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A core wound is the oldest hurt in your nervous system: a moment, or a whole season, when you needed to be met and weren’t. Most lists name five or six of them. Underneath every list I find two faces: abandonment, which lands as “I’m too much”, and rejection, which lands as “I’m not enough”. You can’t rewrite where it came from, but you can complete it in the present.
Maybe you already know your story. You can explain exactly where it comes from, and it still runs you. A friend takes a day to text back and your whole body goes cold. A partner sighs and you’re five years old. You keep picking the same kind of person, the same kind of boss, the same fight. You’ve done the reading. You’re tired of being this predictable to yourself.
The child inside me was frightened from the moment he came into this world. Forceps pulled him out. He spent twenty-four hours in an incubator. Later, the frights got bigger: his father’s drinking and anger, the depth of his mother’s heartbreak.
My grandmother on my mother’s side used to lie about my birthday, because it was a reminder that my mother had conceived me before she married. It wasn’t uncommon for my birthday to go uncelebrated. A child doesn’t think “this is my family’s shame”. A child thinks “there’s something wrong with me being here”.
And at eight, after something frightening happened in my body at school, I woke on a couch with adults whispering around me. Not speaking to me. Whispering. That’s how shame enters the body. Not through words. Through silence.
Before I explain any of it, try something. Read the next sentence slowly, let the out-breath go, and notice what happens in your body as you read it. You were never too much, and you were always enough. Don’t argue with it and don’t agree with it. Just notice where it lands, the chest, the throat, the belly, and whether something in you eases or rushes in with the evidence against it. Stay with that one more breath. That’s the place we’ll work from.
What’s really going on
If your throat tightened at that line, or something in you said “nice idea, not for me”, notice it. Both make sense.
The wound comes before the shame. We come into the world expecting to be met: held, fed, kept safe, made to feel we matter. Sometimes the world doesn’t meet us. The bond breaks, or goes cold, or never quite shows up. That unmet-ness is the original wound.
Then shame arrives on top of it and says, now you get to believe it’s your fault. The simplest version I know: you call your dog and your dog doesn’t come. First it hurts. Then, faster than thought, the story. He didn’t come because I’m too much. Or, he didn’t come because I’m not enough. The not-coming is the wound. The story about you is the shame.
Why would a child blame themselves? Because the alternative is worse. A child can’t survive believing the person keeping them alive is unreliable. So the child makes a trade, and it makes sense: it must be me.
Here’s what the lists of five core wounds often miss. The wound doesn’t stay in the family. The same two questions, are you there for me and am I enough for you, get asked of everything you’re bonded to: friends, teachers, partners, employers, the community you post in. Too much and not enough are the oldest wounds in the human nervous system, and they turn up dressed in all sorts of costumes.
In my book I call these open entries. Your body keeps a ledger. Some experiences got completed, someone held you and the feeling moved through. Some didn’t. Those open entries keep broadcasting, and whenever life rhymes with the old hurt, you feel it again, right now. A protector part grows around each one. Mine is the Bull, who keeps me busy so the old fear never gets quiet enough to speak. Protectors are noise management. They keep you functional while the books stay open underneath. You make sense.
Need to talk this through right now? Figlet is an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, or right now. It runs this loop with you on the Self ground.
The loop, on your situation
Coaching is how we go from where you are now to where you want to go. We only address the past when it emerges in the present. And that’s exactly where a core wound shows up. So take one recent moment that hit harder than it should have, and walk it through this.
Get ground in your body first
Feet on the floor. One breath out, a little longer than the breath in.
What happened
One plain sentence, the way a camera would have seen it. “My sister didn’t reply to my message for two days.” Not “nobody ever cares”. Just the event.
Where it lands in the body
A hollow in the chest. A clench in the jaw. Going very still. Is it okay to stay with it for one breath, with permission to stop any time? And now what do you notice?
Who’s driving
Which coin did you reach for, “too much” or “not enough”? Which protector came in to manage it: the one who gets busy, the one who goes quiet, the one who makes a joke, the one who leaves first? It took that job because, once, it was needed.
Trace it
Only as far as today needs. When have you felt this exact feeling before? You don’t have to dig up a whole childhood. Notice the first image that comes, and let that be enough for now.
Feel it and tell someone
Shame feeds on aloneness. The antidote is company. Say one true sentence to someone safe: “When you didn’t text back, I felt about six, and I felt like too much.”
One creative action
Ask yourself the question the Friend asks: what do I need right now? Then give yourself, or ask for, one small piece of it this week.
How to heal core wounds, honestly
Most guides tell you to identify your wound, journal, do inner child work, set boundaries and find a therapist. All useful. But insight on its own doesn’t close an entry. You can know your story perfectly and still flinch every time.
What still fascinates me, after two decades of doing this work, is that we don’t have to change the past to heal. We only have to change a present moment. You can get, now, the thing you actually needed then. And when you do, the new experience goes back into the nervous system and changes the meaning of the old one.
I call that the missing experience. If your wound says “too much”, it’s being with someone who stays when you’re at your most. If it says “not enough”, it’s being chosen when you’ve done nothing to earn it. That’s why this work happens with another nervous system steady enough to lend you its ground, a partner, a friend, a coach, a therapist.
And give back what was never yours. A lot of the shame you carry is someone else’s failing, handed down. You don’t have to hate anyone. You can say, quietly, “This was yours. I’m not carrying it as a defect in me anymore.”
One thing to do tonight
Finish this sentence three times on paper: “When people pull away, the story I tell myself is…” Read your three answers back slowly, feet on the floor. Circle the one that feels oldest. Then write underneath it, in your own words, what you needed to hear back then. Read it out loud once.
Would therapy help with this?
If an old wound shows up in your patterns but you can still live your days, coaching is often the right size of help.
But if you’re dealing with flashbacks, abuse in your past or present, panic that floods you, or a low mood that won’t lift, please work with a licensed therapist where you live. If you’re thinking about hurting yourself, call or text 988.
The path
What I’ve just walked you through is the Empathi Method. For an individual, it’s built on my Proof of Work of Being Human protocol: building sovereign ground inside yourself. On the Self ground, one plain sign of progress is that the old feeling still comes, but it passes in an hour instead of a week.
There are two ways to keep going. You can start now with Figlet, an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, on the Self ground, the next time a small thing lands like a big one. Or you can get on the list for the book and the live program with me, where we do this work together.
Figs O’SullivanFiglet Life Coaching
Get help now
Figlet is an AI coach, there at 2 in the morning or right now. It runs this loop with you on your actual situation, as often as you need. It’s coaching, not therapy. The list hears first about the book and the next live program with me.
Proof of Work, Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027. Not sure which ground is hurting? Take the two-minute Ground Check.
It was never that you were too much, or not enough. It was that nobody came.
I go deeper into this in my book, Proof of Work (Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027).
Common questions
What are the five core wounds?
The most common list names rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal and injustice. Other lists differ. In my work they come back to two faces: abandonment, felt as too much, and rejection, felt as not enough.
How do I figure out my core wound?
Look at what hits hardest and what your protectors work overtime to prevent. Notice the story you tell when someone pulls away. Whether it’s “I’m too much” or “I’m not enough” is usually your clue.
How do you heal a core wound?
Not by rewriting the past, but by completing it now. Feel it in your body, let someone steady be with you in it, and receive the experience you missed. Slipping back is part of the practice, not failure.
The Friend, and the question “What do you need right now?”, come from the teaching of Aftab Omer at the Institute of Imaginal Studies, where I trained.
