Saturn Returns with Caggie - *Moments* Viewing ourselves through our ‘Wound Lens’ with Donna Lancaster

Episode Date: November 13, 2022

Author and co-founder of The Bridge, Donna Lancaster, is joining Caggie this week. In this ‘moment’, you’ll hear Caggie and Donna discussing how we can view ourselves through a ‘wounded lens�� in order to understand how our childhood impacts our relationships and behaviours with those we love as well as how we can move from being childish to being child-like. The full episode will be available tomorrow and explores themes around forgiving and managing our emotions, touching on: victimhood, somatic experiencing, vulnerability and how our physical body often holds the antidote to our anxiety and trauma. You can buy Donna’s book The Bridge here. --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

hello everyone and happy sunday i hope you are having a lovely weekend and i just wanted to share with you a moment from tomorrow's episode of saturn returns when i am joined by the lovely donna lancaster who is author and co-founder of the bridge which was a retreat it is now a book and it's a fantastic book that helps you live a more authentic and wholehearted life so I highly suggest giving it a read and here is a moment from tomorrow's episode so I really love that sort of dance between like you say, release and relief, or perhaps the sort of inner child work and the parenting work and kind of running those things in tandem. So you're like, also, it's an exercise in itself that brings about the awareness of those two parts. And I think that that's something that we we've explored a lot in this podcast. And it's been such an instrumental tool for me in my own journey to

have that awareness over that child and that parent so for the audience that perhaps hasn't listened to an episode around that would you be able to explain from your own perspective what what you mean by those things yeah sure so I mean the wounded child is um is an archetype so it's an aspect of ourselves that we recognise carries an emotional wound from the past. And so, you know, I always give the example. So if there was a life event that happened to you, say in childhood, doesn't always have to be in childhood, but let's just use that as an example. So say when you were five or six, your parents divorced, and that was really difficult for you. And then if you imagine that

you didn't, then your parents, perhaps with their own challenges around that divorce, they didn't perhaps give you the time to express how you felt, and it wasn't talked about or processed. So what happens for us as individuals is that we then become emotionally arrested at that age. is that we then become emotionally arrested at that age. It's like there's a part of us that's still five. And so we look, you know, we grow up and we look like an adult woman, man, person. And yet there's parts of us that usually get triggered in intimate relationships

or at work that then, yeah. And then that five-year-old abandoned child and she felt abandoned by perhaps both her parents but through the divorce gets reignited again and it's like she's very alive so that's the wounded child and we have many most of us you know if you've had any kind of life experiences you have a you know a five-year-old a seven-year-old 11 year old a 13 and a 17 but enough about me but it's like those are the wounded child archetypes. And there are also other child archetypes that we move into as we heal. So as you go, what I call going back for

the five-year-old. So you go back and you basically allow that part of you safely through the resources here or in therapy or in a group session to allow yourself to safely access and release the emotions that you felt and actually have a voice to give a voice to that wounded part of you that was that is five that's still in there and and then when you do that when you really let that part of you feel seen heard and understood be validated in their experience, which is what children need. It's what we as humans need to feel that we're seen, heard, understood, and validated. That's what we need as humans. And so when you do that for your five-year-old self, then what happens is she can emotionally grow up. And it doesn't mean that you never get triggered your abandonment wound as a core wound for many of us.

It just means it doesn't hijack you. It means you kind of go, oh, ouch. I can feel that. I notice that when my partner says he's going to be back at 10 and he comes back at midnight, I notice and he doesn't text. I notice that I feel angry. I feel abandoned. I feel rejected. that I feel angry, I feel abandoned, I feel rejected.

You know, we notice, but it doesn't hijack us and we go into five-year-olds kind of, you bastard. So we move from childish to childlike, and that's a beautiful transition. And then we move further as we emotionally grow up the wounded child. We become, rather than childish, childlike, and we then can access other parts of the child archetype, which include playful, innocent, joyful child. So we become more childlike, but in the kind of best sense. So that's the wounded child.

And then there's what could be called the parent, and also as an archetype, we call the wise adult. So it's like the parent in you, the wisdom of you, some might even call it your spirit, I would, but it's like the part of you that knows, the part of you that can take care of yourself, the part of you that has your own back, can hold your own hand, that really solid inner elder, if you like,

can comfort and soothe the wounded child part of you and the more the more you do that with yourself in the ways that I've described that wisdom just gets stronger and stronger and stronger because you're not you haven't got like a you know a family of five ten inner children running rampage because that's the other thing kagi is that like kids you know children will start off saying like tugging at your jumper and saying like um i need help and they'll say it in a you know an ordinary volume and then they'll start to go hey i need help and they'll start to raise the boy and in the end it's a scream isn't it and a punch in there you know and that is exactly what happened in that toilet it's like I will get your attention and we have a tantrum because it's like come back for me you

know and that is really what it's all about is about going back for that five-year-old little you that's hidden under the bed that gets activated with bosses and figures of authority your partner friendships and then you heal that and then you welcome her home and then the childlike wonder comes out beautiful yeah because especially I think for so many people listening as well it's in relationship that aspect gets so brought out and I actually to share my own experience have been like navigating that this weekend that's just passed when to be quite open I'm at a point in my relationship that I've never gone past this and I've never been with someone as long as I've been with my current partner and even though I'm like okay this is a healthy like beautiful nourishing relationship this part

of me feels very activated of like when's the other shoe gonna drop and you know perhaps that's because my parents got divorced so I'm always anticipating like something's gonna go wrong something's gonna end someone's gonna do something but then how how present that inner child part of me is so when anything is said I will interpret it in a sort of like about through the through the wounded lens you know through that kind of abandonment and then my system will go into sort of shutdown it's this fearful avoidant thing where like I want both sort of be taken care of and told that it's okay but also to push away and run and how that will kind of escalate when I'm sort of like behaving in a

way and you and you use the word and it's what I use is I have enough awareness that I can communicate whilst it's happening but every time I do speaking my truth about how I'm actually feeling and what's going on feels so exposed and vulnerable and like I am five years old speaking to a parent that it gets hijacked every single time by emotion and it's not that and that that's usually crying and it's not even that I'm thinking I'm I'm sad it's not actually that I'm sad it's just the vulnerability of speaking in itself that then the emotion just just floods it and I yeah it's something that every time I'm like I don't even know where this emotion is coming from from your five-year-old self if you want to listen to the full episode it will be available at 7 a.m tomorrow

that is Monday and I hope you enjoy it sending lots of love and remember you are not alone goodbye