Healing the Five Wounds of the Heart: Free Yourself From the Bonds of the Past

You avoid commitment.

Left untreated, the five wounds of the heart lead to repetition compulsion, also known as trauma reenactment—the mysterious effect by which humans seek out the very same situations that hurt them in the past.

if you grew up with a mother who required you to create a false self to please her, you may believe that creating a false self is just a normal requirement of being loved.

You have a desperate need to please

Do you avoid people? Do you give too much? Do you build walls against intimacy?

Judgment: You keep getting involved with people and institutions who criticize and shame you, and your response to life's stressors is to criticize and shame yourself. No matter how hard you try to seek out supportive partners and friends, you end up with people who put you down. Alternatively, important people in your life have told you that your

Repetition compulsion is life's way of giving us opportunities to heal. Although we cannot time travel to the past and change things, we can heal the past by responding to our present situation in new ways.

Denial: You keep getting involved with people and institutions who require you to bury your true self and put up a false front. No matter how firmly you resolve to be yourself, you end up developing a new persona to please others. Alternatively, important people in your life have told you that they can't be their true selves around

Separation: You keep getting involved with people or institutions who make you feel like you're all alone. No matter how hard you try to connect with other people, you still feel cut off and isolated. Alternatively, important people in your life have told you that it's difficult to connect with you or make you part of a group, no matter how hard th