Mother and father wounds can affect us all our lives, they will influence our attachment styles and relationships so how can inner child healing hypnosis help us to overcome mother and father wounds? To understand how we can heal mother and father wounds with hypnosis we first need to understand what they are and what created them.
What Are Mother & Father Wounds
Most parents don’t meet the criteria to be good enough parents because most parents have their own unresolved trauma and learnt to parent the same way they were parented. Inner child work is not about placing blame, it’s about healing our own trauma. Inner child work is about reparenting ourselves, giving ourselves unconditional love and acceptance so we can become good enough parents for ourselves and our own children.
Good Enough Parents
Good enough parents will be able to provide the child with unconditional love, they’ll love the child, no matter what. Many children grow up with conditional love so they’re forced to do things to perform roles within the family unit. Maybe to be perfectionists, to do well at school. If they’re not performing these roles they’re not receiving love or acceptance. A good enough parent needs to be patient. They need to be dependable. The child needs to know that they’re going to get their needs met, there’s always going to be food on the table, that they are always going to be picked up and comforted when they need comforting.
Good enough parents will have their own sense of individuality and an internal locus of control. Until the age of three a baby can’t tell the difference between themselves and the outside world. It’s not until we start being able to move around, once we start becoming toddlers that we start to get our own sense of individuality. You were a we before you became an I. A good enough parent needs to know who they are. They need an internal locus of control. So they need to be able to take responsibility for their actions. Obviously, a parent who blames a child for being born isn’t a good enough parent.
So as children, we need to connect with a mothering person who’s emotionally regulated, safe, reliable and the relationship with the mothering person is going to be the most important relationship for any child it is going to form the foundation for all future relationships.
Emotional Regulation
As I said above, the baby sees everything as them pushed out. They can’t tell the difference between themselves and their parents. So they’re reliant on the parent for emotional regulation, to help them coregulate their emotions. If the parent is dysregulated, babies can pick up on that and it’s going to make them dysregulated.
If you’ve ever tried to comfort a baby who’s crying and that crying causes you to become anxious, that makes the baby play up more. So they’re looking to their parents to help them regulate their emotions and of course in the womb, the baby is going to feel the emotions that a mother feels. If the mother feels anxious and depressed, the baby’s going to pick up on that, they’re going to become anxious and depressed.
Mother Wounds
If a child doesn’t have a good enough mother they will develop a mother wound. A mother’s unhealed trauma, how she views herself, beliefs she holds about herself and the world, how she learnt to soothe herself, the emotions she feels all these things will affect her children. A mother wound is created by a mother who is absent, doesn’t make the child feel loved and secure, doesn’t make the child feel accepted, shames the child out of their emotions, enmeshes the child and expects the child support them with their own emotional needs, was critical of the child, uses substances or has mental health issues. Mother wounds are usually associated with daughters but both boys and girls can both develop mother wounds.
A mother wound can result in low self-esteem, an inability to set boundaries, self sabotage, a lack of emotional awareness, acting in through self harm, eating disorders and unhealthy soothing strategies or an inability to self soothe, feeling like you are unworthy of love.
Father Wounds
If a child doesn’t have a good enough father they will develop a father wound. Just like with the mother wound a fathers unhealed trauma, beliefs and how he’s learnt to attach will affect his children. Children look to their father to make them feel secure, to develop discipline and for social development. A father wound is created by a father who is absent, neglectful, abusive or controlling. How either parent treats their child will develop the basis for all future relationships. Just like with mother wounds father wounds are usually associated with daughters but both boys and girls can develop father wounds.
A father wound can result in low self esteem, depression, anxiety, a critical inner voice, an inability to set healthy boundaries and poor relationship choices.
Why Mother & Father Wounds Need To Be Healed
As I said above if we want to be the best parents we can be for own children, to stop ourselves passing on generational trauma, to develop healthy and functional relationships as adults, to increase our own self esteem, learn to set healthy boundaries and overcome emotional pain it is essential that we heal our mother and father wounds. We are looking to our parents to model what a man or woman should be and so we will learn our behaviour from them. Our parents are the first people we learn to love so our relationship with them will affect all future relationships.
Is It Possible To Heal Mother & Father Wounds
Yes, it is possible to heal these wounds. To heal mother and father wounds we need to become good enough parents to ourselves, we need to learn to love and accept ourselves unconditionally. I show exercises to heal these wounds, increase self love and self acceptance in the inner child program. Hypnosis allows us to visualise our inner child and reconnect with them. Hypnosis can also help us to learn new ways of interacting with people so we can create healthy friendships, have a healthy work life and romantic relationships.
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