When you live with a cracked lens of perception, your reality is different from everyone else’s. What is a cracked lens of perception? According to Dr. Judy Rosenberg in her book, “Be The Cause: Healing Human Disconnect,” a cracked lens of perception is when “childhood wounds crack our psychoperceptual lens, warping our ability to see ourselves and the world around us with clear perception.” You see the world through the shade of your trauma.
If you see the world with rose colored glasses, you perceive everyone as good when in reality they could be stealing from you, manipulating you, or taking advantage of you. In extreme cases, for example, the cracked lens of body dysmorphia can distort how someone sees their own body. Having a cracked lens can be dangerous. Seeing one’s own world more negatively than the truth of reality can push people to suicide, homicide, and racism amongst other things.
Steps to Fix the Broken Lens of Perception
- Understand your childhood wounds and how they impacted you.
- Dismantle the lies of your negative core beliefs.
- Eliminate the poison from your life, choose to surround yourself with people who lift you up.
- Get in touch with the truth. Learn how to self reflect and self correct.
- Coming from the consciousness of truth, relate to others and yourself in a healthy way.
From a Mind Map Perspective
Instead of having a clear lens of perception, our eyes are clouded. Why? Childhood wounds distort our sense of self and how we see the world. From the pain of these wounds, we form negative core beliefs such as “I am not important” or “I am unlovable” that change our perceptions of ourselves. This continues the further distortion of our lens. When we don’t see ourselves and the world clearly, we can form unhealthy defense mechanisms to combat the chaos and pain in our heads. Those defenses can get in the way of living normal lives. Our unresolved internal pain can cause eventual breakdowns. We cannot take our parents’ perceptions and turn them against ourselves or against other people. Until we look back on our negative childhood experiences and dismantle those unrealistic core beliefs, we will not be able to see the world clearly.
A Message for the New Decade
Going into the new decade, Dr. Judy asks each one of you to be aware of your lens. The entire world is interconnected, and we cannot look at the world in “isms” such as racism, sexism, and other forms of hate. On a micro level, you can clean your psychoperceptual lens so that you can see your own beauty as well as the beauty of others. As a result, you naturally treat yourself and others with kindness. On a macro level, these are the steps that lead to healing the world’s disconnect. Join the healing race in 2020 with 20/20 vision, and have a Happy New Year!
