The Core Relationship™
The one that shapes all the relationships in our lives
Summary
The core relationship is the relationship you have with yourself, the first relationship you were ever in and the one every other relationship in your life passes through. It starts forming as early as six to eight weeks old, shaped by whether early emotional exchanges with a caregiver were consistently loving and caring or not. When it is damaged, the most common symptom is negative self-perception which grows to become negative self-talk. Repairing it works on two levels: conscious daily practice to program the mind with a new healthier level of self- perception, and Soul-Level Trauma™ healing which uses shamanic practices for the deeper wounds that live at the soul level, where other therapies cannot reach.
What Is The Core Relationship?
The core relationship is the relationship you have with yourself. It is the first relationship you were ever in and it stays running underneath every relationship that comes after it. Every person you meet, every place you go, and everything you take on in your life gets filtered through it, whether you are aware of that or not.
Most people never name this. They talk about their relationship with their partner, their parents, their kids, their work. They rarely stop to notice that all of those relationships are being shaped by one that they are already in around the clock, the one with themselves. If that relationship is damaged, it negatively shapes your interpretations and perceptions of yourself and your life, which dictates your thoughts, words, and actions.
When Does The Core Relationship Start Forming?
Somewhere between six and eight weeks old, a baby begins to smile back at a face it recognizes, not by reflex, but because it is starting to understand that someone is there and responding. That is the beginning of a two-way street. The baby reaches out emotionally and a caregiver reaches back, and that exchange, repeated thousands of times over the first year of life, is where the core relationship starts to take shape.
If that exchange is warm and consistent, a child starts to form a quiet, background belief that they are welcome here, and that belief becomes the solid foundation their core relationship is built on. If that exchange is inconsistent, cold, or missing altogether, the child does not usually conclude that something was wrong with the adult. Children are not built to think that way about the people they depend on, so they conclude that something is wrong with them instead. They do not feel secure within themselves or their environment. That is where the core relationship starts to fracture, long before a child has any language for what happened, and it is where the negative self-perception begins.
What Damages The Core Relationship?
A handful of experiences show up again and again in the story of a damaged core relationship as we move through life.
Growing up with a caregiver who was inconsistent, critical, absent, abusive or unpredictable, so a child never knew which version of that person they would get.
Being compared to a sibling, a classmate, or an idealized version of who a parent wanted them to be.
Having big emotions met with punishment, silence, or dismissal instead of comfort, which teaches a child that their own inner world is not safe to show anyone, including themselves.
Carrying responsibility that belonged to an adult, like managing a parent's moods or holding a family together emotionally, which trains a child to abandon their own needs to take care of someone else's.
An authority figure such as a coach or a teacher who belittles a child in front of their peers.
Not being accepted by a peer group, or being bullied by other kids.
A boss who never gives credit for a job well done, or one who constantly judges or demeans no matter what you do.
Some suffer through a dramatic or obviously abusive childhood, where the source of the damage is easier to identify, but a collection of less obvious negative experiences accumulated over time will also alter the core relationship in a negative fashion.
Negative Self Talk Is The Symptom, Not The Cause
If you struggle with a harsh inner voice, one that tells you that you are not enough, that you will mess this up too, that everyone else has it figured out but you, that voice did not start with you. It started as a message you absorbed a long time ago and mistook for your own thinking. Negative self-talk is not a character flaw and it is not random. It is what a damaged core relationship sounds like from the inside.
This is why trying to talk yourself out of negative self-talk rarely works for long. You are arguing with a symptom instead of addressing the relationship underneath it. The voice will keep coming back with new material until the relationship we have with ourselves actually changes.
Why It Is Called The Core
Every other relationship in your life runs through this one first. The way you let someone treat you, the way you interpret a friend going quiet on you, the way you respond when a plan falls apart, all of it gets colored by how you already talk to yourself in that same moment and how you have perceived yourself in the past.
It is difficult to become close to others in a healthy manner when your opinion of yourself has been lowered by negative self-perception and self-talk, and it is nearly impossible to build a healthy relationship with someone else when you have not yet repaired the one you have with yourself.
Repair the core relationship and the change does not stay private. It shows up in how you handle conflict, how safe you feel to love others and let yourself be loved. A healthy core relationship can increase the amount of peace you actually feel in a room by yourself, or one filled with others and the mix of energies they carry with them.
Can The Core Relationship Be Repaired?
The past can explain why we behave the way that we do, but we can choose not to let it define who we are. Our behavior patterns are learned, which means they can be relearned. The work is not about silencing the negative voice through sheer effort. It is about going back to where that voice was formed and giving it something truer to say instead. This is the exact ground that Daily Mind Tools™ was built to work on, one small daily practice at a time, until the voice running in the background actually changes as the perception we have of who we really are begins to blossom and grow in a healthy manner.
Some of what damaged the core relationship happened before you ever had words for it, back in that same window where the relationship first started forming. Daily practice and conscious self-talk work can only reach what you can recall, name, and talk through, and that is not a limitation of the practice, it is a limitation of what talking was ever built to do.
Shamanic work does not have the same constraints as other practices do. It operates in the energetic field directly, which is exactly why it can reach a fragment that broke off before a child had words, or in a moment too overwhelming to ever become a coherent memory in the first place. It is not to say that one practice is better than another. Each one acts as an instrument for a different depth of the same wound.
Learn more about soul level trauma healing - https://yourperfecthealing.com/soul-level-trauma-healing
Learn more about healing the mind - https://yourperfecthealing.com/healing-the-mind
Reaching a wound from before language existed for you takes a different instrument. This is where Soul-Level Trauma™ shamanic healing meets core relationship healing, working directly in the energetic field to reach the parts of this story that were never available to memory in the first place.
How The Core Relationship Affects the Body
The core relationship doesn't just live in the mind, it plays out in the body too. Your body reads the emotional charge attached to your thoughts and treats it as information about your safety. Negative self-talk carries a heavy emotional signal, one your nervous system can treat as a sign that some kind of threat or ongoing loss is happening right now.
When the self-talk leans toward sadness, people often describe feeling like they're in a quiet, ongoing state of grief, even when nothing has actually been lost. Many notice they're tired more often than makes sense, deal with more brain fog than usual, or feel a pull toward sleep even during the day. Left unaddressed, that kind of constant emotional load tends to wear a person down over time.
When the self-talk leans toward anger or frustration, people often describe a body that never fully relaxes, staying keyed up in a fight, flight, or freeze kind of energy. Held long enough, that tension tends to show up somewhere, often as aches and tightness that don't resolve on their own.
Healing the core relationship at the root is what allows the mind to stop asking the body to carry all of this.
Ready to explore whether this work is right for you?
It starts with a conversation with no sales pitch involved. You can learn more about Mark’s practices and he has the opportunity to learn about your life challenges. Together, you can decide if his work might be a fit for you.
Mark Lemohr is a third generation healer with over with over 50 years of healing experience and 18+ years of professional practice in Energy Healing and Contemporary Shamanic Healing.
He works with clients from around the globe through remote distance healing. No travel required. No geographic limits. Sessions are available worldwide.
His work is recognized and endorsed by medical staff from major medical institutions across North America, including the Albert Einstein College of medicine in NYC, Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Vancouver General Hospital and St Paul’s Hospital in Canada.
If he cannot improve your condition to your level of satisfaction he will refund your payment.
To learn more about Mark, click here: https://yourperfecthealing.com/mark-lemohr
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I have negative thoughts about myself?
Negative self-talk almost always traces back to your core relationship, the relationship you have with yourself. It starts forming in early childhood, shaped by whether the people around you responded to you consistently or not. If that early relationship was damaged, even in small, quiet ways, it leaves behind a background voice that keeps repeating old messages. The thoughts feel like your own, but they usually started as something you absorbed a long time ago.
What causes negative self-talk?
Negative self-talk is a symptom, not a starting point. It develops when the core relationship, the one you have with yourself, gets damaged by inconsistent caregiving, criticism, comparison, or environments where your emotions weren't safe to express. Once that relationship is disrupted, a critical inner voice tends to fill the space where a sense of safety and positive self-worth should be.
How do I manage negative self-talk?
Since negative self-talk is learned, it can be relearned. Managing it works on two levels: conscious daily practice for the patterns you can recognize and name, and deeper work, like Soul-Level Trauma™ healing, for wounds that formed before you had language to describe them. Trying to manage it through willpower alone often fails because you're arguing with a symptom instead of addressing what's underneath it.
How do I stop the negative inner voice?
You stop it by changing the relationship it's coming from, not by silencing it directly. The inner voice keeps returning with new material as long as the core relationship underneath it stays damaged. Daily practices like Daily Mind Tools™ changes the conscious self-image, which reshapes the inner dialogue. For damage that happened below the level of thought, shamanic healing works at the soul level. It is used to find the parts of our soul that got left behind and are lost in the negative energy of the past. Energy healing techniques can be used to clear negatively charged energies stored in a person's energetic field which impacts the body and the mind.
How do I stop talking negatively about myself?
Start by recognizing that the voice isn't really yours. It's a message you absorbed early on and mistook for your own thinking. From there, healing the core relationship, both through daily conscious practice and, where needed, deeper energetic work, is what actually changes the voice over time rather than just quieting it temporarily. Shamanic healing and energy healing combined with reprograming the conscious mind with healthy self-perception is a highly effective system for healing the way you think and speak towards yourself.
How can I help someone with negative self-talk?
The most helpful thing you can offer is patience, since negative self-talk is what a damaged core relationship sounds like from the inside, not a character flaw or a choice. Encourage them to look at where the pattern started rather than just trying to argue them out of it in the moment. Professional support, whether through daily mindset work or deeper shamanic healing modalities, can help them address the root cause instead of just managing symptoms.
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Important notice: Mark Lemohr is not a medical professional and does not provide medical diagnosis or treatment. Energy healing and shamanic healing are complementary spiritual practices intended to support overall wellbeing alongside, not instead of, licensed medical and mental health care. If you are experiencing a medical or mental health emergency, contact your local emergency services immediately.