Healing From Past Wounds: Episode 3- Unexpected Responses

Episode 3: Show Notes

 

First 5 minutes:

Intro- The hard thing about “Raw Spots” is that first you have recognize that something is happening, then you have understand where it came from, and then, it would be good if you could share it with your partner so that you can get an accepting response. ALL HARD, especially when you’ve never done them before.

 

Angela sets up the story of her ‘Raw Spot’. When they had been dating for about 3 months, Chad bought Angela a necklace. He hoped that she would respond well, but the response was very unexpected.

 

Minutes 5-10:

Angela had a trigger and couldn’t identify what was going on- she turned on him and criticized that he bought her jewelry. They were left with the question, ‘What Just Happened?’. Thank you might have been a better response. The jewelry wasn’t over the top. It was nice. Looking at the situation now, it’s sad. Angela can see that her response was out of the ordinary. She had shame around her response and they decided to talk about it.

 

Angela realized her internal process when she gets a gift. In the process, Angela decided she needed to dig deeper and Chad was able to ask, “when else have you felt like this?” This ties the thing in the present to experiences that have happened in the past. Angela began to realize that her body feels a pressure or expectation around how to respond to the gifts. She also has felt it on behalf of other people at birthdays, baby showers, wedding showers, etc…

 

Once you recognize that there is a trigger, and you can identify the content where the trigger shows up, you can start to unpack or put words to the meaning that is assigned to the experience.

 

Minutes 10-15:

What are the ingredients of the soup? In that moment, we need to break down all the different feelings in the moment. For Angela- around gift giving, there is fear, expectation, needed gratitude, and other feelings that would shut her down.

 

Angela’s family of origin, often used gifts to do repairs, instead of words. Some of the meaning Angela applied to the gifts meant I couldn’t talk about my pain, or there would be no apology for the harsh words that preceded the gift.

 

The hardest or most unfair part about a raw spot is that Chad likes to give gifts. So something he likes to do is the very thing that causes me to feel pain. So in order to try and get some healing around this specific wound, we need to ask, “when is the first time you felt that (or had the soup)?” Can you identify some of the root experiences that really assigned the meaning to the trigger.

 

Angela clarified the specific feelings that are triggered are about the expectation she has to respond correctly to the gift.

 

Minutes 15-20:

Where this really started to be a bigger problem is when their daughter wanted to start giving Angela gifts. She had to really get some repair around the wound of receiving gifts so that her response could shift. It is unfair for Chad and for their daughter that Angela has a wound around receiving gifts.

 

First, you have to have a awareness that something from your past is at play. Then, a great question to ask is, where have I felt this before. If you can tie the thing happening in the present to another moment when you felt this same thing in the past, you can start to identify the ‘ingredients in the soup.”

 

It can be tricky because these raw spots are so personal, that often the partner has no understanding of the feelings or the meaning around the trigger. The thing that raw spots exposes is how different our experiences are around specific content.

 

Connect Point:

See if you can identify a raw spot or heightened trigger and first try to identify some of the ‘ingredients in the soup’ then ask yourself, ‘when have I felt this before’ to see if you can tie it back to a previous time this happened to you. Then, have a conversation with your partner and share your experiences with each other.

 

For more information about Chad and Angela Imhoff, visit their website at: www.therealimhoffs.com