You may have been hearing the term toxic positivity a lot lately. Over the last 4 years, life in human society has become a much more negative experience for people. In truth, for many people, life has become so emotionally hard to deal with, that they have turned to all kinds of coping mechanisms to deal with it. And one of these coping mechanisms is toxic positivity. It is absolutely rampant today. For this reason, let’s look at what toxic positivity is, why it is a problem and what to do about it.
A person who has a positive mental attitude focuses on the positives in any situation, expects good outcomes, even expects things to turn out for the best, re-frames negative things in a positive light, finds the silver lining, has an optimistic outlook on life and focuses on the desired outcome. It is easy to see how this could be a beneficial way to approach life. But what if I told you that there can be a really big dark side to positivity when it is used as a coping mechanism? To cope is to make a specific alteration mentally, emotionally or physically so that you can manage or adapt to something that is causing you stress. We usually adopt a coping mechanism when we believe that the situation that is causing us distress cannot be changed for the better or eradicated. Essentially, we believe that it is out of our control to eradicate the stressor. So, we are forced to manage with it, deal with it and adapt to it. This is especially true in childhood, when we do not call the shots about our own life. The people around us do. As people around the globe are feeling more and more powerless to the negative, unwanted stressors that currently exist in human society, they are turning more and more to coping mechanisms.
A person who uses positivity as a coping mechanism, uses positivity to deny, suppress, disown, reject and run away from anything they consider negative. It is an extreme form of avoidant resistance. This, is toxic positivity. When someone is engaged in toxic positivity, they are using positivity like a buoy that they are desperately clinging to, in order to keep them out of reality, because subconsciously they think that they cannot handle the negative aspects of reality. It is a form of willful denial. And in today’s world, it does not help that a few teachers and even more social media influencers are encouraging this. They are promising you that the way this universe works, is that if you focus entirely on the positive and put yourself in the place of already being where you want to be and already having what you want to have, that the reality you want will come to be. It is a real ‘fake it is how to make it’ mentality. Pretend to be confident and you will be confident. Think positively and only good things will happen to you. Imagine and act as if you have that boyfriend and he will appear in your life. There is even a “delulu” movement going on in the younger generations. Delulu being short for delusional. People are being told that the key to having the life they want is to “be delulu”. Be positively delusional, and what you want will become your reality.
Because of all of this, we need to weed through the reasons why toxic positivity is a problem.
It distorts universal truths. It is a reality that you live in a universe based on the law of mirroring (also called the law of attraction). What this means is, your external reality was designed to be a reflection of your personal vibration. But as per usual, the people who are promoting the idea of willful positive delusion, are drastically oversimplifying what makes up your personal vibration and therefore why and how something shows up in your external life. They are reducing your vibration solely to your mind and to what you are consciously focused upon. If I got into the full picture of what makes up your personal vibration, I would be writing a bible and you would be too overwhelmed to deal with it. But just to give you a taste of what I mean, take solely the genetics you opted into by coming into this life in the physical incarnation you opted into. Genetics are multi-dimensional, something science will one day find out. At one of these dimensions, they contain the memories of every ancestor who came before you on both sides of your family tree. This is one reason why ancestral traumas can be passed down, something scientists have already studied and proven to be true. A great many of these patterns are active when you come into this life, as you are meant to be the one to work with them for the sake of your own personal expansion as well as the expansion of the consciousness of your family line. So, let’s say that three generations ago, all of your family members were carted off to concentration camps and the people who lived and went on to have children, lost everyone they cared about, leading to hypochondria at the slightest of ailments. This pattern will be passed down. Simply focusing your conscious mind on being perfectly well and everyone around you being perfectly well, does not overcompensate for that imbedded experience. Especially when for most people, what we call the subconscious mind is SO much more powerful than the conscious mind. Nor is it looking directly at the trauma and creating real healing to that trauma. All this does, is give the person a mixed vibration. This ancestral pattern will still be reflecting in this person’s life as external experiences where they fear their own death and the loss of loved ones to death, no matter how much visualization they do and no matter how much they ‘act like’ everything is fine.
Another tiny example is that by opting into certain decisions, you are automatically becoming a vibrational match to certain experiences. These include both pre-birth decisions, such as incarnating as a woman in the year 1705, as well as decisions you make along the way such as the decision to attend college. Positive focus does not suspend the law of cause and effect or the reality that this is a universal construct of contrast. There will be a set of positives and a set of negatives to any situation you chose into. For example, if you choose to become a professional surfer, no matter what, there will be a set of negatives that come with that. Things like risking drowning, injury, sharks, collisions, sunburn, surf rage, being cold and the extreme pressure of competition. You don’t tell someone who gets cold because of making the decision to surf in frigid waters… “Well, the whole reason you are cold and wet now is because you didn’t put yourself mentally in the place of being warm and dry, because if you had, you would be. You would have never experienced being wet and cold in the first place.
Knowing these universal laws and using your conscious mind to manifest, which you can absolutely do, is but one part of the picture of mastering life on earth. It is not the whole shebang. And when it comes to altering your vibration to be more of a match to what you want, conscious positive manifestation pales in comparison to working with your subconscious; things like shadow work. On top of this, you have to be very honest about whether your goal is simply to feel good and create the life you want, or to become awakened. Because simply focusing on the positive and on the creation of what you want, is NOT the road to awareness and awakening. In fact, if it becomes your way of living life, rather than just a tool in your tool box for life, it can become an antagonistic force to awareness and awakening.
Toxic positivity is a resistance, dismissal, suppression and avoidance of negative thoughts, negative emotions, and negative realities. It is a pushing against what is unwanted. It is a refusal to accept something. It is a war with what is. This means, a great deal of energy is going into and towards the very thing that a person is trying to avoid. And this means, they will not only persist, but grow bigger until you cannot run from them anymore. Toxic positivity is not a coping mechanism that will work long term, and when it doesn’t, the negative reality you will be sitting in, will be far worse than it was to begin with and far worse that it would have been if you were to face the negative aspects of reality to begin with.
Toxic positivity is a form of denial and as such, it will ruin your life. Denial is refusing to accept or admit to the truth of the reality of something unpleasant. It is a powerfully unconscious state of being because to slip into denial, a person has to either stop seeing, feeling and hearing any proof to contradict the positive. Or see the negative, but negate it, nullify it, deny or minimize the impact it has on their life, excuse it, forget it or rationalize it. Denial is a recipe for disaster. To understand why, imagine getting in an airplane and flying out across the ocean. Imagine that a low oil pressure warning light comes on in your cockpit. Now imagine that instead of actually addressing it, you take a piece of duct tape and put it over the light so you don’t see it anymore. Obviously, that is going to get you into a whole lot of trouble. Just like any coping mechanism, with toxic positivity, a person simply immediately indulges in the coping mechanism instead of actually making effective, positive changes to their life that accommodate for the negative realities that they are being presented with.
Toxic positivity will destroy your relationships. Let’s imagine that you feel like you simply cannot deal with the pain you feel in response to someone else bringing up something negative or someone else’s negative emotions because it makes you think negative thoughts and feel negative emotions, something you feel you can’t deal with. Not being able to cope with that, let’s imagine that you will deny that person’s reality and refuse to accept it as true or valid. Instead, you minimize, invalidate and refuse to deeply acknowledge what they are presenting you with. The person is not able to be seen, heard, felt or understood by you. And you will not respond in a way that accommodates for their negative reality. As a result, you cannot act in their best interests. You will lose their trust. Just think of the previous analogy. If you get into an airplane and the pilot flies out across the ocean, sees a low oil pressure warning light come on in the cockpit and puts a piece of duct tape over the light so neither of you see it anymore, you immediately no longer trust the pilot. Trust is the holy grail of relationships. Toxic positivity in a relationship makes a relationship impossible. People may be in the same room physically, but they are in different realities completely and usually, the one who is not coping with toxic positivity is in torment because they are not just alone, they are alone in their pain. The single most painful thing a person can experience isn’t something painful… it is going through something painful, entirely on their own. To really help someone with their fear or pain, it has to be acknowledged, seen as valid and understood. Otherwise, all the “helpful actions” you take aren’t really helpful; they are simply attempts to trump the person’s painful reality with your reality. With toxic positivity, the mentality is “I don’t see you or feel you or hear you or understand you because it’s too painful to me to do those things.” The underlying message is: “I cannot accommodate your reality into my reality and feel good at the same time, so I’m going to choose to leave you alone in your pain and in your reality, so I can feel ok”. Toxic positivity is also one of the most damaging patterns that a parent can exhibit. If you want to learn more about this, watch my video titled: When Positivity Becomes a Parenting Problem.
Toxic positivity shuts down authentic discussion and communication. When someone is engaged in toxic positivity, anything that is not positive is countered, ignored and shut down. There is no space to come to the person who is engaged in toxic positivity with thoughts, insights, truths or emotions that they would deem as negative. They see it as wrong. And so, there is no psychological safety around honesty and expression around them.
Toxic positivity induces guilt and shame for feeling bad and for having negative truths. Toxic positivity rejects all difficult thoughts, perceptions and emotions in favor of a cheerful, falsely positive façade. It is an intense and enduring pressure to feel good no matter what is happening. It carries with it the message that the thoughts and feelings that a person is thinking and feeling are unacceptable. It also carries with it the message that if you are not finding a way to think and feel positive, even in the face of serious tragedy or dire circumstances, you are doing something wrong. For this reason, it compounds a person’s pain. It makes someone’s pain worse as well as denies people the authentic support they need for what they are facing. And this is the message that a person who copes with toxic positivity is sending to themselves every day without even knowing it.
Toxic positivity causes an escalation of negativity in others. When someone copes with toxic positivity, it causes pain to the other person, thus adding to the negativity of their life experience. Also, it is such an intense polarization that it tends to push people to the opposite polarity, which is negativity. On top of this, when someone suppresses the negative, it will come up through other people they have a connection to. On top of this, it is such a blatant refusal to acknowledge the negative and such a blatant opposition to pain that people find themselves having to escalate the negative and the pain in order for it to be acknowledged and in order to advocate for the parts of themselves that are in pain. Many people around someone who uses toxic positivity will begin to feel bad about themselves because of how truly pessimistic and negative they will start to become. At the same time someone who uses toxic positivity will be confused about why their positivity isn’t simply attracting positive people into their life. Why instead, they are increasingly surrounded by negative people and ever-increasing negativity. Most especially negative feedback.
Toxic positivity prevents growth and personal expansion. It is in the acknowledging of the negatives, as well as the exploration of them, that we are able to gain the awareness and insights necessary to define what we want, change and to go in the right direction. To use toxic positivity is to deny yourself of self-awareness. It is to deprive yourself of external awareness as well. It is to break your own compass. Therefore, it is a guarantee that you will not develop as a person and you will not end up where you want to end up in life.
Toxic positivity brings humanity further into the emotional dark age. It is critical that we come out of this emotional dark age. We have to learn what emotions are, what purpose they serve and how to respond to them. Toxic positivity makes an enemy of negative emotion. It is abusive to negative emotion or put another way, to the aspect of a person that feels negative emotion. And this guarantees that the negative emotion will not be responded to correctly. To learn more about this, you can watch my videos titled: The Emotional Wakeup Call and Stop Trying to Regulate Your Emotions.
Toxic positivity is a form of gaslighting. When something negative is happening, it creates a false narrative of reality that causes people to doubt their own estimation of what is real. It makes people feel mentally ill when they are not. Reality contains both positives and negatives. To fixate only on the positives of a given reality, is to be out of reality. And a person who is facing something negative in reality, does not need the negative elements of reality to be denied, negated and nullified.
Positivity can be a very helpful tool in the right context. Healthy positivity is rooted in reality. Toxic positivity is a fight against what is real. Healthy positivity is to acknowledge the bright side. Toxic positivity is to deny and suppress the dark side. Positivity works when a person is looking directly at and is taking in the full reality of any given situation, this includes what some people might label negative realities. But positivity must be authentic, not a cover that is dawned to hide or avoid anything negative. Using our original metaphor, the point of life is to master the art of swimming. Not to desperately cling to a buoy for dear life. If you use toxic positivity as your coping mechanism, the time has come to learn to feel your negative emotions and acknowledge your painful truths. You need to start to lean into discomfort and practice moving towards it instead of away from it. We engage in coping mechanisms to get out of pain. If you adopted the coping mechanism of toxic positivity, you felt you could not change or eradicate an actual situation that was causing you pain; so, you moved your sights to the unpleasant response to the threat… the pain itself. You started to see pain in and of itself as the problem and therefore the threat to your life. In reality, pain was never a threat to you, quite the opposite. Pain is a feedback mechanism. It tells you information about your environment and yourself so that you can listen to that feedback and take appropriate action.
So that you can understand better what I mean, I will paint you a picture. To see pain as the enemy and to engage in a coping mechanism to get away from it is akin to having your arm cut off and injecting yourself with morphine and convincing yourself that once the pain is gone the threat is gone and you’re all better. When in fact the real threat is that you’re bleeding out and by not feeling the pain, you are certainly not all better. In fact, you will never take the necessary steps in reality to actually be better. Whenever you feel negative emotion, use the pain itself as a kind of mediation bell, awakening you to the opportunity to gain valuable feedback. It is trying to tell you something. If you engage in your coping mechanism to get away from it, you’ll never know what it’s trying to tell you and so you’ll never be able to take the right action for yourself or for the people around you.
The good vibes only mantra is a societal illness, one that we need to remedy, especially if we want to make any genuine positive change to this human society, which is currently causing us so much distress that we feel the need to use coping mechanisms to survive it.
Courage is the willingness do something despite the fear, pain and difficulty involved in doing it. Courage is something that each and every one of us will have to have at specific times in our life experience. And some people struggle with this more than others. Here are eleven powerful tips which will help you to be courageous.
People often erroneously think that courage is some kind of personal quality that they have to do something to get, or that they have to develop somehow. Or that it is just something that some people are born with and others are not. But the reality is, courage is a willingness. It is the willingness to face and lean into pain and fear. It is a choosing of discomfort and sometimes pain for the sake of what matters to you. To the degree that a person is committed to security, comfort, feeling good and ease, they will lack courage. For this reason, courage is a choice. It is a choice to feel fear and pain and difficulty for the sake of what is important to you. And that is a choice that no one can make for you. The difference between a courageous person and someone who lacks courage, is that the courageous person faces challenges head on, is willing to experience pain and moves forward with their fear. And the person who lacks courage spends their time avoiding pain, fear and challenge.
One of the biggest misconceptions about courage is that people who are courageous don’t feel fear or pain in a situation where most people would. Because of this misconception, people who lack courage spend a lot of time looking for some way to make it so they aren’t afraid anymore. Or looking for some way to make a thing not painful, so they can do it. And this approach will never, ever work. It is a dead end. Because to do something that holds no fear and no pain, requires no courage. People who are courageous often feel incredible fear and incredible pain. But they choose to tolerate the fear and pain in order to face something or to take action. The correct approach is not to bulldoze through fear and pain. Nor is it to let your fear and pain mean you shouldn’t do something. It is to recognize, work with and caretake your own fear and pain while taking action towards what matters to you, even though that fear and pain is there.
Fear and pain are not bad. They do not feel good. But they are not bad. Both serve a purpose. Both are information. Very important information. When we feel pain or fear, we often interpret that as a message to stop and not do something. To stop and not do something is only one tiny sliver of what fear or pain can potentially mean. Otherwise, no one would ever leave a relationship that isn’t good for them or become physically fit or go through a pregnancy (which is painful). And no one would ever take a risk to get what they want or be authentic and honest or make a change to their life that brings them into the unknown (which is terrifying). And no one would ever achieve something (which is often both terrifying and painful). To have courage, we need to be in a much more dynamic and positive relationship with emotions and sensations that do not feel good. This implies seeing the positive value in fear and in pain. Embracing and caretaking your vulnerability rather than bulldozing it or allowing it to stop you from doing what matters. And being willing to experience them and hear the information, including the why it is there, carried within them. For this reason, it would benefit you to do the emotional experiencing process. You can learn how to do this process in my video that is quite literally titled: How To Do The Emotional Experiencing Process.
Find your good enough WHY. Courage arises when you find a good enough reason to be courageous. In the situation you are in, look for the reason that is compelling enough that it makes you willing to lean into fear and pain and remember that reason. It will act like a north star, even when things become hard.
When we are in a situation where facing something or doing something evokes fear or pain, we tend to imagine potential negative scenarios that could come as a result of facing that thing or doing that thing. What we don’t do, is to directly look at the potential consequences of NOT facing that thing or NOT doing that thing. It is a mistake to think that avoidance, even though it may feel more comfortable in the immediate moment, does not come with consequences. Every single thing we do and don’t do comes with contrast and with consequences. So, something that can really help with consequences is to deliberately play out the worst things that could happen if you don’t lean into the fear or the pain in the specific scenario you are in that is requiring you to be courageous. To help you more with this point, you can watch two of my videos: The first being: Why You Should Consciously Choose Consequences and the second being: The Biggest Lie the Spiritual/Self Help Industry Sells You.
Become aware of and lean on your strengths. When we are experiencing fear and pain, we don’t feel very strong. As a result, we are more acutely aware of our weaknesses and our shortcomings. It is tempting to feel “underneath” the situation we are facing because of this. Confidence, which greatly helps us to be able to lean into fear and pain, can be drawn upon by being aware of what you are good at, knowing what your strengths, accomplishments, aptitudes, gifts, talents and skills are. We can lean on those strengths as powerful resources when we lean into a situation where we need courage.
Remember the person you want to be. The one you can live with and the one you can feel good about. The price of not being courageous is low self-esteem. And that is a price that is not worth it. In whatever situation you find yourself in, really consider what the best version of yourself or perhaps your ideal future self would want you to do now in order to become them. When we become aware of what decision or action we would have to make and take in order to be able to live with ourselves, feel good about ourselves, live up to our potential and be the person we want to be, it is easier to be willing to lean into fear and pain and do the courageous thing. Do what you need to do to embody the person you want to look at in the mirror every day.
Like anything, the more we do something, the more we master it, the more accustomed we become to it and the more familiar it becomes. Many people like to compare courage to a muscle that can be built for this reason. Courage is not something that has to be built up because any person can decide in a situation to lean into fear and pain (this is especially obvious when people find themselves in very extreme situations). That being said, you can train yourself into being a person who is good at doing so. The way you can do this, is by deliberately practice choosing to do things that are out of your comfort zone. Make choices throughout your day-to-day life that make you uncomfortable. You can start with littler things, like making yourself go up to and talk to someone. Or making yourself try a new activity. And graduate from there to things that require courage, where the stakes are bigger. You will be surprised how much of your time was spent trying to stay comfortable when you do this. You can develop the habit of courage which will turn into a virtue by being courageous again and again when faced with the choice to do so or not.
Don’t be conditional about courage according to the results you get. Embrace the potential for failure. And use failure constructively when it happens. Just because you are courageous, does not mean you will get the results or outcome you want. True success is so much about how you handle things going badly. To succeed, you need to not be conditional about the courageous things you do. So many people on earth are conditional when it comes to things, this includes being courageous. They decide that the courageous things they did and even being courageous in general isn’t worth it, if they don’t get the outcome they want. If they fail rather than succeed. This is a recipe to try out being courageous, only to give it up when it doesn’t go perfectly to plan. It is a recipe for a life that isn’t truly lived. Again, it implies an unwillingness to experience pain. Only this time, the pains that come with failure. One of the fears and pains you will have to lean into when you are going for what is important to you, is failure. Failure is painful. But it is an opportunity to grow, learn something new, re-evaluate, try a new approach and change. It is a key part of expansion and improvement.
Think about your life within the context of death. Courage is harder when we forget that life is temporary. It is all too easy to get sucked into our day-to-day experience and forget that we do not live forever. That our time here is limited and that to truly live, we need to make the very most of our time here. All that will happen if you live your life for comfort and safety, is that you will arrive at death safely. And most likely with a lot of regret about the risks you didn’t take. A great way to have the willingness to lean into what scares you, is to think about how you might feel on your death bed about what decisions you should make and what you should do, if you were to look back on the situation you are in right now. Doing this tends to reveal what is truly important and what really matters. And when we living according to values like that, we feel the ability to take on fear, pain and difficulty. If you aren’t courageous today, you will one day find that you have run out of tomorrows.
Spend time with courageous people and with people who support you to be courageous. Courageous behavior is infectious. If you are surrounded by people who don’t take risks and who are ruled by their avoidance of fear and pain, you will adopt that way of being. Your wellbeing will suffer because of it. And you will squander your life. There is a difference between being smart by evaluating risks and being avoidant of risk in general. When you put yourself around courageous people and keep them as company, you will feel a greater willingness to make a decision for what matters, even if that means having to be courageous and take a risk. The feeling of being around them and watching their life will make you feel like you are not really living by comparison. And this will inspire you to choose discomfort for the sake of what matters more to you than feeling comfortable.
Courage is a crucial aspect of success. It broadens your experiences. It gives you the power to live a life according to what is most important to you. And courage reveals what you are capable of. By doing so, it grows your self-esteem. The people who live the most fulfilling lives, choose courage. And they choose it again and again and again.
There is a lot of confusion going around about when doing something qualifies as being disciplined and when doing something qualifies as bulldozing yourself. This confusion is a problem when one is an important element of success and the other is a road to failure. For this reason, I’m going to explain the difference between discipline and bulldozing.
To understand bulldozing, I want you to imagine a bulldozer. When a bulldozer encounters resistance or opposition, it drives straight through and over it. It will not stop and consider and it will not work with whatever is resisting it, so that there is any alignment. It plays a zero-sum game with whatever is opposing it. “I win and you lose.” “I get my way and you don’t.” And this, is a recipe for a terrible relationship with yourself and others, as well as failure.
When someone is disciplined, or has a high degree of self-discipline, it means that they have an internal drive to act based on their goals. This implies the ability to use their own conscious, objective free will to govern their emotional system, mind and body. And as such, they are not controlled by their own thoughts, emotions or body. Even when they encounter resistance. When we say that a person is disciplined, what we are talking about in layman’s terms is that they can take action regardless of how they feel. Or that they do what needs to be done to achieve goals, even if it is difficult or painful. Or that they pursue what they think is right despite temptations to abandon it. Or that they make themselves work hard (or behave in a certain way) without anyone else having to tell them to do it. All of these examples, imply that self-discipline has something to do with self-governing as well as the ability to persevere towards one’s aim even though there is resistance. Keep in mind that resistance is any oppositional force. This resistance can come from the outside or the inside, or both.
There is a BIG space between the two extremes of bulldozing right through any resistance you encounter and allowing any resistance you encounter to dictate what you do and don’t do. In other words, ignoring and disregarding resistance and letting the resistance be in control you. Discipline and success lies in-between these extremes. But it isn’t about balance. It is about working directly with your resistance.
Working with resistance means seeing, feeling and hearing into it deeply so as to be aware of the cause and the WHY of the resistance. From there, it is about resolving that resistance, so as to make a decision with your conscious free will that is actually in your best interests. Doing so, will make it so that all of you can say yes to something because it will feel right for you to do, potentially even if it comes with discomfort.
Living without discipline, means that you are at the mercy of everything around you. It means your life is limited. When faced with the inevitable downsides of doing something, you will give up on it, achieve nothing, build up nothing, never end up where you want to be, be unreliable, unable to plan, be a floater in life, align with your own resistance (regardless of whether your resistance is in your best interest or against it) and fail to delay instant gratification in the face of short-term temptation. You will have ruined every relationship around you. And you will be at the mercy of everything around you, including your own mind, emotions and body.
Living your life by bulldozing means you are unresponsive to yourself and to the world around you. It means you are willing to play zero sum games with parts of yourself and with things external to you. And by doing so, you are choosing to put yourself and others in danger. There is valuable information within resistance. Ignoring that information can be catastrophic to yourself, to your relationships and to your success. With true discipline, you are working with yourself not against yourself, like you are with bulldozing.
An important thing to know is that “it doesn’t feel good” is not the information you are looking for when it comes to what you should and shouldn’t do. The fact that something doesn’t feel good is simply your alert that there is a red flag. It is the same as hearing the ‘you’ve got a message’ ring on your cell phone. But it is as strange to decide that this automatically means you shouldn’t do something, as it is to decide that when your “you’ve got a message” ringer goes off, it means you need to not do something. All it means is: You’ve got a message! You have to actually see, hear and feel what the message underneath the alert is, in order to make the right decision relative to the information.
It is very important to know that you (and/or a part of you) are able to choose what does not feel good for an important purpose. You are able to say yes to negatives. And there is a big difference between part of you really saying no to something for some reason and part of you saying yes to something, even though it doesn’t feel good. If this were not the case, you would never exercise. All you would eat is junk food. We would never learn anything new. Say goodbye to all sports. No one would ever go through pregnancy. You would never work late hours to accomplish something important. No one would ever leave an abusive relationship. There would be no societal revolutions. There would be no innovations regarding the negatives that come with anything. The process of healing in general would be out the window. You get the point.
When you hear teachings like “follow your joy” or “listen to your emotional guidance system”, that doesn’t mean “never do anything that feels uncomfortable or painful”. That doesn’t mean “your emotional guidance system is always going to lead you to something that feels good, so let it govern your life”. That also doesn’t mean that “your feelings are always a reflection of an accurate perception”. Discipline goes hand in hand with following your joy and listening to your internal guidance system. But for them to operate hand in hand, you’ve got to understand that your emotions and mind and body are simply providing you with information about you and the world around you all day long. But this information, though important, is not necessarily always accurate, nor is it necessarily a good thing to allow to govern you. Your conscious awareness and free will must heed this information and use it to decide what is right to do given that information.
If you are making a choice from conscious, objective free will, often times it becomes obvious that the right choice to make is in the direction of something painful because you align with the reason for doing so.
To understand the difference between discipline and bulldozing and allowing your resistance to rule you, here is an example:
Bryce is currently obese and has his sights set on losing weight. He decides to go on an extreme diet and commit to going to the gym with an aggressive personal trainer every day. Because he thinks this will get him the fastest results. This goes good for two days. Then he starts to feel deprived and like he is being forced to do something he doesn’t really want to do. He has big time resistance to what he is doing. None of it feels good. Bryce decides this is normal and forces himself to keep dieting and bulldozes himself to exercise anyway. In fact, he pushes himself harder. And as if things weren’t unenjoyable enough, his ankle starts hurting, making what he is doing in the gym, even harder to do. He bulldozes through this too and ends up injured. As a result, he has to take a break to “recover”. But this sends him into a “nothing ever works for me” spiral. And eventually, he breaks down and copes emotionally by binging junk food.
Charlie is also obese and has his sights set on losing weight. He decides to exercise and go on a diet on Monday. Because of this, he is very excited and starts off the morning on Monday by eating cottage cheese and cantaloupe. And he takes a 45-minute walk. At lunch time, two of his friends invite him to a restaurant. He goes along and looks at the menu and all the delicious options he could order and realizes that the only thing on his new diet is an overpriced salad. He starts feeling bad. He feels resistance to staying on his new diet. When he closes his eyes to see why he is feeling so bad, he sees that he is feeling deprived and cut off from enjoyment. He immediately decides this isn’t good. And so, he lets himself order what he really wants off of the menu, especially because his friends, who want him to feel good, are encouraging him to get what he really wants to eat. The next morning, Charlie feels tired getting up to go on a walk. He doesn’t really want to go walking, even though he wants to lose weight. So, he decides he doesn’t want to bulldoze himself and calls it his rest day.
Lyle is also obese and has his sights set on losing weight. He decides to hire a personal trainer and cut out all sugar and junk foods from his diet. Even though his personal trainer was really good and supportive, his first day of exercising with the personal trainer made him feel bad. He initially interpreted that resistance as a “No, we shouldn’t do this.” When this resistance comes up, he does not bulldoze it. Nor does he just give into it. He decides to sit on a park bench and really become aware of the way he feels. Doing so, makes him aware that he feels bad because working out makes him feel bad about himself because of how little he can do. That he does not really want to go back and feel the physical pain or shame that he feels when he exercises. Lyle thinks through the option of quitting based on this reasoning and decides it is a bad reason to quit because it would simply be avoiding shame. So, instead, he decides to do The Completion Process on the feeling of shame. He also decides to do belief work. He works on the belief that “I shouldn’t be fat.” When he does this process, he sees that given everything he went through, it makes perfect sense that he is fat and has struggled to lose weight for so long. He also sees that his personal trainer actually has no judgement towards him being fat and wants to be a support to his health. That unlike his step father, who made him bad and wrong for everything, his personal trainer wants him to feel good and to feel good about himself. As a result, Lyle feels in alignment with exercising, even if it isn’t comfortable. And decides to involve his personal trainer in how he is feeling emotionally, so they can work through that together and adjust things accordingly if the feeling arises, while still remaining committed to working out.
When Lyle starts to feel like he doesn’t want to be on a diet anymore, especially when he went to thanksgiving dinner and saw how many of his favorite foods he would have to say no to, he started to question himself about what it was about the foods that he felt so desperate for. He realized that it was emotional. The part of him that wanted to say “screw you” to the diet wanted the emotional element of those foods. He associates those foods with togetherness and comfort. Something he really struggles to feel with the people in his family. He wants to feel those feelings and also, he wants to stop eating foods that are bad for him. So, with that information, he decides to suggest to the family to play a specific game, because Lyle feels like when they play that game, everyone is together and there is harmony and he feels comforted. He also decides that on special occasions, like holidays, he is going to let himself have a taste of his favorite foods, but to not have a portion of them. And that when he has a taste of them, he is going to really savor them and experience them in his whole body. So that he won’t feel completely deprived and cut off from joint experiences. As a result of working with his resistance to make up his mind about what to do about it, Lyle stays disciplined to lose weight. And he does lose weight. Not only that, he heals a great deal of the emotional and mental patterns feeding his obesity, because those patterns came up during the process in the form of his resistance to losing weight.
The moral of the story is, when resistance arises, you must see it as important. You must be responsive to it. You must look directly at it. You must explore it. You must question it. You must work with it. The WHY behind resistance is everything. And based off of all the information the resistance contains, you must make a decision about what is best to do. Knowing that to act in alignment with your internal drive to act based on your goals, often means saying yes to a specific unwanted thing or to doing something, even though it doesn’t feel good.
People need to be validated. They need to have their experience, their feelings, their thoughts and behaviors be seen as important, understood, acknowledged, taken seriously, accepted, mirrored, seen as valid and real. Validation is an important part of a healthy relationship, and this is even more true if someone grew up in an invalidating household. But validation can also be misused.
Raymond is in a partnership with Miles. They have lived together for just over five years. Three of those years were really wonderful. But then, things really took a downturn. Miles started to behave in really sabotaging ways. He started passive aggressively forgetting things. He started emotionally withdrawing. He started dropping his responsibilities, acting as if he were incapable of them. He started evading issues (including the issues that Raymond had with his passive aggressive behaviors) and stonewalling in conversations. Miles eventually admitted that the reason for his behavior is that he didn’t know if it was right for him to be in a partnership with Raymond. Miles admitted that down deep, he wants the security of the relationship, but he wants to be free and live a totally different lifestyle. One where he is free to do whatever he wants whenever he wants. Free to pursue different romantic and sexual interests whenever the opportunity arises. Free to stay up late, indulge, travel and party.
Spending nights at home, being someone’s emotional support, being meticulous about eating right, exercising together and getting enough sleep, being sexually faithful and having a bunch of household responsibilities, he finds soul sucking and boring. It makes him feel trapped. But Miles did not follow up after sharing this truth by deciding what that meant for the relationship. He made no decision to change their relationship and took no action to either change himself to be more compatible with the life he was living with Raymond. Nor did he take any action to move forward in his life toward something else.
This truth is serious business because given what Raymond wants and needs in a relationship and a lifestyle, and especially given that Miles sold Raymond on the idea that this thing he doesn’t want was exactly what he did want. Not only is it duping, it leaves no room for a compatible partnership arrangement to be made. Miles has un-committed to his relationship with Raymond, while still staying in the relationship. He threw a bomb into their relationship and by doing so, put the relationship in a state of limbo.
Raymond is in a lot of pain. Sometimes throughout the week, he loses his temper at Miles and has a meltdown. In these melt downs, Raymond yells and cries that he needs Miles to make a decision and decide to take an action, so they aren’t in this intolerable limbo. He cries about how unfair it is that Miles duped him into believing they were compatible and by doing so, gave him a taste of what he wants more than anything, only to reveal that it was a lie and take it away. Raymond becomes incensed at Mile’s passive aggressive behavior, which continues, despite the reasons for the behaviors already having been put on the table and talked about. Miles has Raymond on a hook. He keeps hurting Raymond with his lack of commitment, with his state of limbo and with his passive aggressive behaviors and inactions.
When Raymond has these weekly meltdowns or even when they are simply having a conversation about what is happening to try to reach some conclusion or resolution, Miles validates Raymond. He says “I’m so sorry. I know this is all totally not ok. I can see that because of me, you are in an intolerable limbo and to expect you to stay in limbo about the person you share your life and home with, is just wrong. I can see that my focus and energy is not here and that I’m not being present with you. I know that I did this because I wanted to be with you, and thought I’d get used to it eventually. And at the end of the day, that was duping you. And duping you is so unfair; you should be treated better in your relationships. And when I drop my responsibilities, and they fall on you, that is also just wrong. You have so much on your plate already that it makes you feel like you are alone in life. I love you; I don’t want you to feel alone.”
The first few times Miles validated Raymond like this, the validation caused him to emotionally down-regulate. It demonstrated that Miles really saw his experience, feelings, thoughts and behaviors as important, understood them, acknowledged them, took them seriously, accepted them, mirrored them, and what’s more, saw them as valid and real and accurate. And because of this, Raymond believed Miles would follow it up with a decision or action to stop what he was doing or end the suffering somehow. But that never happened. Rather, Miles kept validating Raymond and doing nothing to take him out of the painful situation that Miles kept saying was “not ok”. Essentially, the validation was serving as a tool to keep Raymond in the pain, rather than get him out of it. Because Miles did not want to face the consequences of his own personal truth and what that would mean for him.
Validation is a very effective placation tool. And some people use it as a way of placating someone’s reaction to being harmed, rather than changing what they are doing to harm that person. Such is the case with Miles.
Validation can become a tool of abuse when you validate someone about the pain that they are in on account of something you are doing or failing to do. And especially when you validate the wrongness and not-ok ness of what you are doing, only to continue doing it. There are many reasons why a person might do this to someone else. For example, they may do it to simply placate the other person and not actually believe what they are leading the other person to think they believe or agree with. They may do this to buy themselves time. They may do it to lead the other person to think they will change, as a method of de-escalating conflict and creating a pseudo-repair so the relationship can continue, when in reality they have no intention of changing and that reality being exposed, would lead to a loss of the relationship. They may do it as a means of manipulating the other person into something they want. They may do it because they truly do get it, but are avoiding some consequence or pain that they think would come as a result of making a change and are thus, willing to keep the other person in pain to avoid their own. They may do it to establish a sense of confluence and closeness without having to make a change that they think would lead to pain on their end. They may do it to try to stay in a situation that is incompatible, but to be able to sneakily do something incompatible that is within their own best interests, but against the other person’s within that situation. They may do it to get the other person to step in and take responsibility and blame for making a difficult decision or taking a difficult action. And the list goes on. The important thing if you are doing this to someone, or if this is being done to you, is to find out the why.
If someone is truly caretaking your best interests, they don’t want you to be in pain. They are not ok with you being in pain. They are certainly unwilling to be the one to keep hurting you. Because of this, they are being active about taking you out of pain. They either do this by putting effort into changing what is hurting you (of their own accord and without you having to nag them). Or by asserting that they won’t make a change to what they are doing or failing to do, explaining why, and then working with you to find solutions and changes according to that boundary they have set. This allows you to at least consciously choose what to do with that reality so that you can move towards improvement in some other way and are not stuck in the pain of hoping for them to change.
Using validation as a tool to enable no change or as a tool to enable harm, is not something that should be done or tolerated. The bottom line is, any tool or technique can be misused. And this includes validation.
Happiness is what nearly every person on earth is looking for, is chasing, is trying to attain. The reason that people do what they do, is because they feel the doing of it will make them feel better. And the main way that people are trying to reach happiness, is by reaching their desires. But the following truth has the capacity to change the way you are trying to go about reaching happiness as well as put true happiness within reach: To be able to experience true happiness, the truth that you must accept is that attaining what you desire, will not make you happy.
Let me explain… Attaining what you desire will feel really, really good. For a hot minute. And then, it won’t. People believe that once they reach their desires (especially in all the various areas of life) there will be no more contrast in their life.
For example, a person thinks that by finding their soul mate and getting married to them, they will be happy. Or that by becoming a billionaire, they will be happy. Or that by becoming a famous artist, they will be happy. Or that by becoming free, they will be happy. Or that by winning something or achieving a goal, they will be happy. Or that by becoming enlightened, they will be able to experience and maintain a state of happiness. We imagine happiness to be a kind of end-state. We imagine it like we imagine heaven, but here in this life. A pure positive state, where life only feels good and no unwanted things happen.
Contrast is one of the integral elements of this time space reality. Contrast is the existence and the perception of polarities such as positive and negative, wanted and unwanted, dark and light, pain and pleasure. Contrast is the root of both personal and universal expansion. A being is meant to sort through the wanted and unwanted elements of this time space reality so as to give rise to desire. And then, to line up with that desire with their thoughts, words and actions. Doing so, causes a person to actualize the expansion. But this improved state of being will come with a new set of contrast. And so, the process and the movement starts all over again, propelling the person into the ever-expanding state of being. The biggest fantasy that people sell each other is that there can be an end to contrast. For sure the biggest lie that the self-help/spiritual industry perpetuates is that there can be an end to contrast. That it is possible to get to a point where life only feels good with no negatives and where no unwanted things happen anymore. If you want to learn more about this, watch my video titled: The Biggest Lie the Self-Help/Spiritual Industry Sells You. The reality is that anything you want and attain, will come with a new set of negatives, pains and unwanted things. And these things will not make you happy. So, you will desire more.
If you are unprepared for this, what you are in for, is a huge disillusionment. You will work your ass off trying to attain what you want, thinking that attaining it will make you happy. Only to find that it doesn’t. And when this happens, you will wonder what the hell is wrong with you. You will change your values and start chasing something totally different, thinking that attaining that different thing is the answer to happiness. But the same thing will happen. You will get there, and find that it too is not the answer to happiness. Again, attaining what you want, will not make you happy.
The answer to this, is not to give up desire. In fact, despite what you have been told, you could not do that, even if you wanted to. Closing the gap between yourself and what you desire, is one part of happiness. The way to experience happiness is not to give up on what you want. It is to accept that happiness will not come as a result of getting what you want. Wants, by their very deliberate design are meant to create continual expansion. And therefore, they can never be satisfied. To learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: Are You Afraid of Desire? The Truth about Desire.
It is tempting to look at the never-satisfiable nature of desire and to make desire in and of itself the problem. Rather than to make the problem what it really is. That people think attaining what they want (a specific outcome) will make them happy or end their suffering. In other words, desire is meant to create continual expansion. This is why desire is insatiable. The fact that desire is insatiable does not make desire in and of itself the problem. The problem is that we think it is satiable.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you begin to form a much more conscious, real and dynamic relationship with your desire. You are able to be much more objective about it, seeing it for what it really is. You are able to work with it as an ally, make conscious decisions about it and with the information it gives you. And use it as a powerful inner tool and resource. It no longer controls you. Nor are you in a fight to get rid of it.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you will stop living your life as a “so that”. What I mean by this is, most people do things that are inauthentic to them. Things they don’t enjoy, in order to attain something else they want because they think this thing that they want will make them happy. For example, they become whatever other people want them to become, so that they can attain belonging; thinking that attaining belonging will give them happiness. Or they work a job that makes them unhappy so that they get money, which they think will make them happy. We all have to consciously choose into some painful, negative and unwanted things in this life. We must consciously choose what set of contrast to say yes to. But this is very different than the subconscious process most people are engaged in when they are doing something they don’t enjoy so that they can get something else they want. This is an unsustainable way to live especially when getting what they want will not make them happy. If you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you are more likely to consciously choose to do something you enjoy and thus, your life experience will feel better to you. To understand more about this, watch my video titled: If You Want to Be Happy, Don’t Do This!
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you are more likely to live for your deeper values. Things that are far more important to you and that matter more than your own sensation of happiness. This causes you to be much more resilient and have a much, much deeper sense of meaning and fulfillment in your life.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you will not tell yourself that something is bad or wrong with you because you become unhappy again, even when you get what you want. You will not tell yourself the false story that you are impossible to satisfy or that somehow, you have failed at life. To move through life with this expectation of yourself, is nothing short of a set up and is therefore, a form of cruelty. And by this standard, due to the nature of desire, everyone is impossible to satisfy.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you will find it easier to fully commit to the adventure of life and to mastering the process of expansion. You can choose to commit to playing the game of life and extracting the benefits from it, including the benefits of desire itself. You will find it easier to no longer be in resistance to the what is in life. You will stop trying to get out of it and transcend it.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, your attachment to and desperate desire for permanence and immortality will diminish, and with it, so will your resistance to impermanence and death. The ultimate object of desire, is to have what you want forever, because you think that getting what you want will make you happy and keeping what you want forever will keep you happy forever. When you no longer see getting what you want as the ticket to happiness, you no longer see immortality and permanence as the ticket to happiness.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you will be less feverish to get past the present moment, straight to the future… what you want. This will cause you to be more present. You will perceive more. You will start to focus much more on what you are experiencing, and on joys available to you in the here and now. The experience of appreciation and gratitude become far more tangible. You will no longer ignore or deprive yourself of joyful experiences in the now, so as to fixate on and get to a goal line where you think you will experience happiness. As a result, your life experience will feel better to you.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you will not look to getting what you want as the salvation for painful and challenging times you may find yourself in. Instead, you are more able to resource the joys and even the best times that are available to you in the here and now, in your worst times. Even when your heart is breaking and even when you are afraid and even when you are tossed in the seas of uncertainty. Because, you will realize, they can coexist. When you are in a state of living hell, the answer to feeling better is not to try to get happy by attaining what you want. Nor is it using the idea of one day getting what you want to feel better about what is happening in the now. It is empowerment. For this reason, if you are in a situation like this, you would benefit by watching two of my videos. The first titled: Take Your Power Back and the second titled: Ticket To An Empowered Life.
Accepting the truth that attaining what you desire will not make you happy because it will not put an end to the reality of contrast, nor will it put an end to you desiring more, has the capacity to actually cause you to find true happiness, which occurs in the here and now moments on the way to what we want.
So, with all that being said, if you were to accept that attaining what you desire, will not make you happy, what would change for you? And what would you do differently?
There are many reasons why a person may not be successful at whatever it is that they want to be successful at, no matter what that is… building wealth or attaining status or creating a feel-good partnership or getting a specific qualification or credential or being the parent that they want to be or reaching enlightenment or creating a sense of freedom in life or achieving any other specific goal. But, a big, and I mean BIG reason that many people never succeed, is that they are unwilling to choose pain for the sake of what they want. They are stuck in a state of contrast avoidance. Anything, I repeat ANYTHING you choose to succeed at, will come with a certain pain. Success is out of the comfort zone. If you want to succeed, you need to be willing to choose that pain. And you will be limited in terms of success by what pain you are unwilling to take for what you want. Now that I’ve said this, let’s dive deeper…
Most people alive today have the following subconscious goal: To get to a point where life only feels good. And to avoid anything that would make them feel bad. And one of the biggest lies that you have been sold is that it is possible to get to a point where life only feels good with no negatives and where no unwanted things happen anymore.
Contrast is one of the integral elements of this time space reality. What I mean by contrast is the existence and the perception of polarities such as positive and negative, wanted and unwanted, dark and light, pain and pleasure. Contrast is the root of both personal and universal expansion. You are meant to sort through the wanted and unwanted elements of this time space reality so as to give rise to desire. And then, to line up with that desire with their thoughts, words and actions. Doing so, causes a person to actualize the expansion. But this improved state of being will come with a new set of contrast. And so, the process starts all over again, propelling the person into the ever-expanding state of being. For example, let’s say that a person really wants to have a life in nature on a self-sustainable farm. By actualizing their desire, they may have things like a sense of independence and freedom, the peacefulness of the natural world, a life that is wholesome, high-quality food and simplicity. But they may also experience things like inconvenience, lots of labor that needs to be done in order to maintain things, a feeling of disconnection from the rest of society and a decrease in financial income.
So much of the process of expansion is about choosing pain for the sake of what matters most to you, and once you have done that, continually making changes so as to resolve or at least decrease that pain that you feel as a result of having made that choice.
Relative to most forms of success, there are also degrees of that success. And as a person sets their sights on ever higher degrees of success, they will come face to face with the fact that to continue on their path to greater levels of success, they must choose even greater pain for the sake of what they want. Essentially, they will run into their own limitations. And they will be limited by what pain they are unwilling to choose for what they want. This is the reason why there are so many sayings out there about success and sacrifice, such as: If you are unwilling to sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice.
Many, many people go for what they want, but the minute that doing so creates pain in their life, especially relative to any other sector of their life, they back off and un-commit to it. They limit themselves, so as to keep themselves in a state of comfort. To keep themselves feeling good.
So that you can understand this, I’m going to give you two examples.
Timothy is 26 years old. Timothy has his sights set on a more traditional picture of success. He wants to be completely financially free and to get a sense of importance by creating a cutting-edge data analysis software based off of his special talent at seeing the shortcomings of the current systems that are available. Timothy has a fiancé and a job at a prestigious financial firm. He spent a lot of his life competing in sports and feels a deep need for athletics in order to stay mentally, emotionally and physically stable. He really cares about his father’s approval. And he loves his leisure time.
As Timothy progresses on his path to the success he has in mind, he becomes aware that in order to get his software to take off, he is going to have to be open to moving from place to place as the need arises and he needs his fiancé to be supportive enough of his success to either go with him from place to place. Or at the very least, for her to let him go for weeks at a time while she stays where they currently are. Timothy’s fiancé will not do this. She has two relationship boundaries. The first is: Her partner is with her, living a together life. She’s not by herself for more than a week at most a couple of times per year. The second is: They stay where they are, because she is very dedicated to the animal rescue organization she works for. It is her purpose. The few times that they have talked this over, it has gone terribly. Because Timothy’s fiancé will not take the certain pain he has presented her with, for the sake of having a harmonious relationship with Timothy, Timothy is at a choice point. In order to succeed with his career, his partnership with his fiancé must end and he must decide to eventually look for a partner who will sign up for being flexible according to the needs of his success. Timothy has hit a limitation. Timothy is in love with his fiancé. And is unable to say yes to the pain of losing her for the sake of his career success. So, he limits his own success by staying in the job he currently has and by postponing the idea of creating his software until he can potentially find a partner who would be able to be the one to travel as the business needs arise.
Timothy’s issue is not just about his fiancé. It is about taking pain in general. He can only commit to something to the degree that it doesn’t cause him pain. Timothy wants to build relationship security with his fiancé. But when she needs him to be with her on a day that he has a soccer game planned, he is unwilling to take the pain of not doing his sports.
Timothy wants to move to a section of town where the rent is much cheaper, so he can save up the money to succeed at being even more financially free. But his father has expressed disapproval at him going anywhere that would decrease his status. Timothy cannot take the pain of his father’s disapproval, so he stays put, making it harder to reach his financial goals.
Timothy wants to be an entrepreneur. But his leisure time matters to him. So, when being an entrepreneur means taking the pain of working during a national holiday, he refuses and takes three days off instead. Timothy is playing an exhausting game where he calculates what to do and not do based off of the avoidance of taking any pain past a certain threshold in any sector of his life. Timothy will forever be limited in every sector of his life by virtue of the pain he is unwilling to sign up for in any of the sectors of his life. And this kind of extreme balancing act will only be right for Timothy if he consciously signs up to the pain of his success being limited in each one of his sectors.
If Timothy were not so hell bent on living his life to avoid pain, he might end up finding out that what is right for him is to limit his success in his entrepreneurship, so that he can have success at a feel-good marriage with his fiancé. But to choose to take pain relative to his father disapproving of him to gain success at building up money to invest. But he will not be confused about why he is not becoming a successful entrepreneur when other men are. Because he is choosing limitations based on pain that he is not willing to say yes to. And they are willing to say yes to.
Ken is also a man who has his sights set on a more traditional picture of success. He wants to be completely financially free and he wants to start a new brand of backcountry ski-wear. Ken has a fiancé and a job with a lot of authority at a sports outfitting company. Like Timothy, Ken spent a lot of his life competing in sports. In his case, Winter sports. And feels a deep need for athletics in order to stay mentally, emotionally and physically stable. He really cares about his father’s approval. And he loves his leisure time. It’s like these two men were cut from the same stone. Except for one thing. Ken is willing to bleed for the sake of succeeding at what is most important to him. And because of this, he is very good at prioritizing.
Ken realizes that in order to become the entrepreneur he was meant to be, he will need to quit his job. His father will not approve because his father was the one who used his personal contacts to get him the job. Ken decides to take the pain of his father’s disapproval and he has to sit through many tongue lashings and criticism and put up with the feeling of lack of support and disapproval. Ken realizes that succeeding at starting his new brand means moving out of the country; so as to not break the clauses of his current employee non-compete contract. He takes this to his fiancé. She sets a hard boundary that she is not leaving the country on account of her friends and family. She says she could try a long-distance relationship until he is able to move back. But Ken does not want to be in a long-distance relationship. He realizes that there is a huge incompatibility between them. If he wants to be as successful as he can be at his new ski wear business, he will need a partner who will be flexible enough to enables his success by going with him, even if that means moving overseas.
So, in order to become successful, he has to face the unthinkable for him, he has to break off the engagement. The amount of pain this causes him is ineffable. He will have to move to a different country alone. He will be starved of a sense of partnership and physical affection. He doesn’t know if he will ever love someone as much as he loves her. But he also knows himself enough to know that his drive to succeed at his new brand is so intense, that if he stays and limits himself for the sake of his fiancé, he will end up resenting her and having a style of relationship that he doesn’t want, where he has to hold himself back for the sake of accommodating her best interests. Because of this, he knows he can’t make that choice.
Being an entrepreneur means dedicating his time and energy to making his new brand all it can be. So, sometimes he has to deal with forgoing the opportunity to do sports. He hates the feeling of missing out when everyone else is he knows is getting together to go back country skiing. But it is pain he is choosing to take for the sake of the success he has his sights set on. Ken is willing to say yes to ALOT of pain for the sake of the success he wants. And as a result, he has less limits on his career success than Timothy does. As a result, unlike Timothy, Ken finds a partner who is happy to be flexible and lend her energy to his career success. And he does launch his new brand and builds it to the point where when he sells it off to one of the biggest outdoor product brands in the world, he is a truly financially free man.
During this process, the way that Ken continued his expansion in the direction of a feel-good life, was to find solutions for the pain he has chosen. Such as, working through his terror at his father’s disapproval with an on-line psychologist. And buying himself a treadmill that fits under his desk, so that he can move his body while working on the computer. And immediately joining groups of people who share the same interests in the new country he moved to. And getting massages regularly as well as getting into a friend with benefits arrangement to offset the starvation for physical touch. And giving himself leisure time only as an in-breath in response to the award of accomplishments he makes in his business endeavors.
It is very tempting to look at what is important to another person and make it right or wrong, according to what society says or according to what is most important to you and therefore what you wish was most important to other people too. But, for the sake of this conversation, I want you to put down your judgements about all that and simply realize that if you want success at anything, you will be tested regarding what pain you are willing to take, (what contrast you are willing to sign up for) in order to attain that success.
By all means, the very first thing you should do is to look really hard to find a way to make things work in a way where you don’t have to take pain (where it isn’t necessary to take pain) in order to achieve the success that you have in mind. But at the end of the day, on the road to success, every person finds themselves in lose-loses where they must be willing to take pain for what they want. And this includes you.
If you want to understand more about this topic, you can watch three of my videos titled: 1. Why You Should Consciously Choose Consequences. 2. Want to Succeed? What Pain Will You Say Yes To? And 3. The Ticket to an Empowered Life.
Each person is unique. Because of this, each person must work out for themselves what is right for them regarding how far they are willing to go with their picture of success, based off what pain they will and will not say yes to. Sometimes the pain you must say yes to, is admitting to a way that you are going to choose to limit yourself.
As someone who spends a great deal of my life helping people to master relationships, I can attest to the fact that people are often out of reality in their relationships. And lately, I have been seeing a disturbing trend in this regard. The trend I’ve been seeing is person A expecting person B (whom they are in a relationship with) to be satisfied in the relationship because person A is doing inner work. In today’s episode, I am going to explain this delusion in detail, remove the delusion and bring everyone back into reality about inner work and its role in relationships.
We are going to start this conversation with an example. I met June when she was selected to come to the stage at one of my synchronization workshops. June is in a romantic relationship with Dalton. They are engaged. But for a while now, things have not been going well. When their relationship first started, everything felt wonderful and they rode the relationship escalator to greater and greater levels of commitment. But when they went to look at buying a house together, things started unraveling. June was very excited to find a permanent home to make her own and especially, a place near her family that she is really, really close to. But Dalton started to act funny. He started dragging his feet and procrastinated badly enough that June’s favorite place was taken off the market. He stopped acting normal at Sunday night family dinners with June’s family. He acted withdrawn and almost snappy and he complained about everything afterwards. June reacted by defending her family and spending more time with them throughout the week. Dalton could not give a straightforward answer as to what his problem was. But the distance grew between them. And one day, June found Dalton getting high on weed at his brother’s house. By doing this, he had crossed a boundary that she had set and he had agreed to at the very beginning of the relationship. It was this trust breech that drove them into couple’s therapy. June feels like she is stuck in limbo with Dalton. She can’t move forward in the relationship with someone who is behaving this way and who is making no moves to tell her directly what his problem is and what he needs. But now, she is just waiting for some kind of improvement or for the shoe to really drop in the event that he should tell her that he doesn’t love her anymore and has fallen for another woman or something.
What June needs is for there to be some palpable change. Something like Dalton being more engaged again and affectionate. Or a full explanation about what is happening for him accompanied with some decision and action taken as a result of that truth he has. Or for him to be actively engaged in buying a house with her. Or for him to initiate developing close relationships with her brothers. Something that makes her experience with Dalton feel better and something that creates security and certainty in the relationship. But instead, when June complains that her needs are not being met, Dalton loves to say “Ease up, I am doing what you want. I’m going with you to therapy!”
One day, June managed to get Dalton to go to a seminar to learn a self-healing process that was supposed to increase self-awareness. June was thrilled to see that Dalton started to use the process regularly of his own accord. But then, in their relationship therapy session, when June mentioned the incredible lack of effort that Dalton puts towards the relationship and how passive he is being about changing anything in their relationship, Dalton blew up and said “How can you say that? Don’t you see how much of trauma processing I’ve been doing?”
The big problem with this, is that Dalton is clearly in the delusion that his own inner work, whether it is going to therapy or doing trauma processing, is FOR June. And so, she should be happy with him in the relationship and even celebrate him because he is doing inner work.
Even though it has nothing to do with the point of this episode, for the sake of those of you who are total awareness freaks and wont sleep without knowing what was actually going on with Dalton, Dalton did not realize until he and June started shopping for places to buy that she was so dedicated to being near her family and never, ever leaving them. This meant that there was a big incompatibility between himself and June because Dalton’s deep desire is to follow the career opportunities that come his way, no matter where that takes him. Not limit himself by only taking opportunities that are near enough to stay near June’s family. He wants his wife to be dedicated to and supportive of his success, even if it means moving. Dalton realized through her behavior that this would be a “no” for her. Not knowing how to face this incompatibility and also terrified to lose June, who is the only person Dalton is truly emotionally close to, he became passive aggressive and slipped into old coping mechanisms and tried to buy himself avoidance time by showing her that he is “doing inner work”.
So many people do not understand that ANY form of inner work that a person does, whether that inner work is going to a therapist (including a relationship therapist) doing any self-help process, doing any kind of shadow work, meditating, doing trauma work, engaging with shamanic medicines, doing breathwork, attending retreats or attending any seminars about any type of inner work etc. is something that a person does for themselves. Why? Because these things are all tools that serve YOU. They are tools SO THAT you can improve your own life. It just so happens that part of the picture of improving your life (maybe even the main thing you want to improve in your life) is the improvement of a relationship you have. Inner work is not something that you do (or even can do) FOR another person’s sake. Even if the byproduct of you doing inner work is something that happens to end up benefitting them.
If a person is doing inner work for someone else, they are treating inner work like a hoop they have to jump through to please someone else. And this defeats the point of inner work. Also, any form of inner work is a tool that CAN enable you to change your perspective or make different decisions or take different actions. But these things are the BYPRODUCT of the tool of inner work. A person can just as easily pick up the tool of inner work and do nothing with it. They can choose to not change anything based off of what they discover doing inner work. When this is the case, the tool is not being applied. So it isn’t creating any improvement or benefit for the other person.
What someone is looking for and needing if they want you to do inner work of any kind, is not that the doing of the inner work itself. It’s the hoped-for positive byproduct that might be the result of you doing inner work. This is what they usually don’t feel like they will get unless you do inner work. The inner work is simply a perceived means to an end. The end being you meeting of a need of theirs or doing something that will feel like an improvement for them.
So that you understand this better, here is an analogy. Let’s say that in a relationship, a person is feeling really deprived of sexual engagement. Eating food is something that you do to be physically healthy. Being physically healthy is something that makes it more likely that you can engage in sex physically. Also, eating certain foods boosts your libido. But you don’t expect the other person to celebrate you for eating. Nor do you tell them to get off of your back and be satisfied because you ate asparagus and chocolate yesterday. The eating is simply a hopeful means to an end. What the person needed in the relationship, was not for you to eat food. It was for there to be an actual, perceivable improvement regarding sexual engagement.
Do not ask another person you are in a relationship with to celebrate the fact that you are doing any kind of inner work in and of itself. I’m saying this as a being who teaches inner work and has made inner work the epicenter of my entire life… If you don’t want to do inner work, the answer to your relationship problems is to make the improvements that the other person hopes will come about as a result of you doing inner work, in your own way. For example, if the other person needs more intimacy, find a way to give them more intimacy or be straightforward about the fact that they cannot get more intimacy from you and make the improvement be about how they can get more intimacy in ways that do not include you.
To sum up this conversation, if you are doing any form of inner work, no matter the motive for doing it (including the motive being to try to make a relationship better), that inner work is something that you are doing for yourself. It is focus and energy you are putting into your own internal bank account so to speak. If someone tells you that they are doing any form of inner work for you (or ever holds it over your head) don’t succumb to the confusing clash of emotions that you will feel and don’t let it slide. It isn’t them doing the inner work itself that you need. It’s whatever improvement you need that you hope the inner work will lead to. Express those things you need and want and hope for directly. And leave the HOW up to them.
Though we would like to think of ourselves as resilient and even immune to the painful things that happen in our life, the reality is that the things that happen in our life, have a very real effect on us. And when they go unresolved, they will manifest emotionally, mentally and physically.
When a painful, unwanted thing happens to us, it can easily become a trauma. A simple definition of trauma is distress without resolve. What should stick out to you about this definition of trauma is that this could mean anything from an infant being weaned to an embarrassing event to chronic experiences where you end up feeling like your worth to others is only about the quality of your performance all the way to a veteran watching comrades being blown up by landmines at war to complex sex abuse and trafficking. Trauma is something that happens in all demographics, across all societal classes, to people of any age, race, class, religion or sex. There are so many types of traumas that a person can experience.
Everyone has trauma. Everyone has experienced distress in their lifetime that is unresolved. Everyone has made adaptations to their personality as a result of experiencing trauma. And everyone’s current, adult life was influenced by the traumas they experienced in childhood. And it is in fact these events that lie at the root of the vast majority of the problems we face and things we struggle with in our adult lives. As the field of psychology evolves, professionals will start to recognize more and more that the vast majority of behaviors that have been grouped and labeled as mental illnesses are in fact adaptations to distressing experiences. And more and more, doctors will start to recognize that trauma is what lies at the root of the vast majority of physical illness.
When we don’t find a way to actually resolve a trauma we experience, we become stuck in many ways at that moment of trauma. Simultaneously, the trauma becomes stuck in us. And we find ways to adapt to it. We develop coping mechanisms. These coping mechanisms allow us to survive distressing circumstances in our lives so we can keep on living despite the stress. They benefit us in some way when they are invented. But over time, we can see that the very coping mechanisms that benefitted us, are in fact the very thing that is hurting us and the people around us. These adaptations may serve us in some ways, but tend to doom us in other ways, especially in the long run.
Trauma changes the course of our lives. When a trauma happens, we make the painful thing that we have experienced mean something. And that in turn alters the way we think, the choices we make and the things we do. Trauma changes the way we think. Trauma changes the way we feel. Trauma changes the way our physical body operates. The symptoms of trauma can manifest as anything from changes in a person’s personality to dysfunctional behavioral patterns in relationships to coping mechanisms to negative self-talk to flashbacks to nightmares to insomnia to addictions to anxiety or depression, to unrelenting thoughts about a specific past event or series of events. To the difficulty regulating anger. To a general feeling of emotional numbness. To a physical disease or illness. To low self-esteem to self-harm to chronic pain to mental illness to simply a lingering feeling of a generally unsatisfying or painful life and so much more.
It is important to understand that the body is being informed all day, every day by the thoughts you are thinking and the way you are feeling. The physical body is not like a separate machine. Most people who are struggling with a physical ailment of course have no idea that there are mental and emotional roots to every physical ailment. And this is one reason why a person can put so much effort into remedies and improvements that are solely focused on the body at a physical level and end up seeing such poor results. Because of this, trauma will manifest as physical ailments. This is so much the case that one could correlate specific physical ailments to specific traumas.
So that you can understand how trauma manifests emotionally, mentally and physically, I’m going to give you an example. Irene was brought to the United States by her parents from Eastern Europe. They were refugees. Though Irene never experienced war directly, she was caused great distress by the feeling of constant threat. Her parents always seemed in crisis. And she felt responsible to behave in a way that put no pressure on them at all. There was no predictability relative to where they would be staying or what they would be eating or when they would see loved ones again. All of that was in someone else’s hands. Rather than being about an isolated incident, Irene’s trauma was about the dynamics of how her life was day to day growing up. As a child, she usually felt too on edge to play. She did not feel secure or joyful. She felt guilty for having any pleasure when her parents were not experiencing pleasure at all. She needed to feel comforted. But could not actively pursue the need. Because that would be to ask something from her parents, who were too stressed out as it was.
On a mental and emotional level, this trauma caused Irene to believe that the world is an inherently unsafe place and that everyone is too maxed out to help anyone else. And that pleasure is something she could not have. That life is not about pleasure. To cope with this, she suppressed, denied and disowned the aspect of herself that is lighthearted and child-like and playful and joyful. Rather, she identified with a part of herself that is serious, practical, perfectionistic and that is a workaholic. She works herself into the ground and does not prioritize joy at all. Doing this, actually makes her feel safer because it makes her feel on top of and in control of the very sad reality of her life, rather than at the mercy of it.
Whenever she experiences a situation that is pleasurable in her life, she feels guilty. Because of her often serious, cold and hard way of being, people feel tense around Irene and are typically not drawn to her. So, she experiences a severe lack of connection and affection. She carries herself with so much constriction in her tissues, that her body posture is out of alignment. Her shoulders are hunched. Her chest is concave. And she is constantly experiencing back pain. And this complete denial of pleasure has negatively informed her body to the degree that she has developed type one diabetes. Her diabetes has served to only make the original issue that caused it, worse. Because now, her condition makes pleasure even more impossible. She can’t enjoy food at all. Food or the lack thereof is a constant source of anxiety for her.
You might be thinking to yourself that Irene’s situation seems extreme, after all, most people were not refugees as children. But trauma does not need to look like what we would traditionally call trauma, to be trauma. Even experiences that you or other people might consider small or normal, can be traumas that have a massive impact on your mind, emotions and body. And don’t forget, Irene doesn’t understand that she experienced trauma. Because what she experienced is so much better than what anyone else in her family experienced. And her parents love to tell her that because they brought her to America, she avoided all the bad things that could have happened. She has so much opportunity and convenience and food and water and shelter and she is safe, unlike everyone who they left behind.
Most people have not put two and two together yet regarding what they are experiencing on a mental, emotional and physical level and the trauma they have experienced. They don’t yet see the flow chart from the trauma to the effect that trauma had on them mentally, emotionally and physically. There are a great many reasons for this all the way from memory suppression to normalization to minimization to adopting other people’s way of seeing our experiences. To it being too scary to admit to trauma because of the consequences we think we will experience if we do. To traumas being hard to see because they are about what didn’t happen, rather than about what did happen. To simply not committing any time or focus to thinking about it.
It is critical that as a society, we start to connect the dots and wake up to the fact that unresolved trauma manifests mentally, emotionally and physically. As well as wake up to the fact that trauma lies at the root of the mental, emotional and physical ailments that we are experiencing in our lives. There are so many modalities that exist to heal traumas. I, myself have created one. It is called the Completion Process. If you are interested in learning how to do this process, you have three options. You can go through the e-course that I created, in which I explain the full picture of trauma on a much deeper level and walk you step by step through how to heal trauma. You can pick up a copy of my book that is quite literally titled: The Completion Process. Or, you can go to www.completionprocess.com and select a practitioner to walk you through the process. The Completion Process is the process that I, myself used to overcome the kind of damage that most experts believed had no cure.
When we resolve distress, rather than cope with it, we are able to weave the negative experience into the fabric of who we are in a way that it benefits us. We are no longer plagued by painful negative emotion about it. We are able to live in the present moment, without feeling like we keep getting dragged back to the painful memory of an experience Essentially, what happened in the past no longer controls the way you feel or behave in the present. You are no longer a deterministic byproduct of it. By being aware of the picture of cause and effect, as it plays out in your own life, you can consciously heal what needs to be healed, and by doing so, experience a different fate.
There are a great many things that you can do for your health and welfare. Lifestyle habits that optimize your wellbeing. Opinions on the matter are plentiful and people don’t always agree. Nonetheless, I’m going to offer to you my top picks of lifestyle habits for optimal wellness.
Shadow work, most especially integration-oriented shadow work so as to bring about internal harmony, alignment and cohesion. Shadow work is any practice, process or technique which helps you to become conscious of what you are not conscious of. It is deep self-awareness and self-intimacy work. Most people walk around making a mess out of their lives and wellbeing because they are ruled by what is subconscious. The truth below their conscious awareness is that they are split and conflicted, in a state of internal conflict. This makes being in-alignment with themselves impossible, so they can’t make the right decision or take an aligned action. Making shadow work part of your daily life, changes this completely, so that you are in a state of internal alignment, making decisions and taking actions according to your authentic truth and living life consciously. To learn more about this, you can watch two of my videos titled: What is Shadow Work and What are the Benefits of Shadow Work?
Be very particular about what you do and don’t put into your body. This means things like the food you eat, the content you ingest into your mind and the products you put on your body. Right now, you live in a world where so many of the things that are out there to consume, are not conducive to human health, nor are they designed for human health. It is critical to be aware of what message you are sending to yourself and also to the rest of the world by consuming whatever it is that you consume. As well as what impact these things have on you. Be aware that just because you may not be as sensitive as others, and therefore may not recognize an immediate effect of certain things, does not mean they aren’t having an effect. A good go to rule of thumb is, the more natural something is, the better.
To give you a taste of what I mean, this means staying away as much as possible from things like refined sugars, chemicals and pesticides, plastics, horror films, violent video games, alcohol, processed foods, damaging noises, radiation, saturated fats, mold, refined grain flours, meat and dairy, preservatives, sulfates, electric currents, foods that are grown in sub-optimal conditions and the list goes on and on. Remember that the physical makeup of something is just a small fraction of a thing. There are many un-seen energetic elements and influences inherent within all things. For example, when a cook makes food in a horrible mood, that alone can cancel out the health benefits of even the healthiest food. Consciously and intentionally attune to the things in your environment and how supportive vs. unsupportive they are. Are they really FOR you and your body and being, or not? If not, don’t consume them.
Make sleep a priority. There are some people throughout history who have managed to be able to consciously take in prana and this changes the amount of sleep they need. But this should not become a goal for people, as if it were a mark of how evolved a person is. Some of the most conscious beings in existence sleep very little and some, sleep so much, it would shock you. To generalize, for people, wellbeing depends on sleep and on getting enough if it. Between 7 to 9 hours of it. There are so many functions that sleep serves, from body restoration to memory consolidation to immune system function and so much more. It isn’t just about energy. And making sleep a priority, means having good nighttime habits, like a wind-down routine to downregulate your nervous system, not ingesting caffeine after 2 pm. Body care. Not looking at screens that blast your brain with light right before bed.
Be proactive, not passive, about health and wellness measures according to your needs; and do so directly. Many people are very passive about their wellness needs. Really own your wellbeing and be active about it. Doing so could look like taking baths in Epsom salts, getting massages, sitting in stillness, seeing a therapist, researching solutions and alternative cures, going on a hike, taking a specific supplement, spending time with a friend, working out at the gym, breathwork, cold showers, dressing in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, the sauna, listening to birdsongs or specific frequencies, no screen time, reading or writing, a retreat, drinking enough water, finding the right bedding for yourself, writing in a gratitude journal, going to sleep by a certain time, cleanses, acupuncture treatments, yoga, cuddling, doing art etc. When a need arises, meet that need directly. By doing so, you are being an advocate to yourself in a very up-front way.
Be attuned to the way you feel and caretake your emotions. When it comes to emotions, we do things like ignore, suppress, deny, reject, fix, turn against, try to control, minimize, distract ourselves from, disguise, dissociate from, numb out and violently act out emotions. There are so many different ways that we do these things and there are so many different ways that this harms us and the people, places and things around us. For this not to happen, we have to let emotions fully pass through our being when they occur, without resisting them. And when we go through something that stirs up strong negative emotion, we need to place our attention on it so as to give it our full presence. We need to fully experience it. We need to let it pass fully through our body and energy field. And we need to learn the information contained in it. Doing so, will increase our capacity to feel as well as our capacity to process emotions. It’s like building an emotional muscle. And this, in turn will make it so we feel we can deal with anything life throws our way, rather than spending every day in panic because down deep, we feel we can’t handle painful things happening, because we can’t handle the emotions that those things will cause us to feel.
People fear that when you focus on an emotion, it will simply amplify. It won’t ever go away and it may even kill them. This represents a huge amount of disempowerment that people feel relative to their own emotions. And this is not true at all when it comes to emotions. First of all, emotions are fluid, they move through you if you let them. On top of this, your truth and therefore your emotions don’t just disappear by focusing on something else. The picture of what causes emotions is more complicated than just what you are focused on in the moment. And most people use these tools designed to avoid negative emotion as a tool of resistance to their emotions. So, their emotions get stuck in the being. Their emotions get sequestered into the subconscious. They start to see their own emotions as the enemy. Your emotions are not against you. They are powerfully for you. Emotions are feedback about what is happening in any given circumstance. When you pay attention to your emotions, you are listening and responding to this feedback. It’s like listening to radar on a submarine.
When we have an emotion occur within us, most of us either immediately suppress, ignore and deny the emotion. Or, we jump right to trying to problem solve it away as fast as possible. In fact, our resistance to emotion is why we rush to get triggers to go away, rather than to use them to assist us in our intention to heal. To learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: The Emotional Wakeup Call. Attunement to our emotion is attunement to the core of our personal truth and experience. It is connection with our “heart”.
Prioritize movement. Your body was made to move every day. You cannot be in a state of optimal health without exercise. Just like sleep, there are so many functions that movement and exercise serves. From strengthening the body to reducing stress to combating negative health conditions to helping you to be embodied to the improvement of mood to boosting energy levels to nutrient and oxygen delivery to improving sleep quality to improving your sexual health to fun and the list goes on and on. Choose a form of exercise that you personally enjoy and thus, feel intrinsically motivated to do.
Meditation. Meditation is to deliberately engage in a mental exercise. It is a deliberate shift in focus and awareness. As such, there are many different purposes for meditation and there are also many different types of meditation. Choose the type of meditation that is designed to best serve the purpose that would serve you best at a given time. That may be guided meditation at one time and focused attention meditation at another time and present moment meditation at another time and so on and so forth. There are MANY types of mediation. What all of them have in common is that mediation is an absolutely priceless tool for wellbeing.
Spend time every day with other people in person communicating, doing quality time activities and making memories together. We are a relationally dependent species. For a person to be in a state of health, they must be with other people often. It is all too easy in the business of the modern world and with the invention of the internet and social media to forfeit in-person relationships and this, should not be done. Make it a point to spend time with people in person and initiate in-person interactions.
Take great care with your environment. Home, yard, office, car etc. The spaces you occupy have a serious effect on your wellbeing. Keep your environment clean, organized and clutter free. Create a pleasing, aesthetic environment for your senses. The decorations, items and colors you use, matter. Each one has an effect on your being. This means, be deliberate about what effect you choose and therefore what does and does not belong in your space.
Spend time outside, and in nature. Preferably in interaction with plants, animals, insects, minerals and elements. Walk barefoot on the earth when you can. This is stabilizing, grounding, balancing and clearing. The frequency of natural spaces is essential for your wellbeing.
Live according to your values. Prioritize according to your values. Live very consciously according to what is most important to you. By doing this, you are living according to intrinsic motivation. Do what matters to you with your time on earth. This is the recipe for a fulfilling life. And don’t do things you do not value or dislike as a “so that”. To learn more about this, you can watch my videos titled: The Secret to a Happy Life and If You Want to Be Happy, Don’t Do This.
Learn. Never stop learning. Seek out new things to learn. Learning is a key component to personal expansion and this will literally keep you young and maintain the plasticity of your being. Learning gives you new information and skills, which you can optimize your life with. It boosts self-confidence and boosts happiness levels. And most importantly, learning prevents decline.
It is my sincere promise that adding these lifestyle habits to your daily life will improve your life immensely.
While it is tempting to think that positivity is always a good thing, the plain and simple truth is, it isn’t true. There is such a thing as damaging and toxic positivity. A person can do a lot of damage with their positivity. And one area where this is especially true, is in parenting. When a parent uses positivity as a coping mechanism, they can and often do destroy their child’s life. I invite you to do a deep dive with me into the positivity parent nightmare. So that this is one nightmare no child in the future has to endure.
Being able to recognize and really take in the positive in life, is a valuable life skill that will serve you well. But just like anything, positivity can be misused and misused severely. This is especially true when positivity is something that a person uses as a coping mechanism. Sometimes, a parent feels they cannot handle reality. And so, they use positivity to deny reality. They use positivity as a tool of avoidance. They create a positive “overlay” reality for themselves that makes their life feel good or at the very least, manageable.
When a parent does this, the truth is, they are using a strategy that they used when they were little to escape from the reality of their own painful childhood. Their own childhood experience was painful. They felt vulnerable and powerless to making it better. The adults in their life did not bother to really attune to them and make changes, so as to make their experience better. Because they could not make it better, they took to pretending as a means to make their life feel better. They took to the art of creating mental overlays. To understand overlays, I want you to imagine a little girl in a home with an anxious alcoholic father and a codependent mother. There are always furious outbursts in the home and the child is expected to be a helper and a pleaser. The child has to find some way of coping with the experience. So, she decides to pretend and focus on things that feel good and craft a narrative of reality that fees good. She pretends that she is an angel that was sent from heaven to help mommy and daddy to be ok. She wears toy angel wings around the house. And she pretends to have special powers that help people to love each other. When her dad takes her to the store to get candy, she tells herself that she is a daddy’s girl. When he flies into a rage at night, she climbs on the roof and sits outside and stares into space, thinking about how wonderful it is that so many planets could exist out there with other life on it. When her mother fails to protect her and set boundaries for her, she focuses on how peaceful and Christ like her mother is because she won’t start a fight.
For a child in this scenario, their only way to feel ok and to continue to be close to the people upon whom their life depends, and to belong with them, is to disconnect from their own pain and disconnect from the negative aspects of their reality. After all, to stay connected would be too painful and scary and powerless and vulnerable. They choose to un-attune to it. And by doing so, they choose to go into denial and out of reality.
The mind has the capacity to play pretend and reframe things and focus only on the positive to such a degree that every element of reality can be seen as a different element in our fantasy reality. A fantasy reality that our mental and emotional survival depends on. This fantasy reality sits over actual reality like an overlay.
It is common for children to use this coping technique because childhood is such a uniquely powerless experience for so many children. They cannot escape. They cannot make choices to change their reality and so they often end up developing coping mechanisms (like overlays) so as to not be stuck in a tormenting reality where they have no control. But this coping mechanism continues past childhood. It extends past when a person actually does have the capacity to change their reality. When this is the case, this coping mechanism gets people into serious trouble. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch two of my videos titled: Overlay, What Prevents You from Having a Real Relationship. And 8 Hidden Dangers of Reframing Your Thoughts.
When a person uses this coping mechanism and goes on to have children, it is a recipe for absolute disaster. Why? Because when the going gets tough, including when the going gets tough with their children, they will use this coping mechanism.
So, what happens when they use this coping mechanism as a parent? They choose to leave their child in reality, in pain and alone. They abandon their child, without ever physically leaving them and they end up doing all the wrong things. By doing this, they put their child in the same position they were in, in their childhood. Thereby putting the child in the position to choose to be in pain and alone, or to do what they did, choose to feel better and belong by creating a positive overlay of their own. Perhaps even adopting their positive overlay. This becomes an intergenerational cycle with some children joining up with the bandwagon and coping. And others, becoming the family problem and failing to thrive.
When a parent copes with positivity, any painful reality the parent does not want to acknowledge, will be denied, ignored, suppressed, minimized, negated and distracted from. This includes any painful reality about their own child. The child is gaslit about that painful reality and is also abandoned to deal with that painful reality by themselves. If the child does not validate this parent’s better feeling fantasy reality, the child is then made the problem. The parent fails to face the negative element of reality, meet the child where he or she is and co-regulate with the child. The parent also fails to respond to the child or the issue in the right way. They do not change anything so as to improve the actuality of the situation that is causing distress for the child. And as a result of this chosen un-attunement, the parent starts to feel like they can do nothing right. And they cannot. They cannot because you cannot do the right thing according to what is actually happening, if you are in another reality about what is happening.
Assuming a child does not or cannot follow suit with the parent and craft a fantasy reality that validates their parent’s fantasy reality, the child will fail to thrive. The child will be in a hell all by themselves, with a parent who is feeling pretty good, except of course for the fact that their child is so unhappy for no obvious reason. The child soon finds themselves in a nightmare built for one. And because their pain is not being seen, heard, felt, understood and therefore is not being responded to correctly, in fact it is being denied, dismissed, negated, and suppressed and they are being neglected, the child resorts to behaviors like cutting and other forms of self-injury, drug addiction, video game addiction, eating disorders, social withdrawal and isolation, aggression, oppositional behavior all the way to even suicide or murder.
So that you can understand this better, here is an example. Bonnie has a daughter named Chloe. Bonnie had children because she imagined the incredible, unconditional love she would get from them. So, when Chloe would get upset at Bonnie as a young toddler for this or that, and wanted to do things for herself, Bonnie felt she was being denied the approval and love she deserved and always wanted and always thought should be there between herself and a daughter. Bonnie reacted very badly to this, withdrawing and acing exasperated. This only caused Chloe to attach to her father instead and avoid her mother. Their relationship got worse and worse. It became adversarial. To make matters worse, the family lived in an area where Chloe could not make friends because their family was a different religion from everyone else.
To make matters worse, Chloe’s father was very disengaged when it came to parenting. To make matters worse, Chloe was molested by a neighbor. Chloe was really, really unhappy. In middle school, she started to wear all black. She would get into fights nearly every day with Bonnie. She also started to cut and listen to death metal music. Any time Bonnie noticed Chloe’s unhappiness, she felt that familiar feeling of not being able to deal with it emotionally. So, she resorted to her go-to coping mechanism. Positivity. Bonnie would write about all the things that were going right in her life in a journal. She would sit outside and appreciate the sunset. She would tell herself that Chloe was going through a phase, just like all teenagers do. And that Chloe was exhibiting all of these behaviors because she is was an artist and all artists are a little bit tormented. She would read books about moms and daughters that ended up close, after years of struggle. She would go to sleep early, so she could dream about good things, even if Chloe was awake alone late at night. She would read the birthday letters Chloe wrote her in elementary school as proof that there was so much love there between them. Bonnie would tell Chloe to be grateful for what she had, and to watch the sunset. She would buy her books about being an HSP. She took her to a psychiatrist who could help her balance her brain out right, because Bonnie had provided Chloe with such a privileged life, there could be no other reason for Chloe’s unhappiness than faulty brain chemistry. After all, depression ran in Chloe’s father’s family. Bonnie would not look at the actual painful reality, her daughter’s reality. As a result, Bonnie escaped from her own child into a feel-good reality that she could live in. And Chloe was left alone in pain in an emotionally tormenting situation she could not change. And because of the chosen un-attunement, everything Bonnie did to respond to the situation was out of reality. And so, it made things progressively worse, rather than better. Chloe moved to New York right out of high school. After a very serious suicide attempt, she is still struggling with an eating disorder and neglectful relationships. She has such a bad relationship with her mother that she often says she doesn’t know whether she will even cry when she dies. Bonnie is painfully envious of the relationship her friends have with their daughters. She still cannot understand what she did to have such a difficult and distant relationship with her daughter. Especially after everything she did for her. But Bonnie tells herself that there is so much we don’t understand about this universe, it may not even be something that has to do with this life, it may be because of a past life Chloe had.
The reality of a parent who copes with positive overlays, is that they are choosing their own comfort over the wellbeing of their child. They are choosing NOT to have a real relationship with their child in the process. They are choosing to occupy a different, more feel-good reality from the one that their child is occupying. This means they are going way from and are neglecting their child, especially emotionally. By un-attuning to the negative aspect of reality, including the negative emotions, thoughts and truths of their child, they are not responding correctly, nor are they responding to the actual issue. And so, they will be able to do no right by their child. One of the most important things you can possibly do as a parent, is to stop coping with positivity. Attune to your child and your child’s reality instead, no matter how painful or scary it is. Only then, will you be able to do the right thing for them.
The spiritual field, the psychology field, the life coaching field, the self-help field and the self-development field are all aimed at teaching the public some version of self-empowerment. And this, is a very good thing. Self-empowerment is a pivotal element of wellbeing in life. At the very same time, there is a dominant shadow lurking within the teachers of self-empowerment. One that has become like a collective illness. And one that can easily infect you. Today, I’m going to expose this shadow to the world, so that you don’t fall into the trap of thinking that something very, very harmful is very, very good.
In order to see this shadow, we need to get very honest about what drives a person towards any field that promises some form of self-empowerment. The answer is some form of powerlessness. At its root, to have power is to be able to bring about what you want. So, what makes people go towards any field that promises self-empowerment is that they are having an experience that is unwanted and they do not know how to bring about what they want instead. It is pain that drives them.
Now let’s go to a deeper layer of truth. The absolute number one thing that causes pain and suffering for people (in other words unwanted experiences) is other people. This means that the very factor that makes the vast (and I mean vast) majority of people go towards any field that promises some form of self-empowerment is powerlessness relative to other people. And the teachers in these fields, are no exception. They are simply the people who have found self-empowerment philosophies and beliefs and strategies and techniques that make them less powerless. Especially less powerless to other people. And they are now teaching these things to the rest of the world.
And because of this, there is the shadow that is lurking. And the shadow is this: The drive to not be powerless to others can lead us straight into the illusion and glorification of independence. And by doing so, fall into an ego trap. A very well disguised one. We can become disconnected under the guise of being more connected. And perceive ourselves to be more in alignment the more out of alignment we are.
The teachers in the fields of spirituality, psychology, life coaching, self-help and self-development etc. have experienced relational trauma. This is trauma within the context of human relationship. This means they did not feel safe in some way with people. And when this is the case, depending on other people and potentially even being deeply connected to other people is experienced as very, very unsafe. It is only rational then to go in the direction of finding ways to not depend on other people and even to not be deeply connected to them. These ways can look like beliefs, philosophies, techniques and strategies.
Let’s look at some of these beliefs, philosophies, techniques and strategies that can serve as a tool of disconnection, a trapping of the ego, and a venture into the absolute illusion of independence.
The concept that everything you need, is within. The practice of non-attachment. The philosophy that the entire world is merely a reflection of the self, so you have control over everyone and everything outside of you. The technique of using positive focus as a means to create your own reality. The teaching that the only love you truly need, is self-love. If you want to learn more about this one, watch my video titled: Debunking The Self Love Myth. Substituting your connection with physical beings with a connection with nonphysical beings, something you can imagine to be reliable. Techniques that are designed to help you to be unaffected by what people do and don’t do. The philosophy that how you feel and your well-being is not anyone else’s responsibility, it’s your responsibility. The idea that you don’t need to feel lonely if the whole universe is inside of you. The belief that emotional dependence is the opposite of emotional strength. The teaching “do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” The practice of not depending on anyone for anything you can do for yourself. Any self-care practice. The practice of reframing, which comes from the idea that happiness has nothing to do with anything outside of us, only on the way we see the things outside of us. The practice of disidentification. Only learning from plant medicines, not people. The philosophy that all the answers are within. Emotional self-regulation. Practicing affirmations. Mirror work. The practice of taking 100 percent responsibility. Acclimatizing oneself to being alone. Techniques to improve your self-confidence. The teaching that people who are meant to stay in your life will stay, so don’t bother over the ones that go. The idea that what other people think of you is not your problem, it’s theirs. The philosophy that a person has to be whole in and of themselves and happy on your own to be in a relationship. And the list goes on. You can probably add a thousand more yourself.
Hopefully something you noticed is that even truly beneficial beliefs, philosophies, techniques and strategies can be twisted and distorted by this shadow.
In these fields, teacher and student alike, so many people were absolutely failed and harmed by other people. And it is so tempting to use beliefs, philosophies, techniques and strategies that feel empowering because they remove any dependence on others or need for them. And then to justify it as being right to do so, simply because it feels less painful and feels more empowering. This doesn’t mean it is actually true or is actually healthier. For example: When a person is abandoned again and again, it feels more empowering to simply accept that people will always come and go in your life. So, to not become attached to them and simply form an attachment to source or God or an imaginary friend, which believe me, many people’s concept of their spirit guide or their angel is simply that. When a person is drowning in the confusion of painful family dynamics where their best interests were never cared for, it feels more empowering to become an expert on human psychology, sort people into definable groups and find ways to master self-care. When a person is emotionally neglected, they will end up suffering from a deprivation of all the things they need to feel good emotionally. And yet, there is no one there to help them. And so, the only hope left is to turn to self-help, where it feels hopeful to read a sentence that says “the root cause of emotional dependence is low self-esteem. Fix your self-esteem and you will not need anything but the security you feel within yourself.” When you have been bullied and felt berated and undervalued by others all your life, it feels empowering to read a sentence that says “The only person who can pull you down is yourself.”
The problem is, these shadow-laced beliefs, philosophies, techniques and strategies will infect the people who come across them. Why? Because they will immediately appeal to anyone who experienced similar relational trauma. Even very unhealthy things will register as empowering, because they remove the dreaded “other people” factor of life. They eliminate the feeling of powerlessness and unsafety we have about others.
When it comes to any belief, philosophy, technique and strategy or practice, we must get ourselves in the habit of looking at the potential downsides and negative consequences, along with the potential upsides and positive consequences of it. As it applies to anything that brings us towards self-empowerment, we must be very, very careful that it does not serve as a tool of escapism from our fear of other people. That it does not disconnect us from others more. And that it does not bring us away from of the absolute reality of interdependence.
You currently live in a time when the world is infected. It is infected with the sickness of the illusion of and glorification of independence. You are living in a time when all forms of dependency are seen as weakness and deficiency. This is an absolute travesty seeing as how, as a person, you are a relationally dependent species. Your wellbeing depends on the quality of your relationships… Relationships upon which you can depend. And you did not come here to deny your humanity or rise above it. You came here to integrate your humanity. This means, you must caretake your humanness. And caretaking your humanness means developing deeply connected relationships with people, relationships that are interdependent. The exact opposite of independence. It is also a travesty because independence is an illusion. There is no such thing as complete self-sufficiency and independence from that which is “other”. You live in an interdependent universe and are currently participating in a consensus reality. This means, you are here to master relationships. And you cannot be independent, even if you were desperate to be. You are part of a web. Every part of that web effects every other part of that web. And it is up to each one of us whether that effect is positive or negative.
The sweet spot of health in this universe rests squarely in the center of two truths. We live in an interdependent universe, where our needs come to us through other people and things. As people, we need deeply connected, interdependent relationships with other people in order to thrive. At the very same time, we can be committed to self-empowerment. Self-empowerment does not inherently imply detaching and doing things despite or against others. We can practice the art of self-love and self-integration. Our relationship with ourselves and our ability to bring about what we need and want; (ie: self-love and self-empowerment) will not make you independent. Instead, it will reflect out in your reality in the form of symbiotic relationships. The idea of interdependence and self-empowerment are not a contradiction.
Society has characterized people as fitting into archetypes and has identified some of those archetypes as a problem. One of those problem archetypes is the uptight, controlling woman. Every week, I get messages from men asking me what to do about the controlling and uptight woman in their lives. But the thing is, most people are totally ignorant about what causes this behavior in a woman and therefore, are totally ignorant about what the actual solution is. So, let’s look at what causes a woman to be uptight and controlling. And let’s look at what the actual solution is.
Control is a fear-based behavior. And people become uptight when their nervous systems cannot relax and unwind due to that fear and anxiety. If someone is controlling and uptight, they have experienced something acutely painful (usually not one time, but chronically). This experience (or chronic experience) is a trauma. In other words, distress without resolve. As part of this trauma, their needs were not met, especially the needs they have to remain in a feminine polarity. And they feel as if their only hope of avoiding pain (whatever they may be afraid of) is to go on high alert and to seize strict control over their environment and the people and things and routines in it. Doing so, is the only way they know how to taste a hint of safety and security.
Knowing this, let’s break down some of the ignorant ideas people currently have about uptight, controlling women and what to do about them.
One of the most popular ideas is that the solution to a controlling, uptight woman is a laid back or carefree man. As if this is a match made in heaven because the theory goes that he will help her to chill out and relax and have fun. This could not be more wrong. In fact, I would go so far as to say that behind nearly every woman who stresses about everything, is a man who isn’t “phased” by anything. The very worst thing for a controlling, uptight woman is a laid back, carefree man. Why? Because a man who is carefree is not attuned to dangers. And does not take responsibility for them. He is not out ahead of her and around her as a buffer, anticipating potential consequences and dangers (whether those dangers are on a physical, mental or most commonly, an emotional level). Because of this, not only is she exposed, she is the one with the sole pressure to ensure safety/security. Controlling, uptight women are SUPER attuned to potential dangers. And if a man is not attuned to those dangers, she cannot trust him to account for them. Therefore, not only is she alone with that pressure, he has potentially become a liability himself. It is very common that women in this scenario gaslight themselves into thinking that the carefree man in their life is helping them to not be so fearful and swallowed up by problems all the time. This perception happens when the man in the woman’s life reassures her in a way that causes her to doubt her own estimation of reality. Sometimes, the reality is that a woman IS perceiving more danger than there actually is. But when this is the case, the absolute weakest response is to try to help her to chill out, rather than to get out ahead of her fears. But again, controlling, uptight women are SUPER accurately attuned to potential dangers.
So that you can get that a carefree man is the exact opposite of what a fearful woman needs, here is an example. Shannon is in a relationship with Jabril. Shannon will tell you that she is so very thankful for Jabril because he helps her to not take things so seriously and shows her how to be less problem focused and more able to enjoy the moment. But Shannon has not become any less controlling or any less uptight. She struggles with constant worry and flips out anytime her sense of control is shaky and is also hyper responsible.
Jabril wants to go climbing. And he would love for Shannon to come with him. Shannon immediately sees all the potential responsibilities and dangers involved in doing so. If they go climbing, the dog must go to a friend’s house during that time, otherwise the dog will suffer and pee and poo all over the house. If they ask a friend to watch the dog, that might put pressure on the friend and that may cause a bad emotional dynamic, such as “You owe me, because I watched your dog.” The car has to be filled with gasoline, otherwise they might get stranded on the side of the road. If they don’t bring food, she will get to the climb and both of them will have low blood sugar. There is a potential that if something goes wrong on the climb, one of them will get hurt, and that causes a whole cascade of painful experiences. So, she has to tell Jabril to go over the climbing equipment to make sure that nothing is missing and that the satellite phone is actually working. You get the point. Because of all of this, she is not easygoing. She is controlling and uptight. This drives Jabril a bit nuts. He reassures her so she will chill out and stop putting the brakes on his enjoyment. He tells her “come on, it’s going to be fine. We’ve got everything. I’ve got someone to come over and watch the dog. We can stop at the gas station on the way out.”
Shannon feels self-conscious about her worry issue and about how not easy gong she is. So, she gets in the car and takes a breath and looks out the window and tries to enjoy the fall time color of the leaves. She actually does manage to enjoy herself a bit. For a while. Until she gets an angry text message from the neighbor that her dog is over at their property chasing the chickens. Shannon is flushed with shame and discomfort that she now has a conflict with the neighbor. Shannon flips out. And demands to know what the hell is happening with the plans Jabril made for the dog. Jabril says “I asked Matt (his friend) to come over to be with him for an hour after he gets off work. And he said yes. But Matt only gets off work at 3, so I thought the dog would be ok in the backyard for a few hours. It’s a really sunny day.” Shannon yells at Jabril. “What the hell… you know that he digs when he’s penned up in the yard.” Jabril responds “I didn’t think he would, he hasn’t done that for like months.” And just like that, Shannon’s uptight, controlling behavior is not only reinforced, it is increased. Jabril has taught her that he is incapable of being attuned to responsibilities, potential pains and dangers. It does not matter how much Jabril might be able to convince her to just look at the view or enjoy the act of climbing, Shannon becomes more and more uptight as a person. More and more controlling. Of course, Shannon likes to normalize the entire dynamic by saying things like “I think this is just how it is for most women and men, every woman I know feels like they have to be the one to stay on top of all of the details.” And “What I love so much about Jabril is he teaches me how to just appreciate the moment.” She has no idea that the big picture of reality (rather than the tiny moments where he does succeed in encouraging her to be less fearful, is that Jabril’s behavior is actually doing the exact opposite).
Carefree men often lack masculine containment in their relationships. Their own sense of enjoyment, fun and personal peace, is often much more important to them than the actual emotional wellbeing of the woman in their life. And they often perceive containment to be an oppositional force to their own sense of enjoyment, fun and personal peace. To understand more about this, you can watch my video titled: Containment What a Woman Needs From a Man in a Relationship.
People think that what motivates a controlling woman is control in and of itself, and so they need to deal with their power lust and need for control over things, including over other people. Control is a symptom. In this case, so is the desire for power. Power is the ability to bring about what you want, which in the case of a controlling and uptight woman is the power to not experience painful things. Focusing on control in and of itself as the issue in this scenario, is the same as focusing on yellow skin as the problem, when someone has liver failure. Again, the problem is trauma and fear.
People think that the solution for a controlling, uptight women is for them to just figure out techniques for how to relax and go with the flow. But no relaxation technique will actually address the monster in the room. The reason why they can’t. This idiotic approach could be compared to teaching someone breathing techniques when they are floating downriver in a boat towards a waterfall.
Now that you understand all of this, here are some solutions to a controlling, uptight woman. All of these solutions involve addressing the ACTUAL root of the behavior, which is fear created by past pain and potential future pain.
Get out in front of her and anticipate and buffer her from potential dangers. Your hyper-attunement to the dangers and actual problem solving of them, will not only cause her to trust you, it will cause her to relax and be able to enjoy. Why? Uptight, controlling behavior is a trust issue. And by doing this, not only have you demonstrated that you can be trusted, you have become an ally, rather than a liability to her safety and security. This, is what no one in her life was before. Uptight, controlling women do the very best with men that are really on their A game regarding responsibility and anticipating and accounting for dangers on a physical, mental and especially emotional level, so as to prevent those consequences and dangers. They do well with super responsible men who are on top of things. Figure out what she might be afraid of and what consequences or pain she might want to prevent and take ownership over those things. Preferably, before she has to tell you. Take responsibility of things. Do not put the pressure on her to get rid of the symptom, which would be to simply be less uptight and less controlling.
Women are not controlling by their nature. Control is rigid. They get controlling when things go very wrong relative to their needs. Uptight, controlling women have super unmet needs, especially the feminine needs (or shall we say the needs that are needed to be in the feminine polarity). Needs such as: Containment, protection, assurance, a sense of support from the people around her, trust, providorship, positive ownership, emotional engagement, commitment, joint effort, collaboration and security. These needs must be met for a woman to no longer be uptight and controlling. Therefore, come up with solutions for these needs to be met. Think about it, what would the uptight and controlling woman in your life be like if she had all of these things?
Uptight, controlling women actually DO need a conscious, proactive way to be able to prevent painful things from happening. Most of what they are doing, is subconscious. It is an immensely beneficial practice for them to directly face what pain(s) they feel they need to prevent and to consciously problem solve how to do so. And NOT ALONE!
There is trauma underneath their behavior. When they get into uptight, controlling mode, they are actually feeling an emotional trigger. Within that trigger, is the trauma that needs to be resolved. One of the best ways to do this, is with The Completion Process. To lean more about this, you can read my book that is quite literally titled the Completion Process. But be warned. No amount of trauma that they resolve will make it so they don’t have the needs they have. You know, the ones they didn’t have that pushed them into controlling and uptight behavior in the first place.
People seem to think that it is natural for a woman to be uptight and controlling. It is being normalized, especially in today’s world, where all the emphasis on women and men being the same, has caused men to drop containment and women to be expected to not have the female needs they have. Women are not going to outgrow these needs. Or to toughen up so they don’t need them. All you will end up with is no women. A woman being controlling and uptight isn’t natural. A woman only becomes controlling and uptight when things go very wrong. And the problem will not correct itself unless the real root of uptight, controlling behavior is actually seen, recognized and directly remedied.
Most parents in today’s world experience their children growing up and leaving home. This transition is not an easy one. Especially if you are a parent who has dedicated most of your time and energy to the needs of your children. For this reason, today I’m going to give you a list of the top things empty nesters can do to improve their experience during this transition.
For the vast majority of empty nesters, maybe it is you, when the children leave the home, it is a major shock. There are some parents who chose to focus their lives on their children codependently because they perceive that to be the right and good thing to do, and are therefore super relieved when the children do leave the home, so they can finally focus on other things and on themselves. But for the vast majority of parents who suffer from empty nest syndrome, this is not the case. Rather, they felt their calling was to be in a support role. To do all the things that parenting requires, such as caretaking, managing, relationship skills, organization, focusing on others, structuring, communicating, educating, providing affection, anticipating needs and fulfilling them, behavioral management, supporting, guiding, protecting, nurturing, devoting yourself etc. Therefore, the worst part about the children leaving, is feeling like your purpose in life left with them. Most empty nesters feel stuck in a hellish limbo where they can’t go backwards to the role they were in anymore. But they also feel like they have no future, because their job is just suddenly done. This often causes empty nesters to feel old and past their prime because they didn’t have other things going for them. It also tends to throw parents into a depression because they resist accepting this reality and they don’t feel they have much, if anything to look forward to.
The single most important thing you can do as an empty nester is to re-assess your values and deliberately seek out new interests, new activities, new passions, new aspirations and new purpose for being. Your time, focus, energy and actions still exist. It simply needs to go somewhere else now. Again, there will be some parents who are super excited to totally switch in life and have their new interests and activities be totally unrelated to supporting and taking care of others. And if this is the case for you, now is your chance to have a new and second life and focus on you and what you always wanted to do, but never did. But for the majority of people who are really struggling with empty nest syndrome, one reason that their life and purpose feels over, is because of this this strange societal expectation that with the kids gone, what you should do is focus on you and do things like vacation and pick up hobbies. But none of that feels fulfilling.
For many empty nesters, their actual calling and actual purpose is to be in a support role. This is what drives them. It is what they can’t not do Their purpose for being is to give their energy to something or someone that needs it and can take it and use it. And so, if you are this kind of person, what you need to be looking for specifically is something new to lend your energy to. Something in need of support. Having dedicated your life to parenting, you have a very specific skill set. A very valuable one. And that valuable skill set can simply be re-directed. There are plenty of youth in this world that are in need of these things you offer naturally. There are plenty of causes in need of support. There are plenty of beings desperate for caretaking. Plenty of places in need of what you have to give and give naturally and are fueled by giving. Just to give you some ideas, you could become a mentor. You could get a job working with children. You could join up in a dedicated way with an organization you care about and pour your support into that. You could caretake animals. You could dedicate your services to helping out new mothers or you could become a medical caregiver etc. The real question for you to answer is: Do I want to use these skills and be in a new and different support role? Do I want to use these skills I have on something new or not? What you have to offer is very much needed and very much matters. So don’t slip into the illusion that you don’t matter anymore. Different things are now in need of what you have to give.
Dedicate time to really be with your feelings. And it can be a roller coaster of feelings. Don’t be ashamed of feeling what you are feeling. It makes sense you would be feeling things like grief, sadness, anxiety, devastation, disorientation, loss, despair and frustration. And rather than rushing to try to not feel the way you feel, go into the feelings themselves. Don’t try to suppress, deny, or hide the way you feel. One of the best exercises to do with the feelings that are coming up, is emotional experiencing. To learn how to do this, you can watch my video titled: How To Do The Emotional Experiencing Process.
Let yourself rest and sleep without expecting yourself to get up and do something, until you feel intrinsically motivated to do so. One of the most common things to experience in this transition is tiredness, if not absolute exhaustion. That tiredness needs to be tended to, not bulldozed.
Be very proactive about being with other people and in person. Many empty nesters find themselves feeling very alone when their children leave. It can feel like you have poured yourself into these people (your children) only to end up by yourself. It is critical to not isolate. Go to gatherings. Invite friends over. Expand your social circle. Go visit people. Don’t just surrender to the idea that now you are alone and living alone if you don’t want it that way.
Actively face and deal with the things that were put on the backburner or avoided by focusing on your kids. When children leave the house, it can very quickly cause you to come face to face with the things you haven’t been dealing with or things that were deprioritized. Things like outstanding issues in your marriage/romantic partnership or even simply putting energy into your partnership if there are no outstanding issues, your health, your mental and emotional wellbeing, projects that need to be done. The more active you are about facing these things, prioritizing and resolving them, the better. It is super common for this transition to create relationship stress amongst couples who focused on their children to the detriment of nurturing and growing the relationship between each other, especially if both parents feel differently about the children leaving the house. It can make you feel alone with the impact that the experience is having on you.
Stay in touch with your children. And don’t drop your estimation of your continued importance in their lives. The time has come to get to know your child, but as an adult! The reality is, the role of being a parent never ends. The job simply changes over time. You are redefining what the relationship looks like. At one point, you had to feed them and carry them around everywhere because they couldn’t walk or feed themselves. That changed and at another point, they could walk and feed themselves, but they needed you to be there to talk them through issues and support them with their hobbies and homework. All this transition is, is another change in what the job of being a parent looks like. Your kids still need you. They just need you in different ways now. Think back to how you needed your parents to be there when you were their age and in this transition yourself, had your parents been able to be ideal. Check in with what they need and prepare to be surprised at how much they may want to handle things on their own. You have not lost your place in their life. What you have lost, is what being in that place looked like day to day before and how it looks now. Staying in touch with your children is part of continuing to be there for them. It is also a better strategy than simply not letting yourself connect with them when you need to and worrying about them rather than actually knowing how they are and what they are doing. The one thing you want to be careful of, is not making your child worry about you when you involve them in how you feel about the transition.
Accept that you do not have control. Somewhere deep inside, you knew that your child is a being that belongs to the universe. That like you, they came here to this life with a very important purpose. And you knew that you would be a big part of the picture of them developing so as to fulfill that purpose. They did not come here to stay a child, dependent on you for everything for the rest of their life. You were raising them to be capable and competent and to be able to thrive in life. At a certain point, just like a bird who takes flight away from the nest, all you can do is place your faith in their capability. To trust them with their own life, knowing you will be there for them when they need you. The day they took flight was never going to be easy, and it would be according to their own timing. But they are flying off, equipped with the information and skills you spent years giving to them. Now, you must trust them to make the most of that information and those skills. Now, is the time to show them that you believe in them. And you trust them with their own life, even in this world that is both wonderful and terrifying. Let them go find and take their place within this world.
If you start to feel relief, don’t feel guilty. Rather, try to enjoy it. At a certain point, most empty nesters experience the feeling of relief. Potentially relief because you don’t have as much pressure on you. Or because you have a sense of unfamiliar freedom. Or because one huge part of your job that you poured all of your energy into is compete and done. Or because you can focus on self-care and put yourself first. There are a great many reasons why you may feel relief. This is something to be enjoyed. And no, it doesn’t mean that you don’t love your children. There is nothing wrong with feeling relief. Raising children is a lot of pressure. It is natural to feel relief when a significant portion of that pressure is suddenly off of you. That doesn’t mean that you didn’t love them or love having them in the house. If you thought about it, you could probably come up with other things you adore, but still feel relief about when it is over for one reason or another.
Prioritize and schedule some fun, and preferably out of the house. So far, we’ve been talking about very serious, proactive steps to take to make this transition go well. It is critical to add fun to the picture of this. Getting out of the house for whatever fun you have in mind is a good idea as well because for many empty nesters, the feeling of their child’s absence in the house or the silence in the house can be a consistent source of pain in the beginning. When we say that something is fun, what we mean is that we do it for the pure enjoyment of the doing of it. It doesn’t need to be something that serves any other purpose. This could look like so many different things because what people find fun differs from person to person. For one person this could mean games. For another, sports. For another, vacation somewhere they’ve been wanting to go. For another, a music festival. For another, the spa. For another, a tantra class. For another, hiking. For another, great food. Don’t be afraid to try new things. The worst that can happen is that you hate it and never want to do it again. The best that can happen is that you have found something new to enjoy about life.
It is important to know that you are not alone. So many parents throughout history and even right now at this very minute have gone through and are going through exactly what you are going through. If you need support on any level to go through this transition, don’t try to soldier through it and don’t be hesitant to seek it!
When our kids are little, the idea of sending them out into the world and not seeing them every day, is unfathomable. Yet the day will inevitably come for most parents when their child flies out of the nest and off into the world towards whatever adventure awaits them. Just like no one prepares you for how it will feel the day they come into your daily life, no one can prepare you for how it will feel when they leave home and go off into the world of adulthood. But they are going off into the world equipped with everything you spent so much time and focus and energy giving them. Let your time and focus and energy be called to the next place that needs it, somewhere new.
One of the most frustrating and draining things in the world, is a circular conversation. Circular conversation has a way of causing people to shut down to communication all together.
A circular conversation is a conversation, usually an argument, that goes on endlessly, repeating the same patterns with no resolution. Circular conversations can appear as one, seemingly endless argument. Or as an argument that seems settled, only to repeat again, as if the first conflict to resolution cycle never happened.
This can happen when:
Both parties have opposing positions on an issue and they are so committed to their positions that all they do, is dig in and repeat and reiterate the merits of their position.
When the circular conversation is in and of itself giving something to a person. For example, it can often serve as a smokescreen for a boundary someone is unwilling to express and stand by.
The parties have not gotten to the root of what a conflict is actually about and the surface argument is actually about something deeper and more vulnerable.
Frist, you have to decide which of these three things is happening. If it is the first, where both parties have opposing positions on an issue and they are committed to their positions, no resolution or pseudo-resolution will have been reached at any point. It will feel like wheels spinning furiously in a rut. Like both people’s heels are dug in and they won’t budge. It is a standoff.
If it is the second, you are likely to see a pattern of pseudo-resolution. An argument will seem as if it is settled. Realizations have occurred, agreements have been reached, a solution has been agreed to and then… The same argument happens again, as if the first conversation never occurred. A person may have the same realizations over and over again and offer the same solution again. And this can go on and on, as if the two parties are stuck in the movie Groundhog’s Day. This form of circular conversation tends to makes you feel like you are going insane or start to wonder if the other person is either insane or stupid.
If it is the third kind of circular conversation, one or both parties involved will seem totally stuck on something on the surface that has happened or that keeps happening. To the outside, it will seem like an easy thing to fix. And yet, nothing is working. Perhaps no solution they have come up with, or agreement they have reached, has worked either. They keep having the same argument over and over again.
With the first, type one circular conversation, both people have something they value and something they fear that they are holding dear. This is often where common ground can be found. And usually, the surface conversation doesn’t address these things. Either side will only start to budge if the other accommodates for their value and their fear. On top of this, the vast majority of the time, this kind of circular conversation happens because of a disconnect that is happening somewhere. The two people are usually reacting to two different things, but are assuming that they are discussing the same thing. It is easier to uncover this disconnect by understanding the minutia and asking both people to explain their reasoning, all the way down to explaining their definition of a word they are using.
So that you can understand this better, here is an example. Bob is in a heated conversation with Nicolas. They both work at a financial firm. They have been assigned to the task of reporting data from several different departments to the CEO. And they are in a meeting to discuss how to gather that data. Nicolas and Bob are in a dead lock. Nicolas’s stance is: “We need to tell the managers in charge of each department that we need them to collect this data for us.” Bob ‘s stance is: No, we can’t do that. Every time we do that, the managers don’t respond and the consequences come down on us.” They have been going around in circles for hours trying to prove their point. And trying to disprove each other’s points.
To get out of the circular conversation, Bob starts asking questions to understand what Nicolas values (ie: deeply wants and needs) as well as what he is afraid of (what he is trying to avoid in this situation). He discovers that Nicolas really, really does not want to underperform. He is the kind of person whose self-esteem is deeply attached to his performance. Bob also does not want to underperform. That is their common ground. He also self reflects to see that he is afraid of wasting energy and time. He HATES inefficiency. Bob wants to get the job done, so he can go back to focusing on other things. that is what he values.
So, first, Bob expresses the common ground he sees by telling Nicolas that he doesn’t want to underperform either, accommodating the fear Nicolas has that Bob is going to be an adversary, rather than advocate for peak performance. This causes Nicolas to soften his stance a bit. He goes further to reassure Nicolas that they will both make sure the job they do is up to or beyond standard. He expressed to Nicolas that he really does not want to be inefficient. And that his big worry is time and being sidetracked from something super important he has been working on. Nicolas realizes that the issue with Bob is really about fear of inefficiency, not the idea of involving managers full stop.
They then move on to trying to uncover the disconnect by understanding the minutia and explaining their reasoning. Bob says “Nicolas, I’m confused about what exactly you are proposing. Can you go into detail about how you think we should go about getting the data from the managers?”
Nicolas explains “I want to fly to each branch of the company to meet with managers face to face so that I can explain what data I need, and put pressure on them to give it to me before I leave.” Bob feels instantly relieved. The whole time he was arguing to not involve managers because they never respond, he was arguing about the ineffectiveness of e-mailing or calling them on the phone. He was reacting to something different than Nicolas was actually suggesting. And Nicolas was reacting to something different than what was real about Bob’s actual resistance. Yet they were squared off in a zero-sum game rather than creating pliability by caretaking each other’s best interests. And they were convinced they were talking about the same thing, when they actually weren’t. They quickly reached a mutually beneficial agreement that Nicolas would put in the leg work and Bob would consolidate and organize all the information as Nicolas sent it to him while he was on the road.
With the second, type two circular conversation, the circular conversation in and of itself, is serving as a smokescreen or avoidance tactic, usually for one person in the conversation. For example, it can be a placation tactic in a situation where a person has no intention of changing something, but wants the pressure temporarily taken off of them. Or it can be a way that a person buys themselves time to come up with something else. Or it can be a way of upholding a boundary while gaslighting the other person that the boundary doesn’t exist. With this kind of circular conversation, what is important to know is that there is some truth underneath the conversation itself. And that thing is not being addressed.
So that you can understand this better, here is an example: Jessica and David got a golden doodle last month. The puppy needs to be potty trained. Every time Jessica leaves David with the goldendoodle, the puppy pees inside the house. And she comes home to have to clean it. This is the third time she has had the fight with David about having to take the puppy out to pee. Jessica is at the point where she feels like she literally can’t ever leave the house or leave David in charge of the puppy. She yells at David that she feels like a single mother. Every time they have this fight, David apologizes and re-realizes that he needs to stop working on his computer frequently to pay attention to the dog and take him out to pee. He tells Jessica that he is setting a timer, so he doesn’t get distracted. But the same thing keeps happening. And soon, Jessica feels like she is a broken record on repeat. And so is David. She hears herself saying the exact same things and David saying the exact same things. And yet, nothing actually changes. She feels powerless to David, who keeps breaking his word. Soon, Jessica wizens up to the fact that David never forgets the things he actually cares about. And when she begins to wonder what David is getting out of the whole cycle, she starts to see that underneath the cyclical arguments, the reality is that all the responsibility for the dog is actually on her. So, she realizes that she must uncover the truth that is being hidden underneath the circular arguments. Jessica asks David, what is really happening here? She doesn’t let him get away with any of the answers he has gotten away with before. Jessica confronts him on the pattern that he is in, and on the fact that she cannot stay committed to a person who keeps agreeing to things, only to break his word. She starts digging at what is underneath his behavior. Eventually, David admits that he doesn’t actually want a dog. He acted enthusiastic about the dog and went to pick one out because he wanted Jessica to be happy. He, himself has no interest in taking care of a dog. And he admits that he is afraid that if he asserts the boundary (especially given that he said yes to the dog originally when he didn’t really mean yes) that Jessica is going to fly onto a rage. And David hates conflict. Now, they can have the real conversation about what the conflict is really about.
To avoid these kinds of type two circular conversations, you need to remember that what should be happening in a conversation is that someone understands something and based on that understanding, an agreement is reached. And because of that understanding and agreement, you see actual changes. If they didn’t actually understand something or agree with something they should be initiating further dialogue, initiating trying to understand and putting energy towards finding resolve. When a circular conversation is giving someone something, the person it is giving something to, is likely to be avoidant rather than proactive about improving a situation and reaching resolve with the other person. The circular conversation in and of itself becomes a form of passive aggression. Usually because the circular conversation is the way they are hiding a personal truth or boundary that they have and do not want to overtly assert.
With the third, type three kind of circular conversation, the reason the argument keeps happening and no agreement or resolution works, is because one or both parties are not talking about the real, root issue. And so, nothing can be fixed. When this is the case, both parties have to ask themselves (and each other) questions to dig beneath what is happening, down to the real, raw, vulnerable WHY below their complaint: Questions like, why does this hurt me so much? What does it make me afraid of? What do I make it mean? If this never stopped, why would that be so bad? And then, the conversation needs to be about those deeper things.
So that you can understand this better, here is an example: Sandy is sick and tired of being the one to have to do far more than her fair share of chores around the house. Marielle is a party animal who prefers to leave every adult responsibility for later in favor of fun. They are now seeing a relationship counselor. Marielle is not responsive to Sandy’s need for the house to be clean at all times. And their agreement for Marielle to keep the house clean during the week days, but be able to not worry about it on Friday and Saturday just isn’t working. Sandy is ready to call it quits and Marielle does not understand why this seemingly little issue is big enough to threaten the whole relationship. They have fought over the house being clean over and over and over for months. Only a little bit of prodding reveals that there is a much bigger issue under the surface of the clean house argument. It is that Sandy feels like Marielle is taking advantage of her by using her as a stable and secure base camp, so she can go out and indulge in her interests in other people when she parties. Sandy does not feel loved. She feels Marielle prefers the company of others and is taking her for granted. And just like that, suddenly the conversation can become about what the problem is really about. The solution to which, is totally different than the surface action of cleaning a house.
On top of all of this advice, drawing attention to the fact that a conversation is circular, is always a good idea. And so is using reflective phrasing, where you listen and then reflect back what you heard the person say, so that they feel understood and have the opportunity to clarify. Such as: “What I hear you saying is…”
Circular conversations can suck the life out of you, but the good news is, with the right strategy, you can put an end to them for good.
Gender bias is an absolute reality in our human world. And perhaps the hardest thing about it, is this bias is subconscious. It exists even in the minds of people who are the most open minded, forward thinking and liberal. And it exists even in the minds of those who protest against it and profess sentiments to the opposite. A great many gender biases exist. But today, we are going to look directly at one of the most extreme examples of it by looking at the relationship conundrum of the successful woman in todays’ world.
This issue begins with how personality is perceived. When we use the word success in this discussion, what we mean is a person who has achieved worldly success. This is a person who has set out to achieve something, usually in the context of a career. And doing this requires a whole host of qualities, such as competence, discipline, passion, courage, leadership, commitment, assertiveness, persistence, intelligence, drive, ambition, willpower, strength, confidence and often times competition.
The problem is, again and again in experiments and studies, these qualities in a man, cause people to perceive him as more likeable. And these qualities in a woman cause people to perceive her as more unlikable. In fact, this perception of women being unlikable due to these qualities increases in direct proportion to the degree of the quality. So, for example, the more competent a woman is, the less likable both men and women find her to be.
This issue only deepens when we venture into the relationship lives of successful men vs. successful women. So that you can understand it first hand, I’m going to introduce you to a couple of people.
The first person I am going to introduce you to is Harriet. Harriet started out as a real estate agent. Then she opened a brokerage. Now, she owns a mortgage loan corporation and several brokerages. Her entire life is organized around her very large, very taxing career. The first question I want to ask you is, what kind of relationship would be the best for Harriet? What kind of partner does she need?
Harriet wants to be in a relationship where she can live a together life with a man badly. But what Harriet needs in a relationship is support. She needs a man who can really own her wellbeing as his main focus. A man who is available. A man who can prioritize her and contribute, caretake and lend his energy towards her wellbeing on a daily basis. She needs a man who isn’t out there in the world focusing on his own success and doing his own thing. But who will lend his energy to what is needed in the life she has built. And without losing his masculinity. Afterall, she needs those masculine qualities in her life. Things like containment and protection and encouragement etc. Pay attention to your first reaction to this… How do you feel and what do you think when you hear this?
If you are like the vast majority of people, you will immediately feel resistance to this. You will feel like there is no equality in the relationship because Harriet will be on top and he will be “less than”. Perhaps you will feel like this is too much to ask of a man. No man would want to do this. Like he would be giving away his life to be there for her and that is really unhealthy. Like it sounds like a real one-way relationship because he would be giving so much of himself for her, but not getting much in return. Like no man who is genuinely in his masculine energy would ever say yes to this. Like a man needs to create something for himself and create a success of himself. Like any man in this situation would be emasculated and would be putting himself in a super vulnerable position.
Now I want to introduce you to Arthur. Arthur is an entrepreneur who started a company that manufactures semiconductors for the electronics industry. He has his eye on winning over the global market. Arthur’s life is organized around his dedication to his career goals. The first question I want to ask you is, what kind of relationship would be the best for Arthur? What kind of partner does he need?
What Arthur needs in a relationship is support. He needs a woman who can really make his success her main focus. A woman who is available. A woman who can prioritize him and lend her energy towards his wellbeing on a daily basis. A woman who enjoys contribution. He needs a woman who isn’t out there in the world focusing on her own success and doing her own thing. Instead, he needs a woman who will join his very large life and lend her energy to what is needed in the life he has built. Now, I want you to really pay attention to your first reaction to this… How do you feel and what do you think when you hear this?
If you are like the vast majority of people, you will feel like this makes perfect sense. Like this is an incredible opportunity that the right woman would be lucky to have. Like Arthur has so much to offer the right woman. Things like being provided for and being kept safe and being a part of something big and having an important purpose and role. Like there are so many women out there who would love to do this. Like it’s a good energy exchange. Like it is the perfect recipe for greater and greater success.
What I want you to see is that both these people are in the same position and the same situation, and therefore offer similar things and have the same needs. However, in most people’s minds, those needs make perfect sense and are right and good for one, but don’t make sense and are bad and wrong for the other. One is perceived as a taker. The other, a giver. One is perceived as an upstanding guy with a lot to offer. The other, a narcissistic bitch.
Arthur did find a woman who was very happy to slide into this role in his life. They have been married for several years now. Harriet on the other hand, is caught in a tormenting conundrum. Why? A successful woman is looking for a unicorn, specifically because of this world of gender bias and other gender related beliefs. Are you ready for the conundrum?
Because nearly every man has this gender bias, and are made to feel pathetic by society if they were to step into a role in a relationship like what a successful woman needs, she will really, really struggle to find what she needs in a relationship. Because of this, her partnerships will seem to be a never-ending revolving door.
The men who sign up to join her life because of what she has to offer and are available, continue to eventually turn out to be responsibility averse and passive. They are looking for a woman who will take all the pressure and all the responsibility. A woman who, like a mother, will take care of them and lead and carry them through life. A woman who is competent and can fend for herself and them. The exact opposite of what she needs. Essentially, she ends up with little boys masquerading as men.
On the other hand, when a successful woman dates men who are engaged in their own successful careers, essentially a power couple dynamic, the relationship goes south even faster. First, because their respective careers call them in different directions. They don’t have a common goal. They are not really living a together life. Rather, they are like two passing ships in the night. Neither can prioritize the other. And each carries a lot of pressure. Pressure which implies the need for support, which is being given to them by other people rather than each other. So, they naturally drift apart and grow closer to the people who are actually there with them in the respective experiences they are having and who they are being supported by.
They have the same needs, needs which neither of them can offer each other. And they offer the same things in a relationship, so neither of them really values getting those things. There is no energy exchange. Power couples only work for couples when increasing power is what each is after as a priority, and therefore each increases each other’s power in some way, even if they spend their life apart. Which is not what most people who already have a lot of success and power need.
When a successful woman dates a man who is either retired or so wealthy that they don’t need to work anymore, they tend to not be interested in joining her life and supporting her. They don’t want to support and they are done with the hustle. They want to focus on fun and on their passions. They want a woman to join them in all of their adventures, which a successful woman cannot do, because this takes her away from what her focus needs to be on.
To make matters worse, when a successful woman complains or cries to the people in her life about this horrible place she is caught in, the most common responses that she will get is these two things: “Why don’t you just pay someone for the support you are needing from a man?” and “Can’t you just learn to be ok with being alone?”
Think of saying this to Arthur, from our previous example… That because of the life he chose, he doesn’t really have much to offer a woman. That he has to be ok with a woman not really supporting him in his success, because she has her own life and goals to think of. That he should be ok living a separate life from the woman in his life. That he can just pay someone to meet the needs he has for a female partner. Or that he really just needs to learn to be ok alone.
As a successful woman, it will very quickly begin to feel like no one likes you, no one wants you to exist and like you are expected to get your success with no resources of support available to you, rather that you must be supportive to others while trying to succeed alone.
This conundrum will only change when we change a great many things. First and foremost, we need to face our gender bias. We all have it, whether we want to admit it or not. Second, we need to see that the gender biases that we have, do not work anymore. Third, we need to genuinely change our attitude towards women who exhibit the currently disliked character traits that are synonymous with success. Fourth, we need to change our cultural attitude towards men being in different roles. Right now, the only role that offers a man status and respect and that is valued, is one role. The role of a man oriented towards his own success, building his own kingdom and who is a provider. This is to try to fit all men into a tiny box and to tell all men that this is the only true expression of masculinity. When this is not true at all. Nor has it been true throughout history. If you look back over time, there were many roles within any kingdom or society that offered a man esteem. And many of these were support roles. Today, all that has changed and it isn’t valid for any man to be anything else and it isn’t valid for a man to want any other thing for himself. This is tragic on so many levels, for both men and women and for society at large. There are so many different expressions of masculinity. Not every man is born for his masculine expression to look like our current model or to be in this role we expect him to be in. And it is going to be much harder for men to break this current limited paradigm if the rest of us, and the whole of society, is maintaining it and not affording him esteem or seeing him as a man for anything else.
In today’s world, so many people across the globe are disillusioned with relationships. They are asking themselves: Do relationships actually even work? Are good relationships even possible? What does a healthy, mutually feel-good relationship even look like? Left and right, relationships are changing and relationships falling apart. And so many people are confused about why it seems like suddenly what used to work doesn’t work anymore. The collective sentiment is: What is happening?
If we zoom way out, so we can look at human relationships as they have evolved over time, what we see is a lot of change. For example, you would see primitive human relationships looking tribal, where pair bonding is not an element of the structure of the group and sexuality is not controlled. You would see the birth of structured hierarchy within society. You would see the shift from a foraging society to an agrarian society causing a shift where separation of family groups became important. Sexuality was then controlled and marriage was an essential element of that control. You would see the onset of religion and religious changes impacting the societal idea of right and wrong, good and bad, this includes regarding relationships. You would see government structures dictating what relationships must be and must not be. You would see marriage being something that was purely based on practicalities and social advantage shifting to marriage being based off of romance and love. You would see living arrangements change from tribal units to extended families to nuclear families to an individual living alone. You would see gender roles within relationships. Then you would see the destruction of gender roles. You would see people taking care of their old to the old being placed in care facilities. You would see advertising changing from the emphasis being about the family to the emphasis being placed on the single individual. Another way of putting this is that all kinds of things change how humans have relationships. Migrations to new environments cause changes in how people have relationships. Climate change cause changes in how people have relationships. Famine causes changes in how people have relationships. War causes changes in how people have relationships. The introduction of new beliefs, such as those introduced by religions, cause changes in how people have relationships. Cultural movements cause changes in how people have relationships. Travel becoming more and more possible causes changes in how people have relationships. Economic changes cause changes in how people have relationships. Needs that arise within any given society, cause changes in how we have relationships. And none of this takes into account that the evolution of relationships in one location and in one culture, may look totally different than it would look in another. Take for example the fact that in certain areas of the world and certain cultures, harems were a normal structure for relationships. Whereas, that was never a standard relationship structure in other areas of the world and in other cultures.
It is very important that we zoom out and look at relationships across time like this because when we are zoomed in, we think the way that we have been socialized to have relationships is just a given. As if it is the only way to have relationships. And this is an understandable, yet ignorant perspective. Sometimes, there are periods of stability regarding the structure of human relationships. And sometimes, human relationships are in transition to something new. Right now, we are in one of those periods of transition to something new.
Most of you watching this video were socialized to think that relationships look a certain way. It would be a good idea to pause this video and write down what you always thought each significant relationship would and should look like. For example, for many of us watching this video, it was a given that our closest relationships would stop being our parents once we started going to school and would instead be with our peers. It was a given that we would leave home at 18 years old as we were not welcome to live there any longer. We would meet someone of the opposite sex and immediately fall in love and the fact that we fell in love with them was the indication that we were meant to marry them. We would then live together in a house with the children that we would have. Whether to have children or not, was never a question, it was a given. We would see the rest of our family on holidays or in times of crisis. We would have friends, but only for quality time or for help in desperate times of need. We would settle into gender roles, but only kind of, because it was a given that the man in the relationship would have an important career. And it was critical that the woman had more important things going than just home making. Otherwise, she was pathetic. But she would have to wait until the kids were in school to then get a job too. We would do our own thing most of the time, and really only come together at dinner time, on the weekend and on vacations to spend time together. We would go out for dates, to keep the romance alive amidst the chaos of the romance killing demands of life. We would be completely sexually faithful to our partner, no matter what. And learn to suppress and manage any attraction we felt to anyone else. We would have pets, especially for the sake of the kids. Because animals are part of the family. And by following this expected template, we would be happy. You get the point right?
We come to believe that there is one structure and one formula for how to have relationships. Whether that be with our parents, siblings, friends, colleagues, kids, boss, pets or romantic partner. And this WAY to have relationships, is reinforced by everything and everyone around us, from our government, to our advertising, to our religions, to our sources of entertainment to all the people around us who we are in relationship with. And when this template does not work for us, we consider ourselves defective.
In this transition that we are currently a part of, there are several factors that have caused a collapse of the template of what we would consider traditional relationships. These changes have made it so that the traditional model does not work anymore. One of these factors is that women’s values within society changed. Both what they valued in life in general, as well as what they valued in a man and in a relationship with a man. The expectation arose for men to take a more involved role in fatherhood and to display empathy, vulnerability and emotional intelligence. And the expectation arose for women to have a career and to display independence, competence and assertiveness. This coincided with the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. This push for equality (really sameness) put human society on a trajectory towards the destruction of gender roles and thus the way that men and women have relationships. This led to the approach of the feminization of men and the masculinization of women. Another factor is the “Disney lie”. Disney movies and romance films set the expectation for children and young people of what to expect in relationships. Only they did not depict the reality. They depicted a perfection that does not exist. A happily ever after. Misleading people in this way meant failing to prepare people for the reality of relationships and when they encountered the reality, there was a mass disillusionment.
Another factor is the LGBTQ movement, which pushed society to normalize relationships that do not fit into the typical male-female box. Another factor is that whereas in the past, divorce was a rarity, divorce became more and more common in the older generations due to many factors and more and more young people experienced their parents divorcing, leaving them with only examples of bad relationships and giving them the impression that marriage doesn’t work. Another factor is a rash of individuals from the older generations, securing positions of power and changing things to be personally financially advantageous in a way that was so financially disadvantageous to younger generations, that the younger generations could not afford a basic living without ceasing to follow the traditional relationship template. For example, many had to work multiple jobs and could not afford rent without a two-person income, so they had to throw gender roles into the trash can and were so maxed out, there was no time for relationships and they began to choose to not have children. This coincided with multiple economic crises.
Another factor is the invention of social media and dating apps, which completely altered the landscape of human interaction, in many ways for the worse. Another factor is the emphasis of societal value being placed on the individual, rather than on the family. In today’s society, everyone is really out for themselves. Another factor is the #metoo movement which dramatically highlighted and changed power dynamics and changed the way women and men interact both positively and negatively. Another factor is that The Covid Crisis worldwide created interpersonal stress and conflict, enforced isolation, disrupted social connections, deepened coping mechanisms, thrust people into mental health crisis, established people as a threat to each other and made people change their priorities and values in life. This list could be much, much longer. But you get the point.
Basically, human relationships may have looked a certain way for a long, long time. But this way does not work anymore. And so, in this transition, human society is back at the drawing boards regarding what relationships should look like. Only there is no new template or example out there to emulate. So, everyone is fumbling around trying to figure out what to do, while trying to cope with the various pain of the things that are so obviously not working. And you are seeing people fighting for a return to the old gender roles alongside people fighting for equality in the form of sameness across the board in their relationships. Alongside people fighting for new templates of relationships, such as polyamory. Alongside people fighting for the idea of living a single, independent life, but engaging in casual hookups. Alongside people fighting for the idea of intentional community.
As a part of this change, what we are seeing is that there is no standard, working exchange in relationships. In relationships, there is always the element of energy exchange. The truth is that every relationship is transactional. Because transaction is a word that we have such a negative association with, you are most likely going to have to re-examine the idea of transaction. A transaction is at its essence, nothing more than an energy exchange. It means each person receives something and each person provides something. What makes a transaction a good one, is if each person gets something that is valued. And value, especially with regards to what we value most, is based on what that person needs and wants. A person has to need and want something to truly value it. Every relationship you enter into, you enter into because you perceive that the relationship would meet a need or fulfill a desire, or many. When one or both people in a relationship start to perceive that they don’t get the needs or wants they value from a relationship; or worse, that one of them or both of them is acting as an antagonist to those needs and wants, the satisfaction they feel in that relationship goes away.
And today, in many cases, because the exchange is now gone, there is no incentive to be in relationships. For example, many women are now in a place where the old gender expectations of the 1950s and earlier are not totally gone. They are simply part of subconscious bias. And yet, there are new post 1960s gender expectations that have been added. And so, they have found themselves in the reality where responsibility is not divided, instead they have to do it all with regards to responsibilities and so there is a very painful collective “what is the point of a man, why be in a relationship at all?”
To truly grasp this concept of energy exchange, you are going to have to separate the concept of loving a person, caring for them, seeing the positive in them and seeing their value in general from the transactional element of a relationship. In other words, you have to separate love from needs in a relationship. If you want to understand more about this concept in depth, you can watch my video titled: Be Consciously Transactional. Why Every Relationship is Transactional.
This belief that love should count for more than personal needs is part of our deep desire for unconditional love. When we are trying to get unconditional love, we are trying to use love to negate, disqualify or deny the transactional element of relationship. We feel greater security in relationships and a greater sense of self-esteem when we feel like a person will love us enough to stay with us no matter what. Including no matter whether their personal needs and desires are met or not. But we don’t understand what unconditional love is and what unconditional love isn’t. For this reason, you would benefit by watching my video titled: The Truth and Myth of Unconditional Love.
Long story short, because of so many factors that have created this transitional space, people today no longer feel like the relationships are meeting their needs or are fulfilling their desires. They aren’t working. And the old template for having relationships, the old structure, no longer works. It is not only an outdated model, it is no longer actually possible for the vast, and I mean vast, vast majority of people.
What we are being called to do, is to be brave enough to throw the old template and model away. This means we will have to change our own programming regarding relationships and how they should look. And we have to start to consciously create interconnected, interdependent relationships by customizing our relationships according to what uniquely works for us. They must be based off of our authenticity, rather than an external template. They must be based off of the aptitudes that we uniquely offer and what we uniquely need and want. No matter how weird it is. While doing this will require lots of bravery because doing so will cause you to come up against both internal and external resistance, this change must also inevitably occur at a higher level of society. It isn’t going to work for everyone to customize their relationships when the law is still built on the framework of things like marriage. And when men are still only valued and given respect within society for XYZ and women are still only valued and given respect for XYZ. And when the architecture and building of homes are still solely aimed the nuclear family etc.
To do this one of the first things we are going to have to do, is to detach specific values from specific genders. Ready for me to make things complicated? We could divide specific qualities into masculine or feminine. For example, we could say that a quality that is feminine is Intuition. And that a quality that is masculine is protection. But it is also true that each quality has a feminine and masculine expression. For example, both men and women have intuition. Feminine intuition and male intuition is a different expression. And both men and women are protective. Masculine protection and female protection may just take on a different expression. Embracing femininity or masculinity does not prevent you from certain qualities or tasks. If this was the case, it would be unhealthy for both women and men to work out at the gym. Why this is important is that when people get lost in the idea that only men have certain qualities and only women have certain qualities, and worse, when men are only valued for certain qualities and women are only valued for certain qualities, we prevent a person’s authentic expression. And when we do this, we prevent this necessary process of customization. We stay stuck in trying to fit ourselves into a box.
To give you a taste of what I mean, here is an example of customization. Jess has always been obsessed with building things. Because of this, she became an engineer. She loves engineering. She is also a single mother who needs support with the caretaking of her daughter. She also has a deep need for support and availability in a relationship. Jess has tried to fit herself into a traditional relationship model several times and failed each time. Those relationships became a source of extreme pain and disappointment. Jess eventually went to work customizing her relationships. She bought a house that previously belonged to a polygamist which was comprised of four separate apartments. She posted an add in several places for other people looking to co-habitate and share child-care responsibilities. And started taking applications and interviewing people.
Now, she lives with two other single mothers and one couple with a child and another on the way. Each day, a different adult or two have responsibility for the herd of children. And sometimes, when it is needed, they all pitch in financially to hire a nanny. This allows the children to have multiple attachment figures, lots of play with other children, and it gives the adults both connection with their children, and a lot of time for themselves and their careers. They have much less pressure than any parent they know that lives in a two-parent household.
Jess is in a relationship with a man named Parker. Parker was a nurse. He always felt out of place because he was never interested in what he could create for himself. Or what he could achieve. Instead, he has always felt the best when he can see his energy is going towards making other people be at their best. His top value is compassion. Jess and Parker decided that he would only work at a clinic three days a week for half a day. He puts the money he makes towards spoiling Jess and vacations. And Jess covers all the essentials. Jess is a very inspiring person with a very quick mind. She is also amazing in bed. Her job is far more high paying. Parker spends the vast majority of his time supporting Jess. He makes her lunches for the week to take to work. He gives her back massages every night. He arranges new restaurants for them to try. He does the laundry. He is there for Jess’s daughter if she needs anything. And he spends the rest of his time on his physical fitness. On occasion, Jess and Parker go to a swinger’s club together with a clear set of rules for the sake of relationship security.
The exchange is very strong and very clear and very customized. Jess gets the support and prioritization and availability and caretaking and commitment and gifts she has always wanted. Plus, her daughter has a reliable, supportive man in her life. Parker gets to be in a really great house, living a lifestyle that is much more impressive than what he alone could afford. He has the space and time to focus on fitness, which is a real luxury. He has a sense of belonging; he is fully received. He has a fabulous sex life. He feels valued and wanted and needed. He is also mentally stimulated and inspired every day. They both have developed very deep, interconnected relationships with the people they live with.
Yes, lots of people, especially Parker’s mother and brother, negatively judges them rather than trying to understand why it works for them. And occasionally, Jess, who was raised Christian, starts to feel insecure about whether what she is doing is wrong, even though it feels so right. But these are both areas to work on and they are both super satisfied in their partnership and their various relationships. Both of them are thriving.
Each and every one of us is back at the drawing boards so to speak regarding relationships. And the sooner we realize this, and start to customize, the better. Of course, we have to be very, very honest with ourselves, in order to do this.
Reframing is a staple of psychological, emotional and spiritual work. Why? Because reframing is when we identify the way we view a thought, an emotion, a belief, an event, an experience or a situation etc. And from there, we change the way we view that thing. A person’s reality is the relationship between themselves and the world. It’s the way they view and relate to the world. If we change how we view and relate to the world, that changes our reality. Because of this, reframing quite literally changes our reality. I don’t need to sell you on the merits of reframing. Why? Because every single one of you watching this has had a personal experience where something or someone changed the way to viewed a situation for the better, and as a result, your life experience improved. But as with everything, there is a shadow side to reframing. Let’s look at this shadow side, so you can prevent the potential damage that can be caused by reframing.
So many things that are good for us, can be used as a coping mechanism. This is also the case with re-framing. A coping mechanism is a specific procedure, process or technique, which manages stress or creates adaptation to stress. A coping mechanism is the opposite of change. Rather than creating a change to ourselves or our lives that makes it so we are not under the weight of a specific stressor, we adapt to the stressor, so that we can stay in it and around it. Doing this, puts us at risk for keeping ourselves stuck, but feeling better about being stuck. The danger of re-framing is the danger of immediately indulging in our reframing in order to make the situation we are in, ok. Instead of actually making necessary positive changes to our life. To give you an example, let’s look at Melanie. Melanie does not feel capable of leaving her miserable job. She feels she cannot face the idea of financial instability. So, she takes to re-framing to feel better about staying in the situation, rather than rocking the boat. When she feels rage towards her coworkers and boss, she looks at a zodiac chart which says that she needs to learn constructive ways of dealing with her anger. And she reframes the situation to “I think this job is here to teach me how to stop relying on everything outside of me to make me feel good. Because of this job, I am going to master my own anger, so I can feel good no matter what situation I am in and no matter what other people do or don’t do.”
To give you another example, Zoey had a therapist who was big on re-framing. Zoey’s therapist encouraged her for years to “reframe” the pain of the deep neglect and verbal and emotional abuse she was subjecting herself to with her primary partner. Zoey’s therapist especially hated the idea of victim mentality. Her therapist would say “if you stop thinking of yourself as a victim, what would you be instead?” For example, instead of complaining that her partner was stonewalling and withdrawing during conversations, her therapist encouraged her to see her partner as the person who was training her to learn the art of self-care, rather than dependence on others. When Zoey’s partner started up a romantic fling with one of Zoey’s other friends, her therapist said “The fact that jealousy is coming up now, is a beautiful opportunity. You get to work through all of your insecurities.” And “This is an opportunity to test the strength of your friendship with your friend. You could see your partner as a welcome test to the strength of the relationship.” What she was actually doing for years was encouraging Zoey to enable the abuse in her partnership while making herself responsible for 100 percent of the relationship. The real way to help Zoey with self-care was to encourage her to stand up for herself and say NO to how terribly she was being treated. The result of Zoey’s therapist teaching Zoey to re-frame everything, was that she stayed in a relationship that was actively destroying who she was, destroying her hope for the future, and her ambition to create the life she wanted for herself. To learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: How to Let Go of a Comping Mechanism.
Re-framing can be a form of denial. Denial is refusing to accept or admit to the truth of the reality of something unpleasant. And denial is in fact a detrimental form of reframing. You might think that denial is a good tool. After all, if someone can ignore proof in a universe managed by the law of mirroring, and focus on what they want to have be true, they will manifest that into reality instead right? Wrong. Denial is a state of avoidance, resistance and suppression. It is a pushing against what is unwanted. It is a refusal to accept something. It is a war with what is. And resistance to a thing brings about an escalation of that thing. Denial does not work because unless you know where you actually are, you cannot know where you want to be and you can’t take the appropriate step between here and there. For the sake of understanding the difference between denial/suppression and genuine improvement, imagine getting in an airplane and flying out across the ocean. Imagine that a low oil pressure warning light comes on in your cockpit. Now imagine that instead of actually addressing it, you take a piece of duct tape and put it over the light so you don’t see it anymore. Can you see how that coping mechanism would get you into a whole lot of trouble?
Denial is not just about denying that there is a problem, some people see there is a problem but their denial based reframing comes in the form of invalidation of the experience, dismissing it, minimizing the impact it has on our lives, excusing it, or rationalizing it. To learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: How To Call Bullshit on Denial.
Reframing can put you in an overlay. To understand overlays, I want you to imagine that a person is in a prison cell. They think there is no way of getting out of that prison cell. They cannot cope with the reality of the prison cell and so they begin to escape from it with their mind. They start to play a game of pretend where the prison is a palace instead. To them, the person who brings food to the cell every day is a servant. The walls are not the stone of a prison; they are the stone of a medieval castle. The bars are pillars. The mind has the capacity to play pretend to such a degree that every element of reality can be seen as a different element in our game of pretend. But this game is not really a game because your mental and emotional ok-ness depends on it. This pretend reality sits over actual reality like an overlay. When we are in an overlay, we lose touch with reality and we start to feel the overlay is more real than the reality we don’t want to admit to underneath it. An overlay is a very dangerous thing because it makes it so we do not even see reality in the first place. We could be headed towards a cliff but because we are not looking at reality, we are looking at our overlay; we are convinced it is a beautiful horizon line. An overlay is a form of detrimental reframing. Reframing with the use of an overlay can get you in serious trouble in any situation you find yourself in. And it is especially a problem when it comes to relationships, because it prevents you from having a real relationship full stop. To understand more about this, you can watch my video titled: Overlay (What Prevents You from Having a Real Relationship).
Reframing can really, really hurt the people around you. If you are too threatened by the reality of someone else (such as a situation they are going through, how they feel or thoughts they are thinking), reframing can be a way to make yourself (or even potentially them) feel better about what is going on with them. But in doing so, you run the risk of failing to see their reality. And therefore, failing to respond correctly. It can cause you to say and do the wrong thing for them, as well as cause them to feel more alone in their pain, thereby making matters worse. Reframing can cause you to become stuck in your own reality about the other person, making it so that you and them are essentially in two different realities and acting according to two different realities, condemning them to be alone and in pain. To give you an example of this, let’s look at Brianna. Brianna has a really bad relationship with her mother. Her mother spent her mothering years invalidating everything there was to invalidate about Brianna, competing with her, putting her down and making excuses for an abusive step father she brought onto the scene. Recently, Brianna’s mother sent her a passive aggressive meme that said “Forgive your parents for not being perfect, they did the best they could”. This threw off Brianna’s entire day. Why? Because instead of actually changing the painful behaviors that Brianna has begged her to change, and instead of apologizing or making amends, she made Brianna’s lack of forgiveness the problem. She put the pressure on Brianna, rather than herself and insinuated that the problem was not her, it was an unrealistic expectation that Brianna holds for her to be perfect. Brianna went to a coffee shop to talk to her friend Avery. Avery is a very spiritual person. In fact, she just got back from a trip to Peru, where she was doing San Pedro medicine. Avery also comes from a dysfunctional family. In Peru, Avery went through a huge forgiveness experience that involved her whole family. And ever since, Avery has been feeling transcendent. Talking to Brianna about her mother feels really “dense” to her. She does not like the feeling of being pulled back into the feeling of family drama. She doesn’t want Brianna to be stuck there either. So, Avery offers thoughts that qualify as a re-frame to Brianna. Avery tells her “Your mother really doesn’t know any better. You came down as her daughter to show her how to love. And the first step, is to forgive. Believe me, that is a decision that you just have to make whenever you are ready.” To Avery, this is an empowering idea. But this re-frame, does nothing whatsoever for Brianna, other than to make things worse. It further invalidates the pain she experienced with her mother. It is experienced as siding with the mother in favor of Brianna yet again taking all the pressure and responsibility in the relationship by being the one who has to do all the work. And it further wounded Brianna because the reframe insinuates that indeed, Brianna is the problem in the situation, because her mother doesn’t know any better. It excuses emotionally abusive behavior. This causes Brianna to feel even worse. And to learn to never, ever tell Avery about the painful things going on with her. Aside from this, Brianna feels like crap around Avery’s air of spiritually transcendent superiority. Avery is committed to her drama free reality caused by her own spiritually re-framed thoughts. Their friendship is damaged by the lack of attunement that re-framing has caused. To understand more about this, you can watch two of my videos. The first titled: The Most Dangerous Parallel Reality. And the second titled: Attunement (The Key to a Good Relationship)
Reframing can be a form of toxic positivity. Toxic positivity rejects all difficult thoughts and emotions in favor of a cheerful and usually falsely-positive façade. This is a recipe for future melt down because you cannot do this long term. You cannot do this and act according to your actual personal truth. Therefore, you cannot do this and live an authentic life or create a life that actually works for you. Nor can you address your actual needs. The reality is, life isn’t always positive. This “good vibes only” approach to life is a form of avoidance and suppression. Toxic positivity prevents you from seeing the full reality of any situation, person, place or thing. It also damages every relationship in your life and prevents your own personal growth.
Reframing can be a form of bypassing. Bypassing (or whitewashing) is the act of using thoughts to avoid facing or healing one’s painful feelings, unresolved wounds and unmet needs. It is a sidestep. It is a state of avoidance. Because it is a state of avoidance, it is a state of resistance. Bypassing enables us to avoid our feelings by detouring into the land of changing our ideas and beliefs. And bypassing operates under the false assumption that every trauma and emotion can be fixed mentally and can be fixed by changing the thoughts you are thinking. Because of this, bypassing actually prevents true healing. Bypassing is ESPECIALLY prevalent in spiritual circles. To learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: Spiritual Bypassing.
Reframing can be a form of gaslighting. And you can use it to gaslight yourself and to gaslight others. To gaslight someone is to sow seeds of doubt in their mind that makes them question their own sense of personal truth and reality (things like memory, judgement, perception, feelings etc). It is to try to convince someone that what they see, they didn’t see, what they hear they didn’t hear and what they feel they have no reason to feel. Gaslighting can be consciously done. We could consider this conscious gaslighting. Conscious in the sense that a person is aware they are doing it and choosing to do it. But by far, the most common type of gaslighting is unconscious. Meaning that a person is not aware of what they are doing and therefore are not doing it deliberately but are doing it none the less. It is critical to practice profound compassion and radical acceptance for your own inner experiences and then to work on seeing things from a different angle. Re-framing can very easily be a tool for the negation of one’s personal truth and reality. Questioning your perception is about questioning whether and where your perception is limited, not invalid. To understand more about this, you can watch my video titled: Gaslighting (What is Gaslighting and How to Deal With it).
Reframing can cause you to oversimplify complex things and complex situations. In this same vein, it can really serve black and white, either or thinking. Many situations in life are not simple. They are full of nuance and contradictory truths. Re-framing often seeks to eradicate cognitive dissonance and the discomfort of complexity, but by doing so, the actual full truth of a situation is lost.
The reality is, it would take the length of a book to write a comprehensive list of all of the potential shadows of reframing. We need to first deeply experience our initial perspective. Another way of saying this is, we need to deeply acknowledge, feel, see, hear and understand the frame which we are currently or initially experiencing. The opposite of avoidance of what is. We do this with the awareness that we can never know whether we are perceiving the full truth. Our perspective may be limited in ways that do not benefit us. There may be a different or more objective perspective that is more beneficial to us. We then need to ask ourselves why we want to re-frame the experience. What is the intention. And we need to check in with ourselves regarding whether we are actually in alignment with the answer we give to that question. Or, if we are indeed using re-framing as a coping mechanism or as an avoidance tactic. If we are in alignment with the answer we give to the motivation for re-framing, we can begin to consciously seek out different frames to view the situation through. We can begin to look for different perspectives. But, when we do this, with each re-frame, we need to ask ourselves: How might this re-frame benefit me/someone in my position? How might this re-frame not benefit me/someone in my position? This allows us to be aware of the potential shadows we are at risk of falling into.
The thoughts and perceptions we operate with, should be helpful. It is beneficial to change thoughts and perceptions into ones that are helpful. But you will find that over the course of your path of healing and expanding, there are plenty of helpful thoughts and perceptions that don’t exactly feel good.
Emotional neglect is one of the most tormenting experiences you can go through in a relationship. Many people who have experienced both, say it is worse than overt physical abuse. It is very important to know how to break free from emotional neglect. So, today I’m going to expose the actual pattern taking place with emotional neglect as well as how to break free from it.
Emotional neglect is about what isn’t there, rather than about what is there. It is a profound “I’m not there for you and I’m not there with you… even when we happen to be in the same physical vicinity.” It is a lack of all of the things that a person needs to feel emotionally good in a relationship and therefore, a lack of a great deal of what a person needs in life to feel emotionally good (because your quality of life is down to the quality of your relationships). It is the affection that isn’t shown. The presence that isn’t granted. The absence of emotional support. The withdrawal of attention. The protection that isn’t being given. The ignoring of needs. The expectation that you meet your needs yourself. The deficiency of nurturing. The total refusal to seek or grant understanding. The disengagement. The indifference that is being demonstrated. The apathy towards the other person and towards the relationship. The emotional dismissal. The unavailability. The disconnection etc.
The natural reaction to emotional neglect, is to try to get the other person (be it a parent or a sibling or a friend or a partner) to not neglect you. And there are all kinds of strategies that you might employ to try to get them to stop neglecting you. From calm, rational conversations about how you feel to becoming whatever you think they want to violent outbursts to seduction techniques to eliciting jealousy to threats to creating emergency scenarios to feigned withdrawal and the list goes on and on.
Sometimes, emotional neglect is something that a person isn’t choosing to do, not even on a subconscious level. Rather, it is a byproduct of circumstances. For example, a person might be emotionally neglecting you because due to their own emotionally neglectful childhood, they truly have no template for what to even do to be there for and with someone emotionally. Or a person may have chosen a career or be in a life situation that quite literally prevents them from being present in a sufficient way, such as being incarcerated or working for the military or some other career that implies absence. Or if someone has an illness. You get the picture. When this is the case, the emotional neglect is not willful. It still does the damage that emotional neglect does. But there can be inherent workability in the relationship because the neglect is not willful.
Emotional neglect becomes willful when on a conscious or even more commonly, subconscious level, a person does not want to be there for you and be there with you. When the person does not want the pressure of caring for and tending to your emotional needs and emotional wellbeing. They don’t want to have the responsibility of doing the things that you need to feel emotionally good in a relationship. And this willful neglect, is inherently unworkable because the neglect is serving them in some way. The question is, how is it serving them, what is it giving to them? And what pain are they trying to avoid by being emotionally neglectful?
Just because someone is in a relationship, doesn’t mean they want to put energy into making that relationship a feel-good relationship if doing so would require something from them that they don’t want to do. A great many people have needs that can only be met in the context of a relationship. So, they enter into one. But they do not want the pressure of being responsible for how the other person feels in that relationship. They just want the other person to magically feel good (and most especially, good about them) no matter what they do or don’t do.
People who willfully emotionally neglect in their relationships, will set up a lose-lose scenario for you, unlike any other. And this lose-lose scenario is likely to leave you in a pattern that can ruin your life. Here it is:
People who willfully emotionally neglect, do not want the pressure of being there for you. They only want you when THEY want and need you. They are in essence, anti-depend on me. So, when they see you happy, they perceive you to not need them and so, they make the most of the opportunity by disconnecting and withdrawing to do their own thing. Focus only on themselves and their needs. So, they train you that being ok, especially being happy, means abandonment.
However, if you act unhappy and they see that you need them, they hate the pressure of that feeling. So, they make you the problem for the neediness. You get turned into the scapegoat and the pressure goes on you to figure out how to not need them like you do.
When this happens, you will most likely get confused about reality, because it is a gaslight. And you are likely to internalize that gaslight and start feeling and telling that you are too needy or too difficult.
When someone willfully emotionally neglects you, they are pushing you away and they are going away from you. They are creating the opposite of security in the relationship. And this creates incredible relationship insecurity. And this, quite ironically, increases your need for them as well as your need to chase and pull them and cling to them.
The people who willfully emotionally neglect, want you to be ok, no matter what they do and don’t do because they don’t want the pressure of another person’s wellbeing. So, the old adage “when someone does you wrong, the best form of revenge is to be happy and successful” does not apply. In fact, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and doing what is necessary to be happy and successful, will be them getting away with everything Scott free. The damage they are doing by emotionally neglecting you, will never be seen, acknowledged or directly addressed. And, doing so will serve as an affirmation that you are in this life alone.
On top of this, when you are in this pattern, the only “needs scraps” you get, happen when they are focused at you being the problem. So, you assume the role of being the problem. You are unhappy. But you also don’t put energy into tending to yourself or getting your needs met elsewhere. Afterall, to do this, you’d have to see and accept that you are neglected (thus step into loneliness). And you’d have to give up on trying to get them to not neglect you (which causes you to step deeper into both lack and starvation). Basically, this feels like the exact opposite direction of your needs. So, you are stuck. You stay unhappy hoping desperately that your distress will be responded to. The needs do not go away just because someone is telling you that you shouldn’t have them. The cruelty of the deprivation and the reality that your very real needs are not being met, start to corrode your wellbeing. This pattern creates such desperation that you are likely to start to feel mentally ill. Many of the children and teens that are carted into therapy every day, are enduring this very pattern with the very parents that are carting them into therapy.
So, what’s the solution? Unfortunately, the solution is not a feel-good one. It isn’t a feel good one because a relationship takes two. If it were a dance, it would be the tango. And you cannot dance for the two of you. The solution is to see that you cannot force someone to stop emotionally neglecting you, especially if it serves them somehow to do so. You can try to get them to see what they are doing and give them information that might change their mind so they step up and into the relationship. Chances are, you’ve already done that 8 million times over. But ultimately, you can’t force someone to take part in a dance against their will.
Willful neglectors are very, very gaslighting. They will not see that they are doing this. It will be very hard, if not impossible to get them to see it. After all, it is a direct assault to their self-concept. And seeing it, means to either consciously choose to be what they see as a bad guy. Or, to do what they really, really, do not want to do. They will be full of excuses as to why they are not providing what you need. And they love to hide their unwillingness to take any responsibility for you feeling good in the relationship under anything else they do for you. Things that have nothing to do with what is actually needed from them. Many willful neglectors are very good talkers. Their words do not line up with their actions. For this reason, and to un-gaslight yourself, you need to put them on mute. This is a practice where you watch what they do during the day, but as if they were on mute so you could not hear them. As if you were watching a silent movie and had to figure out what was happening and understand what is going on in the relationships, without any discourse. When you do this, you think to yourself, what is the reality? What is actually happening and even better, what is not happening?
I’ll give you a tip which will help you to know if someone is willfully emotionally neglecting you. You will start to feel ever increasing desperation and emotionally ill as if you are malnourished emotionally. This can also come with a feeling of emptiness, weakness and weariness. You are likely to be full of anxiety as well, as relationship insecurity causes you to feel chronically anxious and chronically in distress. Because of this distress, you will try to get the other person to change their behavior. You will try to get them to meet your emotional needs, rather than emotionally neglect you. This is likely to start as basic conversations, but escalate and escalate and escalate to full blown fights and other “don’t neglect me” behaviors as the desperation rises. But nothing changes. The conversations are likely to be circular. Your experience does not change. The other person will put no effort into changing your experience. They may also promise you to change something and then break their word. You will ask them to change something and they will neither set a solid boundary (so you can decide what to do given the fact that they will not provide a need you have in the relationship). Nor will they actually do what it takes and put any energy into changing what isn’t working into something that does work. I’m going to tell you something. If a person wants to show up and step up in a relationship to make it a good relationship, they do not want the other person to feel emotionally abandoned. They have intrinsic motive for them to feel good. So, they are responsive to the other person’s distress. And they come towards the other person and towards the relationship when the other person is in distress. If they don’t know what to do, they put genuine initiative and effort into gaining information, learning what to do and involving help.
If you are with an emotional neglector, they will not be responsive to your distress. They will not come towards the relationship in response to your distress. Nor will they take responsive action to change what isn’t working into something that does. They exhibit a real apathetic laziness towards the relationship and towards you. And even when they use the “I don’t know what to do” excuse, they are especially apathetic towards finding out what to do and learning how to make things better in their relationship. The reason being that they are actually getting something out of emotionally neglecting you. And attention all of you who were scapegoated in childhood… All of the energy they are using to “help and fix you”, they could be putting towards making the relationship better. Remember, how you are feeling and acting is the symptom, not the cause. They don’t want to solve the cause because that would mean having to be dependable, responsible, authentic, intimate or whatever else they want to avoid.
So that you can understand this better, here is one example of emotional neglect: Britt is in a romantic relationship with Jason. And things are not going well at all. Jason is focusing less and less on Britt and is instead, obsessing over his business. Britt feels like she is becoming just an accessory to his other, more important priorities in life. He is very rarely affectionate anymore. He does not take her on dates. He doesn’t like to engage in deep conversation about what she thinks or feels. He is “gone” when he is in the room. And when Britt has a meltdown, which she has been doing often, he sits apathetically on the couch, staring at her in silence. Sometimes, just to placate her, Jason validates her feelings and reassures her that he will do something differently, only to break his word later. So now, his reassuring promises only escalate her further. Jason is also in a pattern of dropping his responsibilities around the house, leaving them to Britt to either nag him to do them, or to do them herself. At Britt’s insistence, they have been to a relationship therapist. There, Jason said that he feels Britt demands too much of any man. And defended that he does put energy towards the relationship because he pays for most of the bills in their joint life together. But Jason never followed up on the therapist after their first visit. He passive aggressively dropped his commitment to going to therapy with her. Britt said she didn’t want to sleep with him anymore if he was going to be so checked out of the relationship. She did this thinking it would kick Jason into action, making their relationship better. But this did not happen. He acted upset. But simply set up camp on the couch and acted like a child in timeout every day. Now, Britt is starting to lose hair she is so anxious all the time. She feels close to a nervous breakdown.
What is really going on is this: Jason’s father left the family when he was just two years old. Jason’s mother turned him into her support figure. Rather than his parents supporting him, he had to support his mother. When Jason’s mother tried to commit suicide, Jason took the full weight of being responsible for how his mother felt and also for failing at it. Her wellbeing was his responsibility. Whether that meant cooking or shoveling the snow or lying with her in bed while she was crying or rubbing her feet. It was a huge problem for her when he wanted to go meet up with friends or play soccer or pursue any goal he might have. And because of this experience, Jason has a serious aversion to taking responsibility for anyone else, especially for how they feel. He has always dreamed of being supported to go chase his own desires. And he now has a trauma reaction to being depended on. When Jason gets into a relationship, he subconsciously tries to avoid this feeling of being depended on as well as to bring about his dream, that he is supported to go do his own thing without consequences. He loves the self-help gurus that teach that everyone is responsible for themselves and that everyone needs to take responsibility for their own emotions. Jason is emotionally neglecting Britt because doing so allows him to avoid being depended on as well as to focus on his own dreams and desires, rather than someone else’s wellbeing.
Britt and Jason are stuck because nothing Britt is doing to try to get Jason to stop emotionally neglecting her is working. Jason has no interest in actually doing what it would take to make the relationship better. Because doing so, would take him in the opposite direction of what he is wanting. Britt has not yet accepted that Jason wants what he gets out of a relationship. A sense of security rather than being alone. A place to belong. Sex. But all he is willing to put into a relationship, is money. After all, that takes no real effort for Jason. He loves money and is obsessed with making more and more of it. And having a man simply throw money at her in place of actually being in life with her, is making the feeling of deprivation worse, rather than better.
I am now going to tell you what to do to break free from willful emotional neglect. But I need you to know that I know how painful it is when experts simply lay out what needs to be done, as if it is simple and easy, when it really, really isn’t. I am fully, fully aware that the actual doing of breaking free from willful emotional neglect is not only not easy, it implies ineffable emotional pain that no one should have to endure in their lifetime. And it is a special kind of hell for anyone who does not have abundant social resources, like family and friends.
If you are being willfully neglected, you need to first, swallow the practically unswallowable, which is that they will never stop emotionally neglecting you. They want zero responsibility for doing what it would take to ensure your emotional wellbeing. From there, you need to do two things. The first, is to commit to tending to your needs, so that you can thrive. This also means going to other people for the needs that you need to have come from others. This means you must stop desperately pulling them to not neglect you and focus yourself towards those who actually are there for you and with you. Those who do actually offer emotional ownership. Keep in mind that tending to your needs is very different than disciplining yourself into doing what it takes to feel better. Tending to your needs both nourishes you and takes pressure off of you. Disciplining yourself into feeling better is to add pressure to yourself. And this is a problem when you have been emotionally neglected because you will be adding pressure to a being that is emotionally malnourished and therefore fragile.
The second thing you need to do is to flip the dynamic around by refusing to be the scapegoat in the situation. Cut off that option for them. Do not let them simply get away with it. Keep the pressure on the real issue… Their apathy towards doing what it takes for you to feel good in the relationship. And keep the pressure on them needing to put forth the effort to repair the rupture and to step up and step into the relationship if they would like the relationship with you to improve. They don’t get to have a relationship if they don’t want to take any responsibility for the wellbeing of others. The likelihood that this will happen, is very, very low. So, make sure you don’t do these three steps as yet another strategy to try to get them to stop neglecting you.
It’s not possible to be in a good relationship and take zero responsibility for doing what it would take to ensure the other person’s emotional wellbeing. Entering into a relationship implies that everything you do and fail to do, impacts them either positively or negatively and vice versa. Everyone wants a relationship because of what they can get out of a relationship. But not everyone wants to give or do what it takes to actually create a working relationship that feels good to both people in it. Unless you get into a conscious relationship with someone where you both agree upon them not meeting specific emotional needs of yours (and therefore you don’t expect it because you agree to getting those needs met elsewhere), a good relationship requires emotional ownership… the opposite of emotional neglect.
To generalize, the goal of a romantic relationship is to establish a secure, feel-good partnership with someone who is truly compatible. But there are some behaviors that make this virtually impossible. Let’s take a look at the worst, unfortunately common, behavior that women have in romantic relationships.
In today’s world, the process of socialization in childhood is not exactly the same for girls as it is for boys. In the process of socialization, both boys and girls learn what about people in general and what about them is bad, wrong, unacceptable, unwanted and unlovable. They learn that in order to stay safe in the social group and get their needs met, they must alienate themselves from and hide those aspects of themselves. And to the opposite, they must identify with and put forward whatever is seen as right, good, acceptable, desired and lovable.
Well, as it just so happens, in most societies, what is seen as right, good, acceptable, desired and lovable in a girl/woman is different from what is seen as right, good, acceptable, desires and lovable in a boy/man. Different things are expected from boys and men than are expected from girls and women. Gender bias studies prove again and again that gender bias is an absolute reality of our world. To give you an idea of what I mean, many societies today value things like strength, bravery, task orientation, activeness, confidence, success drive, independence, assertiveness, competence and intelligence in males. On the other hand, many societies today value nurturing, supportiveness, sensitivity, passiveness, beauty and kindness, in females. On top of this, within global society, for thousands of years, most human societies have been patriarchal. Men held all of the power and women were treated as property. Even in the United States, it was only in 1974 that a woman could have access to credit without a man, such as a husband, father or brother co-signing on a loan or credit card. Many of you watching this were already born when that happened. Some societies are very gradually transitioning out of this, but a society does not transition overnight. This means, female disadvantage and female powerlessness is not actually a thing of the past. And most societies still expect girls to be oriented towards others and serving what other people want and need, rather than themselves and what they want and need.
Why all of this is important is because this cocktail of societal realities makes it so that girls often find themselves in societies that oppose who they naturally are and what they really want. Girls face negative consequences for going directly for what they want and need, as well as for the list of character traits that enable a person to do so. All of this makes it very hard for a girl to take ownership over her life. So, a girl very quickly has to find a way to get control over her life and get what she wants and needs, but without going directly for it and without displaying any of the character traits that would be considered undesirable. And the way they do this, is by manipulating.
They employ creative ways of influencing and controlling other people’s behavior and actions, especially those who they believe have more power than they do. They take to behaviors and strategies which are designed to elicit a wanted thing from others, such whoever they are in a romantic relationship with. And this becomes a chronic behavior up into their adulthood.
As a result, the worst habit that women have when it comes to romantic relationships, is manipulation of their partner. And the biggest problem of all, is that most women don’t even see what they are doing AS manipulation. In other words, they aren’t even aware that they are manipulating. The thing is, there is no possible way for a relationship to actually be a healthy relationship when manipulation is going on for several reasons. Let me share some of them with you.
The decision to manipulate someone, whether it is subconscious or conscious, is a decision to gain power over them. When power disparity is unilaterally forced like this, it means you are not seeing your partner as an ally in life and an ally regarding the bringing about of what you want and need. You are seeing them as an enemy in life and an oppositional force to the bringing about of what you want and need. The opposite of a working relationship.
Manipulation is not done with the best interests of the person being manipulated in mind. When someone manipulates, they only have one thing in mind, their own wants and needs; no matter the negative impact on anyone else. And this, is a recipe for relationship disaster. Why? Because it destroys trust. Manipulation destroys trust in a relationship which is the most sacred element of a relationship. And when the manipulation is seen, it immediately leads to the person who is manipulated feeling unfairly treated and resentful.
The many tactics of manipulation, such as using a person’s insecurities for your own benefit, using someone’s needs against them, deception, fake friendliness, insincere flattery, guilting, inauthenticity, lying, strategically giving and withholding a person’s needs, strategic nice-ness, false promises, feigning ignorance, playing weak or helpless strategically, bullying, temper tantrums, veiled threats, playing mind games, passive aggression, silent treatment, gaslighting, love bombing, denial, blackmailing, putting people in terrible lose-lose scenarios etc. Are abusive. They do damage to others, which is not a recipe for a healthy relationship.
When someone manipulates chronically, it is usually because they were raised in a highly competitive environment, in which people (family members, classmates, coworkers, social groups, societal affiliations, economic interests) jockeyed for things like power, resources, advantage and influence. And that in that environment, they felt a lack of direct power and control over their situation. Because they felt this sense of being at the disadvantage, being powerless, being inadequate and lacking what they want and need, they resort to indirect, underhanded strategies to attain what they want and need. When manipulation is employed, it not only keeps you stuck in this worldview of negative competition (including with your own partner) it prevents you from actually seeing the power you do have and from actualizing your own genuine empowerment. It keeps you trapped in a position of having to get what you want and need through others and against their will.
While the most skilled manipulators are able to manipulate someone without them even realizing that they are being manipulated, at some level, most people can feel when they are being manipulated. Most people can feel when someone else is trying to control them. At the very least, they can feel that something is “off”. And this creates a negative emotional tone in a relationship, invites all kinds of protest behaviors and causes a cascade of conflict.
Manipulation causes an overall lack of emotional safety in a relationship. It is a recipe for an insecure relationship. This goes hand in hand with the fact that manipulation destroys trust. For a relationship to work, the other person needs to be a place of safety and security for you. When a person manipulates, they have demonstrated that they cannot be considered safe or secure. They have demonstrated they are emotionally unsafe.
Meet Megan. Megan is in a relationship with Noah. Megan comes from a background in a Southern Baptist family. She is not an easy-going woman, even though she knows that being easy going is what is expected of her. Noah has recently decided that he needs to switch to a different medical college. This would mean moving and not just anywhere. Because of the college that Noah has decided on, it would mean moving back home, to the town where Noah’s mother lives. Megan does not want this to happen. But she is convinced that if she is honest and direct about the fact that she does not like his mother and abhors the idea of living near her and also that she cannot manage a long-distance relationship, that Noah will simply end the relationship. So, Megan is convinced she has to find an indirect way of getting what she wants, which is for Noah to change his mind.
Megan decides upon several different methods of achieving this aim. The first method, is sending him articles about the downsides of living in the city that he wants to move to and feigning fear about the things written in the article. The second method is coming up with excuses for why she can’t move for a while, such as a friend who is going through cancer and then guilting Noah for his willingness to simply abandon the friend in their time of need. The third method is to triangulate Noah against his mother.
Megan knows that Noah doesn’t like how suffocating his mother is. She calls him several times a day and loves to tell him what he should and shouldn’t be doing. So, Megan decides to fan the flames of discord between them. When she sees any sign of frustration in Noah after a phone call with his mom, she jumps in to not only validate his frustration, but to increase it. She says things like “Babe, it’s so sad that your mom doesn’t see that you’re a man, it must be hard to feel so disrespected by someone who you love so much.” And “What do you think your mom would want you to do, if she could have everything her way? I think she would have you move in with her and for you to be kind of like her husband… what if your mom is never ok with anyone you marry, because she wants you for herself?” Despite it not actually being the case, Megan is careful to frame everything that Noah’s mother does, through the lens of her controlling him, disrespecting him and trying to get between them. After all, she knows these are triggers for Noah.
The tactic works. One day, Noah says “God… I’m really starting to re-think this whole thing about moving back home.” Megan jumps on the opportunity to support his new idea not to move, showering him with nurturing physical affection while she does it. Noah feels a new found sense of resolve NOT to go. All the while, feeling a sick feeling in his stomach that he can’t quite understand about Megan. He dismisses the feeling though. She’s so obviously supportive of him and his own masculinity, unlike his mother.
Manipulation is a way of indirectly meeting your needs. It is as simple as that. So, the way to break the habit of manipulating, is to be upfront and to go directly for what you want and need. Yes, doing this will bring you face to face with everything that caused you to start manipulating in the first place. Things like your personal sense of inadequacy and the belief that no one actually cares about what you want and need enough to be an advocate for those things and the fear of being seen as a bad person etc. But facing and resolving these things will drastically transform your life for the better. Not only that, it will make a healthy, mutually feel-good relationship possible.
Just because you keep hearing the same thing from different people over and over again, doesn’t make it true. This is especially true when it comes to beliefs. Today, I’m going to de-bunk a commonly held belief that is causing a lot of damage to people, especially those who are struggling when it comes to self-love.
You’ve heard it all over the place: “You’ve got to love yourself first to find someone who loves you.” And “if you want to be loved, you’ve got to love yourself first.” And “you’ve got to love yourself first… You’ve got to be ok on your own before you can be ok with someone else.” And “you’ve got to love yourself first, because until you love yourself, you will never have a loving relationship.” And “you cannot expect someone else to love you, if you don’t love yourself.” This relationship cliche that you need to love yourself first before anyone else can love you is now treated as an unquestionable sacred truth. And not only is it not true, it causes people extreme pain and causes them to approach self-love from a totally wrong angle.
In order to shoot this concept to the ground, I’m going to go point by point.
No truly self-loving person would ever say this. Why? Because a self-loving person recognizes that the need for other people and the need to be loved by them is an important need. One they cannot put on pause. They would never expect themselves to be an independent island unto themselves, where they shut down their need to be loved by others in order to try to do that independently. They would never put that need for others on pause (as if that were even possible) so as to require themselves to accomplish a feat first. A self-loving person realizes that a crucial part of loving yourself, is to directly meet your needs, including the needs that involve others, such as specifically seeking out the experience of being loved by others.
A much more objective truth than this one, is that fundamentally there is no self and other. Self is a distinction that is either useful or not useful, depending on the situation. If the ultimate truth is that we are all one, because we are all made of the same conscious energy, there is no difference between loving yourself and loving something else, at the end of the day, every form of love is self-love.
When it comes to the law of mirroring, often called the law of attraction, people love to oversimplify things. They don’t understand the complexity of a person’s overall vibration. Because of this, they logically deduce that if someone does not love themselves, they cannot be a match to someone who loves them. But this is not true. It is far more nuanced. For example, a person’s desire is a part of their vibration and so, if a person desires to be loved, this desire is also serving as a point of attraction. Or for example, if a person pours a lot of love into something else or someone else in their life, this frequency of love serves as a point of attraction where love will be reflected back at them through others. Or for example, a person does not hate all of themselves, only parts of themselves. They are likely to experience rejection from others for these parts of themselves, while being valued for the parts they, themselves are not in rejection of.
On top of this, we learn to love ourselves, or not, by virtue of the mirroring we received in our childhood and by virtue of the nature of the relationships other people had with us and each other growing up. Children are not born hating themselves or acting against themselves. They build a negative self-concept and detrimental relationship patterns through unloving relationships. If the law of mirroring were as simple as we like to make it, a child would not be a match to anything but loving relationships.
A person cannot exist in a vacuum. But when we say that you have to love yourself first, we act as if it is possible to live in a vacuum. You can’t press pause on relationships because all life is, is a series of relationships. Throughout the whole process of developing self-love, you will be in a relationship with a plethora of different people. Remember that a romantic monogamous partnership is not the only relationship there is. It’s just your biggest mirror for what you reject, suppress and deny and what you own, identify with and like about yourself. Your process of developing self-love, will be taking place while other people either love you and value you or reject you and abuse you or anything in-between. It isn’t a one-two step process. As a human, you are a social species. You cannot exist as an island.
So much of this belief is a smokescreen for relational trauma. When people go through very specific relational trauma, believing that they can be an island unto themselves (and never be powerless or in pain again due to needing something from someone else) feels empowering and safer. So, believing they have all the power in their hands regarding love or that they only really need love from themselves, is a feel-good thought for them. It is a feel-good thought because it prevents them from having to face their past wounding and also the vulnerability inherent to relationships.
The process of developing self-love is a process and it’s a process that is lifelong. Self-love is not something that you do and then it is done. Acting as if there is some end point to self-love, after which your accomplishment of self-love will make it so you can be loved, means you don’t understand what self-love is. To love yourself, is to take all parts of yourself, especially those parts that you are in rejection of, and see, hear, feel and understand them. To take positive ownership of them, so that you can value and appreciate them and do the right thing by them, thereby building an internal system built on love and trust, rather than going against yourself. This is a practice that does not end all the days of your life and is not simple to master. Just take one thing you really dislike about yourself. How easy is it for you to see, hear, feel, understand, value and appreciate that thing so as to positively own it? What if I told you that you will never have someone who loves you, until you do that? Self-love is not easy. And just like a scientist is likely to keep honing their experiments and theories until they die, the vast majority of people, even those who make self-love the focused practice of their life, will still be trying to master self-love on their death beds. You are not going to show up in any relationship as a perfected being.
You cannot deny that a great many times, a person learns to love themselves BY someone else loving them. Sometimes a person learns to value something they reject in themselves BY someone else valuing it. For example, a person may have grown up in a culture where their hair type was considered terrible. Then they move to a different culture, one that loves and even prefers their hair the way it is naturally, and because of this, they come to love their hair, the very thing about them they once hated. Or for example, a person may have learned a pattern of abusive self-talk and only realize this once they are around someone who speaks to them positively and lovingly and as a result, they change their abusive self-talk. If it were only ever possible for someone to love you, if you already love you, or value something in you if you already value it, none of these stories would exist. They simply could not occur. Never underestimate this universe’s ability to bring you the healing element, and the healing element may just be someone who loves you. Other people loving us DOES play a role in us learning to love ourselves. If it didn’t, we would not have ended up in this self-hating place to begin with.
When people are desperate to be loved, it means they are starving of an actual resource that people actually need in order to be able to survive and thrive. This means they are depleted. When you tell them that they need to go figure out how to love themselves first, this is the emotional equivalent of telling someone who is desperate to be touched (another human need) to go sit in the corner and learn how to touch themselves. Or telling someone who is severely undernourished that they need to learn how to grow food themselves first before someone else will give them food. This belief is actually a form of cruelty. Most people only really understand how cruel this is if they think about a child standing in front of them, emotionally starving for love. And them imagine telling this child, “I can only love you if you go figure out how to love yourself first!”
Your ability to love yourself or even to take love in, does not determine other people’s ability or lack thereof to do so. The choice to love is something that is in each one of our hands. If you don’t believe me, think of a time you may have loved a pet, no matter what they did or didn’t do. No matter how young or old they were. No matter how well behaved or ill behaved. Have you ever had a person in your life who you know didn’t love themselves? Did that make it so you could not love them? The responsibility in a relationship is not all on your shoulders. Other people are not sitting around powerless to love until suddenly, you loving yourself makes them able to love.
Loving others and being loved by others and practicing the art of self-love, are all things that will be taking place simultaneously. So now I’m going to tell you where the idea that self-love makes for better relationships with others does hold water. If you are in rejection of aspects of you, the law of mirroring will reflect that to you, most likely by other people rejecting that aspect of you. Probably not all the people in your life, but enough to make you conscious of the part of you that you are in rejection of. If you do not love yourself, you are going to make all kinds of choices for your life that are not the best choices for you, this includes choosing people and staying in relationship with people who are not the best for you. And endlessly trying to make the people who remind you of the people who hurt you and didn’t love you, be the very ones to value and love you. And maintaining the adaptations that you made to unloving relationships in the past, which bends you towards only being able to fit into or create unloving relationship dynamics… People who do not practice love towards you. Self-love drastically improves your point of attraction relative to loving relationships. And it causes you to make drastically better choices for yourself, including choices that cause you to end up in better, more loving relationships. If you want to learn more about self-love, you can pick up a copy of my book that is quite literally titled How to Love Yourself, it is also available as an audio book. I also offer an e-course specifically on self-love if that would interest you.
Don’t go down the unnecessary rabbit hole of hopelessness that pops open the minute you hear you have to love yourself first for someone to love you. There are plenty of people who have a long way to go when it comes to self-love, and whom are in loving and healing relationships. Loving, feel good relationships are not reserved for perfect people, as if only being in a state of self-love makes you worthy of or a match to a good relationship. The fact that you do not love yourself, which is already painful enough, does not mean that you are incapable of finding love, period. The End!
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