There is great interest these days in balancing our inner masculine and feminine parts, to for example attract the right partner or unlock higher levels of spiritual consciousness as well as higher levels of income. The missing piece however in most teachings is undoing our patriarchal conditioning and healing our patriarchal wounding.
Healing the Masculine & Feminine series is an eight-article series by Sabriyé Dubrie of Soul Teachings on healing our patriarchal conditioning and truly balancing our inner feminine & inner masculine parts within ourselves. As a society, we are only starting to understand how deeply our patriarchal wounding still influences us today; and how it wreaks havoc in our romantic relationships, our relationship with our parents, our relationship with the opposite sex, our relationship as women amongst ourselves, and in what it means to be a woman or a man in our own lives.
The teachings shared are gleaned from my own healing journey on a Soul path level and my experience in working with over a thousand clients using the Soul Embodiment® Therapy method. For those interested in learning this method as a therapist, I run a yearly Soul Embodiment® Therapy Certification Program to train therapists worldwide in this revolutionary healing modality.
In this Soul teaching on the wounded feminine you will learn:
- What is the wounded feminine?
- The Yin and Yang of the wounded feminine
- How the inner feminine sabotages our romantic relationships
- What the wounded feminine represents on a Soul Path level
- And more…
What is the wounded feminine?
‘Wounded feminine energy is when your authentic feminine essence is prevented from being fully expressed, because of the wounds you carry from your past.
This wounding can be from our families, romantic partners, society, or any other situation in which we have felt unsafe or unsupported.’ Source: bykaterinacz.com
For many of us, such wounding has not only been passed down through our ancestral lineages, but we have also brought it with us from previous lifetimes. After more than 6.000 years of living under the patriarchy, we have as a collective become deeply conditioned not only to devalue but suppress the feminine externally and within ourselves.
As explained before in the Soul Teaching on the Witch Wound patriarchy has made us voluntarily suppress parts of ourselves and our femininity to survive. This survival wasn’t only a practical survival in the sense of a roof over our heads, clothes to wear, and food to eat which was provided mainly by the men in the household, but also the survival within the community that could otherwise punish, torture, exile or execute you if you stepped out of line as a woman.
The only parts of the feminine that were deemed acceptable within the patriarchy were those parts in service of men and their offspring, all other parts of feminity had to be shut down to fit the patriarchal mold of what it meant to be a woman.
This has led women to disown vital parts of themselves to fit in. Parts such as:
- Her sexuality and sensuality
- Her wisdom and intelligence
- Her spiritual gifts and intuition
- Her innate connection to nature and healing powers
- Her passion and conviction
- Her anger and her rage
- Her boundaries and sovereignty
The Witch Wound describes where women have internalized this wound to keep themselves safe in the outer world (in their communities, villages, cities, or countries) in regard to society as well as the governments or rulers presiding over them.
The wounded feminine archetypes we will be discussing today are where we have internalized this wound in order to be and remain safe in the inner world of our homes, families, and marriages. Women throughout many periods in history and within many cultures could not survive without a man to protect and provide for her and her offspring, this gave men a lot of power over women and forced women not only in a dependent but subservient role.
The Yin and Yang of the wounded feminine
This utter dependency on men has left its scars on the female psyche in two ways that we will discuss in this section. It has either led to them becoming someone who cannot lead themselves, who feels that they cannot function independently without a man by their side or they have become hyper-independent, subconsciously believing that if they don’t take responsibility for (read control) everything themselves they won’t be safe (or survive).
Just as we discussed in the teaching on the Wounded Masculine, the wounded feminine also has a Yin and Yang expression. Depending on where we are in our lives and who we are in a relationship with, or if we are in a relationship at all – we can carry both wounded feminine archetypes within us.
For example, within my first marriage, I was very much in the Yin wounded feminine archetype energy while my then-husband with strong narcissistic traits was very much in the Overbearing (Yang) masculine energy at that time. He went on to have a much better second marriage where that part of him was not triggered as much.
In my second marriage, I was much more in the Yang wounded feminine energy, while my second husband was much more in the Yin Collapsed masculine energy. Whatever wounded energy we are embodying ourselves, we tend to attract the vibrational opposite to that in our partners to help balance ourselves out.
You will not find long-lasting examples of people who are either both in their Yin or Yang energy, because those relationships don’t work.
We are not talking about gender or sex here, but about the inner masculine and feminine archetypes we embody, and within those archetypes we are always looking for someone to complement us and balance us out.
That is until we learn to balance the inner masculine and feminine within ourselves, then we don’t need someone externally which is actually a good thing because we can then enter relationships for all the right reasons, rather than to heal our unresolved past (pain).
So let’s explore together what the Yin & Yang wounded feminine archetypes look like:
The Rigid Inner Feminine (Yang)
The rigid inner feminine is what matriarchal societies would and have looked like, many (spiritual) women carry the illusion that because women are more inclusive, a matriarchy would be a more egalitarian society but that is not true. A society should neither be matriarchal nor patriarchal, but instead a mix of the best of both worlds, that is how we truly create an egalitarian society.
The rest is just shifting who dominates the other sex…
‘In matrilineal societies, although in-marrying men may be deemed necessary and useful as husbands, fathers, and human resources for labor, their function becomes part of the puzzle; in the context of assumptions about male authority, their roles may seem to be effete or ambiguous.’ Soure: britannica.com
This is because in matrilineal societies power is bestowed on the brothers and uncles within the maternal lineage, which leaves husbands and fathers with even less power than women and especially mothers have within patrilineal societies.
The rigid inner feminine is a product of the collapsed inner masculine, which makes her become the pseudo-masculine in order to protect and provide for herself. She can only do this by sacrificing her own feminine traits of openness, receptivity, and flow. Instead, she becomes hard-shelled and armored in order to protect herself and fend for her own.
This makes it very difficult for her to open up to receive love, money, support, or true intimacy because that would make her vulnerable to being hurt. One of the main characteristics of this archetype is needing control in order to feel safe and this can often be traced back to their childhood where they experienced either neglect or physical, psychological, or sexual abuse which is how their inner masculine collapsed in the first place in their current incarnation.
In reality, of course, the inner masculine collapsed earlier in their Soul path journey and the childhood experiences recreate those wounds in an attempt to heal them, this time around. This obviously does not justify the actions of the people who hurt us, nor absolve them of their responsibility for their actions.
A woman with a rigid inner feminine is wildly attracted to men with a collapsed inner masculine because she feels safe with them as they allow her to be in control most of the time and because men with a collapsed inner masculine struggle to be emotionally available which is right up her alley because she finds it very difficult to be vulnerable which she equates with being ‘weak’.
This woman is a fighter, very capable, dependable, reliable, and responsible because she knows how to get things done. Most single mothers are stuck in the rigid inner feminine archetype, they’ll take the meaningless sex and the one-night stands, maybe even the cheating because it allows them to stay in control of their own lives and that is for her the only way that she is sure she will survive if she takes matters in her own hands.
She does this of course because in the past (current life, ancestral or past life) she has been hurt by men which is why she has decided it’s not safe to depend on them.
Rigid inner feminine keywords are:
● Too masculine ● Rescuer/giver ● Controlling ● Father wound ● Retreats within or strikes out ● Avoidant/Anxious attachment ● Twin Flame chaser ● Doesn’t feel safe to receive ● Overgiver ● Can’t be vulnerable ● Can’t receive love ● Difficult to receive money ● Risks burnout ● Difficulty feeling emotions ● Difficulty trusting ● State of starvation ● Seeks emotionally unavailable partners
The Insatiable Inner Feminine (Yin)
The insatiable inner feminine is the feminine archetype where there is not enough masculine anymore to contain the uncontrollable amount of emotions that stir deep within. This wounded archetype is a result of being suppressed by the overbearing masculine (the masculine in excess) for so long that the feminine overflows and becomes destructive. It’s the woman, that embodies the feminine to the extent that she has become completely dependent and therefore ineffective.
This makes her manipulative, demanding, draining and a damsel in distress who is always in need of rescuing whether by her partner, her friends, or her family. In relationships she is insatiable, she can never have enough attention, love, affection, admiration, compliments, etc. because deep inside she is a bottomless pit. This is due to the fact that she is trying to get her needs met externally, rather than growing up and being the parent to her own inner child.
These are the women who have a father-daughter relationship with their significant other, where they forever remain the child within their partnership. Very much, in the same way, that the rigid inner feminine often subconsciously creates a mother-son relationship with the collapsed inner masculine.
Both yin archetypes whether masculine or feminine tend to become the child in their relationships because of their inability to take care of themselves and their own needs.
In Jungian psychology, this is referred to as the puer (m) and puella (f) state.
Please remember in our wounded state we are always a mixture of both, we might be 70% the one and 30% the other expression of the wounded inner feminine but that really depends on the situation and relationship. This means that we can still be a rigid inner feminine, with puella tendencies.
Insatiable inner feminine keywords are:
● Too feminine ● Victim ● Damsel in distress ● Manipulative ● Mother wound ● Empath ● Anxious attachment ● Disconnected from the inner masculine ● Can’t receive enough ● Becomes vulnerable too soon ● No amount of love is ever enough ● Has money but is afraid to lose it ● Doesn’t accept boundaries ● Gets lost in emotions ● Enmeshment/clingy ● Demanding/draining
How the wounded feminine sabotages our romantic relationships
As discussed above it’s pretty clear why the wounded feminine whether in her yin or yang expression struggles to have fulfilling relationships. The yang expression can’t let love in and the yin expression doesn’t feel loved no matter how many hoops she forces her lovers to jump through to prove their love for her. Because the fact that she had to make them do it, makes their display of love invalid in her eyes because she knows it was coerced.
Just think about every time you have instructed your partner on how or what you want for your birthday, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas, your anniversary, and so on and then felt cheated because they did exactly what you wanted (or didn’t) and you were disappointed that it didn’t come from their heart! This is a typical way that women sabotage themselves in their romantic relationships either through manipulation (yin) or control (yang).
The same is true for connection and the level of intimacy that is a result of truly connecting with our partners, the rigid inner feminine doesn’t feel safe to be vulnerable. The only way to connect is to open up and let someone in. In contrast, the insatiable inner feminine is both so needy as well as emotional that her significant other keeps her at arm’s length not to get sucked into her bottomless pit.
Both wounded feminine archetypes can resort to promiscuous sex for their own reasons and this is not to slut shame other women but to pull back the curtain on which wounding can make women want to engage in a type of sexuality that typically suits men more than women.
Because let’s be honest unless you hit the lover’s jackpot most one-night-stands aren’t worth the bother and it’s statistically more women than men that regret having them.
‘The study found that women are more likely to experience higher levels of regret after a one-night stand, with 35% of respondents admitting to feeling guilt.’ Source: Thegaurdian.com
‘While some (women) may be interested in a casual hookup, others may not be interested in that at all—but, as a result of hookup culture becoming the new norm, many feel hooking up is their only option. What was once sexual liberation for women and a win for feminism, in which women having casual sex was destigmatized, is now a sexual license for men. Our support and encouragement of hookup culture can actually promote the patriarchy by telling women that there is a greater expectation for them to have casual sex than to have a real relationship.’ Source: bcheights.com
‘Most young college women for example don’t like being promiscuous. ‘However, they feel like if they don’t “put out,” they’ll be outcompeted by the more sexually adventurous women among them, i.e., that another girl will end up in a relationship with the guy in whom they are interested. What most of these women don’t know, however, is that recent research shows the opposite to be true—at least when it comes to true love and lasting relationships.’ Source: naturalwomanhood.org
The last two quotes sum up the reasons why the rigid inner feminine and the insatiable inner feminine agree to non-committal sex. The rigid inner feminine whether she admits it to herself or not prefers it that way because it allows her to stay in control of her own life and feel ‘safe’, in other words, she doesn’t really want the relationship or the commitment but she does crave sexual satisfaction. Mind you, you can be in a partnership and still have one foot out the door and there is no better way to keep your options open than having multiple sexual partners.
The insatiable inner feminine on the other hand agrees to non-committal sex in the hopes of getting a relationship out of it. She does it to outcompete other women and hopes that by blowing his mind sexually to win him over forever. But as research indicates this is not the way to land a man, at least not when it comes to him seriously wanting to settle down with you and have children together.
As a heterosexual woman, I do not know if and how this applies within same-sex relationships but when it comes to these archetypes playing out it would not surprise me if this plays out the same way it does in heterosexual relationships.
These are three concrete ways in which the wounded inner feminine archetypes sabotage us in our love lives and prevent us from having the romantic relationships, love, and connection we deep down both crave and deserve.
Another way that it can sabotage relationships is that the rigid inner feminine feels unsupported and left to fend for herself in her relationships. Her partner often accuses her of being the man in the relationship which has left him feeling emasculated and not willing to perform in bed, the one place she does really want him to give her all he’s got.
While the insatiable inner feminine tends to lose herself in her partner or her children and starts to resent them for it. She either tends to feel there is no time for herself because of the demands of others, or she tends to live through others vicariously. This is due to her pattern of enmeshment and lack of boundaries which makes it hard for her to make the space she needs to take up for herself.
What both wounded feminine archetypes need to understand is that it is their own subconscious programming that causes this and not per se the people in their lives although they obviously play their part.
It’s like the chicken and the egg, which came first?
But in this case, it’s clear, or at least it should be clear, that it’s their own subconscious patterns that drive their behavior to manifest in alignment with the wounded feminine archetype playing out in their lives.
Rather than it being a personal trait or problem, it’s actually a collective problem playing out in very similar ways for all the women with this specific wounded feminine archetype. It of course, needs to be healed on an individual level but women can take it less personally (or take it less as a personal failure) when they understand that it’s a collective struggle (patriarchal conditioning) one way or another (yin or yang) that all women need to heal at some point in their lives.
We all have the wounded feminine (and masculine) archetypes playing out in our lives no matter who we are or where we came from, it pays no attention to race, class, income, or whatever. Every woman has these archetypes playing out in their own life according to their current life experiences, childhood trauma, ancestral baggage, and past life trauma.
What the wounded inner feminine represents on a Soul path level
On a Soul path level, the wounded inner feminine represents reclaiming and embodying the Divine Feminine. It’s about bringing back all the disowned parts of our femininity that we needed to split off to survive and be safe.
This has not only made us less of who we are but has also imprinted within our psyche that the feminine is less than the masculine which is contrary to our Soul blueprint, where the feminine and masculine are each other’s equals in every way.
This is why no one can truly reach enlightenment or attain Soul mastery or even Soul embodiment without healing the inner feminine within themselves. This is true for both men and women, this is even more so because the Kundalini energy that lies dormant around the tailbone in the root chakra is the Divine Feminine energy called Shakti.
‘Shakti energy is the divine feminine energy that resides within each of us and is present all around us. Awakening Shakti inside of you is often connected to kundalini awakening or the divine serpent energy at the base of your spine.
The most commonly used literal translation of the word shakti is energy, potency, strength, or power. Shakti is the embodiment of the divine feminine energy that is present within everyone and everything. As the energy underlying the universe, Shakti represents the sacred process of creation, maintenance, and destruction constantly occurring all around us.
Shakti is also the name of Parvati, the wife of the deity Shiva. But beyond this singular form of the Goddess Parvati, Shakti truly represents the Goddess in all her many forms. Shaktism is the spiritual tradition of praying to this divine feminine Goddess and accessing the doctrine of power within you. Shaktism teaches us to focus on the Divine Mother, known as Shakti or Devi, in her many forms so that we can embody her gentle fierceness.’ Source: courses.onlineyoga.school
The goal for Shiva (the divine masculine) and Shakti (the divine feminine) is to unite by Shakti (the kundalini) rising from the root chakra to the crown chakra where Shiva resides.
This is why the feminine and the masculine have to be in perfect harmony and balance within ourselves, to unlock our own Divine nature and power aka our own Soul and divinity.
‘Many people think, that Shiva Shakti is Male-Female sexual energy. And their cosmic union is almost always regarded as sexual energy. You need to understand that sexuality is a natural phenomenon, but most people mix up sexuality and spirituality. For the universe, sexuality is the union between a man and a woman, whereas, spirituality is the union between an earthly object or power with a divine power.’ Source: shreehariyoga.com
Healing the wounded masculine is about reclaiming our power on a Soul path level, healing the wounded feminine is about reclaiming our divinity.
‘According to Tantra, Shiva is a corpse without Shakti — it is Kundalini Shakti that imparts life to Shiva, and, thereby, She constitutes the life of Shiva. Even in manifestation, the Divine Couple does not remain apart, as one without the other cannot exist.’ Source: hridaya-yoga.com
How to heal the wounded feminine within yourself
To heal the wounded feminine within, you first need to heal the wounded inner masculine.
Good luck getting the rigid inner feminine out of protection and survival mode as long as your inner masculine is still collapsed. Without the inner masculine healed he cannot protect her, which leaves her with no option but to protect herself. Her wounding is in response to his wounding and we are not talking about the external masculine here, but the internal masculine – your animus.
Likewise, the insatiable inner feminine is a result of being denied, silenced, and locked away in a dungeon by her own overbearing inner masculine. This is what causes her to become so emotional, that she cannot contain herself and becomes destructive. So the very first place to start healing is within your own inner masculine.
Once that is set in motion the unresolved pain of the inner feminine will start coming to the surface from your current lifetime and childhood, passed down through your ancestry and from your past lives.
Over 6.000 years of patriarchy have left scars on our inner feminine template that need to be healed for us to be able to reclaim and bring back all the parts of our femininity and not just the ones that were acceptable and valued within the patriarchy.
If you still carry a lot of anger toward the patriarchy, it might be a good idea to (re)read part I of this series on the true origins of the patriarchy.
A series of lifetimes I saw in my own Soul history centered around the wound of not being in control or in charge of my own life and destiny as a woman. Every human being whether currently a man or woman, has lived this experience as a woman in previous times when men or male family members decided the fate of their daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, and even aunts, cousins, or nieces. This is still the custom in patriarchal societies today such as India with their arranged marriages.
Such deeply subconscious memories keep us from becoming truly sovereign and the masters of our own destiny. This is because deep within our psyche these false beliefs based on past experiences have been imprinted as the truth, a ‘truth’ no matter how outdated or objectively false that we still operate under because we don’t know that it’s there.
As long as you subconsciously believe (whether it is objectively true or false doesn’t matter) that as a woman or in regards to the inner feminine; women are powerless, you cannot embody the Divine Feminine nor truly unleash the Shakti energy within your system.
The one cancels the other out.
It doesn’t matter if you are 100% convinced of your sovereignty on a conscious level, it’s not your conscious mind that creates your reality or only a very small part of it does. It’s the subconscious mind that pulls in the people, situations, and experiences into your external reality to help you become conscious of your subconscious fears, false beliefs, and false self-identifications. It does this not to harm you but so that you can liberate (heal) yourself from them once and for all.
This is why we have to find these false conclusions because they are co-creating our current reality.
Reclaiming & embodying the Divine Feminine
The end goal of healing the inner feminine, no matter if you are a man or a woman is being able to reclaim and embody the Divine Feminine. As said earlier this is imperative for our spiritual awakening and a full Kundalini awakening that shifts us permanently into a different state of consciousness and not just temporarily which is often the case with spontaneous Kundalini awakenings.
This shift from ego or 3D consciousness to a Soul or 5D consciousness happens through the Kundalini, but as you can see in the excerpt below this cannot be done without the Divine Feminine taking her rightful place on the celestial throne next to the Divine Masculine.
‘Before (the Kundalini) reaches the heart chakra, we were bound by the laws of karma. With the merging of the divine feminine and the divine masculine, we gain the ability to make our own decisions. We become an aspect of Karma itself.
This chakra is the balancing pivot between the three lower and three higher chakras. Here, our higher nature has the potential to become manifest. We are now free to “follow our own heart.” We have discovered that sacred place where the sages can hear the secrets of the universe: a language older than words.’ Source: fractalenlightenment.com
Not only can the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine not merge when there are still patriarchal beliefs within the psyche that the feminine is inferior to the masculine, but as I mentioned in the example of my own healing journey we cannot be free to “follow our own heart” if we still subconsciously believe that we are not in control of our own destinies.
A subconscious belief based on our unresolved past from female incarnations where this was the case and which has left trauma imprints on our inner feminine template.
‘The Anahata or Heart chakra is associated with love. It is the meeting place for the divine masculine and divine feminine forces where they can exist in perfect balance. Anahata is represented by a lotus flower with twelve petals inside of which is a six-pointed star made of two intersecting triangles (the Shatkona or Star of David) that depicts the union of Purusha and Prakrititi / Shiva and Shakti / Male and Female – the source of all creation.’ Source: soultree.co.nz
This imbalance of the inner masculine and feminine first has to be solved within the psyche for it to work through to the more subtle vibrational body and the Kundalini.
Any attempts to bypass this, because it’s uncomfortable to face our inner feminine’s (and inner masculine’s) unresolved pain is nothing but make-believe. The spiritual ego always likes to see ourselves further than we are, but as tempting as it may seem to go along with it – this doesn’t get us where we want to be. It just keeps us trapped in illusion, rather than the actual embodiment of the truth of who we are – our Soul self.
I pray this Soul Teachings helps you identify the wounded inner feminine archetypes playing out in your own life and inspires you to heal the inner masculine and inner feminine within yourself so that they can come into perfect balance and harmony. This inner balance is also part of your Soul blueprint, the equality of the divine masculine and feminine seated on their celestial thrones inside your heart.
We just started the 8-week healing container Goddess, Reclaiming the Divine Feminine Within and the women in the group are making massive breakthroughs in the sessions. You can still join, you have currently only missed the first group call (which was recorded) to be able to make massive breakthroughs in your own healing of the inner feminine and inner masculine.
Claim your spot here! Payment plans are available.
Do you recognize the wounded feminine archetypes playing out in your life right now or do you have any questions in regard to this Soul Teaching? Let me know in the comments.
With my deepest love,
