Core Wounds: What they are and why it matters

A core wound forms when pain and emotions have been suppressed and internalized. They are most often formed or triggered in childhood, through a traumatic experience or some form of emotional neglect.

When an adult is unable to properly regulate their emotions, it is their inner child that is acting out for attention. This usually shows up as reactivity, emotional manipulation, controlling behavior, or generally unstable emotional reactions.

What is a Soul Wound

A soul wound is a core wound that was formed in a past lifetime. Soul wounds are carried over into the next life if they are not resolved in that current incarnation. When something traumatic happens in a previous lifetime, the experience contributes to creating your core wound. The core wound is based on the negative experience and you make a choice, a vow or a promise that shifts your identity. You might say, “I’ll never allow myself to fall in love again!” and then wonder why you’re experiencing uncommitted partners in this lifetime.

Since this experience shifted the way you see the world because it caused you pain, you’ll need to process what happened and what it caused you to believe. Your internal environment which is made up of your thoughts, beliefs, and stories creates your entire external world. In other words, your wounds carry just as much weight as your positive affirmations and winner’s mindset.

While positive affirmations as a mindset are good things to cultivate, they won’t be effective once your wound is triggered. Your wound is governing your emotional body which is the way in which you react, respond, and relate to the world around you. As within, so without.

A past life regression may be helpful in properly healing a soul wound because it will help you get to the root cause and make peace with the events that took place. Forgiveness is a necessary part of any healing practice because the reason you formed an emotional wound about your experience is that you experienced pain. Whether it was self-inflicted or caused by others, forgiveness is a critical component of your healing.

Core Wound Healing

Core Wound... it definitely isn't party talk.

It may even be one of those things that you want to shhh... keep your voice down! I don't want anyone to know about that!

I bet you don’t sit around sipping wine and talking about your core wounds with your friends on a Saturday night…

In fact, that shushing is the reason that core wounds live so long and cause so much destruction. If you shush something long enough, it starts to get really loud and in your face, like a belligerent know-it-at-all at the local bar.

It’s not one of those fancy buzz phrases that get all the attention. In fact, it’s something that most people tend to suppress until they can’t stand it a minute longer. But, why?

In order to heal a core wound, you need to start on the inside. A core wound is a wounded part of you and your energy that causes you to create and attract painful experiences that feed the wound.

A core wound is caused by one or more painful experiences that define who you believe yourself to be and this in turn, drives your actions.

That energy lingers, grows and creates an entire belief system, story and IDENTITY to justify the validity of the wound causing all sorts of problems in your life. Most of the time, you aren’t even aware of the problem until you’re so stuck in the muck, you start searching for a solution.

Healing a core wound can dredge up a whole lot of painful memories that you may not want to deal with.

We know this and yet, we will avoid it like the plague.

A core wound may begin in a past lifetime or if maybe a past event in this lifetime. Either way, the past is the past and when a core wound is present, it means that you are operating from a place of wounding, rather than love.

To heal a core wound, we need to look at the areas of your life that are not pleasing to you with love, compassion and non-judgment. Approaching your feelings with love and compassion, while being honest with yourself will help you let your guard down so you can begin to see your wound. Wounds need to be seen because it is energy that is suppressed and this energy tends to act out for attention to be seen, heard and validated.

Whether you’re struggling with relationships, finances, career, home life or another area, try to isolate the main symptom or issue. If you have a core wound that hasn’t been healed, it’s likely that you project your pain outward, so look for areas in your life where you’re experiencing conflict or stuck energy.

Once you’ve done that, turn it inward and honestly ask yourself how you may be contributing in some way to the conflict, even if it’s subconscious. Oftentimes, your own belief system may be the reason that you’re engaging in the conflict. For example, if you find that you always attract people who are not committed to you, see if there are areas of your life where you have not fully committed to yourself.

Next, take your journal out and draw a line down the middle of a sheet of paper. On the left side, write down the actual experience you’re having based on your current perspective and level of awareness. On the right side, write down how you’re engaging in or entertaining this experience, even though it likely won’t be intentional. Use this as an opportunity to take responsibility for your role in this experience.

The abandonment wound

Before your Soul incarnated, it chose your parents and your major life experiences. Many of these choices were based on karma from your previous lifetimes and the lessons you need to learn in this lifetime. The reason you learn lessons is to move you closer to enlightenment each lifetime.

Human beings all share the same collective wound. It’s abandonment wound that your Soul wants to work through in this lifetime.

Since the abandonment wound stems from a feeling of disconnect, it’s highly likely that you incarnated into a family that was emotionally unavailable and neglectful. Even if you had everything you needed, you may crave a level of support you’ve never felt before. If you find yourself blaming others for this feeling, it’s a tell tale sign that you’re dealing with abandonment.

Maybe your parents worked all the time, or you were left to take care of yourself. Or maybe your parents didn’t know how to talk to or connect with you. Perhaps you didn’t even trust them to care for you, or with your feelings. You may have had a difficult time connecting with them and sought attention. Your wounding wound determined that in order to be loved, you need to try harder, be better, love more, give all of yourself. Something is wrong, so you need to “fix” it. But, you may notice that no matter what you do, it doesn’t fix the situation and you still feel abandoned, striving for attention and validation.

If you’re on the other side of this abandonment wound, you’ll find that you have a difficult time walking away from people, patterns, situations and beliefs that you KNOW are bad for you. You stay too long, love when you’re getting nothing in return and struggle with boundaries. This stems from being afraid of being abandoned, but you may tell yourself that you’re afraid to abandon others, so instead you sacrifice your needs and settle, staying much longer than you want to.

The core wound is attached to a story and to your identity. Naturally, fears can come up when it’s time to heal and grow. You may even wonder who you’ll be without your wound, especially if it’s all you know. But I promise you, healing a core wound is life-transforming and you will learn what it TRULY means to live happily.

Fears associated with the abandonment core wound are:

Fear of loss

The deepest level of the abandonment core wound stems back to a deep fear of loss of love. Losing someone or something that you love is the initial superficial response. However, the true loss is losing yourself through sacrificing your needs that causes deep division between the mind and the heart, creating chronic feelings of inner conflict. When inner conflict is present, it will feel impossible to make a decision that is for your highest good without feeling doubtful about the choice you are making. 

Fear of losing control

With an abandonment core wound, the thought of letting go, surrendering or releasing control is anxiety-inducing to the ego. This is because the sense of trust and belief in yourself is both depleted and disconnected. When trust is fully present and grounded in your emotional body, the need to control becomes obsolete. You’ll find that the more you try to control, the more difficult life becomes. In fact, this is one of the best signs to know that you are on track with your healing. It’s in the surrendering that you’re able to receive inspired guidance that propels you forward.

Afraid of your own power

If you’ve abused your power in a previous lifetime, or in the past in your current lifetime, you’ll struggle to step into your power. Many people, especially healers and people who work in areas of consciousness and evolution struggle with this. The deep healing required to resolve an abuse of power means that you need to look at your soul tribe lifetime, undoubtedly the most traumatic past lifetime many of us have experienced. Each of the twelve soul tribes has been through trauma that rippled through the collective souls that were tied to the ancestry of that tribe. Looking at your soul tribe lifetime is the first step to unraveling any storylines associated with areas where you may have abused your power.

Afraid of the consequences of your own actions, which leads to a fear of taking responsibility

Anyone who has abused their power will struggle with a fear of consequences because it’s easier to remain unaware than it is to become aware of how you contributed to causing pain, take responsibility for it, heal it, forgive yourself and others and let it go. Taking responsibility means that you’re willing to open your heart again and in order to do that, the pain must be processed. The fear of being vulnerable or worse, making a mistake causes many people to shut down in this area. It isn’t easy to admit when we’ve made a mistake and rectify it to the best of our ability, but it is healing for everyone involved.

These fears are symptoms of abandonment wounds, so if you witness them coming up in your own life, you may find yourself walking out on people before they walk out on you. This is a protection mechanism to guard your heart against experiencing the pain of losing love. It also means that you aren’t allowing your heart to fully open and surrender.

Love eventually includes some form of loss, but with this wound, you are more sensitive to it because you feel it’s a reflection of something you’ve done wrong. The abandonment wound and self-blame go hand in hand.

Try to remember that people are doing the best they can from their level of awareness, but this doesn’t mean that you need to excuse pain that you experienced at the hands of others in your life. In fact, acknowledging the pain to yourself is a powerful part of the healing process. What happened to you may not have been right, but it also doesn’t need to hold you back. It’s the lessons you take away from your pain that help you transcend it.

Healing rejection wounds

Rejection is a symptom of abandonment core wound that stems from an internal feeling of non-acceptance. If you had any experiences in childhood where your tribe did not accept you, you may have learned to reject yourself. The experience first happens on the outside, then it is internalized and directed at yourself.

The tribes in this case are the people that existed in your family, social circles and environment. We see this a lot with bullying in adolescence, at a time in life when someone is learning more about themselves, who they are, and how they fit in with the world.

If you didn’t have a strong and present support system helping you to navigate these external pressures with confidence, your self-esteem would’ve been adversely affected, causing you to look down on and reject yourself. Wanting to fit in with your tribe is normal, so you observed, adjusted and molded into someone that would fit in, even if it went against your personal truth. Rejection wounding causes you to turn within and avoid being seen, so that you cannot be rejected, so it’s likely that you have a more passive, peace keeping energy.

To heal rejection, you will need to tap into your true inner sense of self without the influence of your tribe or society. You’ll need to learn how to set strong boundaries and find and exercise your voice in order to advocate for yourself.

Healing the core wound of the heart

What is the core wound of the heart? In a few words, it’s the wound you share with your mother, also known as the mother wound.

Whatever your mother experienced while she was carrying you for nine months until it was time for your grand entrance into the world, you absorbed. Whatever she was feeling, grieving and processing is embedded into your cellular memory. You are sharing her body, emotions, and experiences until you are born. On top of this, you’re also connected to ancestral energy, dynamics and patterns that have been passed down through your family’s ancestry.

Depending on your feelings about and experiences with your mother, you may have a healthy relationship. If you find that your mother triggers you, it’s likely that there’s an energetic attachment lingering and healing that needs to be done. Just because the umbilical cord is cut, it doesn’t mean the unhealthy energetic cord has dissolved.

Oftentimes, children feel that they need to help or save their parents and this is especially true in households where the adults did not have healthy boundaries and were unable to regulate their emotional states. Imagine knowing exactly what your mother feels, thinks, and struggles with before you were even born. There are no boundaries in the womb so you absorbed all of it.

Transitioning this energy from one of attachment to one where you are your own sovereign being in this lifetime will be your work, not your mother’s. It will be important to remember that your only job is to take care of yourself and heal your inner wounded child and the relationship she or he has with your mother, without taking responsibility for what your mother is feeling or how she is reacting while this work is going on. Freeing yourself from this ancestral power struggle, which is both internal and external is where the true healing lies.

How do you identify core wounds?

Core wounds affect everyone on some level. To identify your core wound, take some time to reflect and write about the longstanding patterns you’ve witnessed in your own life. Look for areas where you’ve had the same or a similar experience repeatedly, especially if you’ve been feeling stuck or conflicted in that area.

Some common areas of conflict are relationships, career, health, and finances.

Engage in this process with non-attachment and give yourself some grace as you honestly assess the areas of your life that you feel could be improved. The information and insights you receive are becoming clear to help you heal.

I’ve only seen one single core wound in my work with just over a thousand people from all over the world. It is the abandonment core wound and it shows up with five major symptoms that I’ve outlined below:

Rejection                                                                 

An inability to fully love and accept yourself will cause you to feel trapped, wanting to escape when things get challenging. The fear that you’ll be rejected may perpetuate feelings of shame about your past choices or guilt about honoring yourself or your truth. With rejection, you’ll find it difficult to trust yourself and others, which stems from a deep fear of failure that causes you to reject yourself and your goals.                                             

Intimacy                                                                   

Shame or guilt arise with a fear of intimacy, especially related to past sexual choices and experiences. You may have been through at least one sexual trauma, such as assault. If intimacy is showing up in your world as an issue or something you’re unable to connect with, feeling emotionally unsafe is the root cause. You’ll need to work through anything or anyone that caused you to repress how you feel.

Vulnerability          

Vulnerability comes up when you’ve been rejected for being yourself, doing what you want or showing vulnerability in some way. Vulnerability comes up a lot with creating something new in any area of your life or within yourself. The simple act of changing causes vulnerable feelings, so healing vulnerability means building internal strength, courage and resilience to prove to yourself that you have what it takes. We live in a world that is waiting to judge you for standing in your truth. Building strength means that you stay hyper-focused on your vision and not what others are saying about you.

Responsibility                           

Responsibility wounding, shows up in two different ways that are two sides of the same coin. You’ll either take too much responsibility, overreaching and doing more than your fair share, which causes burnout. Or, you’ll take less or no responsibility and slip into complacency, blaming others for what you aren’t achieving in your life. Either way, you’ll never feel satisfied.

Burden                                                                       

Feeling burdened often shows up as a sense of dread in the pit of your stomach causing you to get overwhelmed by day-to-day tasks because you worry about disappointing others. Burden is the worry that you’ll make the wrong choice and it keeps you stuck. You’ll have a reason for everything that you can’t seem to accomplish and you will create stories that only serve to justify your inaction.

No matter how core wound energy is showing up in your life and belief system, it can be healed through love, forgiveness, acceptance, and confidence. The real you is inside, buried underneath years of other people’s opinions telling you who you are and what you’re capable of. It’s a storyline that can be re-written to serve YOU and what you want to achieve in your life.

Energy Drains 

Energy drains energetic cords that are attached to your emotional energetic body. The cord is attached to you on one end and to another person, situation or energy on the other end. Energy drains are also known as energy cords and energy vampires. Once you become aware of an energy drain, you can work to unplug it from your energy field.

There are two major energy drains:

Overgiving

Overgiving is the act of over-reaching your energy to give more than you are getting in return. Some people thrive on this, the energy of GIVING to others GIVES them energy. Most people do not thrive with giving to this extent and it’s important to be honest with yourself of what you’re truly able to give and correct the imbalances.

The ability to give from a state of unconditional love, while not expecting anything in return stems from a place of overflow. Only when you and your life are overflowing with love, opportunities, money, healthy relationships and so on, are you able to give to others from the overflow that you have been blessed with.

People pleasing

People pleasing is the act of placing another person’s needs above your own repeatedly to the point of depletion. When your well has run dry and you continue to prioritize others, the energy is imbalanced and more difficult to correct. Eventually, you might feel like you have nothing left to give. This is like living in a robotic state where joy is harder and harder to come by because you don’t remember what it looks or feels like anymore. This is a tell tale sign that you’ve lost touch with yourself and your needs.

People pleasing can be corrected by understanding your motives in your relationships and correcting any imbalances. Anywhere where you feel resentment, anger, frustration or sadness are areas where you are people pleasing. You are giving more than you have, or more than you want to give. Be honest with yourself and work to maintain a better balance that not only gives to you, but serves others as well (if that’s what you want!)

What’s YOUR #1 Energy Drain?

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What would life be like if you could heal that ONE stubborn energy that is holding you back from living your best life? I love working with people just like you on healing the abandonment core wound!

Which part of this blog resonated the most for you? Comment below and let me know!

You might also be interested: Soul tribe meaning.

Love,

Felicia