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What is CHART?
Conscious Healing and Repatterning Therapy -- A Journey to Find Yourself
by Paula Shaw
Conscious Healing and Repatterning Therapy (CHART) is an energy-based system
that incorporates traditional therapeutic models as well as components of the
most prominent Energy Psychology methods. It’s a therapy for a new millennium, a
synthesis of many systems with the unique aspect of focusing the energy
treatment on the specific Part of the Personality that holds a given emotional
issue. The CHART system utilizes Intention, Diagnostic Muscle Testing, Keywords,
Visualization, and Chakra and Meridian contact to energetically clear emotional
issues being held by the Inner Child, the Inner Adolescent, and the Adult Self.
These critical components of the psyche each carry their own energetic patterns
that must be individually treated and healed.
CHART is an outgrowth of many years of my personal and professional experience.
I began as a teacher of children, and I guess my heart has always been with
them. Even though I left teaching and entered the adult worlds of resort
marketing and motion picture location management, I was destined to return to
school to do post-graduate specialty study to earn certification to counsel in
the area of Addictive Disorders. In addition, I attended a Loyola Marymount
University program and earned certification as a Grief Specialist. Unreconciled
grief became the central focus of the work in my private practice because I
believe it is so critical an issue in the evolution of addictive dysfunctional
behavior, as well as so many other mental/emotional disorders.
While developing CHART, I became acutely aware of a universal grief that we all
carry inside, the unhealed grief whose origin is in childhood trauma. This grief
is still felt and held onto by our Inner Children who carry the energetic
patterns of our past pain and trauma. It keeps them stuck and imprisoned in fear
and darkness. Implementation of the CHART process frees those Inner Children
from having to sit and wait in the dark, painful silence. It gives them the
opportunity to speak up, express their pain and get the attention they have
needed for years. Once that happens, in my experience, both the Child and the
Adolescent are able and willing to let go of the pain and fear, heal, and move
on. I have seen this time and time again. We aren’t blocked because they are
stubborn and won’t budge; we’re blocked because we refuse to acknowledge them
and listen to their pain. In the face of that reality, they simply hold onto the
dysfunction that has helped them survive. It’s all they know. Once they’ve been
heard and freed, however, they happily let go and open the way for the Adult to
heal and grow.
If we as Adults are to function optimally, we have to first clear the “damaged
under-growth” existing in the psyches of both the Inner Child and the Inner
Adolescent. This outgrowth of the pain and trauma of the early years blocks
energy in the present and prevents us from living successfully. We become stuck,
dysfunctional, vulnerable to mental disorders, addictive self-defeating
behaviors, and unhealthy relationships. However, if we clear this negative
patterning from the past, we open up a space in which we can create the future
we really desire.
The CHART approach is based on the belief that severe unresolved trauma and
attachment conflicts interrupt the normal human developmental process of
integration of the personality. The result is fragmentation of the personality
manifested as personality disorders and other unproductive beliefs and behavior
patterns. The goal of CHART work is integration of the personality and healing
of the psyche, brought about by clearing and eliminating unproductive beliefs
and behavior patterns where they began and still reside, within the Inner Child.
In most cases, this is where the initial trauma and the resulting Attachment
Conflicts were first experienced. However, CHART also addresses emotional issues
held by the Inner Adolescent and the Inner Adult, whose psychological makeup was
built on the damaged foundation of the Child’s psyche.
A child who is sexually abused and has no opportunity to process and clear the
emotional scarring will often develop a negative set of beliefs that initially
helps him/her to cope. Beliefs like, “I’m bad and I deserved what happened to
me,” or “I’m only lovable when I’m sexual,” place “badness” on the child and, in
a perverse way, aid the child in coping through creating the illusion of power
and control. The thinking that follows is something like: “I’m the one who’s
bad, so if I change the abuse will stop.” Even though this never materializes as
truth, the hope attained by holding onto this belief helps the child to survive.
In addition to this damaging delusion, probability is high that the Child is
experiencing Attachment Conflicts because the natural biological urge of the
child is to attach to the care-taking adult for protection and love. After being
violated in what’s supposed to be a place of sanctuary, the understandable
desire of the child would be to withdraw. However, the need to attach is so
strong that it drives the child to maintain a bond with the perpetrator. Imagine
how damaging this is to the child's psyche. If no opportunity to process this
damage occurs during childhood, the Inner Child will hold on to the core of this
trauma and the negative outcomes it produced. Adolescent beliefs and behaviors
will be built on the damaged psychological foundation created in childhood,
resulting in the perpetuation of unproductive behavior patterns in the
Adolescent and eventually the Adult.
In my opinion, Energy Psychology Systems that only clear issues on the Adult
level have limited effectiveness because they may not be impacting the core of
the pain and shame held by the Child and/or the Adolescent. Consequently, the
problematic beliefs and behaviors may persist or recur. The client continues to
think: “I’m bad,” “Men are bad,” “I only have value when I’m pleasing someone,”
etc., and behaviors like the inability to commit or be intimate persist as well.
Even if the Adult self is anxious to clear negative energy patterns in order to
create a more effective life, the Child and Adolescent parts of the psyche may
be immobilized in dysfunctional behavior, old pain and trauma. Until those hurts
are healed, the Adult cannot go forward in a productive, pain-free manner. The
Child and the Adolescent will create the physical or emotional upheaval
necessary to draw attention to what they need. A kind of psychic “tantrum” can
even occur, manifesting itself in physical pain, illness, or psychological
disorders.
Our vulnerable Children experience most of the initial trauma that occurs in a
given life. Rarely do they get the opportunity to process and release the impact
of the trauma, so it gets locked into their energetic circuitry. A matrix of
unproductive beliefs and behaviors forms around it, and after a time it is
almost impossible to separate the child’s personality from the traumas that
initially formed it. Before they are damaged or traumatized, children are open,
loving, happy, inquisitive, full of awe and vitally alive. Then the pain comes
and the trust and aliveness become deadened with fear. Without help from a
trusted adult, the child is doomed to remain this way.
Sadly, it’s upon this damaged foundation that the psyche of the Adolescent is
built. That psyche then becomes further decompensated by the unresolved traumas
experienced in Adolescence. This is the legacy that will then be passed on to
the Adult. Is it any wonder that by the time we are adults we are fearful,
neurotic, frustrated, anxiety-ridden, isolated beings, with no sense of wonder
or awe and little ability to live creatively? Way too many of us are walking
around numb, afraid, and emotionally dead. It doesn’t have to be this way.
When childhood is a happy, secure experience, grounded in open, honest
communication, adolescence will progress normally. The adolescent feels safe to
devalue authority figures, individuate, and learn through trial and error who
she/he is and what she/he believes. The growth and
independence attained during adolescence will contribute positively to the
formation of a healthy adult. However, when the child has been frightened and
damaged, the normal developmental tasks can’t progress smoothly. The courage,
independence, safety and security necessary for the adolescent to rebel and
become his/her own person won’t be there.
If we as adults take no action to heal the wounds of the Child and the
Adolescent, how can we realistically expect success with moving beyond the pain
and deadness that weigh us down? Who we are is built on who the Child and
Adolescent were. We can’t build a strong house on a faulty foundation. We have
to go back and begin the healing where the wounds were incurred.
Caroline Myss describes this beautifully in her book Anatomy of the Spirit:
"The 'wounded child' in each of us contains the damaged or
stunted emotional patterns of our youth, patterns of painful memories, of
negative attitudes and of dysfunctional self-
images. Unknowingly, we may continue to operate within
these patterns as adults, albeit in a new form. Fear of
abandonment, for example, becomes jealousy. Sexual abuse
becomes dysfunctional sexuality, often causing a repetition
of the same violations with our own children. A child’s negative self-image can
later become the source of dysfunctions
such as anorexia, obesity, alcoholism, and other addictions
as well as obsessive fear of failure. These patterns can
damage our emotional relationships, our personal and
professional lives, and our health. Loving oneself begins
with confronting this archetypal force within the psyche and
unseating the wounded child’s authority over us. If unhealed,
wounds keep us living in the past.”
With these ideas as my guiding thoughts, I began to work with clearing the
issues of the Inner Child, Adolescent and Adult with all my clients. I had been
working with several clients on the Matrix Key Core Traumatic Patterns, so I
decided to go back and recheck the issues we’d already cleared. This time I
checked the Child, Adolescent and Adult. In every case the Adult was still
clear, but the Child and the Adolescent were not. Low and behold, as we began
clearing the traumas of all three of these aspects of the psyche, the back pain
in the aforementioned client disappeared completely, as did the life-long
Depression issues of another. These successes were soon followed by a host of
other physical and emotional issues getting cleared and staying cleared.
My belief is that, when we heal the pain of the Inner Child and the Inner
Adolescent as well as that of the Adult, we get a deep clearing that lasts
because we have eliminated the issue on the level where the pain was first
experienced and on the levels that were later impacted. I feel this is an
important piece of the puzzle that may add to our understanding of why people
sometimes “take an issue back” or why it may take several treatments to get it
cleared in the first place. What may be going on is that the Child or the
Adolescent hasn’t yet had his/her “day in the sun,” and therefore isn’t ready to
let go of the issue.
The goal of this system is to help you CHART a different course -- a course back
to happiness, joy and freedom.
First you must gain the trust of your Inner Child, but that’s easy to do because
he/she is so ready for some attention. Begin by saying goodnight and good
morning to him/her and thinking of him/her when you are enjoying things you
enjoyed as a child or when you are afraid of things you feared as a child. Put
your arms around her/him and tell her/him, “It’s okay, I’m aware of your pain
and I’ll always be there.” That kind of acknowledgment is like a banquet to this
child who is starving for attention.
Before you know it, you will be clearing issues you’ve carried for years. In my
experience these Inner Kids don’t want to stay in pain nor should they. They’re
ready to let go once they trust us to show them how. Don’t keep walking by your
Inner Child ignoring her/his tears! It takes so little effort to achieve so
much.
Everyone can do this. Just have the desire to take your life to a better place.
Set the course and invite them to join you. Have no fear; the Inner Child and
the Inner Adolescent will be happy to accompany you on the journey.
For further information about CHART please visit
http://www.chartpsychology.org/
Articles, News, Trainings with Paula Shaw
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