The Essential Drives

Love, Peace and Purpose

This week, I achieved a huge milestone in my life. I have wanted to be an author since I published my first poem in a kid’s magazine at 8 years old. Monday, I released my first book.

When I started this journey, I thought the hard part would be writing enough words for a book.  I figured since I knew how to blog, I would just write more words.  Right?  That sounds logical.  I hate when I try to be logical.

In reality, the past two years (yep, two years) have been an obstacle course of self-sabotage and defense mechanisms.  In fact, writing the words was the easy part.  Getting out of my way was a nightmare.  I heard constant phrases like:

“Who do you think you are?”

“You’re not good enough.”

“Nobody’s going to like it.”

And for a while, I believed it.  But I kept pushing anyway.  I changed direction a few times.  I wrote several outlines. More than once, I started writing concepts only to put them aside.  It wasn’t the right topic, not yet, not now.  But then, I had an epiphany.  I woke up to a new understanding that our inner parts are driven by something greater than trauma. It came to me as I wrote a blog post and I knew this had to be the basis for the book.  To back it up, a mentor emailed me after reading the post and said, “You should write that book now.”  But even from this point, there was plenty of self sabotage to overcome.

A year later, I have completed something I previously believed to be impossible.  And I’m proud and terrified at the same time.  Today, I want to share with you an excerpt from that book in which I introduce the essential drives.

An excerpt from One Voice

Discovering unconscious beliefs was one of the most important early steps in my recovery. I started questioning why my life had taken so many disastrous turns. And I started to take responsibility for it. Before I knew it, I was getting a sense of the beliefs I was carrying. And it was shocking. I had always seen myself as an independent, smart and reliable person in my conscious mind. I had no idea what those conscious thoughts were covering up. It was a mine field of unworthiness and self-hate. I was blown away.

After many years of struggling through those beliefs and the memories that created them, I became aware of my inner parts. I realized my beliefs and memories were held by parts of myself, and these parts had certain ways of viewing the world. I spent time building relationships with these parts, and they shared more and more information with me. That said, I didn’t always have the highest opinion of them, especially the parts who liked to curse me out and send me down the wrong roads.

But last year, I had a new epiphany. It spurred an idea so pivotal, this book is based on it. It also led me to a new relationship with my inner parts, a better relationship. I came to understand that my inner parts were not just trying to ruin my life with their crazy belief systems. They had a plan. There was an end goal to the ridiculousness. They were attempting to achieve something. This came to me when I was writing a blog post about the belief of “not enough”. I realized these beliefs are based on something innate within us. The beliefs are there to support our reason for existence on the planet. I refer to these reasons as the essential drives.

I came to understand three key reasons for being: love, peace and purpose. Are there more? Of course there are more. But I could always categorize them under love, peace and purpose. As I wrote about them, it became clear how they were driving my own beliefs. My essential drive for love was fueling my beliefs about losing myself to find it. My essential drive for peace was driving my beliefs about self-blame and control. My essential drive for purpose had birthed my beliefs around unworthiness and not being enough. These beliefs existed for the purpose of getting back to those essential drives.

There was a problem. My inner parts were going about it all wrong. The beliefs were encouraging behavior that would never lead to true love, peace and purpose. The trauma was skewing my approach. The trauma was fueling some bad choices in my attempts to do the right thing, to come back home. In some cases, it was making my essential drives mutually exclusive. I could only have one, but not all three. When I figured that out, I was able to work with my inner parts in a different way. I knew their end goals, so I could facilitate their journey by providing a different perspective on how to get there. And I think my inner parts knew it. They started responding differently to me, as though we had connected on a deeper level.

Now, I can share those ideas with you. Now, you can ask those questions of your inner parts. What is it you really want? What is your goal? How can I help you get there differently? I am hopeful this perspective changes your understanding of your inner relationships and leads to breakthroughs in your work. In reality, your parts mean well. And you have what it takes to help them come home to their essential drives.

An excerpt from One Voice

Written By Elisabeth Corey, MSW

The Essential Drives was originally published @ Beating Trauma and has been syndicated with permission.