The Week of August 29th, 2021
“Why People Don’t Like Change” sermon series
Sermon Noodles and Devotional Guide on “The Wounded One”
We are in a series of sermons on why people don’t like change. We have come to the part where we simply answer that question: People don’t like change because it opens up how they felt as a wounded child, it triggers past wounds of fear of abandonment, grief and loss at best, and a re-traumatization of past-events at worst. It is impossible to overemphasis what is known as “The Wounded Child” when discussing spiritual growth and human development. Impossible. The #1 reason people get stuck in life, or lash out, or simply don’t do well is the lack of healing for the traumatic wounds of childhood primarily associated with injury and rejection.That is why you have extensive sermon notes and a handout of the map of the human psyche in your bulletin.
In my humble opinion, The Wounded Child is the number one reason why change initiatives fail in families, especially church families. And if you don’t get a handle on healing the wounded child, well, good luck trying to do any strategic planning in an all-volunteer organization like the church that source of revenue is the good will and generosity of its members.
Notice The Map: Each of the cardinal directions has an archetype of the True Self—big bold Christlikeness. There is also a counterpart to the big bold Christlikeness in each direction that is an archetype of the False Self is not bad or evil, but it is wounded. It is a fragment. Notice in the direction of the South is the wounded child.
Everyone gets wounded in some way or another during childhood.
Around the age of three or four, we begin to develop childhood survival strategies in response to the wounds. The survival strategies are not evil or bad—they help us survive the war of childhood. The problem comes when our wounded child gets triggered and hijacks our response.
Devotional Guide
We are in a series of sermons on why people don’t like change. We have come to the part where we simply answer that question: People don’t like change because it opens up past wounds that may lead to fear of abandonment, grief and loss at best, and a re-traumatization of past-events at worst.
It is impossible to overemphasis what is known as “The Wounded Child” when discussing spiritual growth and human development. Impossible. The #1 reason people get stuck in life, or lash out, or simply don’t do well is the lack of healing for the traumatic wounds of childhood primarily associated with injury and rejection.
1. Everyone gets wounded in some way or another during childhood. Around the age of three or four, we begin to develop childhood survival strategies in response to the wounds. The survival strategies are not evil or bad—they help us survive the war of childhood. The problem comes when we as adults continue to employ the strategies of the Wounded Child.
2. The Wounded Child has four main strategies for life:
A. The Victim: Broods at how life is unfair. Speaks primarily of the wrongs with other people. Takes little or no responsibility for their lives. The person whose strategy in life is never wrong and never at fault.
B. The Conformist: is the most common strategy of white middle class America and pursues security, comfort, money, prestige, and power over others. (Wild Mind 161). As children we may have been incessantly criticized and the fear of criticism leads us to want more than anything to fit it. We do.
C. The Rebel: is angry and against almost everything. Ironically finds a place of social belonging by associating with other rebels.
D. The Princess/Prince: this strategy shares the emotion of anger with the Rebel but unlike the rebel, this person is able to reap the rewards of her community. The Princess/Prince is the person born on 3rd base and goes through life thinking they hit a triple. Their sense of entitlement is profound and they use intimidation, condescension, control (like gaslighting) to get what they want.
3. As with all the other strategies of the “False Self,” these fragmented parts of us hijack our response to life at key moments—even in the midst of a conversation with a friend at coffee fellowship after church. They also “retraumatize” us by reliving the childhood wound and inflicting/transmitting it upon others (hence the biblical phrase “the sins of the father are passed down to the fourth and fifth generations”) and result in depression, addiction, and even suicide.
4. The Wounded Child tries to get their needs met through immature emotional strategies. This can powerfully curtain the development of “EQ” or our emotional IQ. Generally, Wounded Children want others to meet our basic needs. (Wild Mind 157)
5. The Wounded Child contains great and wonderful gifts, many of which we rejected in order to survive. The healing of the Wounded Child and reclaiming those gifts usually begins with assimilating unassimilated emotions, beginning with grief.