Do You Have A Core Belief You Are Bad?
Naughty Girl
When I was 12 I was caught stealing a .99 cent ring at Woolworths. The police were called, and I was driven home in a police car. I remember seeing my friends playing on the street and their faces at seeing me in a cop car. Lots of shame and lots of drama.
I went to bed afterwards and I remember feeling so ashamed, waiting for my punishment, which never came, my father said that he felt that what I had been through was punishment enough.
I remember that no one bought me dinner that night in my bedroom.
But there was punishment, it was more the way I was treated there after through my teens. It was very different to how I was treated before my teens. I was a bad egg and not to be trusted. After a while I stopped trusting myself.
This incident has been one of those defining moments all my life.
Trustworthy
I went on to attract people who were untrustworthy, like I believed myself to be, and my behaviour was such that I had to keep proving that I was good. And this meant that I was loyal in times I shouldn’t have been, was nice in the face of ill treatment. I was so intent on proving I was good that I didn’t even think about whether the company I was keeping was healthy or not.
It caused me to also give my power away to everyone in my world. That they would perceive me to be bad and I had to prove I was good. I was always worried I was being judged, and what they thought of me was more important than what I thought of me. So I would have to filter everything I did and said through a gauge of badness. That I was going to hurt people. Or do something wrong.
The most damaging relationship I had was the one I had with myself.
I have visited this incident so many times in my healing, but I could never get past that I was bad and had to try harder than most to be good.
Prayers
So, in thinking about what lead me to steal, with it being such a hugely impactful moment in my life, I had the sense that it wasn’t just one of those silly things kids do. It really did reflect how I felt about myself.
What came to me was that all my childhood and into my 20s, I said nightly prayers, I was scared not to, as if something bad would happen.
“God Bless Mummy, Daddy, Karen (that’s me), Maree and Lynn, Nanna, Pop, Ken, Leslie, Trevor, Willie, Grandma and Grandpa up in heaven, and make Karen, Maree and Lynn good little girls, forever and ever, Amen.”
And make Karen Maree and Lynn good little girls.
So, that’s assuming we weren’t good girls. That we need a nightly prayer to keep us good. What power that line had for me saying it repetitively for 20 odd years.
Born in sin
My grandparents were born at the end of the Victorian era, where kids were seen as sinful and bad and needing to be steered right.
My sisters may not have even had this prayer affect them like it did me, there was probably something in my soul’s journey that needed healing around this. I was conceived out of wedlock and there was a lot of drama around this in my family back in the early 60s.
Religion for my grandparents is like weight loss for western culture now, it was the mindset that was at the core of society. They were God Fearing, not believing that God is Love.
Vocation
Since my mid 20s I have helped people heal their blocks and restrictions, but for myself I felt as if I had to clear the bad in me in order to make me good. I have to get the bad out of me.
At a soul level I will have chosen this path in order to align me to do the work that I do, but now I can do the same thing, but without the charge around *bad*.
What if I was good and had some blocks?
I can still work on healing myself but from a different perspective than being bad at my core. I may have to transmute the dark into light but that doesn’t mean I am the darkness.
No doubt there’s past life trauma here, especially around religion. Persecution for being a witch is usually a trauma a lot of healers have in their Soul’s journey.
The Sins of the Mother
Funnily enough, in doing accounts for my son’s business, I sort out payments FROM Woolworths. Both my sons had worked in supermarkets when they were young, and now one son works for the parent distribution company for supermarkets, overseeing the software that programs the tills. The other son has his sports supplement products in supermarkets. Woolworths being one of them.
This also shows how an unhealed trauma can affect the next generation.
At your core do you feel you are bad and have to strive for goodness?
Comments
mynewchapters
Hi, Kate! This is a great article. It’s brave of you to put forward such personal information and assist others on their healing journeys (as usual)! I was also born out of wedlock, but at the tail end of the 60s, which was still 60s enough. My mother hated me for being born and told me often that I was cause of every problem in my life. No four year old should have to hear how hated she is so often–or at all–and especially not so loudly and with such venom. It was a gift, though, as I have learned/am learning to love myself, since I had no one to do it for me. I thought I did not deserve love, and have been told this several times over, that I don’t deserve love, food, clothes, presents, etc. But again, the journey to love myself is priceless, and I’m sure I orchestrated this experience in order to bring the love into my life. Now to tell myself I’ve made up for the missing food, clothes, and presents so that I can achieve a healthy weight and balance in my life! There’s always something to work on. I’m a good person, but don’t tell my mother.
Elizabeth T-C
As usual….. your eloquent way with words make me tighten my throat; seeing this little girl intensely praying for absolution. I did the same. Praying and offending. Shaming was quite a big thing at ours. Trying to get someone’s forgiveness. Knowing that I was probably lost forever and ever. Always on the wrong side of the line.
it is amazing how these things echo through time and space. Afraid of being thrown out of the family . Loosing a family. Being alone and wondering what to do to get back on to the carrousel – because I am bad and not invited to the party. … amazing how you writing goes to the core, thank you, Kate
Mary
I was shamed at age 5 for saying something that was labelled sexual at the time. Basically I was describing a picture I saw in the lingerie section of a catalogue my mum received at home. The teacher got me out in front of class and shamed me there and then, after which I had to face the music at home. It was earth shattering to have the two bonds that I relied on practically severed that way. I grew up listening to sex being the devil’s invention and being stopped completely from dating from the ages 14 to 24. The body shaming was intense; mum made sure I got the lesson in more ways than one. Now in my 40s, I’m sorting out a divorce … a marriage to a man who refused to be intimate with me for 7 years out of an 11 year marriage while having affairs throughout the marriage. He said he was punishing me for giving him a daughter who has physical disabilities. The day I left him, my brother (a Catholic priest) told me he was absolving me from my sins and blessing me to keep me protected from the devil. I replied that I had just left the devil behind me in another town. Talking of absolution… one of my sisters tried to take my daughter when she was 6 months to an exorcist to absolve her of her mother’s sins… and have her disabilites removed that way. It’s called cerebral palsy, and she’s an adorable little angel. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.