Focusing Tip #854 – Emotional Wounds of Childhood – “I compare myself negatively to other people”

August 16, 2023 Ann Weiser Cornell

"There is a feeling of feeling inferior or feeling less... and there is a part that knows this comes from childhood..."

Focusing Tip #854 – Emotional Wounds of Childhood – “I compare myself negatively to other people”

What if you know that your painful feelings now are connected to the past? Read on…

Gloria writes:

Sometimes, at work, and also in other spaces, something in me feels uncomfortable with comparisons with other people, there is a feeling of feeling inferior or feeling less.

At the same time there is a part that knows that this comes from childhood, together with the demands of school and my father, and never being good enough.

Do you think you could give me some guidelines for how to work with it, producing some movement of change forward?

Dear Gloria:

You’ve taken the first important step toward shifting this pattern — using the phrase “something in me” when speaking about that part of you that feels inferior to other people.

Now sit down in a quiet time and close your eyes, letting awareness come to the inner area of your body, and remember a recent time this happened. And say: “Something in me felt inferior there, and I’m inviting the feel of that in my body now.”

Not instantly, but in a little while, you will feel something in the inner middle area of your body. It might not be strong, and it might not be in words, but it’s there.

Just be with it. Sense how it feels… describe it… check the description with it. You’ll feel your contact with this part of you deepening as you continue to hold it in a non-judgmental relationship.

At some point this “something in you” may show you memories from your childhood, experiences you went through, ways you were treated by other people. Let it know you see what it’s showing you.

Now your inner relationship is with the “younger you” who went through those things. You can say to her: “I know that was (and is) really hard for you. And I am with you now.” When this younger part knows that you are with her, and you are listening, the process of healing and change has already begun.