It's Not Your Fault

By Michael Fisher

In the movie "Goodwill Hunting" Matt Damon plays a brilliant angry young man who has a history of violence and has been bound over by the court to a psychotherapist plaid by Robin Williams. In the pivotal scene towards the end of the movie the psychologist and the boy are standing facing each other and he says...

This scene never fails to create an emotional response from the audience, because they know there has been a breakthrough in what he has been resonating with all his life, "It's my fault."

In the crucial formative years during a child's growth at a physical, mental, emotional, spirit level, from in utero, the birth process, and up to the age of eight, whatever positive or negative influence the child has learned will stay with him/her for the rest of his/her life. Up to the age of eight everything is related to 'self'. The child is more attuned to the right hemisphere of the brain. After the age of eight we learn to integrate the left/right hemispheres of the brain and learn how to discriminate and become more analytical (an ability only given to the human specie as sentient beings).

This early preoccupation with 'self' has profound implications in our relationships, especially with our parents. If a small child sees his/her parents having an argument or worse, it immediately becomes "my fault" because everything is about self.. this is followed almost automatically by "I'm not worthwhile," "I'm not lovable."

This will play out in a number of scenarios. If parents go out for a couple of hours without explanation and leave the child on its own, there is separation anxiety and what follows is "it's my fault," "I'm not worthwhile," "I'm not lovable." There are many other scenarios and during the course of a session of Resonance Repatterning they come up over and over again. The child in the adult still resonates with these messages and it plays out in his life with an inability to bond appropriately with the opposite sex, health issues, anxiety, abandonment issues, in fact right across the whole spectrum of human behaviour, often with disastrous results; for example: drug and alcohol abuse, or sexual addiction, as a result of low self-esteem, all in an attempt to anaesthetise themselves against life.

In his article, "The Power of Belief" Peter Shepherd states, "Our beliefs strongly influence our behaviour. They motivate us and shape what we do. Beliefs are our guiding principles, the inner maps we use to make sense of the world."

This can of course be a double edged sword. He goes on to say, "Beliefs come from many sources - upbringing, imitation of significant others, conclusions as a result of past traumas and repetitive experiences."

Chloe Wordsworth in her Introduction to Belief Repatterning writes: "It is not necessarily the painful past experience itself that creates your present pain or difficulties. Resonance with old life-depleting beliefs that are associated with highly charged feelings, create much of the pain and limitation experienced in the present."

This becomes apparent when we are witness to the afore mentioned scene in "Goodwill Hunting." Wordsworth goes on to say, "The beliefs that are identified may not make logical sense to you. In fact you may not even be conscious that you have such life depleting beliefs. This is because such beliefs are responses to specific situations from your infancy and childhood. What is important is to identify your resonance with the infant or childhood beliefs, so that this resonance can be transformed."

"It's not your fault." "I know." "It's not your fault."

"It is also possible that a life-depleting belief is a generational pattern that has been inherited."

Peter Shepherd says, "When we believe something we act as if it is true... this makes it difficult to disprove; beliefs act as perceptual filters. Unless we can truly forgive ourselves, we can never really move on and be free of the past."

That is why it is essential that we erase the program that we have resonated with for so long... "It's my fault - I'm not worthwhile - I'm not lovable."

It's not your fault.