Dear Fellow Adults, You Can Still Fulfill Your Tender Unmet Childhood Needs
“Time does not heal all wounds; it just gives them space to sink into the subconscious, where they will continue to impact your emotions and behavior. What heals is going inward, loving yourself, accepting yourself, listening to your needs, addressing your attachments and emotional history, learning how to let go, and following your intuition.”
~ Yung Pueblo from his book Clarity & Connection.
Understanding the Lasting Impact of Childhood Traumas
Donna Jackson Nakazawa, a renowned science journalist and public speaker, explores the profound impacts of early trauma in her 2016 book, Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal. The title itself bears both unsettling and hopeful messages. Nakazawa draws on research into Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which are common yet often unrecognized factors affecting nearly two-thirds of adults in the USA. These experiences, ranging from neglect to abuse during the formative years of 0 to 17, are strongly linked to increased risks of chronic diseases, mental health issues, substance abuse, and violence in later life. Particularly alarming is the finding that individuals with an ACE score of 6 or higher may face a lifespan reduction of up to 20 years. These insights emphasize that time alone cannot heal the deep-seated wounds of childhood. Instead, they embed themselves into our very biology through adverse childhood experiences, community experiences, and climate experiences. Even if you were well taken care of as a child, witnessing violence in your neighborhood, or surviving a pandemic might have over-stressed your child brain and impacted your current life circumstances much more than you realize.
Despite these challenges, Nakazawa provides a hopeful perspective: the brain’s remarkable ability to heal and change. She wrote, “ACEs can last a lifetime but they don’t have to. We can reboot our brains. Just as physical wounds and bruises heal, just as we can regain our muscle tone, we can regain our function in underconnected areas of the brain. The brain and body are never static; they are always in the process of becoming and changing. Even if we have been set on high reactive mode for decades or a lifetime, we can still dial it down.” We are not doomed by our less-than-ideal childhoods to live in perpetual suffering. Our adult brains can still be rewired to be more resilient, helping us thrive and succeed more in life.
The Path to Healing
In her book, Nakazawa presents a range of therapeutic strategies that have proven effective in addressing the scars left by adverse childhood experiences. Here are some steps you can undertake for recovery:
- Take the ACE Survey: Participating in this survey can help normalize discussions about adverse childhood experiences by showing how widespread they are. Understanding how these experiences have affected you can be the first step in acknowledging and addressing their impact.
- Take the Resilience Survey: This survey focuses on the positive elements of your childhood, helping you identify what strengths allowed you to cope with early adversity. Recognizing these resilience factors makes it easier to integrate them consciously into your adult life, enhancing your overall well-being.
- Write to Heal: Writing about your distressing experiences, including any feelings of shame or secrets you’ve held onto, can be therapeutic. The simple act of writing has been shown to have a positive effect on health, even if you choose to throw away the pages afterwards.
- Seek Professional Help: Dealing with complex childhood experiences can be challenging. A trained therapist can support you in your recovery journey by offering unconditional acceptance and gently highlighting blind spots in your personal history. Nakazawa recommends several therapeutic modalities in her book, including hypnosis, neurofeedback, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), desensitizing memory techniques, and Somatic Experiencing.
Introducing the MAP Method™ and the Beautiful Beginnings Program
While Nakazawa’s suggested methods lay a foundational understanding for addressing childhood traumas, the MAP Coaching Institute introduces an innovative alternative with the MAP Method™. This neuroscience-validated modality complements yet distinctly diverges from traditional therapeutic strategies by neutralizing painful memories gently, quickly, and effectively at both the conscious and subconscious levels. There is also no need to divulge any painful experiences, making it easy for anyone to start the healing process quickly. And when the painful emotions are neutralized, the same events can be recalled from a more positive perspective with newfound wisdom.
Expanding on this innovative approach, Margaret Allan, an advanced certified MAP Practitioner and MAP Supervisor, has developed an online self-paced MAP program, aptly titled Beautiful Beginnings. Designed to address and transform negative and unwanted childhood patterns, this program guides participants through a structured process to rewrite their life stories, fulfilling core needs from conception to age eighteen. The program’s design allows participants to systematically progress through each stage of their early lives within six months, with the flexibility to adjust the pace as needed. Margaret has also added MAP sessions focused on specific themes essential for fulfilling core childhood needs.
Here are some of the benefits of using the Beautiful Beginnings program to help you heal from your childhood:
- Privacy and Ease: MAP sessions are pre-recorded and can be listened to anytime and anywhere at your convenience, allowing healing without the need to actively recall and reveal painful memories. You can also listen to subliminal MAP sessions to neutralize your childhood memories subconsciously while doing your work or household chores.
- Guided Positive Rewriting: Through these structured MAP sessions, participants are encouraged to craft positive narratives for their childhood experiences, promoting healing and resilience.
- Community Support: A dedicated closed Facebook group offers a platform for sharing experiences and connecting with others in the program.
The Beautiful Beginnings program was first created in 2019 and has gone through multiple revisions since then. Here are two FAQs you might find helpful to know:
Do I need to know exactly what happened during my childhood to benefit from the MAP sessions?
Margaret: No, you don’t need to have full awareness of what happened.This program is helpful for people even if they don’t have memories or awareness of any struggle or strain in childhood, but somehow they are not succeeding in the way they want to succeed as an adult now, and they’ve tried everything.
Samantha Bentley shared, “The Beautiful Beginnings program took me back to memories I’d forgotten about and not necessarily bad memories. I found it a really lovely program and couldn’t wait to do it every night. I’m no longer looking for answers from my past. Any sadness has gone. I feel that I can just live and move on.”
Quincee Evans shared, “I have been in deep self-work since 2009 and experienced many modalities. Nothing has shifted me the way this program is shifting me. Loving the deep work, being able to shift the residual core of what has been negatively affecting me my whole life. I feel a new beginning is happening. My heart is grateful!”
What if I have some strong negative feelings about my childhood?
Margaret: MAP is very gentle and can help you release the negative charge from beliefs and emotions in your childhood memories. You can also choose to listen to all the subliminal MAP sessions before listening to the original MAP sessions.
Michael Leverett comes from a fractured family and was very aware and reactive to unresolved feelings about his childhood.
He shared, “I felt my younger years were worse than what they really were. This program was good for me as it allowed me to go back to things from my past and separate the negative emotion from the story. Stories, feelings and emotions from the past are more in perspective now. It also reminded me of some terrific times I had as a child. Remembering old friends and relations was quite heart-warming. Since the program has finished, I have been less reactive to stressful situations. I have also been in touch with family on a more regular basis as the course has helped strengthen my relationships with them.
I now have been in touch with friends I haven’t spoken to for decades. I meditate more often now and I am feeling more relaxed and less agitated.”
Would you like to find out more about the Beautiful Beginnings program?
Dear readers, if you want to feel more at peace with your childhood, your past, and to begin afresh with a new sense of clarity, we’d love to invite you to explore this Beautiful Beginnings program more by booking a free info session. A replay will be provided if you can’t attend it live. During this info session, Margaret Allan, the program creator, will be addressing the question: “How does our childhood shape our life, relationships, work, and health in the present?” She will also be facilitating a group live session exploring the experience of not belonging as a child.
Though the info sessions are only held twice each year, the Beautiful Beginnings program is an evergreen self-paced online program that you can purchase anytime with lifetime access. For more information, please visit the Beautiful Beginnings website here.
