How to Be With Yourself When You Are in a Core Wound

Core wounds are uniquely difficult. In this article, I share my personal experience with them.

Core wounds are very difficult and often misunderstood, construed simply as depression. Through my work with people and my own experience, I have come to see the core wound as the place in the psyche where the personality begins to form in response to the original injury. As such, it is a source of both great pain and powerful healing. In the hope of understanding core wounds better, I offer this article about my own experience, along with a companion piece, How to Be With Someone Who Is in a Core Wound.

If at any point you feel unsafe, or fear you might harm yourself, please reach out to a licensed professional or a crisis line, such as calling or texting 988 in the United States.

What it's like in a core wound

I have been in core wounds three times in 44 years of working on myself. (I started at age 18 and I am 62 at this writing). The first lasted 3 months; the second lasted 16 days; the third lasted 21 days. Each was the most painful period of my life, but the rewards were great. Every time, I have emerged stronger, ready to face life with inspiration and more love for myself.

I experience being in a core wound as a dark, narrow canyon with impassable walls that extend so high I can't even see the top. I am at the bottom and I am completely alone. Occasionally, people can speak from the top of the canyon and I can hear them. These people touch my heart and help me move, but most people's voices don't reach me, and don't touch my heart.

When it's happening, I can barely tolerate the pain. I feel like I am dying in the most tortured way. All three times, the core wound period started after a loved one said or showed me that they didn't love me.

From inside the canyon, it is clear the loss of connection is all my fault and is due to my inherent and fatal flaws. This is a fact, not an opinion. Part of the experience is also believing that the state will never shift, and that there is no person or power greater than myself that can reach me. In a core wound, I am convinced that there is no love available in the universe for me at all, although I can see that it exists for other people. I can't overstate how much these perceptions feel like The Truth. They show up as axioms of reality.

Inside the attack

When I am in a core wound, I don't respond to the normal attempts at comfort or support. I am a psychotherapist and I teach people how to work with their inner critic. Even though I know I am under attack by the critic, those tools don't work in this state. I am inside the reality of being irreparably flawed. This reality is all I can see.

Core wounds have grown more painful as I get older. I attribute this to my increased ability to tolerate the injuries and fallout left in my body from the real, damaging events that happened to me as a kid. It was too much to feel the impact at the time, so I developed defenses and coping mechanisms. A major defense was this intense offense - hateful rejection from my inner critic. Now that I am strong enough to hold the pain, I don't need those same coping mechanisms, and the more intense wounds are coming out.

Being inside a core wound is like being inside a superego attack. I now understand the attack itself as one of the defenses that is breaking down during a core wound state. Knowing that the superego (the conscience) formed as a defense against intolerable feelings AND realizing that it is coming into consciousness to be healed…these two things bring me comfort when I am in the middle of it. Rather than work with it, reduce it, or try to understand where the inner critic came from, just seeing it for what it is brings the most comfort.

Simple presence is something I benefit from. In a way I don't fully understand, I have had to just hang in there with simple presence (mine or someone else's) until a shift happens and I am back to myself. Sometimes, the shift doesn't seem to have been brought about by anything but time. Somehow the mere appearance of the wound in my conscious life combined with letting it do its thing (which hurts) seems to take care of it. I always feel better after a time, usually better than ever.

That said, there are some things that reach me in the canyon. When it's happening, I am very aware of what reaches me and what doesn't. I feel the good intentions of my friends, but I can only speak with those who have familiarity with their own core wounds. What helps me the most is when they have had contact with their own core wounds and they also have a connection with a power greater than themselves. That blend allows me to feel understood, and then let in some of the healing energy of the universe. Certain music also touches me and lifts me up from the canyon, but not all music. During my last core wound, most pop songs plunged me more into the canyon because they are about losing love. I also found great comfort in an oracle deck (like a Tarot deck) based on Rumi poems. They seemed to carry an energy that I could feel from the bottom of the canyon.

Ideas for when you are in a core wound

Next time you are in a core wound, here are some ideas that I hope can reach you.

• See who can be with you right now. You will be able to tell when you feel like they get you. You need someone who can help you be with it, not try to fix it.
• Notice what brings comfort. The sky's the limit. I had a friend in her 50s who watched the High School Musical movies over and over during her last core wound.
• Even if you don't believe it, review the fact that you won't always feel this way.
• You may need to toggle between staying busy as a comfort, calling in sick to life, stopping and crying, etc.
• See if there is some part of you, however far in the background, that can see that there the content of your thoughts is unkind. Something like, "Wow, that is some really mean s—- going on."

When it passes

After a core wound has passed, I feel better than I have ever felt. I know, deeply and truthfully, that I am lovable. I feel stronger than I was before, more myself, more vitalized, and I feel like I belong in the universe. Usually my life takes off in good directions after such a period. I go forward in my career, or start a new, significant relationship (friendship or romantic). I also remember that after the core wound healing times were over, I consistently had better concentration, more inspiration, and more energy than before the core wound. I am here to hold forth and tell you the life force is waiting for you on the other side of the core wound. I wish that resolution for you, and that you land in a place that is better than you hoped.

Please see my companion piece, How to Be With Someone Who Is in a Core Wound, to learn more about how to tell if someone else is in a core wound and how to support them.

I hope this article gives you companionship in the narrow places.