Risk Losing People to Make Room for Those Who Can Honour and Cherish You

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.