About Assessing  for Psychological Wounds

      Research suggests that many typical U.S. adults carry up to six psychological wounds from too little early-childhood nurturance. The wounds range from minor to life-threatening. They amplify four other hazards that promote our unremarked U.S. divorce epidemic. The core wound is a personality composed of many disorganized subselves - a reactive, survival-oriented "false self." False-self wounds (a) promote characteristic attitudes and behaviors which (b) cause predictable health and relationship consequences, including unintentionally passing on the wounds to descendants.

      Self-study Lesson 1 here provides a way to test for these wounds and intentionally reduce them over time. Typical false selves are dis-trustful, scared, and need to distort reality. They don't trust that wound-assessment and relying on the resident true Self is safe, or that true (vs. pseudo) wound-recovery will promote significant benefits for them and people around them. Normal symptoms of this distrust include thoughts like "This is stupid New Age psychobabble. Forget it!"; "No way I have a 'false self!'";  "Everybody is a little wounded, so no big deal;"  "I'm not wounded, but (someone else) is)!"; and "I probably should assess for these wounds. I'll get to it soon...'' 

       Lesson 1 provides 11 assessment checklists to overcome protec-tive false-self deceptions. Many wounded people must stabilize and control (vs. "cure") one or more addictions before they can progress with full recovery from false-self wounds. Are you willing to assess for false-self wounds now?