Healing the Wounded Child
A Journey to the Core
For the past three years I have worked slowly through layers and layers of trauma, eventually learning about the scapegoat complex that the Jungian analyst Sylvia Brinton Perera wrote about, and how this applies to my life. I had been working for the past year to dismantle the last protective persona. Trying to be the strong one carrying my own shadows and the shadows of others and the collective. As such I had taken on the Collective Shadow, next to my own personal shadow. Whilst this was key in the healing journey to understand myself better and my own lived experience, this also became a problem. As in that I tried to carry this burden of the collective and try to solve its problems. I did that by writing my book Alchemy of the Psyche, and figuring out the patterns going back to the Neolithic to understand what is going on, and trying to emerge in the Collective Unconscious and tried to be worked through collectively in that sense. Even if our culture is fragmented.
However this at the same time kept me chained to the scapegoat-redeemer pattern myself. Where I would not face the needed emotions and core issues. Still trying to be the strong one. Yet as Perera said directly ties into that proud but uneasy strength, which has to fall away. The last barrier between myself and what kept the victim-child locked up. Which is why from around March until recently I had been on purpose trying to challenge this last persona, and thus face the victim-child aspect that carries the core trauma tied to the scapegoat complex. At various times grieving for myself and the inner children. Also throughout these months grieving for days or weeks. Feeling confusion, despair, loneliness, fear and rage. I for months was crying about wanting someone to care, and when someone then showed me kindness I cried about feeling cared about. Until then recently I hit this core spot.
Where recently when the persona fully dropped for two days straight, my alter Artie (part of our DID system) was fronting. Crying about various memories from early childhood, primary school and also high school. Yet all touching upon fundamental unresolved early childhood trauma, involving emotional neglect, abuse and feelings of abandonment. Being tied to fundamental disruptions in early caregiver relationships, leading to feelings of extreme abandonment and insecurity. Next to experiences that threatened basic safety and well-being, causing profound fear and anxiety. Feeling unsafe being the core trauma that was being processed, next to feelings of being a failure, unworthy, and feeling like my authentic identity could not be accepted. Feeling unworthy of life. These feelings are foundational to the scapegoat complex.
At some point we were lying down and Artie who was fronting expressed feelings such as “It hurts so much. 😭 Mommy I feel like I can't breath. My body hurts. My body hurts. Where is mommy. 😭” I was crying for days about not having a mommy, and feeling unsafe, thrown into the wilderness as a child, with memories from various times surfacing. Crying and feeling deeply in pain, then becoming depressed about our life. How it was and currently is at this moment. The trajectory of it all. Yet I also came to understand that this is how my life has been, and it is my life. I can’t change this fact. This deep seated trauma influenced my life deeply, from self-perception to relationships and how I see and interact with the world.
Yet this was something to face, if I ever would want a life. To face these fundamental issues related to early attachment, security, and the foundational sense of safety and care. These deep core aspects of self-identity and self-worth. If not I would remain emotionally cursed to the wilderness. So this was about facing the primal, formative experiences that shape the core of my emotional landscape. The primal feelings of abandonment, helplessness, and deep existential suffering, touching on the most basic layers of emotional pain, where early childhood wounds and core identity issues are at the forefront. Yet only if one can feel through the pain can one get to the very core, where the Divine Child archetype still remains buried. That seed of potential.
