that understood how to nurture a sensitive child, then perhaps the effects of your core wound were lessened through that nurturing love. For a lot of empaths, though, their families were unable to see and nurture that sensitivity properly. Sometimes people turn to criticism or anger when they don’t understand someone’s feelings, and that’s an extra unfortunate occurrence when those feelings belong to the empath. What starts as a singular foundational wound of being unseen in sensitivity can then snowball into rejection upon rejection that only affirms the painful tone of that wound.
“Don’t take it so personally.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Oh, stop it, you’re fine.”
“Why can’t you just get over it?”
“Don’t be mad/sad.”
“You need to toughen up to make it in this world.”
These are all things the empath often hears growing up from those who can’t or won’t see and acknowledge their sensitivity. These are all things that confirm the empath’s greatest fear: they’re too sensitive for this world. Every additional painful experience contributes to the building up of our emotional pain structures.
What is your core wound? What is your emotional pain foundation?
Retrieving Your Inner Child
Not only do our core wounds create foundations for our pain, but they also cause what’s known in shamanic communities as “soul loss.” Soul loss is what happens when a soul experiences trauma, and a piece of the soul fractures and breaks off to protect itself from the pain of that trauma. The piece of soul that fractures contains a vital energy that is necessary for the wholeness of the human life, and at some point, we all must retrieve these lost pieces. We all experience soul loss many times throughout our lives. It’s much more common than one would think. We all have many different pieces that have separated from our bodies from many different stages of life. When soul loss happens, that vital energy stays the same age and mentality it was when it separated from the body.
When I found my inner six-year-old crying over the dead bird, she was still six years old, still insecure about her sensitivity, and still at my grandparents’ cabin in northern Minnesota. Your inner child may also be the same age as when you first experienced the wound of sensitivity, in the same place where it first happened. This is especially likely if you have dreams of those places. Our inner lost pieces like to help us out by creating our dreamscape in places where our t
reasured energies are still hidden, waiting to be recovered.
Those who have experienced prolonged periods of abuse and those who experience dissociation are more likely to have more soul loss than others. This is because soul loss is actually a defensive strategy for the soul, and the more trauma the soul is exposed to, the more it will try to protect itself. It recognizes that something awful is happening, whether it’s on a physical, emotional, sexual, or psychological level, and it wants to do everything in its power to protect the soul’s vital energy, so it splits off and separates from the painful event.
This is why, when we discover our lost pieces, they’re incredibly potent and pure, just as they existed right before or as the trauma happened. While we can’t erase the pain and trauma we’ve endured, we can reclaim those lost pieces and reintegrate their power into ourselves.
The cultural conditioning of “good” feelings versus “bad” feelings makes soul loss even more of an epidemic, because the more we push away or ignore the “bad” parts of us, the more additional soul loss occurs. If you tell parts of yourself that they’re not welcome, eventually they’ll listen and leave you. As a result, there are times that we can get so comfortable with this soul loss that it almost feels like we’ve found some level of spiritual peace. Those “bad” pieces are hidden away where they don’t have to be dealt with, which can feel like a relief to an overwhelmed empath. While this may work for a while, our repressed pain always finds a way to come up, and the longer we avoid that pain, the more it eats away at us and begins to manipulate us from the shadows.
The best way to retrieve your inner child and lost soul pieces is to work with a trusted shaman or shamanic practitioner. This isn’t always a possibility, though, so you can always work on building a relationship with your inner child yourself. At the end of this chapter is a guided meditation to meet and retrieve your inner child.
The most important thing to remember about retrieving your inner child is that they are just that: a child. They remain exactly as you left them, without the love and understanding they truly needed at the time of the soul loss. Because of that, they have specific needs in order to be integrated back into the body. You must treat them as a being separate from yourself, and mother them as if they were your own child. They need to feel safe and loved to be integrated back into your body. You must give them now the love that they needed then.
My own inner child needed to be seen and validated for her sensitivity. She needed to feel like it was okay to care about a dying chickadee. One way I respected her (and myself) was with my willingness to continue caring for injured creatures. From baby bunnies escaping cats to birds hitting windows, I allowed myself to care for the dying, even if it hurt me—all because that initial experience with the chickadee stuck with me. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered the spiritual meaning and message of the chickadee: be brave in using your voice and speaking your truth, while knowing that your truth expands across both the positive and the negative, and that they are both equally valid.
Your own inner child carries messages and meanings for you as well. They want to know that you respect them, and finding ways to honor them will show them that you’re here to stay. You may even find that, like mine, your core wound may involve a secret message that clues you into your bigger purpose here on Earth.
Finding Your Mother Wound
Many empaths have a very deep mother wound. A mother wound occurs when, as a sensitive child, you didn’t receive the kind of mothering you needed. If your mother was very strict and emotionally withholding, you have a mother wound. If your mother was overly emotional and overbearing, forcing you to take on the mother role as a child, you have a mother wound. If your mother abandoned you or was emotionally absent, you have a mother wound.
As a sensitive empath, your mother wound likely runs deep and affects your relationships as an adult. Until you address that wound, you will find yourself playing out different versions of the same wound in all of your relationships.
The way we approach a mother wound is the same as the way we approach an inner child: we need to give ourselves now what we needed then. If your mother didn’t nurture your sensitivity, you need to nurture your own sensitivity now. If your mother was absent in your darkest hours, you need to show up for yourself now. You need to learn how to mother yourself. Even if your core wounds aren’t directly related to your mother, the ability to mother yourself in your core wounds is paramount.
Learning how to mother yourself isn’t easy, and more than that, it can feel incredibly unfair. There’s a part of you that wants to rage against the idea of mothering yourself, because you know that you deserved a mother who could love you the way you needed to be loved. You did deserve one, and you deserve one now. I wish I could say that you will find that in another person or that your real mother will grow into exactly what you need, but sometimes that never happens. Sometimes we never find another human being to fill that mothering role. You’re right; it’s totally unfair. Like any other emotion, that feeling of injustice needs to be seen and validated. But then, it’s time to step up and mother yourself.
The easiest way to begin mothering yourself is to start with the basics. When you are feeling the urge to collapse into your mother’s arms, and those arms are nowhere to be found, you can start small. Turn inward and ask yourself, How can I take care of myself right now?
It could start with drinking a glass of water, eating a good meal, taking a nap, even taking a shower. Any step you can take in the direction of providing for your own needs is a step toward mothering yourself. The more you take these smaller steps, the more you’ll be able to take larger ones. You can ask yourself, What would I want my mother to say to me right now? and write yourself a letter, telling yourself exactly what you need.
Another way to heal the mother wound is to turn to God. Whether you are a follower of the Goddess, Gaia, Christianity, or anything else, you can turn to a Divine Mother to help you. Your biological parents on this earth are not your true parents. You are a child of God, of Nature, and your truest parents are figures and forces of divinity. If you can turn to a Divine Mother for mothering when your human mother cannot help you, she will help you find your footing, and that Divine Mother will flourish inside of you.
Keira had a very absent mother growing up. When her mother was gone, her two sisters were there with her. One of her sisters was incredibly mean to her, bullying her emotionally and physically to a degree that was completely traumatizing. She felt betrayed by her mother, who allowed it to happen, she felt betrayed by her sister, who intentionally hurt her, and she felt betrayed by her other sister, who watched it happen and did nothing.
When Keira came to me for a soul retrieval, she talked a lot about a group of friends, all women, that she recently lost due to betrayal. One woman victimized and bullied her, while the others allowed it to happen. Keira didn’t realize it at the time, but she was playing out old patterns from her childhood and reliving her mother wound in her adult relationships.
When she made that connection, I had her tell herself all of the things she wished her friends would tell her, and everything she said perfectly mirrored what she wished she would have felt and heard from her mother and her sisters. When she started delving into mothering herself, she turned to the Goddess Lilith for support, a deity she already had a close relationship with.
Mothering Your Inner Child
The process of coaxing your inner child back to you can be incredibly emotional. Convincing them that they’re safe now and that you will take care of them will bring up all the painful feelings that caused the separation in the first place. They need to be seen in that pain and then loved just the same. By telling them that they’re safe, you’re also telling yourself that you are safe as well. Don’t be surprised if you have the overwhelming urge to weep when you truly connect with your inner child. Allow yourself to feel whatever emotions come up for you and for your
inner child.
This kind of self-work is heavy as hell. Getting your inner child to come back is only one piece of the puzzle. Another piece is convincing them to stay and allowing them to fully integrate into you, which can take some time after the initial retrieval. Doing this can be painful and uncomfortable, and we need something to temper all this heaviness. That something is joy.
The key to fully integrating and mothering your inner child is joy. Children need to experience joy in order to learn and evolve in their environments. You will have to get to know your inner child and find out what they need to stay with you. Finding out what your inner child needs is as unique a process as getting to know a new friend.
Establishing a relationship with them is a necessity, and being able to ask them questions will make all the difference. They’ll want you to do childlike activities with them, things they enjoyed or things they wanted to do at the time of the soul loss. What do they like to do? Do they like to color? Buy a brand new coloring book and pencils. Do they like to dance? Dance! Do they like to play mermaids? Take them to the beach. Is their favorite color yellow? Work some yellow into your wardrobe. Is their favorite food spaghetti? Looks like you’re having spaghetti for dinner! Whatever you can do that celebrates their personality, their sensitivity, and their existence will not only fully integrate them, but it will also bring childlike joy back to you in full force.
Every inner child is different. One of my clients was a woman who grew up as a tomboy and later enlisted in the military. A condition of her inner child was to be able to feel more feminine and do more feminine things. She felt a bit smothered by her masculine sense of duty and order, and wanted to feel free to be both masculine and feminine. For my client, this meant she would allow herself to dress up, do her hair and makeup, and have dance parties with her girlfriends. Doing these things didn’t mean that she had to change herself to be traditionally feminine all the time, but it allowed her to experience something her inner child desperately wanted, which anchored and integrated her inner child into her.
