Are You Driven by Primal Wounding?
Unlocking the truth behind trauma bonds.
IA primal wound can be seen as a break in the intricate web of relationships in which we live. This break is caused by an internal struggle with the connection to the deeper self and reality, which has become wounded. This can be due to a violation of self in early life, a feeling of non-being, loneliness, frustration, betrayal, isolation, low self-esteem, fear, and shame. These feelings can shape how we define our place in the world, keeping us locked to a perspective that unconsciously drives our beliefs and subsequent behaviours. As adults we can remain unconsciously bonded to experiences of trauma in our childhood, which creates a permanently unhelpful filter on our views of self and others. Trauma creates a disconnection from your authentic self and it’s a wound that can be healed by the therapeutic relationship in counselling.
Trauma is the Greek word for wound and most of us have experienced it in some form, whether with a metaphorical big or small T, and it can be seen as the underlying issue of all issues. When someone has experienced an extreme event, the immediate aftereffect is shock and denial, not dissimilar to a grief cycle. A survival instinct can then kick in which can lead to different responses, such as disassociation, feelings of alienation, unpredictable emotions, flashbacks to the events, withdrawal, as well as physical symptoms such as headaches. Trauma bonds can keep you locked into fight or flight mode, which overtime can take its toll. For someone is struggling to make sense of what happened can develop mental health issues like PTSD, depression, anxiety, alcohol and/or drug use, which can impact their relationships and daily life. Emotional trauma can manifest as a persistent sense of unsafety or challenging emotions, like anxiety and hyper vigilance. Trauma can also become frozen and thawing these experiencing through therapy can be daunting as it can evoke strong feelings of fear, sadness, guilt, and anger, and as you start to make sense of the events, however, the feelings can then subside.
It may feel like there is an overuse of the term trauma, but more importantly there are misconceptions around it, such as the notion that you must be able to see it in someone and if you don’t, then the person must simply be resilient. How we experience trauma is part of the human condition and the trauma export, Gábor Máté sees it as not something that happens to you but rather it’s what happens inside you because of an event or continued experience. Having said that, it’s not only caused by external circumstances and events, but can also result from a lack of things. Trauma can be the result of a moral injury, which is social, psychological, and spiritual harm that arises from a betrayal of one’s core values, leading to a dislocation from self. This injury is often a primal wound, i.e. occurring in childhood.
Parenting is one of the hardest roles a person can undertake, and there is no surefire way of approaching it that guarantees to have zero negative impact on the child. People often talk about good and bad parenting; however, this black and white labelling suggests that there is a right and wrong way to raise a child. Instead, the way in which a parent interacts with their child is constantly changing and is always at the scrutiny of environmental factors, as well as the parents own internal woundedness. While the occurrence of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences), which are traumatic events that happen within a child’s environment between the ages of 0 and 17, will likely lead to negative physical and/or mental health outcomes in adulthood, there are other more nuanced experiences that can have a lasting behavioural impact. Emotional neglect in childhood, such as an absence of hugs or proclamations of love, can lead to feelings of invisibility and result in weakened sense of self. This type of primal wounding creates a chain reaction where you may run from the void, or the abyss of nothingness, towards something else that can replace the connection to self, such as dopamine chasing in different forms, which masks the negative woundedness.
For some, a lack of emotional awareness and support in childhood can lead to an overactive need to be validated. This may manifest as an attachment of your self-worth to what you do for others, lead to a focus on over-achieving to receive praise. In her book, The Emotionally Absent Mother: How to Recognize and Heal the Invisible Effects of Childhood Emotional Neglect, Jasmin Lee Cori talks about how exploring the parental gaps in your childhood can help you heal in the present. By working with a therapist to identify where your needs weren’t met in childhood, from a place of compassion and understanding for both you and your parent, you can reframe your perception of self and learn how to self-nurture. This will allow you to break the bond of past traumas and have the self-assuredness to feel love inwardly, and the confidence to know the difference between relationships that nourish rather than starve you.
