Before we make sense of the world, the world shapes our mind. If what we take in through our senses conveys to our brain that we don’t have safety or acceptance in the world, we conclude negative things about who we are in it. Nurture begins the day we are birthed and it can greatly shape our identity. If our surroundings make us feel abandoned. we lose a bond and commitment to ourselves that will have us searching for attachment to others from that moment of disconnection forward. 

Trauma is embedded inside of you as a result of what happens to you, not the thing that actually happens. The problem is what children “make it mean”. If my mom abandoned me at age 8 and left me with a rageful father, it must’ve meant to my young mind that I was unwanted, not lovable, or unworthy of protection. Trauma is my “not being lovable”, my, “not being wanted” beliefs, as a result of being left. The feelings which produce a wound, gets embedded in the nervous system as emotional memory. Recalling a memory doesn’t come into play until later in brain development so everything I take in through my senses as a newborn becomes impressionable and factual from the world I am birthed into.  The nervous system embeds my emotional truth through osmosis, I soak in messages about myself based on safety or lack thereof from my parents and environment. The looks from my caregivers, the feeling of their own angst and stress, or the very neglect of them not touching me, changing my diapers, or feeding me on a normal schedule becomes all about my deserving it simply because experience equals truth.  Because the nervous system embeds my emotional truth based on what I make it mean, if I feel abandoned and neglected in a temporary state which morphs into a long standing situation, I could adapt to a pathological method of survival that causes a dysfunction or disease. 

These disorderly traits are triggers that spark the fireworks that maintain my belief of being unlovable as a result of mom leaving; it’s the point of pain that has its source and origin in my childhood happenings which flare every time a similar feeling erupts. Alcoholism is the largest predisposition to dysfunction and disease without any prognosis addressed from the medical field because quieted children still don’t have words as an adult to define their parents emotional ineptness, much less realizing that it still impacts them.  Pre-verbal memory is emotional truth embedded in the nervous system that can ignite over and over and over again whenever a slight or circumstance feels familiar, this continues into adulthood until apprehended. If gone unchecked, the body traps the emotional pain in our muscles, nerves or tendons and congregate in the head, heart and gut areas which can be triggered through parts that swooped in during the emotional distress to contain it.  A parts job is to distract from the distressing wound so the child can move on without emotional reaction, this however gets harder to do when repeated circumstances build upon the original wound. Disorders become a litany of symptoms but they don’t necessarily explain anything, which is why IFS Therapy helps deconstruct a pathological diagnosis and helps the person see that all of their emotional responses are a collaboration of parts. These parts hold perception that is valid because of a moment in time where they had to “help” in order to make sense of the chaotic world outside of the persons internal system. An overactive sense of mistrust was made with mistreatment or betrayal from parents, but was a magnificent survival method when the child had to prepare for the next round of suffering that was inevitable. Pathological traits are the scaffolding of symptoms like compliance, silence, burden bearing, codependency, depression and anxiety created by the caregiver which becomes the foundation for pathological traits misdiagnosed as ADD, dyslexia, autism, gender confusion, learning disabilities and behavioral disorders largely non-otherwise specified (NOS).  It is important to remember that this lineage was often passed down out of love and concern from the parent but parts internalized it as fear because the child was enduring high distress through feeling it from the only source of stability it had during infancy.  The way a brain adapts to early stress is by shorting out or dissociating through parts that splinter off and aid the child during helplessness.  The parts protect the child from the neglect, criticism, stress or anything that interferes with the capacity of the parent to nurture.  Nonverbal feelings begin in the womb and to the degree of pain transferred from the mother to the baby, sets up the trauma bond that if continues during development through external stimuli, becomes a multi-generational trauma which is passed on.  This cannot be diagnosed as genetic disease because the emotional embedding was a trauma bond.

When we look at chronic illness or disorders, we see that Western medicine defines most of them as disease. Depression is not a disease, it’s emotions being pressed down on the inside due what was unacceptable for one to express according to those who were in charge, the caregivers. In order to survive, the child will turn off her emotions to endure her environment.  This is subconscious and mandatory to remain in the family unit because there is no choice otherwise and after years of submission, later get diagnosed with depression. Popping a pill will never heal, the silencing of the parts  within a child’s psyche that were deemed a problem by the authority, is unknown in medicine because they separate the mind from the body for treatment. If our survival was conditioned by what we learned in the first nine years of life, we aren’t going to give it up that easily because it is not a disease, it is a part of us that developed depression because speaking up wasn’t permitted in the environment. Children have no defenses, they have to endure choices made for them and if it was hurtful, they have subconscious parts that will carry the burden of those negative feelings and create acceptable behavior to grow up as safely as possible. The abandonment occurs on the inside because the authentic self is lost as it defers to the selfish demands, criticisms or control of the household for survival.

Attachment is defined by the innate need to be cared for, and to take care of a close bond with a parent.  Authenticity is being in touch with our own bodies and emotions. This past summer I had a strong gut warning against doing something to the point of butterflies in my stomach. Turning off all need to eat because my internal system was hunkering down for the aftermath should I push forward and ignore my feelings, I was neglecting the parts of me that were rising up to try and help. I went against my gut reaction and engaged in the behavior, ignoring that instinct, and being sorry immediately afterward. The immense guilt part  that rose up after I ignored the warning part, brought on physical symptoms as a cold sore on my lip to make sure it got the attention it deserved. This exposed my childhood trauma which is defined as a persisting wound, even though it’s four decades later.  Somewhere in the mixed messages of childhood, I feared expressing my truth because the punishment wasn’t worth the cost.  All these years later I deferred to people pleasing even though I was partaking in action that went against my personal values.  Parts who had been in this predicament many times before usurped my decision making ability and put me on auto pilot so peace would be made with others instead of within myself. The result of obtaining a physical reminder on my mouth, brought additional suffering through shame, all with the intention to make me stop the behavior before I went too far.

Because my gut feelings like yours, are necessary for survival but pose as a trigger later in life, making decisions circle back to the original pain. When young, I learned how to fit in with my family rather than listen to my gut instinct which told me to speak up or say no to their needs.  All these years later, I am reacting as a child subconsciously through parts who long for attachment to another because they believe I will be cared for if I am compliant. Therefore, I abandon self who is capable of being trusted but I have no trust in because I have not developed a strong connection with it. When we ignore these vital triggers, we are telling these parts within to sit down or shut up when in fact, they will dig their heels in and manifest loud enough so we will see, sense, feel or know  their presence.  We abandoned ourselves once again, and are back in a childhood state of meeting needs without known resources. The abandonment of ourselves is a revoking of our authenticity because we associate connection to ourselves as being a threat to closeness with others, which we desperately crave. If I ignore me and my demanding parts so that I can be with you, it’s worth it in the moment, until I’m sorry afterwards. This further tells me that being out of touch with myself is how I must survive. I have lost connection with my authentic self and picked up coping measures through parts that keep seeking connection outside of me and continuously fail, even though they long for attachment. 

After years of working so hard to keep us from feeling the pain of the original wound, parts  grow tired of the broken cycles of behavior that maintain negative narratives of striving, silencing, ignoring, fixing or coping strategies, and seek understanding from strength that emanates through God, which empowers self.  The parts within my system are stuck in my childhood. When they show up with internal flares of caution, I will continue to abandon them and self each time I chase experiences that will result in shame and guilt afterward. From the inside out, I will need to pause, and remember when they first started diverting my attachment from self to their coping mechanisms, so I can lean into their signals of caution with honor, knowing their cry for help is a loving one. This is how I return to the moments in history where I needed a loving parent, but did not have it, so I reparent each individual emotional part when I give it the attention it deserves today. I go to that inner part stuck in childhood abandonment and appreciate all the ways it has helped me cope from childhood until the current moment. I see it, feel it, sense, or know it, and validate its emotions, response and choice of survival that it acted upon at that time. Then I invite it to connect with me, the adult who authentically understands why and how it was trying to help me. I establish a trusting connection with it.  I thank it and I honor it for all its hard work and update it with my current age and life. For some parts this isn’t enough and they will need to come out of the historical memory they are stuck in and find safety around my heart, no longer having to be a gut reaction. Once it can discern leadership from myself that is not surviving in a state of suffering it can transfer the trauma bonding and separate from that responsibility.  The part can be unburdened when a realization is made that it can be doing something positive instead. Parts of us naturally long to connect and will choose to hand over its coping method to either the earth, wind, water, or light. When that negative attribute is gone, and the essence of connection to self is available, there is no limit to the authentic attributes the part can have in exchange.  One by one, part by part, they will emerge out of their wounded state  because it is exhausting to persist in old ways of survival.  Integration of the system happens as each of these parts witness the healing of other parts who lay down their traumatic response and pick up authentic connection with self who can be trusted to respond appropriately to triggers and danger.  With each new emergence of a part stuck in historical memory, the chance for authentic healing is becoming available. If honored it gives entranceway to sustainable change in the body and mind resulting in integration of the system. What once persisted as a wound gets transformed as a trusting bond to self.