That's me in the upper right when I was in a lot of pain, not realizing I was blending into the background.
A common thread with the women I work with is that they have been unconsciously living their lives for other people. As children we observed that women are primarily caretakers who put the needs of other people, like husbands, children and parents, ahead of their own needs. We learn to be who other people want us to be because we need them to love us. As children we need our parents to love us so that we get our survival needs met. We learn to avoid conflict, which comes with uncomfortable emotions, and we learn to suppress parts of ourselves we think will be rejected.
When we continually put the needs and wants of others ahead of our own we get lost. Our body and emotions grab our attention to focus on what needs attention in our own lives. The disconnect can come to our attention in the form of chronic physical pain or dissatisfaction in primary relationships. We think we will feel better if we could just get rid of the physical pain or change the guy or fix the relationships. We often look outside ourselves for someone else or something else to fix us.
As little girls we learn to be “healers” to help other people feel better, so they are more comfortable in order to get our needs met. We do this not realizing that we’re holding back parts of ourselves so other people will love us. We end up having relationships that feel disconnected because we are projecting fake images of ourselves to others and we have relationships with fake images of other people, which results in feeling really disconnected.
How can our lives feel satisfying to us when we are living our lives to satisfy what we think other people want from us? How can we feel connected in our intimate relationships when we are disconnected from ourselves and therefore living a lie? How can we be authentic when we don’t know how to be authentic?
All we really want is to be valued for who we really are. When we carry the message that who we really are is not valid, how can we feel valued? We feel disconnected and helpless to fix our pain and our relationships because we spend so much time dissociated from our every day present time experiences.
There are many ways to come back to yourself. It can start with accepting and who and where you are right now. It can start with accepting the present moment and how you are feeling right now. It can start with making time for yourself, with making you more of a priority. It can start with appreciating your own value. It can start with noticing what distractions you use to keep from making yourself a priority. It can start with just sitting still for five minutes a day, closing your eyes and feeling what it feels like right now in your body, just being with yourself noticing you even have a body, that you are breathing, that you are present right now.
Fixing yourself is an inside job, nobody else can do it for you. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I’m still doing that. I learned that being present with myself, feeling how I am really feeling, fully connecting with my physical body, emotions and soul, and taking some time each day to connect with me is what has healed my body and relationships. I’d love to share more with you on ways to heal yourself. Contact me for your free 30 minute consult, or share with me in the comments below what you are struggling with or methods you have learned to heal yourself.
