Healing your Core Wound, and Sharing your Gift with the World

Eric is flying solo this week. Join him as he talks about unlocking your true potential by tapping into and sharing your unique gifts.

Topics:
➡️ Discovering your innate skills and how to harness them in everyday life.
➡️ Overcoming the perfection barrier to start helping others with what you already know.
➡️ The impact of integrating and sharing your gifts within the community.

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TRANSCRIPT:

All right, hey, listeners, so running solo today, Kate is traveling, so I'm going to be running the next week or two, just on my own. And really wanted to dive into some very important and deep topics. So you know, if you don't know us already, Kate and I, I'm certainly more of the thinker, the person that goes into a lot more depth, almost like obsessive with human behavior. Kate often adds more levity, more life energy to us. If it was up to me, I would always just be overthinking everything and really diving deep into these things. I think Kate has the ability to sometimes pull me out of that. That being said over the next episode or two, we're really going to be diving into some deep topics, but I'm going to do it in a way that is digestible for you and especially actionable, which is what this podcast is all about. We really want to help you understand more about yourself and how it not only impacts your relationships, but also how you show up in life. And so today, the episode is going to be really about understanding, kind of your own core wound, how it's impacting the way you show up in life, and how to connect to your gifts so you can share them with the world. We're going to talk a little bit about kind of the foundation of all this and where it's based out of, and then break down, you know, how to understand your core wound, how to go about healing it, and then also how to understand your gifts and how to go about sharing them, which is really, really important if you are listening to this on the podcast. I would love it if you could, you know, like, subscribe, share, do all that good stuff. Just help us get the word out. We don't do any ads or anything like that, so we do count on our listeners to spread the word, to share the episode, even to Like and leave reviews. That really helps us. And we're now on YouTube, so you might be listening this video on YouTube. Would love it if you could, you know, do all the YouTube stuff again. We're brand new to this, but yeah, if you could subscribe to our YouTube channel, give us a like, add a comment to let me know what you think that would be super, super helpful to our message, and we would be ever grateful to you. So thanks for that. So let's go ahead and start with this idea of our core wound. And so oftentimes our core wounds, what does that mean? Right? There are these deep emotional wounds that we carry with us. You might not even be conscious of them, right? They might just be running your life in the background, subconsciously or even unconsciously. But oftentimes, these wounds, they start out in childhood, and so, you know, because we are so dependent on our caretakers when we're very young, we experience these wounds and adapt to them in a way to create secure connection, right? And so maybe you felt ignored or left out. Maybe you had a caretaker that when you reach for them, they weren't available to you for whatever reason. You know, maybe they were doing the best, and obviously they're your parents, but you know, they just weren't available to you. Maybe your father was at work all the time. You know, your mom was busy with other siblings, or things going on in our life, and so when you reached for them, they weren't available to you. So maybe you felt left out. Maybe something happened where you felt betrayed, right? Maybe when you asked for help, you were told that, hey, that's not okay to ask for that. You know, you're on your own, or, you know, go to your room in isolation. So all these like small, nuanced things over childhood kind of add up, if you will. It's this whole idea that, over time, you have created this wounding and then learn to adapt in order to get closeness, but at the same time keep yourself safe and so understanding what your core wound is and healing it, you know, is a lot of what personal growth talks about in terms of unlearning, right? It's like, Oh, we got to unlearn all the stuff we learn. Well, what they're talking about, most likely is, or most often, is this idea that you have this wound that you need to heal, and if you're not aware and not moving towards healing it, and not creating a relationship with that wound in order to integrate it, it's most likely going to run your life in in all kinds of different ways, right? And you know, if you think about how they affect us today, they're affecting us in so many ways, if you're not aware of it and learning to heal it, you know, through relationship, through action, through stepping into your courage and your power, right? Maybe you know if you've been hurt before by a caretaker and think that hey, like when I reached when I was young, love wasn't available to me, or I was scolded to be like, hey, stop asking for that, or stop opening up, or stop being emotional. Well, what's going to happen now in your current relationship is you're going to have shut up, shut down, that part of you, right? Maybe you are very scared to be vulnerable. Maybe you're very scared to show yourself. Maybe you're very scared to talk about your feelings. Because you learned when you were young that whenever I talk about my feelings, I'm scolded and I'm told to go away and essentially, secure connection breaks. And so the best way for me to maintain secure connection is to keep all those feelings to myself and never open up and just kind of show up in the way that the other person wants me to show up. Um. You know, if you think about even at work, right, you might be avoiding certain promotions, or you might be avoiding going after, you know, courageously what you want, or speaking your voice. Because maybe you believe that, you know, hey, if I get this promotion, and I get put in this position where I have to, you know, manage other people, or do more work or be more seen by people, well, then that actually leaves me open to more criticism. And I grew up in a home that was, you know, very critical, and that criticism really hurt, so therefore I'm just going to kind of remain invisible, remain in the background, and never be kind of in the spotlight, if you will. And that's the way that I protect myself from criticism. Is to just be invisible, be forgotten, you know, never have an own needs, never ask for what I want, and just exist and again, like it's an adaptation that you learned in order to create secure connection, right? So you might not like that part of yourself, but the reality is, you have to create a relationship with that part of yourself and realize that it served you at one point in your life, it's just not serving you anymore. So you're just running an old programming we call like an emotional echo that's essentially showing up today in your life, that's preventing you from going after what you from going after what you want, but because you haven't created a relationship with it, healed and integrated it, it's still running a pattern. And so that's really important to understand your core wounds and how they affect you, right? And it's even like your inner voice. One of the best ways to understand your core wounds is to listen to your inner voice. Like, what does your voice tell you? If your voice is constantly telling you, know you suck, you don't do this. You're not enough. You're not working hard enough. Well, that's going to give you a little bit of insight as to your core wound. You're right. Maybe it's you know, unless you were serving others, or unless you were doing something for others, that somehow you didn't have value. And so you're constantly playing this loop of like, I'm never enough, and I always need to do more in order to be loved and accepted. And whenever I feel not good or lonely or unaccepted or unloved, well, my response to that is to go and do more work and go and serve more people, because I realized that in my family of origin, that's the way that I was loved, right? It was like, whenever I did something really good for somebody, it was like, great. Whenever I didn't do something for anybody, I was told like, you never do enough, you're lazy, you don't show up, right? And you're only about yourself. You're selfish. And so again, that creates this story that now you're running in your background, internally, in your voice that's affecting you. And so your inner voice, your inner critic, is going to give you a little bit of insight as to what your core wound is. And you know, a way to really kind of step into that and start to heal your core women. So the first step is to, you know, we call like witnessing, but essentially like, take a breath, step back and think about a situation where you know your reactions maybe were out of line, right? And so you want to be in your wise adult here, when you're doing this, you don't want to be in that place of like, the, what we call like an adaptive child, right? This is Terry Real's word, but he talks about this idea of like,

you know, when you're in your adaptation, when you're in that kind of inner child, you're just focused on self protection, like you're not focused on connection, you're not focused on, you know, growing. You're not focusing on anything like that. You're just in that survival mode. And so you want to get to a place where you're in your wise adults, right? So when you can take a breath, when you're outside of the area of conflict, that panic mode, and getting to a place where now you can kind of revisit a moment and say, hey, yeah. Actually, it's weird that when my wife said that, you know, she wouldn't come to bed with me, or she showed up late on time that I just fucking, you know, raged at her. I got super angry. I yelled at her. I started accusing her. So that's a moment when then your wound showed up. If you think about it like a like, if you had a big wound on your arm, well, that moment, what happens is, like somebody slaps that wound, right? And so again, like your nervous system is just going nuts, like, that's so painful. And also your your nervous system is lashing out on the world, trying to protect you. And in that moment, you're creating more pain, right? Because you're acting from that very wounded place. But you have to understand, like, hey, what showed up in that moment? Why was that so intense for me, right? Why was it that I was raging at my wife or showing up late? And then I realized that, you know, over time like and again, this is some deep work, right? You can get some help around this, but I realized that my wife showing up late is the same thing I experienced when I wanted to see my dad, and he never came home, and he was always working. He was just never available to me. And so thinking about my wife, prioritizing her work, really woke up that wound in me and made me feel like I was in a priority to her. And that scared me, right? And when I was scared in that moment, the way I reacted was to try to control her, to try to get her to understand me, to try to get her to really protect me, and the way that I did that in my adaptation was to yell at her and try to control her, right? And this is kind of, as you break down your core wound is really recognizing it, understanding it, so you can heal it right? And because if you can't recognize it, if you're just like on autopilot, you're like, I'm not doing anything wrong. It's all good. It's totally fine that I'm you know, I think about this a lot with men, it's like, you know, they do these really, like, violent things, right? They yell and they scream and, you know, like me years ago, like I used to punch holes in walls, and then I used to justify that, like, Well, I'm not an angry guy, you know, it's just Kate did x, y and z, so that's why I punched a hole in the wall. And so I was even, like, oblivious and protecting myself. In this acknowledgement that I was angry, like I was so angry and and I was so disconnected to that part of myself, like I thought it was so bad to be angry that I was like, I'm not angry. And I just couldn't accept that part of me. And so part of my healing was to recognize I am angry. I'm angry at this situation, right? And and then understanding that, like punching holes in walls is absolutely unacceptable. It's violent, right? And there's other ways that I can deal with my anger, but the first way to deal with my anger is to understand that it exists and to stop, stop avoiding it or trying to push it away, or stop saying like I'm just not angry, like I'm No, I am angry. Here's why I'm angry, here's a situation that's going on, here's what it brings up for me. And to really speak truth to that anger and connect with it so I can integrate it. Because, you know, we always talk about this in EMC, in the involvements collective but all transformation starts with truth. And if you're unwilling to be true to yourself, you're unwilling to speak truth to yourself, and you're just blaming everybody else, avoiding, arguing, justifying, trying to avoid the truth, well you're never going to be able to transform. And so really understanding that you know you have to recognize and and then understand why you're doing what you're doing so you can heal it right? And then the healing process often is done with help. It's done with support. It's done with trusting people. This is a huge part of what we do in the beginning of a man's journey and evolved Collective is we help him heal that core wound so that it's not just spreading to his marriage, to his family, to his kids, so he can leave a healthy legacy, instead of just continuing the cycle, right of, for lack of a better term, woundedness, that he's going to be passed down to his kids. Because, you know, and I'm sure you heard this term like, hurt people. Hurt people, right? That was me when I was an alcoholic, when I was abusive, like none of that was okay, but I was deeply hurt. And because I was deeply hurt, I was just lashing out, hurting others. And so I had to heal myself before I could really show up and help others. And so that's a big part of our healing journey. And so when you think about this, right is really understanding, okay, I have this core wound. What is my core wound? What happened when I was a kid? Then recognize how it shows up today in your behaviors, and then understanding what drives that behavior, right? Maybe it's not even conscious for you. Maybe you need a bit of help to dive deeper into understanding, and you might have some resistance to that, right? The example I use of like, I'm not angry, I'm not an angry guy like you have to stop saying that it's okay that you're not an angry guy, but the reality is you felt anger in that moment, and so connect to that, right? Yes, here's the reason I'm angry. Accept that it exists so that you can understand it and then heal it. Now, that's kind of the big part for your core wound, right? And that's a big part of why we were, you know, essentially growing, why we're evolving into maturity is, you know, we experience these wounds when we're young, and then we mature, and we carry these wounds and we want to, you know, essentially heal them. And for a lot of men, you know, this is kind of the work that we do in the group, is like, sometimes they don't even recognize the weight that they're carrying. It's just like normal, just like, it's become like the normal for them. They're just they're just carrying this 1000 pound wound with them all the time. So just like, it is the way it is, you know, but when they let it, when they put it down, they realize, like, oh wow, I feel way lighter. I feel way more powerful. I cannot believe I was carrying that right? I didn't, I didn't think I could feel this good is something that we hear often, and so think about that and how it's affecting you, because we're all carrying wounds, and your work, especially in the beginning of personal growth, is to heal that wound. And whether you avoid it your whole life, you know life is going to keep forcing you to face it right. It's going to keep damaging your relationships, your life, your connections, and so whether you want to keep avoiding it and eventually isolate yourself and be alone and having to deal with this shame, this wound on your own, that's your choice. But for us, what we found is that you know, getting around in a really healthy group of men, healing together so we can then create a legacy for our family, is what it's all about. Which brings me to my second part right, which is really about sharing your gifts. Now, this is a, you know, some people call this soul work. A lot of us call this now. It's like personal growth, right? That's what it's all about. It's really like in vogue right now to talk about, you know, growing myself and being authentic and being more of myself. For us, a big part of what we think about is, is this idea of sharing your gifts, and in order to share your gifts, you know, first of all, you have to heal your wounds, right? So you have to truly believe that you're worthy of having gifts, and you have gifts so you can connect with those gifts and and not, you know, continue to play the story that somebody has fed to you. This is where a lot of men get lost, right? They are. They are given the script of like, Hey, do X, Y and Z equals amazing life, and then they do all that, and they're not feeling fulfilled, and that's where a lot of men come to us in EMC, right? Is like, for the most part, their finances are great, their family's good, everybody's healthy, their career is good, they're healthy, but there's just this like, unfulfillment, like this numbness that they're experiencing. And this is. Where, for a lot of men, they started getting confused, right? And then they start to numb that pain through pornography, through alcoholism, through affairs, through all kinds of stuff, right? And what we really help men understand is that you have a calling, right? And whatever you believe in in terms of a higher power, right? We believe that the universe puts you here because you have a calling, and really, your soul has the ability to share its gifts with the world, right? And that's kind of our belief and we think about in the group. So understanding what those gifts are and then living them out so you can serve the world and really help heal the world, in a sense, and make the world a better place while you're here is incredibly important to us. And really, when you think about the work that a lot of people do with men of like living at your edge, your purpose, right, your legacy, this is really what we're talking about, is understanding and sharing your gifts. And if you're in in in a work or in a career that really just feels unfulfilled, that's an example of you. You know, I don't want to say wasting your gifts, but certainly not connecting to your potential, right? Which is really, really important. So how do you go about understanding your gifts, right? So first of all, you have to heal your wounds, because that inner critic is always going to be in the way of you connecting to and sharing your gifts. Every time you're going to want to share your gifts, that inner critic is going to step in and say, like, no, no. In and say, like, no, no like. And so you want to first of all heal your wounds, but once you've worked through healing your wounds, and it happens at the same time, right? It's not like I heal my wounds and then eventually, no, it's like, as I'm healing my wounds, I'm also sharing my gifts, and that all happens together, and that's what we call personal growth, right? But the idea is, gifts are just you at your core, living out what feels most authentic and in alignment for you, right? For me, I think about my gifts and how I'm continuing to cultivate them so my gifts, big part of my gift is really empathy, like I deeply understand people, right, not only because of my own wounds, what I had to go through like my whole life and experience has led me to really understand people. And one of my gifts is I want to share my heart. I want to share what's going on beneath the surface for me with the world, and then encourage especially men, but people in general, to

really speak out their own voice and in a way that is courageous, loving and in service to the world. And so that's a big part of what I continue to live in in terms of my gifts, and it's a practice, right, constantly. But really understanding your gifts is going to be really important, and you're probably already tapping into some of these, right? Maybe you're an amazing problem solver, maybe you're super creative, maybe you're really great at speaking, you know, maybe you are very organized, right? And have the ability to organize things in a way that's super simple. So you have some skills that you're already, you know, portraying in the world. And really it's just tapping into those skills and then thinking about more potential beneath that. Because what often happens is we put ourselves in a situation where we can use these skills, but we're not really diving deep into them. Instead, we're just like doing the skill in that specific area. But we want to do is really understand that skill and start to spread it out. So it's a gift that we can share all the time, you know? And I, I come back to this idea of, like, when I was really helping people in their relationships, you know, it was a, I had a coach that told me, but it was like, Okay, I had this whole idea, like, I had to build a business and make a lot of money and all the all that crap, right, that you think about when you're young and mature. But the idea was like, Okay, once I get a business, and then once I get a website, and then once I do all this stuff, I can help people, right? And then people will hire me, and I'm gonna get on calls, and they're gonna pay me money, and then I'm gonna help them. One of my coaches said, why would you wait to do all that before you can help people? If helping people truly is your gift, you know, especially helping men. Like, be more open, be more loving, be more kind, be more fierce. Like, why would you start doing that now? And it was just like a paradigm shift of, like, you're right, like, I can help people now, but the idea is, like, because I'm not getting paid for it, I shouldn't do it, or because I'm not, people don't think I'm an authority. I shouldn't be doing it, but that's just my gift. So really, what I should do is just live out my gift. And so what that created was, like, I was always having conversations, especially with men, but I was just having conversations all the time about how people relate. And when you know, I would ask questions, I would seek to understand people. I would get curious, I would share my own story, right? And over time, what happened is people started to realize, like, wow, that's super helpful. Like having a conversation with you is actually super helpful. You've helped me understand something. And in the beginning, like I wasn't even getting paid for this, like it was just like it was just like a thing that I did, and I was like, I'm just practicing sharing my gifts. I'm just learning and sharing my gifts. And over time, you know, obviously what you see now is people started paying me money for that, and like, Oh, that's so great. Like, now I want your insight, and I'm willing to pay for that. It'd be in this group and all that stuff. But in the beginning, it didn't start like that. I just had to focus on sharing my gifts. And I continue to do that right a big part. Why we do the podcast. And you know, we're not trying to make this thing a big financial thing, like, we're not just no ads or anything, like, we just want to share our gifts through this podcast. And so that's an example of me continuing to understand my gifts, continue to develop my gifts, and continue to share them with the world. And you have this too, right? You have your gifts. And it doesn't even have to be on, like, a massive scale. Like, you don't have to start a business, right? Like, if you're just a great problem solver, or if you're just, like, really organized, or if you're a great speaker, if you're really creative, it's like, how can you tap into that creativity and share with the world on a daily basis? Right? I think about Kate, my wife. She's incredibly creative. Like, one of her gifts is creativity. She creates beautiful things for kids to learn, for her co workers at work. Like, it's just awesome in terms of how amazing of a teacher she is, and she's constantly getting like, accolades parents are like, parents want their kids and her classroom, like, all that kind of so anyways. But even in our home, like Kate brings the gift of creativity, even in like, when she makes recipes, when she's decorating our home, when we're playing with the kids. Like to her creativity is just flowing all the time, and it's such a beautiful gift that she brings to the world, not only for us, like we notice it in our family. It even, like, encourages my daughter to tap into her own creativity, which is amazing, but also she just shares that with the world all the time, right? She's just like this amazing, creative person who is not like, about like, coloring inside the lines or having this box. She's just like, Yeah, let's just do stuff. Let's just make things happen, right? And it doesn't have to be perfect, but let's just continue being creative. And so she's working at sharing her gift of creativity world, regardless of whether or not it brings financial, accolades, like validation, like she's just doing it because she's like, I love being creative. I think the world needs more creativity, and therefore I'm going to share with the world, right? And so really understanding and thinking about these gifts that you have is really important. So start asking yourself, like, what are some of the skills that I have that feel really great to me to display, right? So write out some skills. Maybe you have, like, five to 10 skills, and really take time to do this, especially men, like, we just don't do this. Or, like women mothers, right? They don't do this either. They're just constantly serving everybody. So they're not really stopping and being like, wow, I'm really skilled at this. Some of us are so skilled in this specific area that we're not even aware that it's a skill. You know, this is like, something people tell me all the time, like, you ask us great questions, like you really make me think. And to me, I'm just, like, being curious. It's not like, I'm not like, oh yeah, I've asked great questions. Here you go. It's just like something that I wouldn't even have realized until people came to me and told me, you asked such great questions. I'm like, Oh, I guess this is just like the way people acted. I just thought it was normal and so, but it turns out it's not very normal, and not a lot of people ask great questions, right? Not only all people ask questions to begin with, typically, we just like story tell about our life, and so really understanding and thinking about, hey, what are the skills that I have, and how can I really continue to cultivate these skills that really light me up, right? That make me feel great when I do them? Maybe you're a great problem solver, maybe you're organized, maybe you're awesome at woodworking, so this is your skill, right? And so continue to cultivate that skill until becomes a gift that you can share with the world. If you're doing woodworking, just don't do them in your shop, and just do them for yourself, like do them and then give them to people, right? I think about how important that is, even for us, like Kate, you know, for her, she's really creative. She loves creating things. So she now she makes bread. She makes a lot of her own food. So that's all something we eat. But now she makes so much bread that we just give it out, right? She's like giving bread to everybody. And what a beautiful example of her taking this creative pursuit, this creative gift, of her making sourdough and then just giving it out all the time, right? And so really start to think about some of these skills that you can continue to cultivate in the gifts, and then share these gifts with the world, because the world is going to be a better place if there's more of you in it, right? Not more of you acting as somebody else, but more of you acting as yourself, as your own soul, sharing those gifts with the world. Okay, so I hope this was helpful for you. Again, a short one, maybe a little more intense one, but really start to understand, hey, these are some of my core wounds. Here's how it's affecting me. Here's how I can heal them. And then on the other side, here's some of the really great skills that I have here. Asked how I can continue to cultivate them, turn them into gifts so I can share them with the world. And again, if you need more help, you can always reach out to me. You can send me an email, Eric at Evolve marriage.com, and we can continue this conversation. See, I can help you out. You don't have to do this alone. Okay, if you're feeling stuck and don't know where to start, reach out to me. I can send you some resources. You know, not even in terms of, like, working together. I'll just send you some resources that can help you, because if you're committed and you're willing to put in the time and energy to improve yourself, I'm in your corner all the way. So again, like, subscribe, share, do all the things. Please support us. I hope you got value from this episode, and I'll see you next time. Cheers.