Long before you might think possible, your little system was taking in information and even though a huge task for a wee being, it was also trying to make sense of all of it.

Drawing inferences. 

Making predictions.

Even coming to conclusions, marking things as true.

All of this before words.  Before executive functioning was online.

What got me thinking about this was someone asking “What is the most common thing people seek somatic work for?”  

While true that it is used in recovery from accidents, injuries and other significant experiences, what struck me as most true was something much more pervasive.

Regardless of where we start, almost every thread has a linkage to one thing, in some way or another, often buried, mysterious or mutable.

Core beliefs

The sort of beliefs that, most of the time, we don’t even think to question because they’ve been with us for so long they feel like part of our very identity.

I’m not enough. I’m too much. I don’t belong. I’m unworthy.  Unlovable.

In sessions, they often show up spontaneously, as a surprise.  Or they sneak in like fog rolling in.  Suddenly, there.  Taking front stage whether we’re working through a singular event or a chronic, sustained experience.

Something linked back to another thing that we didn’t know was remembered, often when we were so small there were no words to explain it.

In the developmental years, the nervous system is doing its best with what it has, and what it has is limited.  There isn’t much language, capacity or ability to self-regulate.

What it does have is a drive to make sense of things, so it does, often by linking experiences that aren’t actually connected at all.

A child whose caregiver worked long hours, for reasons that had nothing to do with love, might arrive at “I’m not loved enough to be worth staying home for”. A firstborn, met early with high expectations, might land on “I’m never going to be enough”. A child born into a large family or with closely aged siblings might conclude “there’s not enough here for me”.  Any of these can happen with caregivers who did everything “right” that they possibly could.  

And yet, none of the memos received were completely accurate readings of what happened. They’re the best guess a very young system could make, in the absence of the tools it would only have later.

(This is not to say there is no real wounding.  There is far too much of it.)

The memos happen regardless of additional wounding.  While more innocently delivered, they are impactful nonetheless. 

The trouble is, once the memo lands, future happenings tend to agree with it. Later experiences that may have nothing to do with the original moment get interpreted through the older lens, confirming what was inaccurate to begin with. By adulthood, the memo isn’t only a belief anymore. It feels like part of who you are.

Most of the time, these aren’t anything you can think your way out of, not fully. The memo wasn’t recorded in the logical, verbal part of the mind because executive functioning wasn’t as established then as it would be later.  So, the memo tends to live in a deeper layer that WAS accessible in your earliest years, and continues to be expressed as something your little body was able to do then such as brace or hold your breath.  That physical expression has also been there so long that you’ve likely stopped noticing.

At first glance, this might feel like a curse — if even the most well-intentioned, informed, open-hearted care can end up in wounding.

On the other hand, once you know it for what it is, maybe there can be some softening of that wounding.  Maybe we can start to see some of it as simply the manifestation of what we came in with combined with our early environment.  Maybe it can be an opportunity for setting down what felt so dysregulating.

None of this means the original misinterpretation isn’t worth looking at.  It just means you’re allowed to hold all angles at the same time: yes, that’s a common life experience, yes, it’s shaping you, and yes, maybe it can start shaping you differently than it has to date.

It’s in this territory where somatic work tends to really shine, with gentle attention to where (and when) the memo is held. We’re never too old to shift what the memo was.

If this is something that sounds familiar, I offer a free 20-minute consult as just conversation to ask what you’re curious about.