10 Unpacking the pain of our old destructive patterns

Let’s talk about pain. And more importantly, let’s discuss how to dissolve pain… The climate we grew up in affected us—it was like perpetually receiving a minor shock… We suffered and believed our suffering was unchangeable. And this conditioned us to create defenses—highly destructive defenses…

We repressed the original frustration and pain we couldn’t deal with, and we put it out of our awareness. There, it smolders in the unconscious mind… Our defense mechanisms of aggression, submission and/or withdrawal fully developed… Our images are also a form of defense, designed to fight against painful experiences by erecting a rigid wall constructed entirely from wrong conclusions…

In every case, we hurt others while also inflaming our own wounds. Because thanks to the law of cause and effect, hurting others has ramifications for us. There will be consequences. So, not only have we done nothing to calm the original pain, we’ve invited more of it… Rather than abandoning our limping pseudo-solutions, we wrap them into our idealized self-image. Here, the agenda is to make us feel better than everyone else…

Since the nature of the idealized self is falseness and pretense—we act perfect since we can’t be perfect—we feel alienated from ourselves, from others and from life… We’ll come to realize that pain feels far better than being alienated from ourselves and feeling numb…

Listen and learn more.

Bones, Chapter 10: Unpacking the Pain of our Old Destructive Patterns

Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #100 Meeting the Pain of Destructive Patterns