Affairs PART 3 – Boundaries

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“Fences” or clear boundaries allow us to focus on taking care of the good things growing in our own garden and allow others to do the same. Solid boundaries are a must for a committed relationship. When your partner is your best friend, the one you confide in first and foremost and the one you don’t have secrets from, your relationship has the appropriate boundaries.

That we experience an attraction to another person’s energy who is not our partner is normal. Or as Shirley Glass says, “being attracted means you’re still breathing”. We are usually drawn to an energy our partnership is missing, when we are attracted to somebody other than our partner. The choice of an affair partner appears to be based on how that person differs from the spouse. The attraction is not so much about the other person, but about the energy they embody.

If our marriage has been missing playfulness because the everyday problems have been weighing heavily on us, we might be attracted to somebody else who we are not carrying any responsibilities with, due to their playfulness. Or if we have felt not good enough in our marriage in one or more ways, another person who laughs at our jokes and seems to think we are the best thing since sliced bread is a huge temptation. If our partner hasn’t paid us any compliments in a long time and somebody else feels we are beautiful and smart, that is a strong attraction.

So what is it that enables some people to resist having an affair, while others slide into one? There is of course a complex dynamic of opportunities, vulnerabilities, unmet needs, and values at play. One important factor is whether clear boundaries with others exist. Couples who are dedicated to each other are as protective of their relationship as couples who’ve just fallen in love. They have built a safe couple bubble and they act in accordance with the rule that other people are third parties and that the partner always comes first. They see each other as best friends, primary confidants and are conscious of each others vulnerabilities and needs.

Often “outside observers will speculate unfairly and ignorantly that the betrayed wife must have been reluctant or inadequate in the bedroom… Just as uniformed gossip often blames inadequacies or weaknesses in the betrayed partner, women are more prone than men to blame themselves for their partner’s infidelity.” (Glass) Women have a tendency to think if they had been more loving, available, patient, sexy, slender and so on, the affair would never have happened.  Glass calls this the prevention myth. A loving partner or good marriage does not prevent affairs. The less aware a couple is of appropriate boundaries with others, the more likely it is that one partner will slip into an affair.

Couples who know how to safeguard their long-term relationship follow basic guidelines:

  1. They know that attraction to others is normal but that just because you feel it does not mean you need to act on it. Being attracted to someone else does not mean that you are with the wrong person, but it means that there is some energy or trait you are attracted to in the affair partner which needs to be brought into your long-term relationship. It is never easy to talk to your spouse about the attraction you are experiencing, but it is worth it. It can save your marriage and make it even stronger.
  2. They don’t allow themselves to fantasize what it would be like to be with that other person because affairs begin in the mind.
  3. They are conscious about not flirting. Even though “flirting” is usually considered harmless, it signals that you are available.
  4. They avoid risky situations, e.g. being alone with a potential affair partner.

In her book “Not ‘Just Friends’” Shirley Glass uses the symbols of walls and windows each relationship has. When you withhold information from your partner and keep secrets, you create walls, but if you open up to each other, the window between you allows you to know each other free of illusions and be truly intimate with each other. “In a committed relationship, a couple constructs a wall that shields them from any outside forces that have the power to split them. They look at the world outside their relationship through a shared window of openness and honesty. The couple is a unit, and they have a united front to deal with children, in-laws, and friends.” (Glass, “Not ‘Just Friends’”)

When a love affair happens, the unfaithful partner has built a wall to shut out the marriage partner and has opened a window to let the affair partner in. After the affair, the walls and windows must be reconstructed to be in line with the “safety code” every relationship house requires. A solid wall needs to be established to block out the affair partner and the window between the marriage partners needs to be installed and kept open. Appropriate walls are necessary to safeguard the relationship against further betrayal.

Further guidelines to follow to protect a relationship are:

  1. Not to discuss relationship problems with anyone who could be a potential alternative to your spouse. When you complain about your partner or listen to somebody else’s complains, you establish intimacy. That opens a window and begins to create a bond with the outsider that then often develops into an affair.
  2. Only discuss your relationship with a professional or a person who is a true friend of the marriage. A friend of the marriage is somebody who is not in competition with the marriage but reinforces the value of your committed relationship and being honest with your partner. ”Single people on the prowl or married people who openly complain about their current relationship are least likely to be friends of the marriage” (Glass). A meddling mother or father who is not able to see their own child in their true light is also not the right person to commiserate with. If you cannot be sure that the other person will encourage you to speak to your partner and work through things, do not talk to them.
  3. When one of you has a friend who wants to talk about personal problems, be careful about your boundaries. Include your partner in these conversations or helping gestures towards the friend. The moment you keep a secret, you have created a wall that shuts out your partner.

Click to read AFFAIRS PART 1 “Assumptions Versus Facts”  or AFFAIRS PART 2 “Lying and Gaslighting”.

 You can also read or listen to my three part article “I Don’t Trust You“. 

Angelika

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my blog. If you are enjoying my articles, you can subscribe to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to enter your email address in the field in the left sidebar. Thank you for your support!

Affairs PART 2 – Lying and Gaslighting

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When an affair is disclosed or discovered, the betrayed partner experiences a traumatic shock. There usually is an acute sense of unreality. Their whole world and everything they believed to be true has collapsed. How traumatized he or she is depends on the duration and manner of the affair, and also on the way of discovery. Couples regain trust more readily after voluntary confessions than after repeated denials that are eventually refuted by evidence. The whole truth needs to come out as soon as possible in order to rebuild the trust.

While for men the affair itself seems to be the issue, for women being lied to and deceived adds extra salt to the wound and makes it less likely that they can forgive their partner. The denials add insult to injury and cause a double wound to deal with.

Annette Lawson found in “Adultery: An analysis of love and betrayal” that confessing an extramarital affair appears less risky for men than for women. Negative consequences are three times more frequent for men when their wives discovered their affairs than for those who voluntarily confessed. How husbands found out about wives’ infidelity made no significant difference.

According to Jennifer and Burt Schneider’s study on sex addictions, 84% of unfaithful partners deny the affair at first. They try to assess how much the partner knows and how much they absolutely have to tell. They are usually afraid that admitting the whole truth will make things worse. The opposite is the case. As humans we have a tendency to fill gaps in with something negative, often our worst fears. The betrayed partner senses that part of the true story is being withheld and will involuntarily fill the gaps in with their worst assumptions.

Most betrayed spouses would rather know the truth, even though it is painful. Over time, we can usually adjust to the truth, in fact 96% of partners feel over time that disclosure was the best thing. Nothing is worse than filling the unknown in with our own fears and insecurities. The betrayed partner goes through a period of great emotional turmoil when things just don’t add up and obvious signs of infidelity are denied.

Dragging out admissions are comparable to driving long distances on a flat tire. Delaying the repair can cause irreparable damage to the wheel and axle. Denials or half truths cause the same damage to the relationship.

The suspicious partner might hear from the unfaithful spouse, “I am disappointed that you don’t trust me”, or “You always accuse me wrongfully of having secrets or being dishonest”, or “I am telling you the truth. Have I ever lied to you before?” When the cheating spouse continues to try to disarm their partner by attacking them for not trusting them, this is called “gaslighting”. The term comes from the 1944 movie “Gaslight” with Ingrid Bergman, in which a husband plays mind games, trying to convince his wife that she is crazy and is imagining things. Gaslighting means gradually manipulating somebody into questioning their own memory, perception or sanity.

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The betrayed spouse begins to doubt her or his own perceptions and sense of reality. Knowing the truth brings the tremendous relief of realizing “I am not paranoid” and also the opportunity to finally be able to adjust to the new reality. The couple cannot start rebuilding a new foundation as long as the unfaithful partner continues to lie.

Once the full truth is revealed, how both partners react significantly influences the road to recovery. An affair can be the catalyst to save their marriage if both partners are willing to commit to honesty, mutual understanding, time and patience. The betrayed partner needs two commitments: the affair will be stopped and all their questions will be answered truthfully.

The straying partner might also be in a place of suffering, as their life is in pieces and they cannot escape the pain they have caused. They are faced with the choice to relinquish the affair or the marriage. And whether they decide to save their marriage or build a relationship with the affair partner, both are hard roads ahead, in which trust needs to be built laboriously. The reason why 75% of all people who enter into a long-term relationship with the affair partner end up failing is that it is hard to trust your partner to be loyal to you, unless both partners have really understood why affairs happen and how to prevent them.

Click here to read AFFAIRS PART 1 “Assumptions Versus Facts” or my three part article “I Don’t Trust You“. 

AFFAIRS PART 3 “Boundaries” will be posted on Nov. 19.

 

Angelika

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my blog. If you are enjoying my articles, you can subscribe to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to enter your email address in the field in the left sidebar. Thank you for your support!

Affairs PART 1 – Assumptions Versus Facts

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“Every era has its defining stories, and one of ours may be a new crisis of infidelity” (Shirley P. Glass). The statistics show that at least one or both parties in 50% of all couples, will break their vows of sexual and emotional exclusivity during the time of the relationship. Shirley P. Glass, one of the world’s leading experts on infidelity, concludes that 25% of wives and 44 % of husbands had extramarital intercourse.

When it comes to affairs, we feel we know why they happen. However, “much of the conventional wisdom about what causes affairs and how to repair relationships is misguided” (Glass). Some of the facts, Shirley P. Glass shares in her book “Not ‘Just Friends’” are surprising and thought-provoking:

 

  1. ASSUMPTION Affairs happen in unhappy or unloving marriages

FACT Affairs happen in good or bad marriages. Affairs are less about love and more about sliding across boundaries.

 

  1. ASSUMPTION Infidelity happens when there is sex

FACT You can have an affair without having sex. Infidelity is any emotional or sexual intimacy that violates trust. Emotional affairs are characterized by secrecy, emotional intimacy, and sexual chemistry. Emotional affairs can be more threatening than a brief sexual fling.

 

  1. ASSUMPTION Affairs occur mostly because of sexual attraction

FACT The attraction is more about how the unfaithful partner is mirrored back through the adoring eyes of the affair partner. A positive mirroring occurs. Being admired and adored is often the missing feeling in a long term relationship or marriage when we know our partner’s faults and issues. “We like how we see ourselves reflected in the other person’s eyes. By contrast, in our long-term relationships, our reflection is like a 5x makeup mirror in which our flaws are magnified”(Glass). The affair might also be an opportunity for the unfaithful spouse to bring out different sides or play a different role.

 

  1. ASSUMPTION A cheating partner almost always leaves clues

FACT The majority of affairs are never detected. In long-term relationships people develop a “truth bias” in which they are more likely to judge their partners as truthful and less likely to detect deception.

 

  1. ASSUMPTION A person having an affair shows less interest in sex at home

FACT That can be the case. However, the excitement of an affair can also increase the passion at home.

 

  1. ASSUMPTION The person having an affair isn’t “getting enough” at home

FACT The truth is that the unfaithful partner may not be giving enough. He or she is less invested in the committed relationship.

 

  1. ASSUMPTION A straying partner finds fault with everything you do

FACT He or she may be critical but they may also show up as extra attentive out of guilt or to escape detection.

 

  1. ASSUMPTION Talking about the affair with the betrayed partner only creates more upset

FACT The opposite is true. Talking about the affair is the only way to rebuild trust. The unfaithful partner needs to be open to answering any questions.

 

  1. ASSUMPTION There is no recovering from an affair

FACT If both partners are still committed to their marriage the aftermath of an affair can offer them an opportunity to strengthen their bond. If the couple is willing to work through their difficulties, they can make their marriage even better than before. The motivation often is that they want the pain that they went through to mean something. It is possible to emerge from betrayal and build an even stronger marriage.

 

  1. ASSUMPTION Starting over with the affair partner guarantees happiness

FACT 75% of all unfaithful individuals who marry the affair partner or enter into a long term relationship with them end up separated/divorced.

 

If you found this article interesting watch out for the next two blogs. PART 2 “Lying and Gaslighting” will be posted on Nov. 18, and PART 3 “Boundaries” will be posted on Nov. 19, 2018.

You can also read or listen to my three part article on trust by clicking here.

Angelika

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my blog. If you are enjoying my articles, you can subscribe to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to enter your email address in the field in the left sidebar. Thank you for your support!

Balance (Costa Rica 3)

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“Libras are sooo balanced”, my mom would say a bit sarcastically, commenting on both my dad’s as well as my own astrological sign, “but just wait until they become unbalanced, then you better go into hiding. The arm of the scale will just come crashing down, once the Libra has lost the balance.”

Now, that was my mom’s perspective, yet, I have to say for myself that there was certainly a grain of truth in what she observed. Often people comment on how calm and balanced I appear to be. What most people don’t know is that being in that serene state requires awareness when I am about to become unbalanced, and the conscious effort to create balance every single day. At different times in my life, I have allowed myself to lose that self-care piece and have become emotionally, or mentally, or physically, or spiritually unbalanced, or all of the above. I learned some lessons the hard way. When I am unbalanced, I am not able to show up the way I want to show up. That has made me hyper aware of how to remain centred.

Returning from my trip to Costa Rica, has been a journey of integration. Integrating the learned lessons and experiences while getting back into routines which allow me to create an equilibrium between work and relaxation, between intellect and heart/spirit, between doing and being, between external and internal focus, between socializing and alone time.

Personally, I find that I need to make time for myself first thing in the morning to raise my vibration, or in other words, to get myself into a joyous positive state.

In Costa Rica, the sun rose at 5:30 a.m., beckoning me to start my day. One of the resorts we were staying at offered 6:30 a.m. yoga in an outside patio. You could see and hear the warm rain falling, smell the plants, hear the birds and monkeys calling. It felt like a piece of paradise. This was the perfect start to balance the body, the mind, the heart and the spirit, and to create a day that unfolds smoothly and gracefully.

At home, I start my day by journaling, to address any of the messages from my dreams, which my subconscious has brought to my attention during the night. Sometimes that means I need an emotional release or a belief change or I need to work with some parts (IFS). Being an observer of different parts (voices) that come up in me and honouring them, allows me to be less reactive and more aware.

I then get on my stationary bike to activate my endorphins. After that work out, I call a wonderful client of mine every morning to do a spiritual mind treatment together.

A spiritual mind treatment is affirmative prayer. In that ritual, we connect with Source energy, recognize that we are one with that one Divine creative power and affirm what we want to manifest each day. We end with gratitude, knowing that we are already receiving what we have asked for, and release our words to the Universe.

 

How do you start your day and create balance for yourself?

We all have different ways of how to get and keep ourselves in a state of emotional, mental, physical and spiritual balance. What is your practice? Is it meditation, yoga, drawing tarot cards, playing music, exercising?

Or if you don’t have an established routine for yourself, consider what would give you personally the best start to your day. How do you get yourself in a great mood, into heart-openness and in a state of clear mental focus, so that you can begin each day with positive expectations?

By consciously creating routines that meet your needs and help you to experience peace and calm, you can respond to and grow through many of the challenges that come our way every day. Each day can be a wonderful day when we consciously choose to make it so.

 

Angelika

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my blog. If you are enjoying my articles, you can subscribe to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to enter your email address in the field in the left sidebar. Thank you for your support!

 

Learning How to Sustain Ourselves Ecologically (Costa Rica 2)

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In my last blog article “Pura Vida”, I mentioned to you how much my trip to Costa Rica has moved and inspired me. Our outreach day, during which we visited the San Francisco Micro Farm and Sustainable School near Fortuna, was especially moving.

I wonder if you would agree with me that the future of our planet depends on everybody learning how to respect nature and live ecologically? If so, you will love this school project. The children in this school are not only taught academics but they are taught how to sustain themselves through ecological farming.

Here are some of the amazing things that they are doing in this school which will change the world if more schools take on this concept:

  1. The school serves lunch, using 80% of the food the children grow themselves.
  2. The garden is used to learn health. A path leads through the garden which illustrates the digestive system from ingestion to elimination. Along the path the herbs which assist with each part of digestion are planted.
  3. They learn geometry in their garden.
  4. They learn about ecological sustainability.
  5. They have a “Leave No Trace Behind” policy.  No garbage comes into the school, and no garbage goes out!
  6. What is left over after they are fed, they learn to market and sell.
  7. They have incorporated disabled kids into their program long before it became mandatory by law.

Bird’s Eye Video of the San Francisco School & Farm

Although the government is studying this public school as a model for the rest of the country, they don’t officially recognize or financially support it. The school is privately funded, and often struggles financially to pay the farm hands, and other workers and educators.

The great news is that it only takes US$ 400 / month to sustain the key farm-hand, and keep operations rolling smoothly. So that means by raising US$ 5,000, we can sustain them for another year!

So today, I have a special love-based request of you. If you feel inspired by reading about this school, seeing the photos and watching the videos, please consider donating to this 501-C3 Non-Profit organization to reach the goal of helping the school run for another year. You will be donating to a tax-deductible, non-profit organization that really is set up to change how we teach our children all across this planet.

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Our team has set up a GoFundMe page here. You can donate directly on the go fund me page (my preferred option), or give me the donation during your next session, and I will contribute for you.

To show you my own commitment, I will give everybody who donates $50 or more $15 off your next session with me during the months of November and December. Even a $25 donation already adds up and helps. In gratitude for your support and open heart.

Angelika

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my blog. If you are enjoying my articles, you can subscribe to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to enter your email address in the field in the left sidebar. Thank you for your support!

 

Pura Vida (Costa Rica 1)

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“Pura Vida”, says the vendor at the beach with a smile as I leave his stall with a pair of hand painted shoes for my shoe loving—or should I say, shoe crazy—daughter. One of the sneakers I bought for her shows a sloth, the other a toucan.

Costa Ricans, who call themselves Ticos, have adopted the beautiful philosophy of “Pura Vida”. They use this term to say hello, to say goodbye, to say that they are doing well. Pura Vida is the way Ticos live. They don’t stress about things the way most of us around the world do; they are more laid back and content. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that Costa Rica rates as one of the happiest countries in the world. Ticos have a very relaxed, simple way of looking at life. They are conscious of nature, and they make family and friends their primary focus. Pura Vida is being thankful for what you have and not dwelling on lack or any misfortune.

Pura Vida also means that everything has its own time and takes usually longer than expected, especially when it comes to getting from one destination to the next. On our 12 day trip to beautiful Costa Rica, we traveled from the capital San Jose to the volcano area of Arenal, from Arenal to the coast and the National Park in Manuel Antonio, and then back again to San Jose to fly home. All unfolded in Tico time and by going with the flow. We eventually got where we needed to go, even if not as originally planned.

At the end of this trip, I am filled with appreciation, immense gratitude and countless memories. I was travelling with an amazing group of entrepreneurs, each of them brilliant in their own way, and with inspiring and heart-centered Bob Evans and his supportive crew of conscious team members helping us entrepreneurs logistically, technologically and even emotionally. Every one of us gave a 15 minute TED talk-like speech as one of our videos for becoming part of the Personal Development App (PDA).

When everything is complete, each of us 13 entrepreneurs will all also have our own App. I am excited that I can now bring educational and informative content in written, audio and visual form to you via another platform.

I also had the incredible honour of facilitating a workshop for this group of messengers, who each impressed me in so many different ways. The workshop was about working with our protective parts and our inner child, which of course loves the idea of Pura Vida. I was a bit apprehensive about being mic-ed up and video taped while teaching, but it was beautiful to see what came up for each participant, despite being on camera.

The last two weeks held so many experiences for all of us that I have decided to write a Costa Rica blog series. Personally, the trip brought me out of my comfort zone, taught me a lot about myself, filled my heart with joy, and inspired me immensely. A community outreach program was part of this trip, and one of my next blogs will be about visiting the alternative school which we were so fortunate to be invited to.

Different fellow travelers have also inspired me and I cannot wait to write about some of them or share their wisdom. I had never traveled with a group before, and for me this trip became an interesting walk between being part of the group and connecting, while at other times expressing my need for quiet and alone time. That meant staying back from some activities or get-togethers, to be able to keep my inner balance and to recharge.

Upon embarking on this journey, I had different parts inside of me who were quite polarized. On one hand, I have a part which loves travelling and was excited about going to not only a country but a continent I hadn’t been to before. I have a part which likes to experience new things. I might not be as adventurous as other people, but there is a part that certainly has a sense of adventure. I also have a Zen part which can go with the flow and trust that all will be fine. I tell you, that part came in handy when we were navigating the steep and curvy pothole-filled Costa Rican roads with two vans weighed down by luggage and eight people each.

On the other side, I had parts come up before—and during my trip—that were concerned. I have a part that does not appreciate surprises at all, and this trip was filled with surprises. In theory there was a schedule, but it was subject to last-minute changes on a daily basis, when something showed up due to the group dynamics or the weather; it was rainy season after all. And, boy, did this trip require being adaptable.

I also have a part, like many of us, that is somewhat uncomfortable with the Unknown and this trip was new for me in every way. I had different parts inside of me which were a bit concerned. A safety conscious part of me was questioning if it would it be safe to be in Costa Rica. A part of me that is rather private was wondering what it would be like to be followed by cameras every day and every step of the way. All these parts relaxed as the days went on. After a while, I barely noticed the video cameras anymore.

I also have a part, and that was probably one of the loudest “voices” in my inner system, that was concerned about being with others and all the sensory input coming at me on a continuous basis. It knows that as an introvert an HSP,  I need alone time like other people need water or air to breathe.

Sensory overload is an experience most Highly Sensitive People have. Travelling in a van for many hours with six or seven other people, where the radio was playing and two or three conversations were going on at the same time, while the scenery outside also wanted to be taken in, was extremely challenging for me.

I am so grateful to my fellow travelers and to Robert Evans for giving me space and alone time after each of those experiences and fully supporting me in taking care of myself. Their understanding and support allowed me to have a fabulous time and experience a life changing trip in full Pura Vida. I am returning home with a heart filled with joy and a mind filled with fabulous ideas and insights which I look forward to sharing with you over the next few weeks. Pura Vida is a beautiful concept to embrace and bring back with me to our busy life.

 

To download the PDA onto your phone, go to the App store and look for the following logo.

 

If you are wondering if you are an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) please read my blog post “Are You an HSP?”

If you are curious about finding out more about working with your parts (IFS Inspired Coaching) contact me for a free phone consultation. I offer sessions for individuals and couples.

Angelika

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my blog. If you are enjoying my articles, you can subscribe to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to enter your email address in the field in the left sidebar. Thank you for your support!

“Only Over My Dead Body” – Hiding Parts of Us in Relationships

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Listen to the blog article as an extended version on my podcast, or read it below!

David was always interested in motorcycles. But when he and Lisa met during university, he didn’t have the money to buy a bike. Lisa lost her cousin in a motorcycle accident and felt very strongly that riding a motor bike meant taking an unnecessary risk. When David and Lisa fell in love with each other, they were fascinated by their differences in personality and character. Within the first year of their marriage, their daughter arrived, and two years later, their twins followed. David put the wish for a bike aside, especially because he knew how Lisa would feel about him riding one. She told him he would only ride a bike “over my dead body”. So David exiled the part in him that was dreaming about riding across Canada on a bike.

David also used to love watching action and science fiction movies, but Lisa did not like any kind of violence. He slowly began to exile the part in him that found enjoyment in these movies. Lisa preferred to go to the theatre, art shows and other cultural events. David felt out of place in those settings. At first, he went with her because he simply loved to spend time with her, but then he became more and more reluctant. Lisa asked him less and less to go to these activities. They stayed home more. Instead of finding a friend to join her, she began to exile her culture loving part for David.

Lisa was always interested in meditations, Reiki and in crystals. When David met Lisa, her apartment was full of crystals, she went to a weekly Reiki share and meditated every day. She considered learning how to use crystals for healing and how to read tarot cards. She easily connected with others and made new friends quickly. As much as David was originally fascinated by her intuitive and spiritual nature and by her ability to connect with others, it over time began to scare him; he felt left out and threatened. He would either get clingy and retreat when Lisa met with her spiritual friends, or cynical and offensive. When that cynical part took David over, he called her friends “airheaded dreamers” who were into “new age nonsense”. Lisa stopped going to the Reiki shares and when her kids arrived, she even stopped meditating. The crystals were banished to a corner in the basement, and she gave up on her dream to be a healer. She exiled the part of her which thrived on intuitive and spiritual endeavours.

Lisa also loved animals, but David was bitten by a dog when he was young and did not want pets. Lisa gave in and exiled her pet loving part for David. After all, David had given up his interest in bikes for her. Each time she met somebody on the street walking a St Bernard, her favourite kind of dog, she longingly stopped to pat the dog, wishing she could get one for her kids and for herself.

Ten years after they originally met, David and Lisa appreciate each other as parents but they have an almost non-existing life beyond their children. Both are carrying resentment because they feel they had to hide away some parts of themselves. David’s brother just bought himself a bike and took part of the summer off to ride from coast to coast. David is feeling a dissatisfaction in his life and annoyance towards Lisa but can’t quite put his finger on the reason for it, until he realizes the connection. There is a part in him that feels trapped and angry. And if he does not address this, the part might take over in a destructive way. Lately, he has found himself very attracted to a female colleague who embodies freedom and danger for him by the way she lives her life.

Lisa has also been feeling depressed. The other day, she bumped into a spiritually minded girlfriend who she had lost touch with. When her friend Valerie told her how she has opened an alternative healing centre with a group of people, Lisa realized how much her spiritual part has been starving. She accepted her friends invitation to check out the centre but did not tell David about it, weary of how he will feel about this.

David and Lisa have done what we often naturally do in relationships. We all have many different parts. Some parts are given space in our relationships, others don’t get any room for expression. Some of our parts we already had to hide away and exile when we were young because we were told that they were bad or wrong. Or we experienced that we were hurt when showing one of those more vulnerable parts. Those hidden childhood wounds affect our relationships subconsciously in a variety of ways. Shadow Energetics works on embracing these dark or light shadows which other people mirror back to us. IFS (Internal Family Systems) Therapy also works towards more wholeness by connecting, unburdening and reintegrating these younger exiled parts.

Beyond our original exiles, we often also disown parts of us when we are in a relationship, in order to make our partner and ourselves feel safer. Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS, calls these parts neo-exiles. These are parts of us that are exiled because they are seen as threatening to the relationship.

When they met, Lisa and David were drawn to each other by the longing we all have to be loved and feel safe. Lisa liked how strong David was and how he could fix anything around the house or solve any practical problems. She liked that he was, as she says “a typical guy”. He was confident, had a strong male energy and seemed to be in control of things. The younger child parts inside of her felt looked after and safe.

David loved Lisa’s free spirit and passion. She was more outgoing than he was and had such a loving open way with people. He felt truly seen and loved by her ability to accept others. His younger parts were drawn to her emotional intelligence and fascinated by her joy for life and for people. He felt emotionally taken care of and accepted.

Over time, the qualities that attracted Lisa and David to each other became a threat to their relationship, due to their own vulnerable child parts which feared being unlovable and abandoned. They unconsciously chose to exile parts of themselves, out of fear of losing the relationship.

In order to reassure our partner and our own vulnerable parts, we might—similar to Lisa and David—exile certain parts of ourselves and expect our partner to do the same. “Unlike the parts you exiled when young, however, these neo-exiles once had a great deal of power. They aren’t used to being excluded, and they continue to have loud voices in your inner family despite their loss of influence. If, because of how you interact with your partner, there continues to be no room in your life for them, they can sabotage the relationship.” (Schwartz, You Are The One, 100)

Both Lisa and David noticed that they felt restricted in their expression of their passions and resentful about having to give up parts of themselves. They needed to become aware of the dynamics and the fears underneath.

The fear of not being lovable if we show our true self is at the core of the creation of neo-exiles. “There are many different versions of this neo-exiling dance, all fueled by one or both partners’ abandonment anxiety.” (Schwartz, You Are The One, 103)

The next step for Lisa and David is to work out ways in which these parts can be reintegrated into their relationship. What is a solution for David to live the part in him that loves the freedom of riding a bike and the excitement of action movies? What compromises can they find for Lisa to not have to exile her culture loving part, her spiritual energy and her dog loving part? Different techniques like IFS Inspired Coaching, Belief Changes through PSYCH-K® or Shadow Energetics, Emotional Releases or other coaching tools allow Lisa and David to create space for all parts of them.

Here is a JOURNAL EXERCISE if you are wondering about neo-exiles in your own relationship:

  1. What parts of yourself have you exiled / disowned in your relationship(s)?
  2. How much have your own fears led your partner—or other people you are in a relationship with—to exile parts of themselves?

 

If you are curious about finding out more about IFS inspired coaching and about working with your exiled parts contact me for a free phone consultation. I offer sessions for individuals and couples.

Angelika

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my blog. If you are enjoying my articles, you can subscribe to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to enter your email address in the field in the left sidebar. Thank you for your support!

Empathy, the Antidote for Shame

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Lina, single mother of three, is in the line up at the grocery store. She feels rushed to buy dinner and get home in time to prepare it. Sarah, her 3-year-old daughter, who she just picked up from a new daycare, is overtired and whiny. She starts grabbing chocolate bars, which are so conveniently placed in her view, and puts them into the cart. Lina, says “no” and places the bars back on the shelf. Sarah continues to reach and struggle to climb out of the cart. She starts crying at the top of her lungs. Lina turns beat red. She is clearly embarrassed about being stuck in the line with a screaming child.

A couple of customers seem to stare at her. She hears a woman’s voice behind her, “When kids are this overtired they belong in bed, not out shopping at the busiest time of the day.” Lina pretends not to have heard the comment. She feels shame for not being able to calm her daughter. In fact, she feels like a complete failure as a mother. She wants to just take her daughter and leave the store without buying the groceries, but that would be really embarrassing, she thinks, and what would they then eat for dinner? She takes deep breaths and continues moving forward in the line up.

When she reaches the cashier, the woman just smiles and gently says, “That’s a tricky age.. I still remember when my kids were that young…”. Lina smiles back relieved. “It’s not easy, is it?” says the cashier and pulls out a lolly pop. “May I give this to the princess…?”

Lina feels like a weight is lifting. She feels validated, seen and understood. Instead of being judged, she is acknowledged as doing her best. What she is experiencing is empathy.

In her research, Brené Brown has collected different definitions of how we experience empathy. Receiving empathy is “feeling emotional and physical warmth”, “feeling understood”, “feeling wrapped up in a blanket”, “feeling validated”, “feeling you are not alone because somebody else gets you” and “feeling somebody hears you or feels you”.

In her shame, Lina felt alone and unworthy as a mother. When the cashier extended empathy to her, the messages was, “You are not alone. We are alike and connected. I get your struggles. I am as human as you are.”

We feel completely alone when we are in shame. We might feel like we are the only one who experiences fertility struggles, or the only one who feels they are not a good parent, or the only one who feels not thin or attractive enough, or the only person who has an addiction, or the only one who was cheated on, or the only one who was physically, emotionally or sexually abused, or the only one who hasn’t found her/his perfect partner and so on.

There also is a difference between embarrassment and shame. We experience embarrassment in regards to a behaviour of ours. We feel embarrassed when we have perhaps said something we shouldn’t have said, or when we have done something that we view as a mistake, or when somebody points out something we are self-conscious of. Embarrassment is fleeting, and we know we are not the only one who has that experience.

I have been a coach for 14 years and have always scheduled my own appointments. It has happened throughout the years, that I have “dropped the ball” and double booked or thought I didn’t have an appointment when I did. Now, each of those incidents have caused me a fair amount of embarrassment. I had to claim responsibility, apologize and hope that the other person would still want to re-book. In most cases, the incident was forgiven. Because I deep down know and believe that I am, overall, a reliable and organized person, there was no shame attached to making these mistakes for me. However, they certainly were embarrassing.

Like all of us, I have also had moments of shame in my life, whether that was in regards to having an alcoholic family member, around my fertility struggles in my twenties, about weight gain at different points in my life, or in regards to marriage struggles or relationships ending. Most of these moments of shame had nothing to do with a specific behaviour of mine but all to do with feeling judged and feeling not good enough in some way.

We all know shame, even though some people have more shame to carry due to their personal history, but, as Brené Brown points out, “to have the capacity for shame is to be human”. Feeling shame is a common human experience, yet, shame—unlike guilt—does not serve us. Feeling guilty allows us to make amends for a behaviour and gives us a chance to become a better person. However, when somebody shames us, or when we shame ourselves, we are being defined by the worst mistakes we have ever made or the worst situations that ever happened to us. It feels like there is no way out of the shameful role we have played. The label sticks, whether that is “infertile”, “disappointment”, “unemployed”, “bad mother / father / wife / husband / daughter / son”,  “jealous girlfriend / boyfriend”, “financial failure”, “unwanted child”, “weak”, “angry”, “controlling”, “victim of abuse”…  A shame label always takes away our power to grow, to leave the past behind, and to show up differently.

According to Brené Brown, experiencing shame is “like being trapped in a deep and dark hole”, unable to see and feel that we can be a better version of who we are in a given moment in time. Shame means feeling disconnected and unworthy of “being a part of”. As humans, we are evolutionary hard wired for connection, and our fear of disconnection, of being excluded from our community, will always be present. We cannot get rid of shame or be completely shame resistant because we need the connection with others, but we can develop a certain shame resilience.

Shame resilience allows us to move through a shaming experiencing without twisting and shaping ourselves into sacrificing who we are. That means proudly being who we are “without performing, pleasing, perfecting or improving” (Brené Brown). Shame resilience happens when we move “from shame to empathy, from fear to courage, from blame to compassion, and from disconnection to connection” (Brené Brown).

Shame is a highly individualized experience. It is very personal. What is simply embarrassing for you, might bring up intense shame for somebody else due to their own history, and vise versa. When we are with another person who is experiencing shame, we have to be very careful not to project our own ideas of whether something is shaming or not onto them. Minimizing their experience does not help them, but rather increases the shame. When we minimize, the message we are articulating is, “you should not feel shame”. The other person ends up feeling ashamed that they are experiencing shame.

The only antidotes to shame are love, compassion and empathy. Shame hates being spoken. Shames grows and thrives through secrecy, silence and judgment. However, if we bring empathy to a situation which evokes shame, shame cannot survive.

Empathy, according to Theresa Wiseman, has four parts:

  1. We need to be able to take another person’s perspective and to see the world as the other person sees it.
  2. We need to be truly non-judgmental.
  3. We need to be able to understand what the other person is feeling.
  4. We need to be able to communicate our understanding of the other person’s feelings.

There is a difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy says, “poor you. I feel for you. I am not having your experience, but I feel sorry for you.” Sympathy exacerbates shame. Empathy, on the other hand, is like saying, “I feel with you.” The two most powerful words to heal shame are an empathetic, “me too”.

You might wonder, how you can have empathy with somebody who has had an experience you have never had? We don’t need to have gone through the exact same situation to know what it feels like. Empathy is not about connecting to a specific experience, but about connecting to the emotions an experience elicits.

Having had the same experience that somebody else has had can sometimes even get in the way of empathy. We are individuals and our experiences are very different. Instead of assuming that the other person feels the way we felt in that situation, we can be curious about what the other person is going through and we can offer to be with them in that experience.

 

If you are curious about finding out more about working with embarrassment and shame, contact me for a free phone consultation. I offer sessions for individuals and couples.

Angelika

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my blog. If you are enjoying my articles, you can subscribe to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to enter your email address in the field in the left sidebar. Thank you for your support!

Experiencing Shame: Women vs Men

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“Will you stop guilt tripping me?!” exclaims Peter. His wife Linda, sitting across from him, stops with surprise on her face. “I am not trying to make you feel guilty. I am just trying to get through to you. I want to see changes…” Her voice trails off. Peter has shut down. His body language indicates that what he is actually feeling right now is not guilt but shame.

Even though Peter feels that Linda is trying to control him by making him feel guilty, the emotion that is actually triggered for him is shame. Guilt and shame are related, yet they have different directions and are dissimilar emotions. We experience guilt when we feel that we have done something bad, we have made a mistake or not the strongest choice in a certain situation. We are able to apologize and let the other person know we will make a different choice next time. The focus is on the behaviour and we are separate from our behaviour. Shame is way more debilitating. It is the experience of being bad, of feeling that there is something profoundly or deeply wrong with who we are. Shame is directed at the person themselves. What is most devastating about this emotion is that we believe we deserve our shame. Shame corrodes the parts in us that believe that we can do better.

Shame is highly correlated with depression, rage, suicide, addictions, and eating disorders. Guilt, on the other hand, is inversely related to these experiences because the more we are able to separate ourselves from our actions, behaviours or choices, the less we are pulled into self-loathing or the feeling of worthlessness which leads to depression and addictions. We are able to see that we did something that was not in line with our values but we do not experience being fundamentally bad.

Most of us grew up with being shamed by our care-givers. As parents, we need to make clear distinctions between who our child is and what they did. A sentence like “You are a bad girl/bad boy” instead of “you are a good girl/boy but you didn’t make a good choice”, teaches us to feel ashamed. We carry this shame into our adult life and it gets triggered by similar situations and events.

In my last article, we explored the Inner Critic voice more and talked about how to cultivate an Inner Champion that helps us to not get caught up in shame and instead to feel good enough. The more shame we carry inside, the easier it is for our Inner Critic to make us feel flawed and lacking.

Brené Brown has researched how men and women experience shame differently and that there are gender specific shame issues. If we want to help our partner to not be activated into experiencing shame, we need to understand more about this emotion and how it affects us all.

Most of us, like Peter, are unaware that we are even experiencing shame. We will substitute the word shame with guilt. It is part of our culture that it is shaming in itself to admit to feeling shame. The assumption is if I am acknowledging shame, or like Brené Brown says “claiming shame”, it means I am somebody who should be ashamed. The same can apply to fear or anger. There is a stigma to feeling these emotions, so we are not even able to recognize them correctly. Anger can often cover up fear or shame.

Brené Brown points out that shame is the birthplace of perfectionism and anger. She says, “in my experience, men have two switches when it comes to shame: pissed off and shut down.” Peter in our example shuts down and has shut down many times before in his interactions with his wife. Linda is unaware of how she triggers shame for him and is unable to help him out of that experience of shame.

It starts with recognizing and acknowledging the emotion of shame. “If we don’t claim shame, it claims us” (Brené Brown). It corrodes all our relationships and we might give up on them because we can just not stand the feeling of not being good enough anymore. When we claim this emotion as what it really is, we can work with those younger parts in us which we have exiled because they were shamed by somebody in the past. Working through shame gives us the gift to live a life without playing small. It’s the opportunity to step into who we truly are, and to build the respectful loving relationships we really want.

According to Brené Brown’s research, shame is different for women and men. The women she interviewed told her that shame is “being rejected, not being able to do it all and most of all shame is people seeing you are struggling or failing”. Linda feels most ashamed when she feels she didn’t manage to be the perfect wife, perfect mother, perfect daughter and perfect career woman. Peter can trigger her shame when he shares with their common friends or his mother that Linda had a fight with her own mother or yelled at their daughter. She feels deeply ashamed when what she says is “private” is revealed without her consent. These are the areas she feels vulnerable and exposed in and Peter has a hard time understanding that being exposed and seen as flawed triggers the experience of shame for his wife.

One woman in Brené Browns studies said, “You work hard to keep up appearance and shame is when the mask is being pulled off and the unlikable parts of you are seen. It feels unbearable to be seen.” Shame for women is often also being an outsider and not belonging. Not getting “a seat at the table with the pretty popular girls”.

The shame experience that comes up for a lot for women is when others see that we are not holding it all together. Life for women is often about making sure no one ever sees how hard you are working to hold it all together. Not only is it shaming to not be able to keep all the balls in the air, but it’s shaming when people see us struggle.

Shame is also connected to what we as women believe to be feminine qualities. According to Jim Mihalik’s Research from Boston College, that is “being thin, nice, modest, and using all our resources in the pursuit of looking better”. So there is shame attached to not having the perfect body or not looking perfect at all times. Being caught in our pajamas or not having the perfect slim and trim body that the media have brain washed us into believing we need to have. PSYCH-K® or the belief change technique from Shadow Energetics can help reprogram our gender stereotypical subconscious beliefs.

For men, shame is “failure, at work, on the football field, in marriage, in bed, with money, with your family, with your children, it doesn’t matter.” Shame is being wrong as opposed to doing something wrong. Shame is a sense of being defective. Shame occurs when people think you are soft or afraid. Shame for men is connected to being perceived as weak. And shame is being criticized or being ridiculed. Peter feels when Linda criticizes him that he is defective and a failure as a husband, a father and as the provider of the family.

How can Linda and Peter get out of this dynamic of triggering each others shame and either of them shutting down, or getting angry in response?

As a first step, they both need to learn to become aware when shame is being triggered for either of them and have empathy for each other. Present day interactions bring up our conscious and subconscious childhood memories. With IFS (Internal Family Systems), Linda and Peter can rescue and unburden the inner children which have experienced shame in the past. As they heal these parts in themselves with self-compassion and empathy, shame loses its power over them. As they both work individually on their own childhood experiences related to shame, they are activated less and less into this emotion. They are able to communicate differently and problem solve better without this incapacitating emotion taking over.

Let me finish with another quote by Brené Brown:

“Show me a woman who can sit with a man in vulnerability

and really hold space for him,

I show you a woman who has really done her work.

If you show me a man who can be with a woman in struggle,

who is in pain, and he can just hear her and validate her,

without trying to fix it or make it better,

I show you a man who has done his work.”

 

If you are curious about finding out more about working with your parts in general or the emotion of shame specifically, contact me for a free phone consultation. I offer sessions for individuals and couples.

Angelika

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my blog. If you are enjoying my articles, you can subscribe to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to enter your email address in the field in the left sidebar. Thank you for your support!

 

 

What Would Your Inner Champion Say?

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Listen to the blog article as an extended version on my podcast, or read it below!

In my article “Inner Critic – Friend or Foe?”, I gave you some ways of achieving separation from the Inner Critic voice we all have inside of us. In this article, I want to elaborate more and offer you a meditation to develop a loving inner voice.

Let’s first of all examine how we usually react to the Critic. Responses that don’t work very well are to ignore it, argue with it or try to banish it. We cannot get rid of a part of our psyche. Even if it goes underground for a bit, it will come back up again, and most likely with more power. In its own distorted way, our Inner Critic is actually trying to help us. Instead of battling with it, we can discover what it is trying to do for us and make a positive connection with it. We can begin to appreciate its efforts and as it begins to trust us, we can create a cooperative relationship with it and transform it into a valuable resource.

Some of the motivations the Inner Critic has are protecting us from judgment or rejection, trying to get approval for us, preventing damage, keeping us safe from attack or keeping us from acting like a parent who didn’t take care of us well.

Images by Jay Earley & Bonnie Weiss

 

Jay Earley and Bonnie Weiss distinguish between 7 types of Inner Critics:

  1. The Perfectionist Inner Critic tries to get us to do everything perfectly. This can make it difficult to finish projects or to even get started on them.
  2. The Inner Controller tries to control impulsive behaviour such as overeating, drinking, or getting enraged.
  3. The Taskmaster teams up with our Inner Pusher and tries to get us to work hard by telling us that we are lazy, stupid or incompetent. It often battles with another part that procrastinates.
  4. The Underminer tries to undermine our self-confidence and self esteem so that we won’t take risks that might end in failure. It might prevent us from getting too big, powerful or visible in order to avoid rejection or attack.
  5. The Destroyer attacks our fundamental self-worth. It is deeply shaming and tells us we shouldn’t exist.
  6. The Guilt Tripper attacks us for specific actions we took or didn’t take. It makes us feel bad and is unforgiving. It might also make us feel guilty for what it considers to be unacceptable behaviours.
  7. The Molder tries to get us to fit a certain mold or act in a certain way that is based on the values of your family or society. It might tell us we need to be outgoing, caring, intellectual, polite, a sweet little girl or a tough guy.

All our Inner Critics are unique. You might have an Inner Critic that has characteristics of two of the described types or wants to be a called a different name.

A powerful antidote to the harsh and shaming Inner Critic voice is to develop an Inner Champion. The Champion does not try to argue or fight with the Critic, or try to get rid of it. It supports us in being ourselves and in feeling good about ourselves. The Inner Champion is the ideal supportive parent. It helps us to see the positive truth about ourselves. It nurtures and cares for us. The Inner Champion helps us by setting boundaries with the Inner Critic, nurturing, providing guidance and planning actions.

Images by Jay Earley & Bonnie Weiss

 

In response to the seven types of Critics, there are also seven types of Inner Champions:

  1. The Perfectionist

In the face of the Perfectionist Critic, the Inner Champion can support us by pointing out that most jobs just need to be done well enough, not to perfection. It has the wisdom to know that it is also important to go with the flow and let things evolve rather than trying to get everything perfect. It allows us to be a learner who doesn’t need to know everything from the start. It understands what a rough draft is. It reminds us that it’s human to make mistakes and that it’s okay when things are imperfect. It supports us to create balance in our life, to rest and enjoy life.

  1. The Inner Controller

In response to the Inner Controller Critic, our Inner Champion reminds us that our feelings and needs matter and to explore what is actually going on underneath the addictive behaviour. What are we distracting ourselves from and what is it that we really need? Like a yoga teacher, it supports us to be centred and in touch with our body so we can follow our body’s signals, which naturally brings more moderation. It supports our need for healthy pleasure and sensuality in life.

  1. The Taskmaster

When we have a strong Taskmaster Critic, our Inner Champion will help us to work efficiently and accomplish something but without expecting that we need to overwork. It recognizes that we are just perfect the way we are, independent of our accomplishments. It believe that we are Superman or Superwoman and that we can easily achieve what we set out to. It recognizes our strengths and special qualities and gives us self-confidence.

  1. The Underminer

The job of the Champion in the face of the Underminer critic is to discern when there is real danger and when there isn’t. It becomes our cheerleader to venture out and succeed. It understands that we have many more inner and outer resources than when we were a child. It recognizes that we can handle being large or visible. It holds a vision of us being smart, creative and able to make a mark on the world.

  1. The Destroyer

In answer to the Destroyer Critic, our Inner Champion affirms that we have the right to exist, to feel what we feel, to set limits, and to be powerful. The Inner Champion nurtures us, it loves us and cares for us. It has great compassion and wants us to feel good and whole. It holds us close and tells us how precious we are. Sometimes the Destroyer Inner Critic has turned anger or aggression inward. The Champion redirects that anger toward where it belongs. It reminds us that we have the right to be angry when others have hurt or neglected us.

  1. The Guilt Tripper

In the face of the Guilt Tripper Inner Critic, our Inner Champion supports us in feeling good about ourselves and our decisions or actions. It puts things into perspective and shines a light on your intentions and motivations. It reminds us that our intentions were good or that we acted from the knowledge and wisdom we had at a given time. It might remind us that we are a good person at heart and that our past behaviour is separate from who we are.

  1. The Molder

In response to the Molder Critic, the Champion helps us to see that the molder values are not the only way to live your life. It supports us in determining our own choices and ways of being. It reminds us that we are a good person even if we choose to live our life in a way that goes against our upbringing and culture. It supports us in being ourselves and living according to our values and our calling.

The above descriptions and images by Jay Earley and Bonnie Weiss are only meant as an inspiration. The Inner Champion might emerge in whatever way is unique and helpful to you. Your Inner Champion is often modeled by supportive or inspiring people from your past or current life, or by well-known people from the present or from history that you don’t know personally but admire, or even by figures of literature, TV or movies.

Join me for a MEDITATION TO AWAKEN YOUR INNER CRITIC by clicking on the link below.

Join me on Sunday, August 12 for a workshop in Mississauga from 9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. You will learn how to work with your Inner Critic and develop an Inner Champion. For more information or to register, please call me.

Angelika

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my blog. If you are enjoying my articles, you can subscribe to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to enter your email address in the field in the left sidebar. Thank you for your support!

You Are My Valued Tor-Mentor

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In my last article called “Relationship Dance” we met Sue and John, who were caught up in a dynamic of one of them retreating and the other one pursuing. There are other patterns we fall into as a couple.

Karen and Frank came in because they agreed that Frank’s anger and jealousy was destroying their relationship. Their dance was that, whenever he was stressed and upset, she tried to rationalize with him. She wanted to show him that there was no reason to feel stressed. However, the more she rationalized, the more he felt judged and not heard, and the angrier he usually became.

A similar dynamic was going on in regards to Frank feeling jealous of Karen’s relationship with her two adult sons from her first marriage. Karen was dismissive of his insecurities and told him that her sons would always be more important than he was. The more jealous and angry he became, the more Karen wanted to avoid him and not even come home but rather stay the night at one of her sons’ homes when she visited them.

Both partners show up in this dance taken over by their protective parts. Frank’s protectors are jealousy and anger. Karen’s protectors are the rational part, a dismissive part and a part that wants her to hide or run.

We have learned to exile our sensitive and vulnerable child parts. Those parts in us are often love-starved and carry limiting beliefs about relationships. We enter intimate partnerships and hope to get the love those exiles crave from our partner. Because our vulnerable child parts are clingy, needy or feel inadequate, our partner often ends up feeling overburdened or not good enough. Due to the fact that we are disconnected from our own vulnerable inner children, we end up judging each other for having exiled parts and protective behaviours.

Internal Family Systems work, or short IFS, offers a solution to this seemingly impossible cycle. We all have a source of love within us referred to as “Self”. This is our compassionate core essence. From Self, we can retrieve our exiled wounded child parts and become the primary caretaker for them. When we take good care of our own parts and they trust us, they don’t have to take over. The exiled children don’t have to desperately bond into our partner. Our protective parts, like the controlling one, or the angry one, or the retreating one, can also relax, instead of dominating the interactions. That makes it easier for our partner to be the secondary caretaker of our vulnerable inner children.

In our sessions, Karen was able to witness how the angry and jealous protectors were revealing some very vulnerable younger parts inside of Frank. When Frank was 5, his dad died, and when he was 8, his mother surprisingly remarried while Frank was staying at his grandparents. When he came home, everything had changed. The little boy experienced a tremendous amount of grief over first losing his dad and then losing the close connection with his mother. He never grew to like the step-father, who he felt was an intruder. When his mom remarried, he felt betrayed and abandoned. He had learned that the people he loves will leave him and betray him.

Using IFS, he was able to re-parent himself and assist his younger selves to let go of the beliefs and emotions they were carrying. After releasing these burdens, his protectors were able to relax. His jealousy as well as his anger were greatly reduced. Karen gained more empathy for him and helped him to work through any remaining jealousy issues. She made sure that she included him in talks and activities with her sons and their families. She started reassuring Frank on a regular basis with words of affirmation that his feelings were as important as her sons’ and that she had no intention of abandoning him.

Karen did her own parts work to discover that underneath her rational part was a younger self that felt overburdened by taking care of her bi-polar mother. Just as Frank’s protectors were triggered by Karen, Karen was triggered by Frank reacting “irrationally” and “unpredictably” just like her mother. The rational voice had become her survival strategy to cope with being the emotional caretaker of a parent. At the same time, she felt resentment about needing to be the caretaker and transferred that to Frank. The retreating protector of hers would also kick in and would instruct her “to run away”, just like she did when she was 16 and moved in with her uncle and aunt.

Karen reparented her vulnerable younger exiled parts as well. Frank began to understand how Karen’s responses had nothing to do with him but everything to do with her childhood experiences. He learned to calmly let her know in different situations that he appreciated her being rational but that he needed her to non-judgmentally acknowledge his feelings.

Our relationships are without doubt our greatest teachers. When our partner pushes our buttons, we are given an opportunity to heal. Schwartz talks about our partner being our “tor-mentor”. Our partner mentors us by giving us an experience of pain and bringing the old attachment wounds to the surface.

“…our partner can be an invaluable tor-mentor—that is, a person who mentors us by tormenting us. It is very difficult to find all our basement children when we’re not in an intimate relationship because often we only become aware of them when they are triggered by an intimate partner. Inevitably, our partner will act like an early caretaker who hurt us, and we will have an extreme reaction—and attachment re-injury. If we follow the trail of emotion to its inner source, we will find yet another exile in need of our love.” (Richard Schwartz, You Are the One You Have Been Waiting For)

 

Join me on Sunday, August 12 for a workshop in Mississauga from 9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. You will learn how to work with your parts, especially the critical inner voices and transform them, how to parent your inner child parts and heal them, and how to acquire the ability to lead more and more from Self. For more information or to register, please call me.

If you are curious about finding out more about working with your parts contact me for a free phone consultation. I offer sessions for individuals and couples.

Angelika

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my blog. If you are enjoying my articles, you can subscribe to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to enter your email address in the field in the left sidebar. Thank you for your support!

Relationship Dance

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Sue and John have come for help with their marriage. In their first session Sue seems desperate and eager to figure out what is going on with them. John has come along but he appears distant and disconnected. As the session unfolds, a not uncommon dynamic becomes apparent: One partner is the one who pursues closeness, the other one distances him or herself.

Sue tries to reach John frantically through her words, her emotions and her body language. One moment, she reaches out to him lovingly and patiently, the next she hurls some strong emotion at him. Nothing seems to penetrate his stoic and unemotional stance. Neither touch, nor loving words, nor angry ones, nor tears, make a difference.

Sue and John are in a vicious cycle that Terry Real calls “stance, stance, dance”. Her stance is to reach out for love and attention, his stance is to resist and retreat, and thus their familiar dance unfolds. The more she asks for closeness and emotional connection, the more alienated he feels. The more he senses her longing for connection, the more he feels “broken” because he is not able to provide the intimacy she seems to need. The more he feels inadequate, the more distant and closed off he becomes. As he retreats further, Sue interprets this as a rejection. She thinks, “there must be something wrong with me that he does not reassure me with loving words”. She tries even more desperately to get through to him. One moment she is loving, the next moment she gets angry or pushes him away. Nothing has an effect.

Reading my description you might feel for either Sue or John, and you might feel inclined to judge the other one as either “too needy” or “too cold”. While both are deep down longing for a secure loving relationship, they clearly have different ways of showing up in relationships. They might draw the conclusion that their partner is just not the right one for them, but a similar dance would most likely occur again with another partner. We have just often not been taught how to get out of our patterns and how to create that secure relationship we all want.

In the 1950s, Psychoanalyst John Bowlby brought our attention to the fact that our early experiences with our caretakers have a profound influence on our relationships. Mary Ainsworth tested Bowlby’s theory in the laboratory with mothers and infants and she distinguished four basic attachment styles.

  1. Babies who had mothers who were consistently and tenderly responsive to their baby’s needs were able to quickly soothe themselves when separated because they were securely attached. They had learned through the consistent loving parent that life was safe and that they were cared for.
  2. Infants of mothers who were consistently cold, rejecting, rigid or even neglectful, developed an avoidant attachment style. They showed little emotion and seemed to be indifferent to being separated from their mother. They had learned that it is best not to need or rely on anybody else. Stan Tatkin calls this group of people islands and speaks of people having “island tendencies”.
  3. Another group of mothers were inconsistent. They were sometimes appropriately nurturing and connected according to the child’s state of mind, at other times not. These children tended to clutch to their mother when they were together, and became inconsolable when they were separated. Stan Takin’s name for this ambivalent attachment style is waves. When we have experienced that our primary attachment figure is unpredictable and inconsistent, we crave their reassurance but learn to be unsure of being able to get it. Like a wave at the shore we might reach out to our partner and then retreat, reach out again and then retreat.
  4. The final group of children were victims of abuse or highly neglectful and unpredictable parenting. They showed a disorganized attachment style, and when separated from their mothers their trauma manifested as moving in circles, rocking back and forth or going into a frozen state.

The estimates are that only about 50%-56% of children have experienced a secure attachment style. That leaves every second one of us with an attachment style or at least attachment tendencies which can create issues in personal interactions. With these acquired attachments styles, we have also learned specific subconscious beliefs about ourselves, other people and the world. We might for example have learned that we are a burden, not important or lovable. Or that other people can’t be relied on and that the world in general is not a safe place for us. We all have certain attachment injuries. Some traumas are less intense than others but they all affect our relationships, especially our close love relationships.

Maybe you have guessed that John is an island and Sue is a wave. The more she comes crashing onto the shore of the island he has retreated onto, the higher his protective walls become. His history holds the answers to why he avoids attachment. John’s mother died when he was five years old, and he learned to get attention by being the brave stoic little soldier, independent and not needing any help or emotional support. His grandmother, who raised him, was controlling and rigid. That made him even more determined to be independent and play his cards close to his chest.

Sue, on the other hand, grew up with an older mother who was inconsistent. One moment she was overprotective and fearful, the next she was distracted and absent-minded. Sue remembers being very shy as a child and not wanting to part from her mother when it was time to go to school. She got most attention from her mother when she was helpless and needed something. She also had an emotionally distant father whose attention she tried in vain to get.

When our intimate partner does or says something that is similar to what our primary caretaker did, we experience what Richard C. Schwartz calls an “attachment re-injury”. We experience the same betrayal, fear, abandonment or humiliation, and the old limiting beliefs about ourselves, other people and the world seem to be confirmed. When John retreats, Sue experiences the same insecurity she went through as a child. When Sue wants to connect, John feels intruded upon just as he felt as a boy, and fears that his independence is threatened. By learning to communicate better, to resolve conflicts or make compromises, a couple might make some progress, but we are missing the mark because the attachment injuries are not unearthed.

The first step necessary to shift out of a specific relationship dance is conscious awareness of the pattern or patterns and the underlying attachment styles. When we bring attention to what a pattern is, it already slows down the habit loop. The awareness begins to disconnect some of the circuitry of the brain that makes the habit so powerful.

For Sue, the awareness is that she feels abandoned, disconnected, alone and unloved when John retreats. She starts to feel desperate and reaches out. What she wants is to feel safe and loved. For John, the awareness is that he feels intruded upon, smothered and inadequate. His protection is to close down. What he wants is autonomy and to feel good enough. If they connect to their needs and motivations for their individual stance, they are already creating space for something different. Without further interventions, they might still repeat the behaviour but it already weakens the pattern because they are now aware of their underlying motivations.

Becoming aware of the pattern and motivations also shifts our focus from “my partner is the problem” or “something must be wrong with my needs” to ”the pattern is the problem”. Sue and John can both shift into thinking, “how does he/she feel vulnerable in this dance?” Sue can realize that John is scared about being too close and feels inadequate. John can become aware that Sue’s intention is not to encroach on his independence, but that it is about her vulnerable feelings of abandonment. The second step, for both of them, is to work on the original attachment injury.

If you want to know how IFS (Internal Family Systems) offers a way to heal our attachment injuries and childhood traumas, please read my upcoming blog article called “You Are My Valued Tor-Mentor”, which will be posted in a few days.

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I offer sessions for individuals and couples and you can contact me for a free phone consultation.

Angelika

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca