How you act and relate can tell you an enormous amount about your own life as a baby. What you think you can’t remember, your body never forgets!

All of us have a range of characteristic, defensive reactions that have been with us since our earliest days. Our addictions small or large, our tempers, our clinging, our rigidities, our self-denial … the list is long.

It is too easy to berate ourselves for our foibles and our difficult traits - especially as their origin springs from experiences before language and narrative memory were available to us. Shame arises from this mystery: when we see our troublesome behaviors as unfounded and senseless. Oh, but there is so much sense behind our ‘madness’! Our automatic behaviors can speak to us; they tell us stories about our earliest experiences. We can decode our automatic, defensive traits to reveal the wounds that drove them. And once we really understand our histories, self-compassion comes in waves. Decoding the wordless story (that baby’s story!) behind human behaviors is essential for a world of forgiveness. And when a true, revelatory self-compassion finally arrives, anything is possible!