The five wounds of childhood | La Carologie | TEDxIMTLilleDouai

Carolina, from Geneva, is a young creator on YouTube where she opened, a few years ago, her channel called "La Carologie" in which she shares her thoughts on subjects close to her heart. Her passion for personnel development lead her to discover the concept of the five wounds of childhood developped in one of Lise Bourbeau book ...

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

Many thanks for attending today,

and a special thank you for giving me
the opportunity to share a tool with you

that has truly changed my life.

I learned this tool
from reading a book called

"Heal your wounds and find
your true self" by Lise Bourbeau.

But before that, first things first,
let me introduce myself.

So, I'm Carolina.

I'm what you might call a "YouTuber".

For three and a half years now,
I've been making YouTube videos

in which I share my concerns,
my soul-searching,

and lots of things
about the human experience

because this what I do all the time:

wondering and trying to understand
the how, why and what

of absolutely everything
that happens to me.

I read a book, "Heal your wounds
and find your true self"

that helped me change
my relationship with myself

and thus my relationships
with others as well.

Before we begin, I'd like
to make a disclaimer

as I usually do in my videos.

It's that I'm going to present
a model that I consider simple,

understandable, and very attainable
that really speaks to me.

However, this model is presented among
a bunch of the author's other beliefs

that are a matter of faith.

For example, she talks
about reincarnation

about the apparition
of wounds on the body, etc.,

things in which I personally
do not believe.

So you need to take some
distance while you read it.

If it speaks to you then good for you,

otherwise take away what you can,
it's still very interesting.

So, what does Lise Bourbeau talk about?

As the book's title indicates,
she talks about the soul's wounds.

In our society as we know it,

it is true that the emotional body
is often put on the back burner

in terms of the attention
and care that we give it.

But of course, if we get hurt -

although some of you may put off
going to the doctor or hospital -

usually when we get hurt,
we seek treatment

such as when we break a limb
or feel pain somewhere.

But when it comes to the emotional body

and what's going on in
our minds and in our souls,

it is much more complicated to see

that indeed, we may have wounds,
and indeed, we may even suffer from them.

So Lise Bourbeau explains
that we can classify

the wounds made to the emotional body

into five large categories
of negative emotions.

Later on, I'll present them in detail
but just to list them,

these are betrayal, abandonment,
rejection, humiliation, and injustice.

We all pretty much know
what these emotions feel like.

We've all experienced them before.

But Lise Bourbeau says that these emotions

leave a mark on us from a very young age
and play a part in forming our ego.

Now there are plenty
of different definitions of "ego".

It depends on your affinity
with different fields

because you can study the ego
in a lot of different domains.

Lise Bourbeau explains that, in fact,

these wounds create in us
the need to protect ourselves.

How? By using what she calls "a mask".

I'll show you that later.

If we were to make a comparison
between this mask and a physical trait,

we could compare it to a glove
that we put on a wounded hand,

the wound being this emotion
that affected us as young children.

So I'm going to show you a little table.

There's a lot of information,
but I'm going to explain everything.

So she tells us that these wounds
that I was telling you about

are sometimes things
that we experienced unconsciously,

things that perhaps
we don't remember anymore

because it seems to me
that human memory

really begins around age five -
correct me if I'm wrong.

So obviously, within five years of living,

we've had the opportunity to experience
many different emotions.

These emotions that are listed
here in the first column,

create in us behaviors
aimed at protecting the ego,

listed in the second column,
that we call "the mask".

So this mask, according
to our previous metaphor,

is a glove with which we cover our wound.

We all know that when we get hurt,
to stop the pain we need treatment.

So in this case,
when we use the mask,

that is when we put
a glove over this wound,

we don't take into account the pain
that the wound can inflict upon us.

And sadly, if someone reaches out
to try to help us and touches it,

we are likely to have
a rejection response

and react in a way where we
misunderstand the other person.

We're going to say, "Why are you
hurting me? Don't touch me."

But others can't know
that we're hurt if we wear a glove.

They only see that we're hurt.

And so Lise Bourbeau's model
helps us understand

how these masks

create a barrier between us and others
but also between us and ourselves

because oftentimes,
we're not aware of them.

We don't know why we use them.

We don't know what they are
or what they are trying to protect.

Now rest assured,
we don't always wear these masks.

We only wear them in situations in which
the ego is afraid of getting hurt again

and suffering from these large wounds
that we carry within ourselves.

So, for the first ...

For the first wound, the associated mask
is the mask of "the controller".

Personally, I relate to this one. Why?

Because acting in a controlling
manner in any situation,

wanting to keep control of it,

is a way of ensuring that nothing
and no one can betray us.

Obviously, if I call over and over
to be sure that we'll be on time,

that we'll be at the given place,
that I'm not going to be let down, etc.,

I'm making sure that I won't be betrayed,
so I'm wearing the mask of the controller.

For the second wound, abandonment,
we will use the mask of "the dependent".

Why?

Because if I act as if
I depend on the other,

this way I reassure myself
that he or she will not abandon me.

It's a way of ensuring I won't be alone
and this person won't let me down

in the same circumstances
where I felt abandoned in the past.

And so the dependent mask serves
to hide the wound of abandonment.

For the third wound, rejection,
we'll use the mask of "the fugitive".

Why?

Because when we flee a situation, it's
a way of anticipating getting rejected.

If I'm facing someone and start imagining
that this person is going to reject me,

by fleeing, I deprive him or her
of the opportunity to reject me.

By doing so, I avoid the situation
in which I might feel rejected.

For the fourth wound, humiliation,

the mask is that of "the masochist".

The masochist is the person who always
puts himself down, belittles himself,

or may excessively self-deprecate.

And consequently, like the fugitive,

the masochist prevents
others from doing it.

If I spend my time putting myself down,
making bad jokes about myself,

and showing that I am
stupid, ugly, and so on,

it doesn't leave room for others to
humiliate me since I'm already doing it.

So this allows me to protect myself
from the wound of humiliation.

And to conclude,
the fifth wound, injustice,

is associated with
the mask of "the rigid".

When we act in an unyielding way,

consistently within a framework
or a protocol so to speak,

and when we don't want to leave
our little boxes or our beaten tracks,

it's a way of making sure
that there won't be any injustice

and that we won't
experience unfairness.

It's similar to the controller
but in a more precise context

and within very precise limits.

So Lise Bourbeau says that, unfortunately,

one of these five wounds is likely
to dominate over the others.

Maybe you can see yourself
in one of those five, or maybe in several,

in any case, some are usually
more present than others.

Often, we created these wounds during
our first encounters with humans

when we arrived on little Planet Earth.

It could be the presence of our parents
and our relationship with them

just as it could be their absence.

You can imagine that if I was
a child born an orphan,

the main wound would perhaps
be that of abandonment or rejection.

But the fact remains
that even if we had parents,

and even if we had
the opportunity to live with them,

our first interaction with them

can potentially cause these wounds
in our emotional body.

And so we grow up through our life

with behaviors sometimes
protective and sometimes not,

but behaviors that seem
completely innate, natural to us,

that are part of our identity
our personality,

while in fact, for many of them,

it"s just a way to believe
that we are protecting ourselves

and doing all we can to not suffer.

So, this prevents us
from getting to the third column,

which I named "Solution".

In the solutions - again, I'm going
to go through them one by one -

we can see how we need to let go

if we use the mask of controller
to hide the wound of betrayal.

It's very difficult, and I'm proof
when it comes to betrayal.

It's true that many times in my life,

I had a hard time letting go
in certain situations

because I always wanted
to control everything.

Ultimately, instead of truly
protecting myself from suffering,

it kept me from being happy

when I should have let go
in certain situations when I needed to.

For the second, how
can we become autonomous

in circumstances in which we should,

if we always use the mask of dependency
to ensure we won't be abandoned ?

That's quite difficult!

For the third,

having to confront situations is something
extremely painful and hard to do

if we always use the mask of the fugive
to avoid the wound of rejection.

It's the same for self-esteem
regarding the wound of humiliation:

How can we develop self-esteem when
we spend our time putting ourselves down

and end up believing
what we say about ourselves?

We often say that
it's humorous and for fun,

and we know it makes people laugh,
but in reality, there's a big chance

that when we put ourselves down,
there's some truth behind it,

or we end up believing it.

So that's what we use to hide,
the wound of humiliation.

And the last is flexibility.

How to succeed in having a certain
degree of flexibility in any situation,

if we spend our time having a strict
behavior so as to avoid injustice?

It's quite complicated.

Personally, reading
this book helped me a lot,

to the extent that I guess, studies have
been made in psychology and neuroscience

that have tried to explain this in a much
more Cartesian and scientific manner.

It helped me a lot because it allowed me
to stop identifying with my suffering,

and stop believing that I was inherently
somebody like this, that is, controlling -

indeed, I do have concerns
for others, don't worry.

So she enabled me to realize
that there are times

where we can spot
ourselves using our masks.

There's certainly a moment
in your lives or maybe several,

when you've asked yourself
more or less regularly,

"Why on Earth did I react like that?
That didn't make sense."

Sometimes, a misunderstanding occurred
with people who didn't mean harm,

but we had no doubt that they wanted
to abandon us, reject us, humiliate us,

or we deemed the situation unjust
or they had betrayed us.

Yet, on their side,
that was not necessarily the case.

Therefore, instead of protecting us,
these masks do nothing more than limit us.

Now this does protect us at times.

The ego protects us in some cases
and it's necessary.

But very often, it's just an obstacle

in our personal fulfillment
and in our self-understanding.

Once we realize when we wear the mask,
we can ask ourselves where it comes from,

where it originates,
when did we start wearing it,

with whom do we wear it,
in which moments of our lives,

and when was it
most difficult to take it off.

This enables us to get past
our toxic behaviors towards ourselves

and even sometimes the wall
we put between ourselves and others,

so that we can try to discover
another part of us,

another facet of our personality,

that matches more closely
with the person we'd like to be.

So if you're interested, I invite you
to read Lise Bourbeau's work,

but also see if you can find this kind of
model in other fields - I'm sure there is.

But most importantly,
I invite you to take off your mask.

Thank you.