“I’m not good enough.” “I’m unlovable.” “He is lazy.” “People can’t be trusted.” Oh, the stories we tell ourselves and don’t even know it because they’re stored in our subconscious mind and imprinted in our body. For that alone, you can understand why story is a buzz word in the spiritual and self-development world and I am definitely one who helps that word buzz around! Story is a mental narrative we believe about ourselves, other people, and the world around us. But, in this post, I’m only going to focus on the former.
To me, the word story is a genius term because it creates a powerful distinction between what’s real (aka reality) and what’s fiction. But, we don’t think its fiction because we’ve been telling ourselves these limited beliefs for so long, which makes it seem real while the emotional memory – that once got imprinted and stored in our body – makes it feel real as those 2 combined create our perception of life. So, the question is, where did that story come from in the first place?
Limiting stories began at a young age, when we experienced our first failure or that “something is wrong.” And, because we didn’t deal with it properly, it stayed with us as we got older, to become our ultimate decision-maker on how we approach life. These stories get in the way of us knowing, experiencing, and living our fullest potential. In fact, this is where the term inner child comes from. Many psychologists, personal growth and spiritual teachers talk about the importance of healing the inner child because the inner child, in most cases, refers to the wounds that never got healed. It goes something like this:
Something happened –> our sensory filter created an unfamiliar and uncomfortable emotion or physical body sensation –> we didn’t understand the feeling and then labeled it “bad” or “wrong” –> so, we created a meaning to why it happened (It’s similar to assumption-making as human beings need answers for fear of the unknown and uncertainty, to the point where we’ll make it up and even believe it if we have to.) –> the emotion wasn’t fully felt, so it got stored in our body as an imprint of an emotional memory –> and then became our story. And, the craziest part is, this entire process can happen in a literal millisecond!
A quick example: I have an identical twin, Jill, and we were in different kindergarten classes. We got our report cards to bring home to our parents and almost immediately when I saw she had all O’s (outstanding) and I had mostly S’s (satisfactory), I got a terrible feeling inside that I hadn’t felt before. And because I didn’t understand what I was feeling, I quickly told myself that “I’m stupid”. Ugh! From that moment on, that’s how I lived my life for 28 LONG years. That story made my life extremely difficult and this was just from ONE of the stories I was living. Yeah…think about that for a moment…and unfortunately, we ALL have them. So, needless to say, my 20s were M-E-S-S-Y until I started working on myself and eventually had a massive mental shift around it 14 years ago. Woohoo!
To end, the reason I’m posting about this is because kambo can be an important tool for breaking those deep rooted stories and I’ll explain why and how in the next post. Stay Tuned and Viva Kambo!