Healing the Wounded Self: The Four Survival Archetypes

In this episode of 'Pearls of Wisdom', we explore the four survival archetypes that unconsciously shape our behaviours, relationships, choices, and sense of self.

These archetypes often operate beneath the surface, influencing how we protect ourselves, where we give our power away, and the patterns that keep us stuck. But when brought into awareness, they can become profound gateways for healing, empowerment, and transformation.

We look into:

• The Wounded Child, and the journey back to the Magical Innocent 
• The Victim, transforming helplessness into responsibility and personal power
• The Prostitute, uncovering where we sell ourselves out and reclaiming self-worth 
• The Saboteur, shifting destructive patterns into conscious creativity

This episode invites self-inquiry and inner work. 

Where are these archetypes showing up in your life? 

What subconscious patterns are asking to be seen, healed, and transformed?

By bringing light to the shadow, we begin turning our greatest inner obstacles into our strongest allies.

The book I couldn't remember is 'Homecoming' by John Bradshaw.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Then it can be a journey to take responsibility for ourselves for the healing, but ultimately that empowers us. Welcome to Powers of Wisdom. I recently ran a workshop on archetypes and essentially the survival archetypes, and I just thought it might be useful just to make a podcast about it because it's something, particularly the survival archetypes that we all we all need to work with to essentially be free and express ourselves and not be subconsciously limiting ourselves. So, first of all, an archetype, as you may well know, is a model, it's a universal classic model where it's a prototype, and it's upon which others copy or pattern or emulate something. So, for instance, you might get an archetype of um a hero, that's a typical one, isn't it? The hero's journey, the hero saves the day. So we describe people as a hero or a mentor, you know, somebody who's a guide or you know, has a wise is is wise and able to guide others. That's a mentor. There's obviously all the archetypes like mother, and you can have a strong mother archetype. I have a very strong mother archetype, even though I haven't had any children of my own, but I have a strong mother archetype in that you know I love to nurture and um help people fly free and be all they can be. Um, and obviously, with all archetypes, there's the light side and the dark side. So, for instance, the mother archetype, in the simpler, simple terms, there is um the allowing people to fly free, to nurture, to grow, to create, you know, obviously actually procreate if you're they're coming through you. And um, the dark side of it is the clinging that you cling and don't let them go. And interestingly, um years and years and years ago, I read uh M M Scott Peck's book, The Road Less Travelled. And one of the things that really, really struck me about being a guide, a mentor, a therapist, somebody who is in other people's lives helping them, is that he said his only real boundary was that he mustn't need the relationship for himself. And I remember then thinking, Yeah, I get that. You can be as close as close as close to people and be the person who's um helping them reparent their own inner child themselves, but being the guide to that, and but let them go when they fly free. And I also learned that working with people who are dying, that you could be emotionally completely connected to them, but knew you had to let them go and not hold. But um, those are the there's many, many archetypes, and we can investigate our own archetypes to see what are the aspects of ourselves that's really resonant for us, whether that's you know, in in my own case, um teacher or athlete or yeah, mother. It that's an interesting um investigation of itself. But today I'm really going to talk about the four survival archetypes because they can in the dark, because I said there's a light and a dark side to our archetypes, in the dark side, we really subconsciously give our power away if we're not working out how to live them out in the light. And if we if we do the inner work to free ourselves from these um limiting subconscious patterns with with these archetypes, then really we can turn them into inner guardians, they are allies. So it's interesting just to you know investigate this. So I it is a very you know quick investigation on a very short podcast, but the four survival archetypes are the wounded child, the victim, the prostitute, and the saboteur. And this is um as um in uh kind of revealed, taught by Caroline, Caroline Miss, who's a wonderful teacher, has some wonderful books. So do investigate her, and she's got a wonderful book about archetypes where you can have much more in-depth um yeah, awareness, teaching, whatever, from her. And there's she has uh archetype cards, she has so much to offer, and about also investigating her other archetypes. So this is this is a her model, but it's a very powerful um way of releasing ourselves from these subconscious patterns, basically, that you know, as I said, give our power away. So, with the wounded child, that is yeah, prevalent. Most people, I would say all people, um, if they you know do not investigate the child within them, then essentially people grow up. But if they haven't had a look at the inner child and see where the child got hurt, didn't get their needs met, then they often drag this inner child with them and it plays out in their grown-up life. And I think really to become an adult, we really need to do some inner work to discover where the inner child isn't healed and where the inner child perhaps didn't get heard or didn't get nurtured in the way they needed to get nurtured or got misunderstood or didn't have aspects of themselves developed because they weren't recognised by the people around them. Um, and therefore they grow up with the inner child still crying out for attention, still crying out to be heard, still crying out to be nurtured, still um you know hiding away aspects of themselves they don't feel are acceptable, yeah, um denying aspects of themselves that weren't welcome in their family, whether this is in ways of being, being lively, showing affection, being able to relax, be um do nothing, because some families it's important you're always active, always doing things, and therefore it means that um people can get caught in a never-ending trail of having to keep themselves busy. But essentially the investigation is is very important, and the way we discover the wounded child is seeing how we act out because we'll have adaptations to that. If we weren't properly heard, we might be somebody who never speaks out, or we might speak all the time, or we might get really, really reactive if we feel somebody's talked over us or they haven't heard us. So, this is how we discover the wounding. So, if we are if we do have a wound of um not having been listened to, not having our needs being heard, met, then if in our adult life or our grown-up life this happens, we're likely to be more reactive than somebody else and shut down immediately or push back or say you're not listening to me. Um, and therefore the inner child work is um very very important, and you can do this by obviously going and speaking with somebody to investigate and just get curious about your childhood, and also it the other way, of course, is well, alongside this, notice in your everyday life if you're reactive, because the reactivity does point an arrow into somewhere where you have been you feel hurt and you feel you haven't been nurtured or looked after properly, or any manner of things. So obviously, I'm as I say, I'm doing a whistle stop tour through um the you know, investigating the wounded child, but essentially the inner work is to return your your inner child to the magical child, to the innocent child, the child that's here to explore, to experiment, to connect, to not have a self-concept that is limited by external you know approval. And this this can take work, of course, takes time. Um, there's a lovely book called Um forgotten what it's called. Oh, I can't remember what it's called, but it's by John. Oh, I've forgotten completely. Shall we cancel that? Um, it might come to me, but it really is a very good um book which I've forgotten. And um, oh what is this book called? Um somebody, yeah, never mind. Never mind that will. Sorry about that. We I will put it in the notes, in the podcast notes. I'll put the name of this book because it's a very good book and it's very helpful if you're wanting to start some work on the inner child. And therefore, if you're interested, please do look in the show notes because it will be there. And um obviously the the next one, the victim, is a sense of powerlessness, and it's about everything everything's happening to me, and it's looking at the you know outside that you're disempowered, and that's very strong archetype, very strong survival archetype that is often obviously associated with the wounded child, but it's it's all over the place, you can see it. People think things happen to them, and of course, the inner work is to empower yourself to take full responsibility, and as with the wounded child, it all it all really stems from the wounded child. The more you're taking responsibility for doing your inner work to heal your own inner child and recognize where you are acting out of that old um pattern, then of course you empower yourself to take full responsibility and to not um yeah, not be disempowered by saying it's happening to me. Now, this of course, this is again a very quick podcast because clearly people have some terrible things happen to them, and therefore, of course, there's a process where you need to have a big lot of work to investigate when there has when you have been a victim of something because people are victims of things. So, as I say, I'm only doing a a kind of um investigation into these archetypes from the perspective of ultimately when we do take responsibility and we do take responsibility for our trauma, both our wounded child trauma and also when we have had trauma happen to us. The the way the route to um freedom is to take responsibility. Now that can be a very big journey because there can be so many emotions tied up if there's been um abuse and that's unfortunately very common, then it can be a journey to take responsibility for ourselves for the healing, but ultimately that empowers us because unfortunately, otherwise, we can live out our life caught in the grips of the victim and the wounded child, and and those patterns and those um experiences can shape us, and of course, they don't need to shape us for the whole of our life. We can go and heal our trauma, we can heal our wounded child, we can take responsibility for our life, we can return to the magical innocent child that we always have dancing within us. Um, and then we come on to the prostitute, and by the prostitute we mean you're selling out. So it's just a terminology of that you're selling yourself short, that you have a price. Um, and only you know if you're doing that, because that that can happen in doing things you don't want to do, trying to please people, um, thinking you can't say no, thinking that you've got to, you know, say yes to the people you don't really want to say yes to, staying in a job you don't like because you're afraid of the financial um, you know, kind of lack when you don't do it, all manner of things, but only you know it. Um, and it brings us to a place of integrity when we move through it. But again, it's all rooted, it's a kind of line, it's rooted in the wounded child and the victim, then those things they're all they're all hand in hand, really. Um, and when you when you start working with one, you inevitably work with all of them. So if you went in at the end of seeing that you were selling out and that you were always doing things you didn't want to do or staying in a job you hated because of the financial, you know, you felt you were trapped. Um, actually, when if you started working at that level and thought, right, what's my true integrity? What's that saying to me? You'd end up, of course, becoming more empowered and not be the victim and not think, I can't, I can't cope without this job, or I have to say yes to these people, or I have to do what this person wants. And then, of course, you you'll find it's rooted in childhood wounding. So it's all linked, it's all it's all linked. Um, and of course, the saboteur that's that's being self-destructive, and we shift that into self-leadership, but we have to see where the patterns of self-destruction are because they can be very subtle and they can seem um you know that we have to do a thing. So people, you know, we might push on when we shouldn't because we feel that you know we're being determined or we're we're following through with something, and actually that's the very thing that makes us crash and burn. Um, I used to do it as a loop in my running, so it's a very it's a very obvious and easy metaphor running, and I um deep down, um, I think the yeah, what was the deep down thing? Because it used to happen in a cycle, I'd get, I'd start, I'd getting super fit and I'd be flying, and I'd be having some great races, it'd all be going really, really well. And I started to have this slight niggle of how am I going to maintain this level? One, two, even worse, that used to put me under pressure was how am I going to improve off this? I'm training so hard. How am I going to improve? And so that was the kind of subtle kind of concern, which was the time that action needed to be taken, really. I needed to um, you know, have some integrity to know that maybe I didn't want to improve, or maybe I needed to have a back-off anyway, and that would have empowered me. I wasn't then the victim of this kind of runaway train of needing to run faster and faster. And of course, um the the inner child was seeking some sort of um yeah, self-actualization and some sort of um approval and you know, all manner of things. Anyway, I used to sabotage myself, and of course, I loved to run. I actually loved training and I loved running races, so it was a real self-destruct act. But what would happen would I be training hard, everything would be going well, and then I'd be super tired, slight niggle, and there was an interval session planned. And in my deepest wise place, I knew that a backing off was the answer. But what I did instead was go and do the session, and inevitably I got ill or injured, and it was a pattern, a self-destructive pattern that took me a while to unravel. Now, of course, that's a very obvious pattern, but there are patterns everywhere, it can happen in relationships, happen with money. Um, you know, people will get to a certain level of wealth and then spend all the money or all manner of things. You know, it it's a very interesting watching our patterns. So, really, this these four survival archetypes are interesting because they will lead us into self-awareness, they'll lead us into looking at our patterns, they'll lead us to go and investigate um, you know, the places where we find ourselves um reactive, we find ourselves things not working out, and we'll see the the the self-destruct and the victim can go in hand in hand. Um, and yeah, we can then um sell out to kind of because we haven't got the you know, we haven't got the resources within us to know how to take the next steps, and that is the the thing is that the the having the curiosity and the interest is the first thing. Um I nearly got the book, John Bradshaw, it's the name of the author, um, and um I can't remember the title, but we're getting there. John Bradshaw, and I will write the title in the show notes. But I think the first thing is to just get interested because um it is interesting because these survival archetypes, as I say, all humans essentially uh are having them carrying them and playing them out in the light, yeah, they become our allies. So I think that from a you know, just for some investigation to begin with, is first of all, are you interested to find out? Because if you are, that's the first place, and um you can you could start to say, okay, how do these four archetypes operate in my life? So, how is the child, the inner child? Watch yourself and see whether the the child is playful, magical, whether there's it's acting out, you know, have a look. Where are you a victim? Do you play the victim? Do you feel that things are happening to you? Um, because as I say, there's the bigger level of our lives where I recognise there's all sorts of things that go on. But if we're just going day by day, do you end up being you know being powerless? Um, do you sell out? Do you sell out? Do you say yes when you mean no? Do you stay somewhere because you are too afraid to leave? Um, and where do you where do you just you know self-destruct? Um, and having had a little bit of an investigate there, you could look at where they limit you and look at areas of your life and just get curious and interested, um, and then look at how they can become allies, how you know, if you're at ease and you're not reactive and you've not got a child that's acting out like the playground child, you know, being cross with your friend or you know, wanting to yeah feel wronged and all the things that children do, and you know, if you're just playful and magical, um, you know, how would that be an ally in your life? And if you're if you're taking full responsibility for yourself, how's that going to look? And if you're not selling out, if you if you're really going, do I really want here? And if you've got a pattern that you've seen is self-destructive, and you stretch out of it and you don't do it, what's that going to be like? How can these these archetypes become your allies? And that's really interesting to just investigate, and also then investigate what immediate work is needed. Is it just noticing and starting to see where you where they play out? That's often the first step. And then is it to read more around this subject? Is it to get Caroline Miss's book? Is it to get Jan John Bradshaw's book? Um is it to listen to some more podcasts? Is it to go and have an investigate with somebody and just sit down and have a reflect? Um, how how would you do some inner work? What immediate work is needed? But um yeah, it's a it's an ongoing, it's an ongoing process living this life. And if we do do some reflective work and inner work, it's transformative. And the particular inner work, as you know, as I talked about in my last podcast, is clearing the reactivity, and therefore that's the route to everything. If you're reacting, that is a an arrow to a place where um there's something unresolved, there's something where it's touched something in the past and it's touched a wound, and therefore that's the core of all the work. So I will put the name of the John Bradshaw book in the show notes, and thank you as always for being here, and see you next time.