When a Worker has an emotional reaction, the pain created by the situation they’re describing is greater than the situation seems to warrant. This is an important clue that a hidden aspect of the Worker’s psyche—the young fragment, or “inner child”—is in distress.
The pain of this wound originated in childhood. So that’s where we must go to heal it. As we work with this, the person will regress to feeling the age they were at the time of the wounding.
Recall that, for the child, feeling pain is akin to feeling death. We need to make plenty of space for the Worker to experience their painful feelings. We do this by actively encouraging them to go as deeply into their feelings as they can.
In this work we transform feelings, we do not transcend them.
Early in their work, a Worker may dip their toe in the water of tough emotions and then jump back out. Over time, they will learn a different approach. They will develop the stamina to stay with difficult feelings until they reach the far shore.
The Worker will learn to trust their system’s ability to regulate how much they can bear. They will also learn to trust our ability to navigate with them, through their sometimes-raging feelings.
Learning to trust
When we learn to trust ourselves—at the level of our Higher Self—we are in touch with our Godself. In other words, to find our true self is to find God. That’s what makes this work spiritual.
But starting out, the Worker may not know who or what to trust. A good step in the right direction is to learn to trust this process. There is nothing we must believe to do this. In fact, if we are only told about the process and don’t experience it for ourselves, we might not believe that this would work.
As the Worker heals fragmented aspects, they start to link cause with effect. They see that life is not really random. That their difficulties in life didn’t just happen to them—they created them.
Gradually, the immature aspects grow up. In fact, the Pathwork Guide defines maturity as the ability to link cause and effect. This is an organic process that happens as we work to heal ourselves.
It feels, to the Worker, like they never left childhood. Because this young fragment of their psyche literally has not.
That was then, this is now
During the work of healing, the Worker will reexperience and release the pain of a painful childhood re-creation. Throughout this process, the Worker may have a hard time distinguishing what happened in the past from what’s happening now.
But once pent-up feelings have been expressed, there will be room for new insights to come in. This may include awareness of old memories that relate to current painful situations.
As the Pathwork Guide suggests, we want to coach the Worker to hold the past and the present like two slides, one on top of the other. One is of what happened then; the other is of what’s happening now.
As the Worker overlays the two, they will start to see how they are the same. The “hurt of now” is the same as the “hurt of then.”
Once they see how the experiences are the same, they can start to tease them apart. This will help them come into the present moment—by realizing “that was then and this is now.”
This exercise helps the Worker see two things. First, what’s happening now is a re-creation of the past. It is happening now because of the way the Worker attracts and sets up—through their actions and attitudes—scenarios that activate an old wound.
Second, the current situation hurts so much because of the old wound. It feels, to the Worker, like they have never left childhood.
Because this young fragment of their psyche literally has not.
Connecting our “selves”
As the Helper, we are guiding the Worker to do two things at once. We are inviting the inner child to sit in the room with us. We are making it safe to do so. At the same time, we need to strengthen and support the adult ego. This is the part that is holding these two slides in their lap.
The adult ego—the one who is witnessing the re-creation—is not caught in the re-creation. We may even offer these actual words to the Worker: “that was then and this is now.” This helps them feel their own inner adult who is now present for holding and comforting the wounded inner child.
This part was not there when the person was young and struggling. But it’s here now.
This adult ego has a very important job to do: pray. We have to ask for help.
The Guide tells us, in the Meditation for Three Voices, that we (our ego) may actually hear an inner conversation between our Higher Self and inner child.
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