Childhood Conditioning and the "Life Script"
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” Carl Jung
Note: although this is included in the Session 1 file, please do not feel that you have to read and understand everything before coming to session. We will draw from this material throughout the entirety of the Program.
Why is it important to understand childhood conditioning when you’re trying to make positive changes in your life?
We tend to focus on our behaviors, thinking we’ll use will-power or try some new strategy or technique to change them. It’s not an effective approach because there is so much going on beneath the surface that impacts us in our day to day living. This can limit our potential and keep us from gaining insight and understanding into our subconscious mind, which is running the show (i.e., aspects like core beliefs, thinking patterns, emotional reactions, etc.).
It's important to note that by examining childhood conditioning, we are in no way trying to place blame, shame, or point fingers at our caregivers. They did the very best they could. But most of us were raised by people who had little awareness or guidance around their own limiting beliefs or true nature. They only passed down what they knew.
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Your caregivers weren’t intentionally being malicious. They weren’t trying to limit you or cause you to struggle later in life. On the contrary, they were well-intentioned in training you to see + experience the world exactly as they did – their objective was keeping you safe. They weren’t consciously aware that they were also passing along their biases, misinterpretations, judgments, and faulty opinions (many of which they took on from their own parents).
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Each time you felt unsafe, unseen, or unloved in childhood it created an emotional wound. If there were other times where you felt safe, loved, and seen, it helped to balance things out. But it’s impossible to navigate through childhood and adolescence without being emotionally wounded.