**\#️⃣ Tags:** #Trauma #Wholeness > **🌱 Planted:** Sun 13 April 2025 --- A side effect of taking ourselves to be [[Separation Paradigm|separate]] from nature and from life is that we also take ourselves to be broken, defective and deficient. In so many ways. [[Collective Trauma|We're born into a traumatised society]], and our early [[Holding Environment]] lacked the [[Empathic Attunement]] we needed to develop into our authentic selves, and our caregivers were attuned to the world in such a way that brought about a constant need for [[Technological Attunement|surviving]] rather than thriving. Our personal subjectivity—our right to exist in this world as a unique individual—[[Narcissistic Wounding|wasn't validated]] in the way [[Developmental Needs|we needed]]. No one saw us for the alive and unique individual we were, in all our inherent [[Truth, Beauty & Goodness]]. Of course, when our caregiver's essential selves and [[Presence|❍ True Nature]] weren't validated either... how could they validate ours? All of this leaves us feeling less than. Only now, we live in this hyperconnected world which is built on constant consumption, production and [[Achievement Society|achievement]], so we’re constantly comparing ourselves to others, always feeling like we don’t stack up. We have so much information coming at us from all angles, almost every moment of the day, that we can barely find the space to hear or know ourselves. So then we walk around believing we’re broken, defective, deficient, less than and unworthy. But this isn't the truth. It's the echo of how our [[Parts]] adapted to survive. Our Protectors still carry the burden of keeping us safe from the pain they remember, even if that no longer fits who we are or what's happening in our lives now. Although we may feel broken, as if something fundamental were missing, this isn't the truth either. The longing ache we feel is itself evidence that we once knew our wholeness. Because if we didn't, how could it at all be possible for us to know something was missing? We are not broken. We are not deficient. There's nothing missing in us. There's only Parts of us still waiting to be seen, heard, understood, loved and valued exactly as they were when we got hurt.