Heal Your Wounds and Find Your True Self
Lise Bourbeau, 2000
Why can one careless word from someone close hurt so much, as if it touched an old wound? Lise Bourbeau believes that almost everyone carries emotional wounds from childhood, and masks we use to cover them. The book describes five such wounds, their masks and her way of becoming yourself again. This is the author's own system, not a scientific theory, and Bourbeau herself suggests testing it against your own life.
Who it is for
For anyone whose hurts come back in the same shape year after year, with different people. And for anyone who wants to understand why people close to them sometimes react more sharply than the moment calls for.
You are no longer the little child who had no strength to bandage your own wound.
A Wound Under the Bandage
Picture a man with an old wound on his arm. He got used to it long ago and wrapped it in a bandage so he would not have to see it. One day a friend, overjoyed, grabs him by that arm. The man cries out in pain, and the friend is bewildered: he meant to hug him, not to hurt him. Is the friend to blame?
Lise Bourbeau, a writer from Canada, uses this picture to explain the main idea of her book. In her view, many of us have injuries like this, only emotional ones, from childhood. Bourbeau calls them wounds. The bandage on the wound is a mask: a way of behaving that a person invented in childhood so as not to feel the pain. The mask hides the wound but does not heal it. So any touch on the sore spot brings pain, and we feel that the one who touched it is to blame.
Bourbeau believes that almost every child goes through four stages. First the child simply enjoys life and being free to be themselves. Then the child notices that the grown-ups do not like them that way, and it hurts. Next comes rebellion. And in the end the child gives up and acts like the person they are expected to be. That, in her model, is how masks are born.
In Bourbeau's view there are only five wounds, and each has its own mask. The rejected child becomes an escapist. The abandoned child becomes dependent. The humiliated child puts on the mask of the masochist. The betrayed child becomes controlling. And the child who was treated unfairly becomes rigid, that is, stiff and unbending.
One thing needs saying right away: this is the author's own system. It grew out of her workshops and out of her belief that the soul chooses its own family before it is even born. Bourbeau goes further still: she is sure that you can see a mask in the shape of a person's body and that masks are linked to illnesses. She writes plainly that her conclusions have no scientific proof, and she asks readers not to reject them at once but to test them against their own lives. That is the best way to read this book. Let's start with the earliest wound.
The Girl Behind the Wardrobe
Guests arrived, and the parents were greeting them at the door. At that moment a little girl hid behind the wardrobe. Soon everyone noticed she was missing and rushed to look for her. The girl could hear the grown-ups getting more and more worried, but she did not come out. She told herself: “I want them to find me. I want them to understand that I exist.”
Bourbeau tells this story as an example of the earliest wound. In her model this is the rejection wound, and it appears in the first year of life, sometimes even before birth. To reject, Bourbeau explains, means to push someone away and not want them near. So a rejected person feels that their very right to live is in question. The girl behind the wardrobe is so unsure of that right that she puts it to the test: will anyone notice she is gone?
To avoid feeling this pain, a person puts on the mask of the escapist. They try to go unnoticed and retreat into a made-up world of their own. Bourbeau often saw this at her two-day workshops. At the end, everyone said how the sessions had helped them, and suddenly someone she had not noticed for two whole days would speak up. They had sat behind everyone else and said nothing. Almost all such participants explained that they had had nothing interesting to say.
This makes a vicious circle. The escapist hides so as not to be rejected. People stop noticing them, they feel even lonelier, and they feel even more unwanted. In Bourbeau's view, even their urge to do everything perfectly grows from the same wound. The escapist does not believe they are worth anything just as they are, and tries to prove their worth through flawless work. They confuse “being” with “doing”.
The escapist often uses the words “nobody”, “nothing” and “disappear”. What they fear most is panic. When someone interrupts them, they go quiet at once and decide they are not worth listening to. A person without this wound would think, in the same situation, that what they said was dull, not that they were.
How can you tell the wound is healing? According to Bourbeau, you slowly take up more and more space and speak up for yourself more boldly. And if someone acts as though you are not there, it no longer knocks you off balance.
About the author
Lise Bourbeau is a Canadian writer from Quebec and the author of 13 books, among them the bestseller “Listen to Your Body”. In Quebec she founded a large school of personal growth that works across the French-speaking world.
All books by this author: Lise Bourbeau
Terms from the book
- Masochist
- Autonomy
- Wound: Bourbeau's word for an emotional injury from childhood that hurts every time something touches it. It is the author's word, not a medical diagnosis.
- Mask: In Bourbeau's model, a way of behaving that a person invented in childhood so as not to feel the pain of a wound. A mask hides the wound but does not heal it.
- Escapist: The mask of the rejection wound in Bourbeau's system: the person tries to go unnoticed and withdraws into themselves. It is the author's image, not a diagnosis.
- Dependent: The mask of the abandonment wound in Bourbeau's system: the person is always looking for support and attention and fears loneliness most of all.
- Controlling: The mask of the betrayal wound in Bourbeau's system: the person wants to foresee and check everything, out of fear of being betrayed.
- Rigid: The word comes from a Latin word meaning “stiff, unbending”. In Bourbeau's system it names the mask of the injustice wound: the person demands perfection from themselves and hides their feelings.
All terms
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