A therapist was observing the couple in front of her. She observed the husband was living in a prison of his own making, within a limited image of who he felt he should be. He acted more like a drill sergeant than a supportive husband or concerned father. He didn’t ask questions, he ran an interrogation. He didn’t acknowledge his fears or vulnerabilities, he asserted his ego.

Of the wife she observed how she seemed hyper-attuned to her husband’s tone and speech. He had been talking about some frustrations at work and the therapist could see how his wife seemed to be searching for a careful balance point between affirming his indignation and stoking his anger. She had clearly learned that her husband needed to be right, that he couldn’t handle being confronted or contradicted.

In a private consultation with the wife the therapist noted the wife’s resourcefulness and the seeming contradiction between her skills and the power she gave over to her husband; the price she paid to keep the peace.

As I was reading about this couple a wave of recognition passed over me. The therapist’s observations were an exact match to those a therapist had once shared with me, about me. I fully recognised myself in this (apparently common) scenario.

What she said next also really hit home. “The wife’s habit of avoiding conflict with her husband at all costs was as damaging to her children’s health and their family dynamic as were his domineering behaviours. They were partners in making control the language of the family, rather than empathetic connection or unconditional love”.

It’s not for the first time I feel great gratitude to find myself in much more healthy circumstances these days. I am also deeply thankful for the opportunities to learn from the past and grow beyond the unhealthy behavioural patterns that started in childhood and have dominated much of my life.

One of the lessons that has really hit home for me this week was something I had heard Brianna MacWilliam’s talk about in relation to anxious types like me. She had been talking about clean, open and honest communication.

She explains that the anxiety stems from the style of attachment bond formed with (usually) our primary caregiver/s as children. Those who are anxious (as opposed to secure, disoriented or avoidant) tend to feel unsettled and worried about the security of relationships, and one of the strategies used to manage anxiety and overwhelm is controlled behaviour as in the example above.

However, another common aspect of an anxious attachment style I recognise is that, with high expectations on myself, there are also high expectations of the relationship. Earlier training having taught me that there was a certain way that things “should be”, I certainly entered my earlier relationships with that mindset.

Then in 2006 I heard Abraham Hicks say “Let go of the cumbersome impossibility to trying to control other people and circumstances” and it struck me like a lightning bolt. By then I’d had enough experience of how cumbersome it really was, and I began to pivot and allow others to be more of who they are.

That said, when a good friend of mine talked this week about the strain of “having to mastermind” the family dynamics when her family were all together, I could relate to this too.

Although I went into motherhood determined to allow my children to be who they are, they also needed healthy boundaries. And although I knew intellectually that my kids would be their own unique selves, I also hadn’t expected them to be so different from their parents in so many ways.

For example, I never had any issues academically, or in attending school – in fact I managed this alongside two and a half hours in the pool training every day. So it was quite the surprise to me that my kids seemed to get so easily overwhelmed and resistant to school, swimming lessons and other activities that I had enjoyed growing up; even the social and fun stuff like going to the beach.

Add the anxieties of their unexpected reactions to the soup of a relationship with a partner who thought it was obviously something I was doing to make the children react this way, my anxiety increased. Because I had learned the cumbersome impossibility of trying to control others, I became more controlled and resentful within myself and in managing the children’s activities in a bid to manage their and my overwhelm.

Over the years, and as we have come through a good deal of these troubling times, I slowly uncovered that my children’s neuro diversity had much to do with their early overwhelm and still does today. However, I felt bottled up and the burden of my own and others’ expectations weighed heavily upon me.

Being anything less than perfect felt dangerous to me as a child. In a world of approval and disapproval, right and wrong, punishment and reward, I had become hyper attuned to their needs and determined to stay ahead of the curve so as not to trip anyone’s wire.

This often results in unreasonably high expectations of myself and others and resulted in the kind of relational style the therapist observed. To start to relate to the world in a healthier way, I needed to start being honest and communicating openly about my needs and expectations. Thus began the learning about having and holding healthy boundaries.

But within that, even once learning about what are and aren’t reasonable expectations of myself and others, there was still the need to communicate openly and honestly. If I am feeling anxious or insecure, learning to communicate that directly without blame or criticism has also been a long journey. That means vulnerability and what I discovered is not all relationships are safe to be vulnerable in.

In Brianna’s words “Just because you become a good communicator it doesn’t make you a magician. It makes you a fact finder – how possible is it going to be to have a compatible relationship with this person unburdened by miscommunications and defensive posturing?”

And if I hadn’t been convinced of that before I certainly have become convinced of the soundness of those words through many months of communicating via lawyers. Each time some posturing would arrive in my inbox I would start to shake and go into flight or fight mode.

My initial responses would then be laden with what Brianna calls “evaluations of other’s behaviour”. I learned a long time ago to own my own feelings, to say “I feel” rather than “You are/did”. But what I hadn’t learned well until recently was how to keep that clean. Saying “I feel rejected” or “I feel attacked” is an evaluation of someone’s behaviour, it’s just a covert way of saying “You rejected me” or “You attacked me”, it doesn’t address how that actually makes me feel inside.

And running away from feelings is something I have done over and over. If I feel someone is rejecting me, how does that make me feel inside? Unworthy? Too much? Not enough? And if someone is attacking me how does that make me feel? Angry? Frustrated? Unseen? Misunderstood? Undervalued?

I realised if I’m going to make an “I feel” statement I need to make it a noun rather than a verb to keep it clean. I have to sit with the evaluation I’ve jumped to in my head, and start to notice more what I’m actually feeling in my body.

And when it’s obvious that someone doesn’t give two hoots about my feelings, just stick to the clear facts. No point in giving away power as the therapist said above, especially to people who are feeding on that and unable to ask questions, or acknowledge their fears or vulnerabilities.

What that ongoing correspondence has given me has been practice ground to get clean. To shake down all the unhealthy and disempowering communication habits I had developed over a lifetime. What I wanted was to assert myself without feeling like I’d thrown another shot over the bow. While temporarily satisfying, I would quickly become anxious about what was going to come back my way.

And when I wrote my last communication, even before receiving a response, I knew I had achieved what I wanted. What I had said could be heard, it contained no blame or criticism. I had finally learned to stand on solid ground.

Even if we don’t always get what we want, most of us just want to be heard. So in what ways would you benefit from making your communication cleaner, more open and honest in order for your voice to be heard?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, Why You Should Consciously Engage in Body Talk, Do You Always Express Your True Feelings? Get out of Your Head and into Your Heart, Change Unhealthy Reactions, Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear and Your Mind Will Try to Protect You By Resisting Your Healthy Boundaries. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Many decades after the war had ended, holocaust survivor Dr Edith Eger finally began to do the inner work necessary to thrive in her life. She said “At Auschwitz, at Mauthausen, and on The Death March, I survived by drawing on my inner world. I found hope and faith in my life within me, even when I was surrounded by starvation and torture and death.”

However, of her life after the war, she said “My inner world was no longer sustaining, it became the source of my pain, unstoppable memories, loss and fear… I tried to banish the memories of the past, I thought it was a matter of survival.”

Then she reflects “Only after many years did I come to understand that running away doesn’t heal pain… (In America) I was further geographically than I had ever been from my former prison, but here I became psychologically imprisoned… running from my past, from my fear.”

Dr Egar, now a renowned psychologist, also observes “There is no hierarchy of suffering. Nothing makes my pain worse of better than yours”.

She has worked with many patients, both those with overt trauma like her own, and those suffering from more covert chronic trauma of childhood development in a world where parenting has centered on controlling behaviour and ignoring feelings for far too long.

Dr Gabor Mate, another child of the holocaust, agrees and says “Trauma creates coping mechanisms.  One way is soothing that leads to addictions, but another way is, if you get the message that you’re not good enough, then you might spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you are, compensating by taking on too much”.

I recognise all these dynamics at play in my own life. I realise I was compensating my whole childhood for my mother’s poor relationship with her father: an abusive, alcoholic liar who died of lung cancer when she was only seven years old. It understandably shaped her whole way of being in the world, as does everyone’s childhood.

My mother was always afraid of anyone getting the better of her, or of us, of being duped, and – as such – had strong unshakeable opinions about the way things should be and a very controlling nature. As children, her reaction to our behaviour (my brother and I) dictated the landscape, and I was never sure whether she would be angry or calm, but she was angry a lot.

To compensate I became hyper attuned to everyone else’s feelings in order to anticipate danger, a perfectionist to ward it off and highly anxious in my relational attachment style.

Like Dr Egar, mum banished the memories of the past and talked about them very rarely, and she certainly made no concession that she had been shaped by her own childhood experience in a way that did not allow her to be the fullest expression of herself.

Now a mother myself, I have been forced to confront the unhealthy behaviour patterns I myself adopted as a child many times over. When I read Dr Egar’s words about her return to Auschwitz decades later, I recognised the truth of them straight away:

“Arbeit Macht Frei, seeing those words made me realise they do spark with a certain truth. Work has set me free I realise. Not the work the Nazis meant – the hard labour of sacrifice and hunger, of exhaustion and enslavement. It was the inner work. Of learning to survive and thrive, of learning to forgive myself, of helping others do the same. And when I do this work I am no longer the hostage or prisoner of anything.”

When I was listening to an interview with Sarah Durham Wilson this week, author of Maiden to Mother: Unlocking Our Archetypal Journey into the Mature Feminine, she really spoke to this sense of many of us being stuck in our child selves.

She talks about the journey of meeting with the maiden (or master) the little girl or boy inside who has been waiting to be mothered for a very long time, about journeying to the underworld (the hurts experienced and the compensations we made) where you start to forgive and release, to alchemise the pain into mothering wisdom. The pain becomes medicine.

This is what makes Dr Edith Egar and Dr Gabor Mate so good at their jobs and able now to speak on world stages about their experiences and lessons, not just from their own lives, but that of the many thousands of people they have helped. They have taken their pain and alchemised it to medicine.

And so this is the task that Sarah Durham Wilson points to. The journey from the patriarchialised mother, where it’s all about keeping you small as a (so called) act of protection, to the great Mother consciousness, which is the opposite and says “you are perfect as you are and cherished always”.

My own healing journey has attracted many more opportunities through other relationships over the years to see all the unhealthy patterns and behaviours I adopted. My work right now is to break the pattern of fighting to have my opinion heard, of my chemical addition to chasing closeness from those unable to give it (the emotionally unavailable), and to ease the pervading sense of anxiety over constant rejection and abandonment.

To break the patterns of codependency, enmeshment trauma, and an anxious attachment style, I’m learning to have and hold healthy boundaries, to have reasonable expectations within relationships and communicate my needs directly without blame or criticism, to take responsibility for feeling my pain and discomfort rather than trying to avoid it by jumping into my head, or trying to fix others’ problems, and to take responsibility for regulating my nervous system.

I vowed to my closest friends that I will keep heading into the underworld to alchemise my pain until it becomes medicine, to keep going in and meeting the cherishing mother until it becomes how I talk to myself and others, and to bring that energy out into the world just as those before me have done.

What unacknowledged pain is there within you? What hurts did you compensate for as a child, what coping mechanisms did you develop, that may now be creating limitations in your life? Are you ready to head into the underworld and do your personal work? Is it time to heal ourselves and to bring back the cherishing mother energy that has been absent for a long time?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, The Almighty Growth Opportunity in Dealing With Emotionally Unavailable People, Get Emotionally Healthy - Is It Time to Break the Chain of Pain?  and Risk Losing People to Make Room for Those Who Can Honour and Cherish You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Image by AD_Images from Pixabay

I was reading an email from Lisa Romano this week that really spoke to me; it's about breaking the patterns of intergenerational people pleasing, codependency and enmeshment trauma.

She said “It took me decades to unravel the layers of my mind, false beliefs, and mind-twisting misconceptions regarding my value as a human being. There was a time of isolation much like the dark cocoon a crawling caterpillar must encapsulate itself in while they endure its metamorphosis.  It took me years to sift through what was negative brainwashing versus what was true about my divinity as a soul”.  

Given, as I’ve said before, I seem to attract people who are unreliable, unavailable, uncommunicative and leave me feeling like I never really know where I stand with them, that is a pretty big pattern that points to some – as Lisa calls it – negative brainwashing.

“When someone is brainwashed” she says “they don't know it. What has been accepted by the subconscious mind becomes an unconscious script the minimally conscious mind never questions.”

Her mother lived in fear of upsetting her father, although her mother would have said she loved him. However, Lisa and her siblings knew her mind was always preoccupied with what her father needed, felt, thought, and required to remain calm. Dinner was always warm, the milk in the refrigerator never spoiled, and their home was near sterile, yet her mother would have told you she was happy. 

I know that story as I have been that mother.

Lisa said “Knowing what I know now about negative childhood brainwashing, perfectionism, and the fear of making a mistake, it now seems so clear that as a child, I never felt safe. It was not safe to laugh or cry, jump, run, or rest. My childhood home was so rigid, that I had no choice but to remain on guard”. 

I know that feeling too, it lives within my nervous system.

My childhood story is not an exact mirror of Lisa’s by any stretch, but the end result of unhealthy patterns is. As Lisa says, changing from a codependent way of relating to others to a more healthy one is a sobering experience. Like Lisa, love, acceptance, pleasing others, feeling needed, and fixing other people's problems are ways I, as codependent, get my “fix”.

Her words are exquisite, when she says “Ending my addiction to people, relationships, and feeling loved required that I find myself within myself rather than in the reflection of the worth others found within my relationship with them. I had to stop looking for people with problems I could fix and I had to learn to feel the lack of control choosing not to people-please created within”. 

In recent weeks I’ve really begun to see which of my relationships are healthy and which are not, and why not. And I’ve made painful decisions, risking losing people by spelling out what I want our relationships to look like. That is all I can do, I can’t make them desire something different, if they do and we are aligned, great. It will take practice and new ways of relating to make it happen.

If people are not on the same page as me, whether it is because they don’t desire to have the same kind of relationship I want or they don’t feel able to make the changes required for us to have that, then it is time for me to cut those ties and ultimately make room for more healthy relationships.

And in the cases where those unhealthy relationships are – by necessity – ongoing, I am working hard to make my boundaries a lot clearer.

Which is why I then appreciated Rebecca Zung’s words this week when she said “There will always be toxic people and things in life.  You can’t control that.  But you can control you.   So how do you change you, Shona?“
She loves the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.  And says ”these are four agreements that you make with yourself:

1. Be impeccable with your word. You use this to create your entire world.  Everything flows from this; your story, your perceptions, everything. 

2. Don’t take anything personally. Everyone lives in their own story. The way people treat other people is always a direct reflection of the way they feel about themselves.  Hurt people hurt people.  

3. Don’t make assumptions…Because most assumptions are not the truth.  We make up stories about we think is happening based on our own perceptions and then proceed based on those assumptions (which were most likely wrong to begin with).  Chaos then ensues. 

4. Always do your best. Because then you are in integrity in your life in every way, knowing that you are doing everything you can to negotiate your best life.”

Both Rebecca and Lisa are fine examples of people who have become consciously aware of unhealthy patterns in their lives and learned different ways of being to the degree they can now teach others.

In Edith Eger's book The Choice she reflects on her time in Auschwitz and how, while imprisoned, her inner world was full of hope and life. Yet in the years afterwards she reflects on how, by not dealing with the ghosts, her inner world became the prison. She later became a psychotherapist and so has helped thousands break free of their inner prison.

She said "Conventional wisdom says if something bothers you or causes you anxiety don't look at it Don't dwell on it. Don't go there." … but "Far from diminishing pain, whatever we deny ourselves the opportunity to accept becomes as inescapable as brick walls and steel bars. When we don't allow ourselves to grieve our losses, wounds, disappointments, we are doomed to keep reliving them"

Lisa Romano’s email wrapped with the news of her granddaughter being born and her observation that her daughter is in a much more healthy relationship, which must be so gratifying to know that she has broken the chain of pain that continues unabated until someone becomes consciously aware of it and makes different choices.

She ends with encouragement that I have taken in and would like to share:
“Dear One, it does not matter how many times you fail to set a boundary, or how often you ignore those red flags as long as you stay on the path of becoming aware of the aching wounds of your inner child. Seeing the cracks negative childhood brainwashing has created is to stare fear in the face and to refuse to look away.”

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, The Almighty Growth Opportunity in Dealing With Emotionally Unavailable People and Risk Losing People to Make Room for Those Who Can Honour and Cherish You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Image by jplenio from Pixabay 

I did an exercise this week going through and listing – for each romantic relationship where I’d felt emotionally attached – that person’s negative qualities and what I disliked about them/ how I felt around them. Then I circled the common qualities between each.

It seems I constantly seem to attract people who are unreliable, unavailable, uncommunicative and leave me feeling like I never really know where I stand with them.

Then I looked back and thought about the negative feelings associated with being in my childhood home: walking on tenterhooks, never knowing where I would stand/what I’d meet (good mood/bad mood), knowing that my opinion wasn’t generally what counted and I’d have to fight for what I wanted, no one acknowledging their feelings except blame/shame based on us kid’s behaviour.

It’s not hard to see the parallels. And as Teal Swan says, “this is what creates the subconscious feeling of love within, and what fuels that instant biochemical reaction to others”. The only way to break it is to become aware of it and do something different.

That sounds easy enough, but life always feels bigger than that in the moment.

As I write this, it is Mother’s Day here in New Zealand and, rather appropriately, yesterday I was at an all-day Family Constellations workshop with a group of other women, some of whom I knew, others I didn’t. The topic was centred around our female lineage and it was really nourishing for my soul I have to say.

Family Constellations is group trauma therapy work, focusing mainly on ancestral trauma. Apparently in South America the courts sometimes insist upon it in separation cases. And it’s been very popular in mainland Europe for a long time, but there's only about 30 qualified therapists in New Zealand of which a good friend of mine is one.

What I really love about this kind of work, playing the parts of other people's stories, it really helps me get how we are all just players in this game of life. We all have stuff, and so much of it is not ours to carry in this moment.

Most of it belongs way in the past, whether with our ancestors or past lives of our own past in this life, we seemed pulled into these loop patterns playing out the same stuff over and over until someone steps out the ring and plays by different rules.

I can see so clearly from my own patterning that one of the key dynamics I’ve actually been playing out for most of my life point to the relationship between my mother and her terminally ill, abusive, alcoholic father in her earliest years. What frustrated me was she could never see that. I’ve learned most people can’t – and don’t want to – see their “stuff”.

As Edith Eger says in her autobiographical account of her time in Auschwitz and her experiences and reflections thereafter as a psychotherapist:

“Conventional wisdom says that if something bothers you or causes you anxiety then just don’t look at it. Don’t dwell on it. Don’t go there. So we run from our trauma and hardships or from our current discomfort of conflict.

For much of my adulthood I thought my survival in the present depended on keeping the past in darkness and locked away. I hadn’t yet discovered that my silence and my desire for acceptance, both founded in fear, were ways of running away from myself. That in not choosing to face my past and myself directly, I was still choosing not to be free.”

Clear about my ancestral stories, and what is mine versus theirs, my stuff really boils down to this... strong boundaries; that’s really my only stuff in this moment.

That means making hard decisions, and cutting some people loose in my life that are not healthy for me. That’s heartbreaking, because my biochemical reactions want to save people I love, but in trying to save them I lose myself.

Just this week I hard to make a hard decision like that and it hurt me to do it, I won’t lie. It was a long time friend that I often talk to in snatched moments, and I wanted us to agree on a time where we could catch up with no distractions for a change. Maybe they had other commitments, I don't know because they didn't actually answer when I asked twice if they were around at a certain time.

I was clear about how much that time without other distractions would mean to me, but it was like I’d never spoken the words. They just continued right on with the snatched moment’s conversation as if we live in a parallel universe.

When I pointed this out, the same thing occurred; it was as if I’d never spoken. So I got on my big girl pants and told them I felt sidelined and rather hurt, and it was time for me to draw some healthy boundaries around this for myself. A true friend would be able to hold my feelings as well as their own; friendship like any relationship is a two way thing. So that brought to an end our conversation and most probably the relationship.

Although I can see this person’s patterning and what causes them to act this way, it doesn’t excuse it, certainly not when it’s costing me heavily. I now fully understand that in order to have room in my life for healthier, more fulfilling relationships, I have to let go of the ones that are hurting me.

So what about you? Are there any unhealthy patterns or dynamics in your life that you are avoiding addressing for fear of losing people? And are you ready to risk those in order to find the healthiest, most fulfilling relationships that will honour and nurture who you truly are?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, The Almighty Growth Opportunity in Dealing With Emotionally Unavailable People and Use the Contrast and Challenges in Your Life for Your Growth and Expansion . To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I have been pondering this week how I might be addicted to getting emotionally unavailable people to open up, and the ways in which it limits my growth and potential. I love deep connections and, whether it is getting someone who is naturally shy or someone who is frankly just outright out of touch with their emotions, I have pursued connection with many emotionally unavailable people as if it’s the Holy Grail.

It’s like there’s an inherent hunger and life keeps presenting new ways to satisfy it.

Terri Cole talks about a common trauma pattern she sees in clients, popularly termed in psychotherapy circles as the mother wound and the father wound.

She says “While they have some similarities, mother wounds tend to cause over-giving, enabling, and taking on the role of the fixer or rescuer. Whereas those who struggle with father wounds tend to feel unlovable, unwanted, not enough, and constantly try to prove they are worthy of love by doing, instead of just by being”.

We all have our own stories and these types of behaviours and feelings seem to be prevalent in our society, perpetuated through generations. But I can certainly see in my own early life the people and occasions where I would have liked to have felt more seen and had my emotions validated.

The thought has occurred to me that the reason life keeps presenting me with the same challenges isn’t likely to be about going around the same old loop trying to get a different outcome. It’s far more likely it’s  giving me an opportunity to change the way I react and look at what is happening inside me instead.

I was reading this from Teal Swan last week, which is quite a simple and healthy way to think about things:

“As a species, people are in the process of progressing towards the actualization of the awareness that in a relationship, there is a “you” and there is a “me”. Whereas people tend to think that in any moment, it is either “you” or “me”.

To have a “me” is to have awareness of your own personal feelings, personal thoughts, personal integrity, personal desires, personal needs and therefore most importantly, your personal best interests and personal truth. And to care about it.

To have a “you” is to have awareness of the other being’s personal feelings, personal thoughts, personal integrity, personal desires, personal needs and therefore most importantly, their personal best interests and personal truth. And to care about it.

When you have committed to conscious living and to awakening, both must matter to you, regardless of whether they matter to the other person.

But for a relationship to be a truly mutually beneficial one, both must matter to you and to the other person as well. If both the “me” and the “you” matter to both people in a relationship, the door is open to identify what the highest and best option for both parties is.”

For me it’s been a journey going from foregoing the “me” in order to please “you” to a more healthy state of “me” and “you”.

That has required some deep work over a number of years learning about what my own needs are and, as Teal says, also what my own feelings, thoughts, integrity, desires, and therefore my own personal best interests and personal truth look like. And to care about it enough to take different action, which has involved learning how to have and hold healthy boundaries.

Someone I’ve known and loved for many years – who is not able to express his emotions well – said to me this week (when I called him out on a hurtful comment) that I over analyse. I find this is a frequent catch cry of people who cannot express their emotions well.

It used to send me into a spiral of self loathing and I’d feel like there was something wrong with me. In fact, as I shared this with him, I also said “I won’t pretend I’m not staring down the barrel of that right now, but I’ve learned I’m actually okay, pretty healthy in fact”.

Sure, I analyze, I’m a born psychologist, it’s what I naturally do. But I also learn and grow, and now I see the growth opportunity in these types of interaction.

There is no sense trying to get water from a well that has long since dried up and is not interested in replenishing itself, that is for sure. No matter how much I want people to feel safe enough to express their emotions with me, it’s not a given.

My friend and I were talking about different types of emotional unavailability. As a trauma therapist this is her take:

• There are some people who look inside and it’s a blank. Sometimes that’s because they were stunted as children and were not allowed to have an emotion let alone express it. Also, sometimes it’s due to their neuropathy as some people are so pragmatic that emotions seem a waste of energy and they bubble up rarely.
• Then there are those who don’t feel safe to express or can’t fathom the words to express how they feel, or they can sift and sort into categories and therefore it all comes out as whatever default they have in place.
• Then there are the narcissists of the world who have found their winning way is one of making other people responsible for how they feel, and have also found that other people are convenient dumping grounds for their toxic projections, pain and handy reactions that feed whatever size their narcissistic appetite.
• Also, there are people who are aware of what they feel, and can fathom the words, and do feel safe but simply just don’t want to tell another person their feelings because they just don’t want them to know (clue – these are the healthy ones).

This week I was also accused of something I would never dream of doing. It was, of course, a misunderstanding. But it is also part of a pattern, a very toxic and unhealthy pattern in this particular relationship, where it seems to me that the thoughts that are formed are really a projection of that person’s worst fears.

The catalyst this time appears to be a mix up in dates, dates that were communicated weeks prior in writing and also discussed verbally. However, this person believed that I had gone back on my word and – despite sharing the previous email with it all laid out in black and white – was still of the opinion that I “make everything hard for them”.

When I say catalyst, the true catalyst I am sure does not even exist in anything real between us, for time and again we have done this merry dance. I suspect it is likely a manifestation and projection of their own unresolved wounds. Therefore, it is not my stuff to solve.

However, because I have to have an ongoing relationship with this person I have to mitigate repercussions by holding very healthy boundaries and ensuring that communication – when it needs to occur – is as clear as possible and in written form.

It is interesting how life keeps presenting these opportunities for me to really bed-in my learning. In another conversation this week where I was being pushed towards a formal agreement I’d been waiting for some time to discuss, and is very important to me, I felt quite proud of myself as I held a firm boundary with someone for whom this was more of a tick box exercise:

“There has been zero discussion about this and now, within a 24 period, I'm supposed to sign off on how we manage this important aspect of my life going forward without the other person – again – not having supplied the information I requested five months ago (and want) in order to make my decision. No, sorry, I have kids still up and wide awake needing my attention and have no space to even think about this right now, so I'm not rushing in and making a snap decision tonight”.

And so life goes on, and as it does I expect I will become less and less attracted to those who are unable to express themselves emotionally, and, now that I am on the right track, it will certainly bother me less when it does happen.

What about you, are you subconsciously attracting do-over’s into your life and going around the same old tracks causing you hurt and pain? Is it time to take a different perspective and start holding healthier boundaries in order to attract those out there who are able to hold a space for both the “me” and the “you” in our relationships?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, Relationships are Just a Series of Moments – True Love Lies Within and Use the Contrast and Challenges in Your Life for Your Growth and Expansion . To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.