Wound Stage Users' GuideTo ensure safety, this stage is only available to users who have been OK'd by a therapist. There are two options:
1. If you have a therapist, send them this link Therapist Explanation of Access Codes, and ask them to get an access code to give you. You can then enter this code here to get access to the Wound Stage of STJ.
If you aren’t currently working with a therapist and want access to the Wound Stage, you can contact an STJ Therapist Guide, who is a therapist or counselor who knows STJ and is willing to evaluate you for Wound Stage access and also guide you in using STJ if you want. You can find the List of Therapist Guides by clicking Finding a Therapist Guide. I (Jay Earley) am one of them, and I offer an inexpensive fee for the evaluation ($50).
In the Pattern System, a wound refers to the emotional hurt, fear, shame, or other pain and negative beliefs that derive from your past and are affecting you in the present. In IFS terms, this stage deals with exiles, which are wounded inner child parts.
This material can be emotionally difficult, so it might be helpful to ask a support person to be with you on the phone or in person as you go through it, or to talk with you when you finish the session.
There are currently fourteen wounds in Self-Therapy Journey—wounds that come from situations, usually from childhood, in which you were judged, shamed, rejected, deprived, abandoned, attacked, dominated, violated, exploited, betrayed, not seen, or made to feel guilty, or wounds that caused you to end up feeling deficient or unlovable. Each wound has a step sequence associated with it for learning about the wound and creating a report on it. You can learn whether you have the wound, how it functions in your life, where it comes from, and how to heal it. As you go through these steps, painful emotions may come up. There is an option to do a specific guided meditation to get into a grounded place first.
Description Page. At the beginning of the wound sequence, you learn about the wound and where it may have come from in childhood. The Similar Wounds Page provides an opportunity to look at wounds that are similar to the one you are exploring in case one of those seems more important to explore. For example, the Basic Deficiency Wound is similar to the Judgment Wound.
Just as with patterns, wounds are activated under some circumstances and not under others. You explore this on the Similar Wounds Page.
The Behaviors Page allows you to explore how you behave when your wound is activated. For example, for the Judgment Wound, one behavior is: “When someone doubts me, I lose confidence in myself and have difficulty speaking.” Some wounds are so hidden that they don’t influence behavior directly—only through the defenses that block them. For example, a Judgment Wound might be hidden behind an Angry Pattern.
The Feelings Page is for exploring the emotions you feel and the beliefs you hold when the wound is activated. For the Judgment Wound, these could include feeling ashamed or believing that you are stupid. The Name and Image Pages allow you to choose a name and image for the part of you (exile) that has the wound.
The Origins Pages are for exploring in detail the childhood origins of the wound (with the understanding that some wounds can originate in adulthood as well, especially if you have suffered trauma). A wound can originate in three ways:
1. Someone did something to you to cause the wound.
2. You were in a situation that caused the wound.
3. You inherited the wound from a parent.
On the Origins – Person Page, you choose a parent, relative, or other person whom you believe caused the wound. They you click through to a separate Childhood Memories Pate, where you can explore (through checklists) what this person did to you to cause the wound, for example, “Mother ignored me.” There is also a check list for what the person said to you, for example, Mother said “Leave me alone.” And you can also fill in the circumstances under which this happened, for example, “when Mother was drunk.” You can do this exploration for as many different people as you want.
The Origins – Situation Page is for exploring situations that caused the wound, such as being judged as a child because of a disability.
The Origins – Legacy Page allows you to explore whether or not you inherited the wound as a legacy from a parent, which means that a parent had this wound and you internalized it. For example, if your mother felt judged, you took in her feeling and felt judged yourself—not because of anything your mother did to you but simply because your mother felt that way.
The Meditation Page allows you to do a guided meditation in which you get to know your exile and heal its wound. This process is based on IFS. (See the second half of Self-Therapy.) This is a long, deep inner exploration that can bring up painful feelings or strong defenses. Make sure you are ready for this process before doing it. You may need support in handling what this meditation triggers.
In this meditation, you access the Self and makes an internal connection with the exile. You (as the Self) reparent the exile, for example, by giving it the love it never got or protecting it from the harm it experienced. Then you retrieve the exile from the past and help it unburden (release) the pain and negative beliefs it has been carrying as a result of what happened. Through memory reconsolidation, the exile’s old emotional memory is amended with a positive, healing experience.
The Report Page gives you a detailed report on your wound, collecting everything you have entered about it. Looking at your reports can give you additional insight into the origins of your issues.
One way STJ can help in healing your wound is through developing a healthy capacity. Each wound has associated with it a healthy capacity that can help heal it. For example, the Self-Esteem Capacity helps heal the Judgment Wound. The Healing Page describes the capacity associated with this wound and gives you the opportunity to work on it.
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