Well, I’d like to offer a brief description of what I understand “wounded child healing” to be.

[Note: I’m re-publishing this article as it is still relevant till today;-)]

What is Wounded Child Healing

The “wounded child” is an archetype which contains damaged or negative emotional patterns of our youth. It may help to improve your understanding if we can draw reference from the lyrics to the song “Childhood” by Michael Jackson…

Before you judge me, try hard to love me,
Look within your heart then ask,
Have you seen my Childhood?
People say I’m strange that way
‘Cause I love such elementary things,
It’s been my fate to compensate,
For the Childhood I’ve never known…

Loving The Wounded Child

Loving the wounded child is about healing ourselves through acknowledging the trauma and hurt that we suffered when we were young and then freeing ourselves from them. As adults, we unconsciously allowed these memories to dictate how we run our lives. Our coping mechanisms were meant to protect us at one stage but they may no longer serve us.

Here is something for you to think about…

The outer story of your adult life, thus far, reflects the inside story of your wounded child.

We hold dysfunctional self images through the stories of our childhood. How we perceive ourselves is pretty much driven by the childhood programming that we have had. Our childhood programming is largely influenced by our caregivers, who represented the world to us while we were young. We form relationships based on what we learn from our parents. Our parents in turn learn about theirs from their parents. So it is in us that we have layers and layers of beliefs, patterns and behavior passed down from generation to generation.

Yet, as much as not wishing to be like any of our parents, we may find ourselves having adopted the same patterns, behavior and attitudes. It often comes as no surprise to some of us on how we end up in similar patterns. We may not recognize it at first but the patterns are the same recurring themes.

Negative patterns essentially bear the same emotional pain energy even though they may take on different forms. Anorexia, obesity or alcoholism may be traced to negative self images perpetuated by our parents during our younger days. It is possible that our current feelings of rejection originate from childhood.

While there are the rare courageous few who rise above their traumas, the vast majority of us carry the wounds of our childhood around. The same patterns manifest in every aspect of our lives; at home, in the office; in the relationships we have with our spouses, kids, parents or friends; or even physically.

Wounded Child Healing: Releasing the Trauma

Indeed, the wounds of your inner child can create much havoc in the relationships you have with yourself and others. Through healing, you confront the archetypal force within your psyche. With confronting rather than stifling the voice, you release the emotional charge that your wounded child holds on to. You recognize that you have been compelled to grow up too fast.

Carrying the baggage of an openly wounded child keeps you living in the past. You keep alive the story of your past of abandonment, abuse, betrayal, rejection, guilt and shame. Your energy resonates the same vibrational pattern. If you have ever wondered why you attract the same type of experiences, herein lies the reason why.

Your wounded child has no awareness of spiritual lessons. He or she may want to stay hurt, angry and vindictive even. You will need to release the energetic story of your wounded child. As long as you allow your wounded child to be in the driver’s seat, you operate from the same helpless space.

Wounded child healing means caring for yourself so that the things of the past no longer hurt you. You realize your need for healing because you are only hurting yourself most of all, when you carry the baggage around. You do this by acknowledging the wounded child within. You call up the little kid for the unfinished business of loving, nurturing and embracing him or her.

You may initially feel resistant to releasing yourself from the pain of your childhood story. You have identified with it for so long that you suspect you will feel lost without one. After all, you need someone or something to take the blame for your current dysfunctional self or life. You are filled with a sense of righteous anger towards your parents, family or friends for the person you have now become.

Giving up the story is going to put you in great discomfort. Your childhood story is essentially a collection of thoughts of the past. You have to realize that you cannot hope to create an empowering life if you do not first release your attachment to an old script.

Freeing Your Wounded Child

For wounded child healing, you may be invited to explore forgiveness. You work on forgiving yourself by letting your inner child that it is not her fault. Also, you may consider if you are willing to forgive those who could have contributed to the situation that you are now in.

Taking one or two steps back potentially gives you a clearer picture. For instance, it allows you to see whether your parents have also been emotionally hurt as a result of their own childhood experiences. They have unconsciously inflicted on you what they have suffered as children.

It also boils down to choice. Think about it this way. Decide which you would rather have: continued pain or ultimate freedom?

Your Thoughts Please

I wrote this article in a series of thoughts on self discovery. My thoughts were sparked due to my own personal healing experiences. [Update] I now offer private sessions where we work on healing and reparenting the wounded child. To find out more about working together, apply for a discovery call here.

Over to you. Do you carry around with you a wounded child? What does your inner child say? If you have dealt with wounded or inner child issues, do share what has worked for you.

In Loving Kindness,
Evelyn Lim

Your money story is the one you often tell to others. It is made up of the issues going on in your current financial situation, the persistent worry that you are experiencing or/and the complaints you have about the economy, property prices, cost of living and so on. It is a story that occupies your mind throughout the day.

As I have found, money stories often act as a smoke screen to deeper underlying issues. At first, it is easy to be mistaken into believing that your financial challenges are caused by a string of bad luck, the fault of the tax authorities, the constant unfair treatment by your employers, the failure of receiving payment on time, or the banks who are out to get you. This being the case, you try to remedy your challenges with band-aide or by rearranging certain aspects of your life.

However, should you step aside for a bit, you may be able to observe money patterns that keep repeating. What you observe are likely to be debilitating cycles of frustration, worry, panic, resentment and anger over finances. Over and over again, you have not been able to truly break free.

Where there is a repeating pattern in your external issues, a root cause could exist internally. 

Feeling intrigued? Read on……

It is what lies below the surface of the iceberg (see above picture illustration) that influences your external actions, behaviour and attitude towards money. This is where the root cause of your money story can be found.

[Tweet theme=”basic-white”]”What’s going on in the inside shows on the outside.” Earl Nightingale[/Tweet]

Here are some of the money stories that various clients reported to having:

– Not able to thrive or make enough in new vocation;
– Inability to have money breakthroughs;
– Stuck at a certain level of income;
– Not able to attract paying clients;
– No pay raise for the last 3 years;
– Not able to revise prices up;
– Deals keep falling through;
– Inability to pay bills;
– Over-extended on credit card;
– Kicked out of dwelling due to inability to pay rent;
– Cannot seem find a job that pays well;
– Living from month to month, and so on.

The problem is that the more you tell a story of lack, the more contractive you feel. What’s important to realise is that if you are hoping to change your situation (things on the outside), you need to start by first changing the energy you have on the inside. Your outer story reflects the inner beliefs that you have about money. In order to dissipate the contractive energy that you feel and believe about money, you will need to uncover the root cause of your troubles.

[Tweet theme=”basic-white”]”The conflicts we have with the outside world are often conflicts we have within ourselves.” Bryant H. McGill[/Tweet]

How to Unravel the Mystery in the Root Cause 

The following are three steps:

(1) The first step involves awakening into awareness.

Many people do not realise that they have been directly a lot of negative emotional energy with their debilitating stories. Fear keeps them trapped. They are too preoccupied with worry to get clear in their thinking.

In order to break free, you will have shine light into the shadows.

From a non-attached conscious state, ask yourself: What is your true (inner) money story? What are the beliefs you have? Are these beliefs expansive or contractive?

In all likelihood, if you have made yourself out to be a victim and given the lack of money power over your happiness, your beliefs are limiting ones.

(2) The second step involves recalling your childhood stories, so that you can uncover the beliefs that you have formed.

What kind of role models did you grow up with?

Did your parents teach you how to master financial education?

What were some of the beliefs they brought you up with? How did your parents reward you for good behaviour or exam grades in school?

(3) The third step involves uncovering your birth story.

How was your birth like? Did your mother experience a “difficult labor” from giving birth to you? Is that why you view life as a struggle and being difficult?

Did you suffer any trauma when you were born?

Did your parents welcome you with open arms or did they withhold love from you because you are considered a burden?

Solve the Root Cause to Your Money Story

Could it be that behind your money story lies core unresolved issues?

Hidden in the labyrinth are your shadows: birth trauma, childhood memories and collective unconscious patterns.

Within the folds could lie your deepest fear, shame, anger, resentment and grief.

But yes, as I have discovered and many others too, it is possible to dive through the layers and to unravel some of the mystery.

During the internal process, you will realize that your relationship with money is a reflection of the relationship you have with yourself and with all others.

{If you have a poor relationship with the self, you are likely to have a poor relationship with money. Likewise, if you have low self-love issues, you are likely to have a poor relationship with money.}

You clear the mystery through deep root healing of your wounded inner child and the energetic release of trauma from past events that have been keeping you stuck.

What is wonderful is that the more you align with the truth of your being, the greater your ability to attract the financial wealth that you deserve. Through financial alchemy, you transmute into the gold of your true being. Ultimately, you radiate in brilliance from the core of your soul.

Love and abundance always,

Evelyn Lim

Transformation Life Coach

P.S. Need personalised coaching on getting to the root cause of your emotional issues? Apply for a 30-min discovery session here. 

P.S.S. This post has been updated in 2024 to correct the links. 

Share Your Thoughts

Share your thoughts about finding the root cause to your money story in the comments below.

Why Heal Your Wounded Inner Teenager

1. Repressed Emotions. Through my work with clients, I’ve encountered individuals who grappled with unresolved teenage turmoil. These were times marked by confusion, vulnerability, and often a lack of guidance to navigate the storm of emotions and societal pressures. Consequently, many suppressed their feelings, burying them deep within their subconscious. This repression, coupled with unmet emotional needs, would build over the years into adulthood.
   If you find yourself getting into emotional overwhelm rather quickly and with an inability to cope, ask yourself if they are related to issues that arise from your teenage years, not just when you were pre-teen. 
2. Body Image Issues. Teenagers go through bodily and hormonal changes and can find it hard to handle their physical challenges. Many feel awkward and having to process societal beauty standards. Some hold on to their body image issues and carry them into adulthood; leading to weight problems, eating disorders or a lack in confidence. 
   If you have got body image issues, check if they first stem from your teenage years. 
3. Reduced Ability to Form Intimate and Fulfilling Relationships. Then, there are also some who experience their first heartbreak or sexual encounter, and that’s when their wounds were formed. Feelings of shame would lie buried in the subconscious for years, causing them to build protective walls that act as barriers to cultivating more satisfying and intimate relationships as they grow up. Some would even swear off marriage relationships due to past teenage trauma.
   If you can’t seem to form intimate and fulfilling relationships, ask yourself if this is due to holding on to unresolved pain, hurt or shame from experiences that are physically or sexually-related from your teenage years. 
4. Unclear About Identity and Feeling Lost in Direction. The teenage years correspond to the time when we seek to find own identity. It’s also the time when we are learning to be independent and to make our own decisions. In order to find ourselves, it may mean having to break away from our parents’ beliefs. During this phase, some confused teenagers may become rebellious as they work out the identity that would define them.
   If you are constantly feeling insecure, indecisive and lost, ask yourself it this is related to your teenage years. It could be that your parents made all the decisions for you or that you had simply adopted other people’s beliefs without clearly processing them. 
   

Benefits to Healing Your Inner Teenager 

Well, the good news is that even though the past is long gone, all is not lost. We can work on healing the inner teenager. It’s similar to doing inner child work, except with considerations of what has gone on during the teenage phase. Whatever hurt or suffering you’ve experienced back then is the key to healing that inner teen today.

Benefits to Doing Inner Teen Work:

1. Calm any nervous tension that originates from your teenage years.
2. Resolve any unmet needs of your teenage self with love, acceptance and care. 
3. Heal the wounds that have been affecting your relationships today.
4. Address issues that are about body image and that could be related to eating disorders or lack in confidence.
5. Reparent the troubled or rebellious part of you with setting boundaries and clear directions for a healthier way forward. 
6. Reclaim the vitality and boundless energy of your inner teen that your adult self may have lost.
7. Rekindle the sense of curiosity and desire to venture out from one’s comfort zone. 

The healthy teenager is at the stage of forging their own identity, with innate curiosity and desire to explore their strengths and interests. Healing and reparenting the inner teenager allows you to restore vitality. Your inner teenage self deserves to be loved, accepted and guided. Set yourself free from your troubled past and be ready to take charge of your life from doing inner teen work.

If you’d like to find out more about working together, request for a discovery call here. 

Love and Abundance Always, 
Evelyn Lim
Transformation & Emotional Healing Coach

That was when I discovered about labelling emotions. I also found out hat emotions have meanings and that they convey our deepest needs and desires. Gradually, I learned to sit with my feelings; instead of running away from them. And, I learned about observing them without judgment. As time went on, I was better able to develop greater self-compassion and awareness. My well-being improved, as a result. 

Building Emotional Awareness: Feelings and Their Meanings

My chart offers a guide that could indicate what the various emotions broadly mean. I would ask myself what my unmet need is. By attending to my unmet need, healing becomes a lot more targetted and effective. 

Strive to Build Emotional Awareness

Your emotions provide feedback on how you can realign yourself.

Work on releasing your negative emotions (such as with EFT tapping), so that you can create a positive shift.

Strive for emotional authenticity, honoring the full spectrum of your feelings without judgment or self-censure. Through increased self-understanding, your ability to build empathy and a deeper connection with others increases. By embracing your emotions, you cultivate self-love and acceptance and develop greater resilience in life.

To your well-being
Evelyn Lim
Transformation Life Coach

My new book, Mindset Journal for Women, is finally out on Amazon…yay!! It is a journal workbook with prompts to practice positive thinking, mindfulness and to improve mental health. You can find the listing on Amazon here.

For the vast majority of people, nearly 90% of our self-talk is negative. It is reflective of having a negative or limiting mindset. In order to overcome the habitual pattern of negative thinking, we need to consistently work on building a positive mindset. Also, studies show that more women than men go into depression. It is where the Mindset Journal for Women comes in.

What’s the Juice with Mindset Journal for Women

The journal book uses the metaphor of your mind being a garden and you as the gardener.

The floral theme in the interior pages acts as a nice reminder and inspiration. Imagine each page as a fertile patch of soil, ready for your seeds of inspiration to take root. With its floral theme, every turn invites you to immerse yourself in planting seeds of positivity. 

It’s not just daily pages that I have included. I have also incorporated a mini workbook planner in Section A so that you can be introduced to concepts that would be helpful for building foundation. There are guided prompts designed to spark growth, foster gratitude, and to practice mindfulness. Section B features daily, weekly and monthly journal pages that are helpful for habit tracking, reflection and for reviews.

How my Mindset Journal for Women came about

As someone who has experienced self-doubt, imposter syndrome, deep-rooted beliefs of “not good enough” and depression, I know what it feels like to have a negative mindset. During my early adult years, I would suffer from bad episodes of panic from insomnia and an inability to fall asleep. Later, when I started my business and became a mother, these new stages brought its own set of challenges.

My experiences reinforced the knowing about how important it is to have a strong mindset to weather any feelings of overwhelm and stress. I realised that it would be impossible to be successful without a positive frame of mind. As a result, I sought to actively invest and to work on my mindset from 10 years ago. It’s something that I continue to do so till today.

One day, my love for flowers and plants got me thinking about using the metaphor of gardening for growing a healthier mindset. There’s no better way than to encourage others to do it through journaling. My ideas sparked the design for my Mindset Journal for Women. It took me 6 weeks to go from conceptualision and to submitting it for approval by Amazon. 

While I run a small coaching business, I hold the big dream of changing 1-million lives through my low-cost self-published books. My desire is to channel part of the proceeds for supporting women causes. If you believe that the book will be helpful for women who needs to work on themselves, do support my endeavour with a purchase.

Get the Mindset Journal for Women

May I suggest The Mindset Journal for Women as a trusted companion for your personal growth path.

Have it by your side as you cultivate confidence, reach for your goals and bloom into the radiant woman you were always meant to be.

Tend to the Garden of Your Mind and Transform Your Life! 

It’s available on paperback. Get your pens out and start journaling! Make a purchase of the Mindset Journal for Women on Amazon here! 

Thank you for your support, Evelyn LimTransformation Life Coach

Well, I’d like to share my answers with you here, in case you are wondering the same too. 

EFT Tapping for Raising Vibrations

In case this is the first time you are hearing about EFT tapping, it is a therapeutic method where we use the fingertips to tap on specific meridian endpoints on the face and body. EFT tapping is a great tool for releasing emotional disruptions and restoring the body’s energy system. You can find out more about EFT tapping points here or simply subscribe to my newsletter to get a downloadable book on EFT tapping. 

Emotions, just like anything else in the Universe, are energy.

If you have negative emotions, they cause a disruption in your body and create blocks in the energy flow. By tapping on specific meridian points while focusing on the negative emotion, you can effectively release the blockages, allowing energy to flow freely again.

The idea of “raising vibration” happens when you shift your emotional state from a lower vibrational frequency (associated with positive emotions such as fear, anger, or doubt) to a higher vibrational frequency (associated with negative emotions such as joy, love, or gratitude).

After releasing the emotional disruptions, you are likely to find it easier to experience a shift in perspective to a more empowering and supportive one. What’s more, the EFT tapping process often incorporates positive affirmations or statements to counteract negative beliefs or emotions. While tapping, you get to reinforce positive thinking patterns; which contributes to raising your vibrations. Both your thoughts and feelings influence your energy state, after all. 

Raise Your Vibration to Attract What You Want 

Raising your vibration helps to raise your ability to attract an outcome that matches the same frequency.

“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.” ~ quote often attributed to Albert Einstein

It’s also what the Law of Attraction is about – like attracts like. 

Chances are, the outcomes that you want are situations that energetically have higher vibrations – results or things that are about love, joy and blessings.

If what you want is more money, income or riches, it boils down to how having this is going to enrich your life. This ONE secret is how my clients have been able to make money or sales breakthroughs. 

In short, raise your vibrations to attract what you want in life and one great way to raise your frequency is via using EFT tapping.

If you have more questions, do ask. Get on a call with me here. I’d love to be able to help you with your questions. 

Love and abundance always, 
Evelyn Lim
Transformation Life Coach

Even though the past traumatic experience is now over, our nervous system continues to use the encoded information that is from the distressing memory to disrupt us today. 

Let me attempt to explain further. Say, you find yourself experiencing anxiety symptoms such as nervous tension, dizziness, an inability to keep still or even having meltdowns. If you are to trace back the earliest time when you first had these symptoms, you may realise that your problem originated from the past. Your body is responding or reacting today from what took place years ago. This being the case, it is drawing information from the past and activating your nervous system. Using the picture, you will see how the “zzz” energy disruption is affecting you. 

Your nervous system signals a lack of safety, triggering the instinct to protect yourself often through fight, flight or freeze response. You are also apt to undertake behavioural patterns that put you in self-sabotage. Thus, despite your desire to lead your best life or to move forward, you remain captive to your past.

Note that past trauma need not be big events such as a death, divorce, sexual assault and so on. So long as the event or incident causes you emotional distress, you could potentially be disrupted for years. For example, if your mother ignored your cries for help in the past, the lack of love and feeling unworthy could affect you. And if she had repeatedly ignored you during childhood, you might find yourself always needing to seek approval and ending up in unhealthy relationships. 

How You Can Reverse Self-Sabotage

Fortunately, while you can’t alter the past traumatic events since they happened the way they did, you can still change the energetic information bringing about the distress that is affecting you today.

Since the body keeps the score, a somatic release and the calming of your nervous system is required. You work on clearing the “zzz” energy disruption. Once it is cleared, your past memory may remain but you are not longer affected by what took place in the past. Thus, if you’d like a more effective way of stopping the automatic responses and to reprogram a different response such that you are no longer having nervous tension and so on, the body and the nervous system need to be involved. This is why talk therapy alone is not effective for cases of deep-rooted anxiety, anger or depression. 

By releasing the energetic information and releasing the embodied distress at the root memory when your trauma first began, it becomes possible to free yourself. No longer holding on bottled-up anger and anxiety, you start to feel lighter and better. It’s how you can become more present and gain the freedom to pursue the life that you want. 
Hope the above information is helpful to you. 

Wishing you well-being,
Evelyn Lim
Transformation Life
To find out more about working together, apply for a Discovery Call. 

Do you go over “poor me”, “poor me” and “poor me” in your mind?

You could also be repeating the same thing to the people that you meet too.

“Poor me” is akin to having a victim mentality. You are in self-pity. A “poor me” syndrome arises especially when you are constantly pointing blame outwards. It could be the fault of your grandmother, father, the government, the economy and so on. It is always the fault of someone or something else except yours.

[Side-note] This post is updated as the content is still relevant today.

“Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the nonpharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.” John W. Gardner

When you think “poor me”, you find yourself realising situations of poor and poverty at the physical level. Thoughts become things, after all. And you know how it is like when you have a sequence of thoughts that are negative. You start to spiral downwards. Over time, you feel more and more miserable and poor and poorer. Invariably, your situation gets worse and worse.

You may not recognise yourself as having a “poor me” syndrome at first. It could be subtle behind your complaints that “life is hard” or that “life is unfair”. But “poor me” could be the unsaid thought that lies beneath the blame that you feel for the outside world. It happens when you pine for sympathy for your situation.

Playing Out the Poor Me Syndrome – Different Scenarios

Unfortunately, there are many women who fall into the category of “poor me”. They crave for a sense of belonging in sisterhoods. Their idea is to come together to complain and compare who has the worst stories. They are great hosts of pity parties that are long-drawn.

Maybe you are thinking if you whine “poor me”, none of your friends will borrow money from you. You don’t want others to know that you actually have excess money in the bank or that you have just gotten promoted with a nice pay rise. However, holding on to such thoughts is not promoting a sense of growth.

When you blame others, you are saying that you are not responsible. You are not taking charge. In other words, you are giving your power away.

You could be feeling justified anger because it is the government, the tax department or the economy that you are blaming – factors that are outside your control. Then again, should you lay blame on any of these authorities, you are basically allowing an external party or force to determine your happiness or level of wealth. It is still giving power away.

Get Over Your “Poor Me” Mentality

The only “thing” that you can control or change is you and your perspective. You always have a choice in how you intend to view your situation.

Blame obstructs the flow of abundance into your life. It does not serve you in any way. Wallowing in self-pity is not attractive in the least. If you have been around people who are blaming others all the time, you will know how toxic blame can be. You don’t win by playing victim, you win only when you take charge of your power to create and to manifest the life that you want.

Prosperity is a state of mind. Instead of “poor me”, think “rich me”. Focus on the blessings in your life and by virtue of the law of attraction, you will start to draw more blessings into your life.

“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.” Brian Tracy

Love and Abundance Always,
Evelyn Lim
Transformation Life Coach 

Share Your Thoughts

Any comments on the “poor me syndrome”? If so, share below.