Limiting Belief – If I could just not feel the pain
then I’d be OK

Pathway Description:

We tend to believe that if we could just escape the pain it would go away. We think that in not feeling we will be better off. This is perhaps a useful strategy when we are in an environment that we cannot control, as in childhood. But, if we are to heal the wounds of childhood then we must be willing to feel and then release what we have been avoiding up to now. As psychologist Carl Jung put it “All neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering”. By feeling our feelings with the intent to move through them, they can be released. Then the mind will be free to experience the joy, freedom, and peace that is its natural experience rather than be addicted to something that allows us to momentarily avoid our pain, but at the price of our happiness and well-being.

Clearing Steps:

• Start, if you would, by finishing this sentence: If I were being really honest I would say that I hurt the most because________________.
• Begin to feel that hurt with the idea in mind that as you feel the hurt it is being burnt up…like a fuel that is being spent in the burning process. Give this process anywhere from a couple of minutes to 10 minutes, but not longer. It need not take a long time to get this stuck energy that we call hurt moving. However, if the hurt feels too big or overwhelming you would be better served by waiting for someone to help you through this step. It would be good to choose another pathway to work with for now.
• In the next step imagine yourself as a child of any age. Imagine that this inner-child is hurting. See yourself step away from the child so that you can see the child but not be the child.
• Can you find a feeling of unconditional or whole-minded love or pure caring? (If not click on Separation Visualizations)
• Go to the child and tell the child that you have come to love and protect it…to give it the right to have its feelings and not be made wrong for them. Let the child cry, complain, hurt or do whatever it needs to do while you just support it with unconditional love, love that has no demands or expectations.
• After a while the child will be finished with its pain release and be ready to move on to something new.
• Spend the day, in imagined time, doing things with the child that it likes. Focus all your attention and love on the child.
• Imagine this child growing up with total permission to express hurt, pain, sadness, happiness, excitement, etc. and still be loved.
• Feel what that child would be like if it were loved in this manner for days and weeks and months and years. What would this child be like as an adult? Would this grownup child seek addictive behavior as a way to avoid pain?
• If you have found a healthy, vibrant, strong, and happy adult as the grownup child then the process has allowed you to experience a part of your True Self without the distortion that covered it over. You have made a step towards being free of the need for avoidance behaviors that are at the basis of addiction. If your grownup child still seems less than whole try repeating the process.
• A thought that might summarize this process might be: I do have the strength to face and release the pain of the past. Love is stronger than pain. Love is stronger than my history. My connection with God gives me the power to choose what truly makes me happy.