As children, we need to belong; to belong is to survive. To express our experience of the family drama would be to risk the love of our caretakers, our belonging, and thus our survival. When a home is emotionally chaotic, it’s not generally filled with adults who are open and interested in the child’s experience; there’s often no safe person for a child to talk to and even less chance for there to be someone who will take responsibility for, or change, what’s happening. 

When we grow up in an emotionally unstable and untrustworthy environment, we develop certain defense strategies to maintain our safety and keep ourselves intact. Put simply, we learn to get okay with a lot of stuff that doesn’t feel okay. We become experts at burying anxiety, fear, anger, and despair; we walk through the wreckage as if nothing crazy is happening, no matter how bad it feels. And eventually crazy becomes our norm. 

Our strategies for survival succeed at keeping us safe as children, on a certain level. But when we carry these same defense strategies into adult relationships, they stop working and we end up feeling trapped, powerless, anxious, and angry. The feelings we buried as children are still there— only now they won’t stay underground.

Those of us who grew up in homes where such behavior was the norm often obsessed about what we wanted to say out loud to a parent, but we didn’t say it because it would have created anger or more chaos, and accomplished nothing in terms of changing our world. Similarly, as adults in relationships, we think incessantly about what the other person is doing to us; we make the case for our grievances silently inside our heads, and rehash what we’re going to say and how we’re going to say it. But, again, we stay silent. We think obsessively about the other and our bad situation, but we don’t know how to take steps to make it change: We’re too afraid of the consequences or of our own rage. As a result, we stay stuck in bad situations, feeling powerless to make our relationships change, chronically fearful and overflowing with resentment. 

As adults, when we’re confronted with behavior that feels bad, crazy, aggressive, or just not okay, our nervous system goes into a kind of fight, flight, freeze response. Our front brain shuts down in a sense and we enter survival mode. Deep in the recesses of our brain there is an assumption being made—that if we speak up, we’ll pay dire consequences and ultimately be worse off. Our deep-seated fear takes over and before we know it, we’re figuring out a way to make the other’s bad behavior work inside the relationship.

But staying silent doesn’t work in grown-up relationships. It doesn’t allow us to grow, feel known, or develop real intimacy. Furthermore, it doesn’t keep us safe like it did when we were kids. Quite the opposite: The strategy of swallowing our truth and our natural self-protective instinct under the guise of protecting ourselves become the very thing that harms us. We end up consumed with fear, obsessively thinking about what we hate, and carrying overwhelming resentment. We end up enraged at the other and ourselves—for what they’re doing to us and for what we’re allowing.

How do we change when our nervous system naturally responds to bad behavior in a way that keeps us stuck? How do we make what’s happening instinctively into a conscious process so that we have choices? The first step is to start paying attention to what’s happening inside us in the face of conflict—that is, to recognize and acknowledge this pattern, and become aware that we go into reactionary mode when confronted with what feels relationally unsafe. In recognizing and acknowledging this truth, we offer ourselves not just kindness and compassion, but also gratitude for keeping us safe in the only way we knew how. And we remind ourselves that this behavior no longer takes care of us.

Secondly, we stop to ask our fear what it needs to know or hear from a trusted other that would allow it to speak up for itself. Sometimes the frightened part of ourselves wants to know or be reminded that it doesn’t actually need this other person. 

If we can realize that we won’t die without this other person, that we’ve projected our childhood dependence onto this relationship, the risk drops and we can find the courage to speak our truth. If we don’t yet genuinely believe that we don’t need the other, we can start taking steps toward the autonomy that can set us free.

On the other hand, the little one inside us may need to know that it doesn’t have to explain why what’s not okay is not okay, or get the other person to understand or agree. Sometimes the fear is about having to defend our case against the other’s anger, blame, and defensiveness that feels most daunting. In truth, we don’t have to get confirmation or validation from the other that their behavior is not okay for us. We can offer ourselves permission to simply say No, this is not okay, period.

There are an infinite number of possible answers to the question, What would I need to believe to speak up in the face of chaos? What’s most important is simply that you ask the frightened part of yourself, with kindness, what it needs to stand up for you, confront the crazy, and speak your truth. Once you know what your system needs to move forward, you can offer yourself that truth, or start on the path to making that answer true. 

When we grew up accepting the unacceptable because we had to, and we become grownups afraid to stand up for ourselves, we learn to stuff our anger and keep the peace at all costs, including the cost to ourselves. 

But just because we grew up around chaos doesn’t mean we’re condemned to live with it forever. We can change. We can change our reaction to behavior that’s not acceptable, and in the process, change the situation itself. Or we can leave a situation that doesn’t work for us. Once we become conscious of our own behavior, we have choices. We can learn to be the light in the darkness and create our own reality.   

Unlike what we believed as children, we do get a say in our own reality and we can move from the problem to the solution. 

The post Why It’s So Hard to Build Healthy Relationships After Growing Up in Chaos appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Lily’s inability to listen had created tremendous conflict in the family. A conversation would happen over dinner, and the next day, Lily would have little or no memory of its content or details. (She was not on any substances.) Their two kids were constantly yelling at their mom for not remembering what they had already told her. Shelly had spent many hours consoling their kids, assuring them that Lily’s inability to pay attention to the details of their lives did not mean she didn’t care (which is how it felt). Although Shelly experienced tremendous resentment and hurt herself when Lily didn’t listen, she did her best to convince the kids that it was their mom’s distraction that was to blame, not them.

Shelly had been talking about this issue for a long time, mostly about how to change her partner and get her to listen better. She had explained to her wife on many occasions how it made her and the kids feel when she didn’t remember what was discussed or the daily goings-on in the family’s life. She had expressed the profound emotional value of remembering the details. Shelly had described in poignant detail how it felt when Lily uttered, “Uh-huh,” at a place in the conversation where clearly no “uh-huh” was called for or appropriate. And how, with that simple, ill-attuned “uh-huh,” Shelly would know instantly that Lily was not present and not listening to what she was sharing. She had talked about the sorrow and loneliness of that moment in great depth and detail.

Shelly had also gone through a stretch of encouraging Lily to get a brain scan, to see if there was legitimately something wrong that made it hard for her to pay attention and land in the present moment. (Lily discovered her brain was fine after a routine cat-scan for an unrelated issue.) In addition, Shelly got Lily into a program of meditation and gave her books on being present and managing distraction. Despite positive changes, when Shelly stopped leading the charge for her wife to meditate, Lily’s behavior eventually reverted back to the way it had been before.

Shelly had also run the gamut in terms of expressing her anger. Again and again, she had begged her wife, “Where are you? Are you ever here where everyone else is, actually listening?” On behalf of herself and their children, she had demanded a change: “Your family is here at the table, we need you here! Where are you?” For Shelly, it felt like an emotional trauma each time it happened.

Shelly had given it the full college try, working at changing her partner for more than a decade. She had lived in a state of waiting—waiting for Lily to change. Some part of her believed that she couldn’t be fully content until her wife became someone else, someone who was not distracted, could pay attention closely, cared about how much it all hurt, and wanted to remember the lives discussed. Shelly had been waiting for her partner to become someone who made her happy.

But as frustrating, enraging, and hurtful as Lily’s behavior legitimately was, the bigger problem as I saw it was Shelly’s belief that her own well-being and freedom depended on someone else changing. Shelly was hostage to a situation she had absolutely no control over (as was abundantly clear by now). Her captor was not actually her wife (as she imagined), but rather her conviction that her wife’s behavior was responsible for her own happiness or to blame for her unhappiness.

Before Shelly could get free from this belief, it was important to offer empathy to the despair and rage that her wife’s behavior triggered, the familial pattern it held, and the emotional abandonment historically tied, for her, to the act of listening. Empathy and compassion for our own experience is a necessary step in letting going of a limiting belief, and in this case, Shelly’s belief that her happiness was tied to someone else’s behavior.

No one, not even our partner, is responsible for our happiness, for providing us with a sense of meaning, or filling up our emptiness. No one is responsible for our well-being—no one except ourselves. (This does not apply to children and their parents.) As adults, it is our responsibility to make ourselves happy—to make choices that are in alignment with our own needs.

This last week, Shelly told me about a recent incident with her wife. In passing, Shelly had mentioned something about an upcoming weekend trip her older child was planning. Lily, per usual, hadn’t been listening when they discussed the trip at dinner (and other times as well) and thus needed Shelly to fill her in yet again on the details, and also to be convinced that she should be allowed to go. In years past, Shelly would have gotten angry, explained what not listening did to everyone in the family, perhaps made an interpretation of her wife’s psychology, and then, finally, done what she always did… repeated the details and explanations so Lily could be included when she was able to pay attention. This time, Shelly felt a sting, but remarkably did not feel inclined to participate in the same way. This time, she calmly told her wife that the conversation and trip had already been discussed, and she was not going to repeat the information again. She then left the house and moved on with her day without anger or resentment. This was, for both of us, a huge victory.

Shelly had done so many things differently in this interaction. For one, she had actualized the serenity prayer. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. She had spent more than enough years trying to get her wife to change, which clearly was not in her control. By continuing to spend her time and energy explaining her anger and repeating the details that had been missed, Shelly had unknowingly been inviting her wife to continue not listening, and also condemning herself to the suffering of the relational pattern, ensuring that nothing would change.

On this occasion, however, she did not do what she had always done, and as a result, did not get what she had always gotten. Following the interaction, she did not live a day full of anger and resentment, did not suffer from high blood pressure and anxiety.  She did not spend the day ruminating and obsessing over how and why the problem had happened again, and of course, what to do about it that she hadn’t already done. Shelly had changed her own behavior, had taken ownership of what she wanted, what she was willing to do and not willing to do, no matter what choices her partner made. This is the most important change we can make in any relationship.

In deciding to stop trying to change her partner and start changing herself in response instead, Shelly discovered that freedom and happiness were already available, now. It’s not to say that Lily’s behavior was suddenly satisfying or delightful; the frustration still arose, but Lily’s behavior did not define Shelly’s emotional state or dictate how Shelly needed to spend her energy or attention. Shelly was not captive to Lily’s choices or limitations. Furthermore, she was not responsible for changing Lily, but she positively was responsible for owning her own wants, needs, and boundaries, and acting accordingly.

In this profound paradigm shift, Shelly realized (as we all need to realize) that it was up to her to decide and also act on what she wanted and what she would participate in. She was no longer waiting for Lily to behave in a way that made her happy but rather taking responsibility for her own happiness—separate from her partner.

When we claim and act according to our own wants and needs; when we get clear about what we’re willing and not willing to do (or do anymore); when we give up trying to change others into people who can make us happy; when we’re willing to take responsibility for our own happiness, then, finally, we’re free. As it turns out, when we are responsible for our own happiness, we get the job done better than anyone else possibly could!

The post Freedom: Taking Ownership of Your Own Happiness appeared first on Nancy Colier.

John is a highly educated man and was vigorously expressing a lengthy and well-defended case against the validity of the whole phenomenon that is the Me too movement.  His argument extended to issues of race and gender as well, specifically, how all of the now-prevalent identity politics is overblown, unnecessary, negative and destructive.

When he did pause, just for a moment, I snuck in an observation, namely, that the identity movement seemed to make him feel defensive and angry.  He denied feeling defensive but shared that as a teacher, the new politic did force him to be hyper-vigilant about the words he uses with students, to have to watch everything he does so as not to be wrongly accused.  I empathized with his experience and how hard it must be to be a teacher these days.  He then went back to his well-constructed case for what was faulty about the movement.

As this conversation was going on, I was also keeping an eye on his partner, Nel.  As John went on with his narrative, Nel’s expression glossed over; she had checked out, lost interest in even trying to stay present.  I understood her experience as there was nobody there, really, for her to be present with.  The possibility for connection was gone, lost behind the steel walls of intellectual content.

But I was hopeful as I had seen an opening; a little piece of John had emerged as he talked about the difficulty for teachers just now.  And so I inquired, hoping that I could get a little further than John’s teacherexperience.

“What does it trigger in you personally, having to be in the thick of it, required to participate in this dialogue and all the forms and training sessions you probably have to be part of?”  And for some reason, with that very simple invitation, within the safety of our relationship, John showed up.  In an instant, his entire facial expression shifted as if he had also not been present and now, suddenly, he was there.

John then expressed how toxic the whole thing felt for him, that he was not interested in any of it and yet was being forced to be in a conversation that was not his life, not valuable to him.  He felt terribly put upon and trapped by the whole environment of identity politics, in a constant fight about issues that he didn’t resonate with, having to prove he wasn’t guilty of something that didn’t in any way belong to him. The specifics of what he felt are less important than what happened in the couple as a result of this fresh truth that John was able to share.

Suddenly Nel was there in the room.  It literally felt like a wave of energy had wafted through the space; it was palpable.  Nel had returned, literally reentered the space behind her eyes.  In that moment, for the first time, I could see real empathy for her husband spread across her brow.   They were sharing the same space, perhaps for the first time in a decade.  Nel was looking at John with an entirely different expression, really looking at John.  Tears welled up in Nel’s eyes; connection was happening.  At last, what had been separating them all these years, all her husband’s ideas, were out of the way and she could feel him, be with him, be truly together, in real company.

John had been honing his ideas and intellect his entire life, using his arguments to validate what he was experiencing, but sadly, because of his own psychology, not even knowing or inquiring into what he was experiencing.  He had gotten quite skilled at proving his rightness, but all his ideas came at the cost of connection.  John didn’t get to feel connected to anyone or, for that matter, allow anyone else to feel connected with him.  He was an island in every way, surrounded by an ocean of mind.

Many people remain stuck in the land of contents—with the context underneath the contents rarely (if ever) reached.  Men particularly seem to get locked in their thoughts, information, and ideas, which shuts them out from their own hearts and shuts everyone else out in the process.  The feeling of being with such individuals is that of not being able to touch them, of being trapped in a corridor with no door, no way to be together, held at bay by the thoughts, opinions, and arguments, the armor that protects their hearts from ever being visible, or vulnerable.

As the partner, you are not able to connect deeply, not below the neck, beyond the layer of intellect. Since it’s not possible to join them in their experience, empathy has to happen from a distance, via an idea of what they’re experiencing but without getting to feel it with them.  For the partner of such individuals, being together is an experience of loneliness, separation, hearts that can’t actually touch, a life that can’t actually be profoundly shared.

When John expressed his personal experience, not his narrative around it, not his justification for it, not all that he knew about it, just his truth in its raw, real, and alive form, simply what he was living on the inside, as it was coming freshly in the moment, Nel felt connected to her husband, like she was at last with him.  They were together in the same now.  His intellectual defenses had stepped out of the way for a brief and blessed moment. Nel could then experience the sensation of being in true company—not being alone together. (She later confirmed this to me in an individual session.)

Couples spend decades trapped, like flies in spider webs, inside the arguments of content, and particularly who’s right, who’s justified in feeling the way they feel about the contents. They get caught, sometimes for good, in the ongoing battle for whose experience is deserving of empathy. This happens for many reasons, one of which is that we mistakenly believe that we are our thoughts and opinions.  Proving our rightness is thus a life and death struggle to ensure survival.  But such is a topic for another day.  In the interests of word count here, it’s my intention to simply point out that ideas and opinions, the stuff of mind, the generalized narrative and intellectual defense system, can serve as a non-navigate-able obstacle to connection.

Source: Vladimir Kudinov/ Unsplash

If you’re feeling that you can’t reach your partner, like you’re alone when you’re together, as if you can’t find the key to being truly with each other, notice, is your couple trapped in the land of contents—of mind—with no access to each other’s hearts.  Is your communication stuck in the land of opinions, ideas, and whether what’s happening is right or wrong, good or bad?  Notice if your relationship is waylaid in the purgatory of commentary, the airless box that it is to always be commenting on life to each other, but never in it with each other, forever a step away from your felt experience, and from each other.

If what I describe resonates, consider offering questions to your partner that contain an intention to reach the heart and uncover the real felt experience–not the story of it.  And, offer yourself the same invitation, to deepen your connection with yourself as well.

Questions that invite feelings:

-What is the experience like, for you, in that situation?

-What does that situation trigger in you?

-What does it feel like when you’re in that situation?

-What’s the worst thing, for you, when you’re in that situation?

What makes it so hard, for you, when you’re in that situation?

And, when describing your own experience, try modeling the communication style you want to receive from your partner.  For example, “For me, when that happens, I feel (such and such)” “What makes it so hard for me is…” Actively model talking about your feelings, your personal experience, rather than your narrative about the situation, maybe even naming that distinction so that your partner can hear the difference, regardless of whether he knows how to do it.  Furthermore, remember that when your partner is able to express his direct and personal experience or a fresh perhaps newly discovered feeling, be sure to offer him (or her) a safe space and supportive response. Don’t correct or dismiss his truth, no matter what it contains.  Each time he moves from the known storyline to the unknown felt experience, he is growing, taking a baby step forward.  When you respond lovingly and with acceptance, you are encouraging more steps in this direction and thus inviting a deeper connection.  True connection happens when we can communicate from our vulnerability, our hearts–not our stories and protective mental layers.  It happens when we dive into life together rather than standing on the shore, safely commenting on it. The most important journey we take in relationship, and life, is from our head to our heart.

The post Do You Feel Alone When You’re Together? How to Deepen Your Connection With Your Partner appeared first on Nancy Colier.

We often hear the idea that forgiveness is a gift, an act of kindness for ourselves, as the forgiver, that forgiveness is not for or even about the one we are forgiving.  It’s said that if forgiveness benefits the one we are forgiving, then that’s an added benefit, a gift, but not really the point. And yet, one of the obstacles we face in forgiving someone we perceive as having done us harm is not wishing them well, not seeing their benefitting from our forgiveness as a gift, and in fact, wanting them to suffer because of what they did.  The idea that the other person would somehow feel better as a result of our forgiveness is challenging and precisely what we want to prevent.  We imagine that not forgiving then is a form of punishment, a way of forcing the other to continue suffering, a way of being in control of a situation we didn’t feel we had control over.  At a primal level, we imagine that not forgiving is a way of taking care of our wound, proclaiming that our suffering exists, and still and forever matters.  Not forgiving, paradoxically, is a way of validating and honoring our own hurt.

So too, when the one we believe caused us harm is unwilling to take responsibility for their actions or insists that they did nothing wrong, we conclude that it’s even more necessary to withhold forgiveness.  Not forgiving then becomes a way of holding on to our rightness—remaining justified in our version of the truth, and the sense of having been treated unjustly.  Our non-forgiveness, as we imagine it, continues to prove the other wrong, which legitimizes our pain.  And indeed, it is the validity of our suffering which above all else we’re trying (often desperately) to confirm and have confirmed.

Furthermore, we think that forgiving the other somehow implies that we are now okay with what the other person did, and maybe even one step further—that what they did is okay on a grander scale. Our perception is that forgiveness announces that what happened is no longer relevant, significant, or alive.  It’s as if we’re allowing the past to be done, and thus to move out of mind and heart, which can feel intolerable.

Perhaps most troublesomely however, forgiveness, as we relate to it, is letting the other person “off the hook.”  We equate it with absolution—excusing the other from blame, guilt or responsibility for what they did.  We imagine it as symbolically setting them free from having to carry the burden of suffering that we believe they caused.

And so the question follows, What actually is forgiveness?  And its partner inquiry, What is forgiveness—not?

Forgiveness is Not Saying… 

-You were not hurt by what the other person did.

-Your pain is gone.

-You are back to being the person you were before it happened.

-Life can now pick up where you left off, you feel the way you did before, as if what happened never happened.

-You no longer believe the other person was responsible for causing harm.

-You excuse the other person’s behavior.

-You no longer view what happened as important.

-You share the blame for what happened.

-You can ever forget what happened.

___________________________________________________________________

The way we view forgiveness, in many ways, is flawed.  We say “forgive and forget,” but when we forgive we don’t forget.  Forgetting is by no means an inherent part of forgiving, nor should it be. So too, we refer to forgiveness as “burying the hatchet.” But when we bury the hatchet, the hatchet is still there, just under a bunch of dirt, or we could say, a bunch of denial.  Buried or not, we still need to find peace with what’s happened.  So too, we’re flippant about forgiveness, encouraging ourselves and others to “just let it go!”  But again, forgiveness is no small affair and we cannot rationalize, intellectualize, manipulate or bully ourselves into feeling it.

Forgiveness is different for every human being that lives it.  For some, it comes on suddenly, blessedly, without having to think about or try and create it.  For others, it’s a more deliberate process that requires effort and practice.  And for others, it’s a permanent destination and once discovered, never slips away.  But it can also be a feeling that comes and goes and ebbs and flows.  There’s no right way to find or live forgiveness; any path to and version of it will do.  And yet, despite the fact that there are infinite paths to and colors of forgiveness, certain key components exist in its sentiment, aspects of forgiveness that essential to its basic nature.

The post What is Forgiveness, Really? When “Letting it Go” and “Burying the Hatchet” Fail…What Works? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Two months ago, a dear friend, someone I consider family, asked to borrow money.  I’m working a lot these days (thankfully) and therefore could provide the help. My friend told me that she would pay me back by the end of February. Before writing her the check, I asked her three questions:

1. Could she, realistically, commit to refunding me by the end of February?

2. Could she repay it without my asking for it?

3. Would she inform me if she was not able to, again, without my having to ask?

Essentially, would she take ownership of the loan she was requesting? Her answers were yes, yes and yes.

Just to know, this is not the first time this friend has asked me for a loan. And, she has not, ever, paid me back when promised. But she does pay me back… eventually. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I do know the problem with doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  But here’s the thing, I didn’t expect a different result, and for many reasons not relevant to this post, I decided to lend her the money anyway.

On the last day of February, I awoke to radio silence: no text, email, phone call or other communication. My friend had not repaid the loan nor contacted me to let me know it wouldn’t happen.

In the past, when confronted with this same situation I would say nothing, at least not for several days, weeks or months. I would sit in resentment, anger, and make-believe okay-ness. Or, find some backhanded way to allude to the unpaid loan but without directly addressing it. Because of my intense fear of what I faced in expressing it—defensiveness, aggression, anger, and attack, a rage on why I was despicable and spiritually bankrupt for wanting and expecting to be re-payed, I would tuck away my truth, my experience of being unpaid, unappreciated, unacknowledged and uninformed. I would disappear, paradoxically, to save myself.

But on this recent occasion, I knew that no matter how frightening the situation, I was being presented with a great opportunity—to practice living from my truth and actually being on my own side. And indeed, I chose to take the opportunity the universe offered, or maybe more appropriately, the universe chose to take me, and lead me somewhere new. It was as if I were extending my hand into the handshake of forward-movement that grace provided.

On that very day, I asked my friend directly if she was going to pay me back and honor the promise she had made—to me.

As expected, she was not going to pay me back, not yet anyway. But the contents of this story are irrelevant. What matters is that I asked my friend for the loan back, on the day it was due. And, that at the moment when my friend would have ordinarily launched into her attack, I stayed still and faced her, eye to eye, to remind her of her promises, and ask her when exactly she would be able to take care of this loan I’d offered. I stood in my own shoes inside the actual moment.

I’m so grateful that my friend didn’t pay me back. It gave me the chance to change, the opportunity to speak up in the face of fear—to choose myself and the truth over the certain conflict it would create and even the possible loss of the relationship altogether. It gave me the chance to practice planting my feet in the truth and trusting that no matter how bumpy the ride, the solid ground of the truth is a place that I will be (and already am) okay.

I write a lot about playing on our own team, expressing and supporting the truth of our experience. In this particular relationship, I would have argued (until recently), that saying nothing and letting it go was taking my own side, because it resulted in keeping the relationship intact, which is what I really wanted and thought I needed.  But as time passed, I grew and my heart broke, for itself. It became clear that being on my side, in this way, also required abandoning myself, not speaking up for myself, and even joining my friend’s blaming of me.

Even though I knew, intellectually, that I had rights, nonetheless, after years of being blamed, something in my gut had lost its conviction that I had the right to ask for the money back because I didn’t need it financially. Or, that I had the right to be informed or upset that something I’d been promised was not going to happen.  Or, for that matter, the right to be able to trust my friend’s word. I was not on my own side in this relationship, not only because of my fear of the aggression that would come at me in response, but also because of my own handshake with blame, both hers and mine.

Taking the step that is joining our own side, finding the courage to face whatever comes when we speak our truth, is a profound shift in a human being.  It doesn’t happen in one fell swoop but rather in little moments and small challenges (that can feel gigantic). In order for this change to happen, we have to have had enough of the suffering that comes with not being on our own side, remaining silent, abandoning ourselves, or accepting blame for having a truth that another person doesn’t like. Our own heart has to break—for ourselves—for what we’ve actually been living, and believing. We have to stop self-blaming and forgive ourselves for needing what we need—for our truth. When this happens, it’s no longer possible to turn our back on ourselves, disappear, in order to keep the peace or status quo.

The moment comes when we say enough, not from our head, but from our deepest guts. We are done, not as an idea but as a profound knowledge.

This process can feel like an act of grace, like something far larger than just our personal self has intervened, offering us the strength and clarity to change how we’re living and who we are. At last, we find ourselves holding our own heart.

Furthermore, the courage to speak our truth involves a shift in allegiance or purpose. Our goal transforms from maintaining the situation/relationship—at all cost—to living from the truth—at all cost. But in order to find this courage, this reverence for and trust in the truth, we have to get okay with anyoutcome that might transpire, including the one we’ve most feared.  We must be willing to let it all burn up in the fire of the truth.

To do this, we have to release the belief that the only way to keep ourselves safe, keep our life proceeding as it needs to, is to control our experience and thereby create a certain outcome. It’s a process, really, of turning it over, truth’s will not my will, trusting (or at least being willing to try trusting) that the truth will take us where we need to go, even if it’s not where we think we should be going. At the deepest level, what I’m describing is an experience of awakening and surrender—knowing that we can’t keep abandoning ourselves in the service of taking care of ourselves.  And, that it’s safe to let go of the reins, that the truth will take care of us. And ultimately, that the truth is the only real safety we have.

The post When We Can No Longer Silence Our Truth appeared first on Nancy Colier.

How does this happen?

Some people are raised in homes where they are perpetually blamed for whatever goes wrong, whether or not they had a part in it.  Usually, for a time, they fight back and continue to know themselves as innocent.  They feel the injustice of the wrongful accusations.  But as time goes on and the blaming continues, but the knowing of their innocence remains irrelevant or worse, an exacerbating factor, two things happen.  First, these people learn to accept the blame for what they haven’t done, even when they know they’re innocent—because it actually feels helpful to take the blame and it often pleases those they need to keep happy, even if at the cost of their own rightness.  But eventually, sadly, they come to experience themselves as guilty; the knowing of their innocence actually gets buried and the blame projected onto them becomes their truth.  They become the bad one on the inside as well as the outside.

In other situations, when a child is neglected, abused, or abandoned, her way of explaining this mistreatment to herself is to blame herself for what happened.  Mommy left because I was wrong and there is something fundamentally wrong about me.  Mommy isn’t guilty, I am.  I am to blame for daddy’s anger, even if I can’t know what I did to make it happen.  Daddy isn’t guilty, I am.  When we take the blame for mistreatment, we do what we most need to do, which is keep and hold mommy and daddy, internally, as the good ones.  As painful and destructive as the system is, it has a wise purpose.

As young ones, it is less painful to make ourselves the bad one rather than to allow our parent (whom we desperately need) to be bad.  More even than our own goodness, we rely on the belief in our parent’s goodness.  So too, we rely on the world making sense.  And so, heartbreakingly, we join our caretakers in believing our guilt, which then, ironically, puts the world back in order and sensibly explains their treatment of us.  The cognitive dissonance that would arise from knowing our own goodness and at the same time being mistreated by those who are supposed to love and care for us, is too overwhelming to bear.  And so we become internally wrong, which, paradoxically, makes the world understandable once again.

There are many varieties of early experiences that can create an instinct to assume blame, but in the interests of space, I will elaborate on only one other.  Some of us grew up in families in which apologies or ownership for bad behavior never happened.  When we expressed our upset, we were either informed of our crime, in other words, what we did that caused them to do what they did to us, thereby legitimizing their behavior and turning empathy for us into a moot point.  Or, we were told how we had done or were wrong, in a more global sense, which then made us undeserving of any kind of treatment other than the kind we received.

For those of us raised in this environment, empathy for our experience was simply not available; we did not know the experience of someone hearing our upset and simply caring about it, taking responsibility for and validating it, without blaming us for it.  We did not have the safety of knowing that our experience mattered no matter what it contained.  All expressions of upset were met with a lesson in our own culpability in our suffering.  The mantra in families like this is “Look at your own behavior…that’s what you never do!”  As the recipient of this kind of blame we then come to believe the mantra, to think that we are somehow responsible, not just for the situation and our own suffering, but also for not being willing to take responsibility for our deserved guilt.

How to Heal?

So, how do we stop the cycle and heal the core belief that we are to blame?  Can we free ourselves from the deep sense of fundamental guilt?  How do we remove the Velcro inside ourselves to which any wrongness seeking a home will stick?

In my experience as a therapist and also as someone who has struggled with guilt, and who was trained early to look to myself for the cause of my own or another’s suffering, I can offer a few thoughts, which I hope are helpful.

To begin with, we have to unpack the original source and conditions for our assumption of blame, to navigate through the who, what, where, how, and why (carefully) of our being blamed, and also see what that created in us.  Secondly, we need to bring compassion to our own experience, to open our heart to the suffering that comes with feeling always to blame, with having to play the role, and worse, believe the role of the bad one.  So too, we need to notice where we started to agree with our accusers, and understand and forgivewhy we needed to do that to be okay, how the system of blame worked. This involves spending time unraveling our relationship with blame and guilt, and looking deep into our conditioning, and the making of our identity as the one who’s wrong.  We do this with another human being: a therapist, counselor, spiritual teacher, friend, or anyone else who is fundamentally on our side, and can keep our eyes and heart open when we’re inclined to slip back into the darkness and pain of self-blame.

We also, in this process, need to separate outcome from intention.  That is, we need to look through our lives and notice where we blamed ourselves or were blamed by others for an unwanted result, but without considering what we were trying to make happen—our intentions.  Most of the time we’re doing our very best to make something good happen, but it doesn’t always work out that way.  We can’t control outcomes, only intentions.  Most of the time, blame is about having created a wrong outcome and yet it utterly ignores the intention that was mother to the process. In turning the light from results to our intentions, we re-train ourselves to connect with our goodness (which lives in intention).  We befriend the part of ourselves that’s ignored when we’re being blamed or self-blaming.

As we go through this process, it’s also profoundly important that we examine our life now and identify the areas where we ourselves are adding to and creating our sense of blame and shame.  Often, we engage in behaviors that initially alleviate our sense of guilt, but then end up fueling and justifying that guilt.  For example, I recently worked with a woman who started drinking casually, in part to ease her sense of unshakeable (although non-specific) guilt.  But over time, her drinking had become more secretive and frequent, which then gave her ever more reason to feel guilty and bad.  The coping mechanism for our guilt becomes its cause.  We need to be fierce and rigorous in our self-inventory, and most importantly, to terminate all those behaviors that in any way strengthen our underlying sense of being blame-worthy, or in any way contribute to a sense of self that forms a handshake with our earliest blamers.

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, breaking free from the assumption of blame relies upon having a different experience of ourselves in the world.  When we put ourselves in the company of people who are kind and reliably on our side, who start (and end) from the belief that we’re good and our intentions are positive, who are willing to listen and care about how we are, even when it might not be what they want to hear… then, we learn to see ourselves through the lens of kindness and support we see in their eyes when they look at us.  Miraculously, we come to know ourselves as innocent.  When we consistently put ourselves in an environment of acceptance and love—the opposite of blame— surround ourselves with people who are fundamentally for and not against us, we then awaken to our truth, the one we knew a very long time ago, before it had to go away.  We awaken and discover that our acceptance of guilt, of badness, is inherently unkind and unfair—to ourselves.  We see ourselves, at last, as good.

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For others, commitment is about living together or getting married and sharing a home life. And for still others, a child expresses the commitment desired. But wherever we fall on the spectrum, when our partner cannot provide the commitment we want and need, we are left to live in a difficult limbo: There’s something we want, that we want more of and more from, and yet we don’t know if we’ll ever get it.

How do we know when to stay or leave this type of relationship?

There are no hard fast rules, ever. Each time we make the choice to stay or go is unique, and sometimes we make it again and again within the same relationship.

At the most concrete level, we can always ask our partner if and when he or she will be willing to meet us at the level of commitment we desire. Sometimes the answer we get is comforting and gives us the sense that we are heading in the direction we want. But more often the answer is unsatisfying and leaves us not knowing if what we want in the relationship will ever happen, usually because our partner doesn’t know. Living with such uncertainty can cause pain and anxiety, and lead to insecurity and resentment.

What’s most important is that we own our truth, which is our desire for more commitment.

We must stop judging and blaming ourselves for needing what we desire. For years I have heard women condemn themselves for being too demanding or not being able to figure out how to be OK without what they fundamentally want. I have heard every possible rationalization for why it makes sense to do without something we fundamentally want. In the context of a relationship, there is nothing “Buddhist” about not being able to make plans for the future, or with someone who is not sure about us. Even if everything is impermanent in the absolute sense, we still need to create places of security in our lives, where the ground is solid—or at least, as solid as it can be.

We get certain things in relationships and give up others. When we’re not getting the commitment we want, we must ask ourselves if the balance is workable, that is: Am I receiving enough to give up what I’m giving up?

We can only answer this one moment at a time, and the answer changes over time. We know we must leave when we can no longer tolerate or bear the situation we are in, when the equation shifts and it’s too painful to do without what we really want. We leave when the unrealized desire for commitment becomes resentment, and we can no longer enjoy or appreciate what our partner offers.

Source: Flickr Creative Commons

No one can answer the question of whether to stay or leave for us. But when we stop judging ourselves for wanting what we want, and dive deep into our own truth, we will find the answer we’re looking for.

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Paula tells Jon that she’s upset and hurt by something he said, a way he responded to her opinion on a family matter.  She asks if, in the future, he could say that same thing with an attitude of kindness and/or curiosity and not be so critical, simply because her opinion differed from his.  Jon reacts to Paula’s feelings and request by aggressively inquiring why he should offer her kindness and curiosity when last month she had shut down his experience over a different family matter and treated him unkindly.  Paula then attacks back, explaining why she deserved to behave the way she did in the interaction last month, and why her response last month was a reaction to what he did two months ago, which she believes was unkind and aggressive.  Jon then barks that he was entitled to his behavior two months ago because of the unkind and critical thing she did three months ago… and back and back in time it goes, to a seemingly un-findable place before the hurting began.

Couples do this all the time; they fight for who’s deserving of empathy, whose experience should get to matter, whose hurt should be taken care of and whose experience should be validated.  Often, partners refuse to offer empathy to each other because they feel that, to do so, would mean admitting that they are to blame and thus giving up the chance to receive empathy and validation for their own experience. Boiled down, if I care about the fact that my words hurt you then I’m to blame for causing you that pain, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the truth of why I said those words, or more accurately, my experience of why I was entitled to say those words, will never be validated or receive its own empathy. Empathy for you effectively cancels out empathy for me.

As hurt and resentment accumulate in a relationship, it becomes harder and harder to empathize with your partner’s experience because you have so much unheard and un-cared-for pain of your own. When too much unattended pain is allowed to sedimentize between two people, it can be nearly impossible to listen much less care about your partner’s experience. Over time, unhealed wounds create a relationship in which there’s no space left to be heard, no place where some injustice or hurt from the past does not disqualify your right to kindness and support, which just happen to be the essential components of intimacy.  For this reason and many others, resentment is the most toxic of all emotions to an intimate relationship.

So, what is to be done if you’ve been in a relationship for some time and hurts have built up and led to resentment and unresolved anger and pain.  Is there hope for empathy to regain a foothold in your relationship so that true intimacy can begin flourishing once again?  What is the way forward when it feels like there is too much toxic water under the bridge, too much wreckage under your feet to find your way back to a loving bond?

If you asked me if it’s possible, if there’s hope for empathy to re-emerge in your relationship, even when resentment abounds, the answer is probably.  But if you asked me whether there are ways to try and rebuild the empathic bond in your relationship, I would answer with a resounding yes. Yes, you can try and yes, the only way you can know if what’s probable can become possible is to name it as a problem and give it your very best effort.  One thing you can know for sure is that if you don’t try and address the resentment, it won’t go away by itself.

So, what to do?  I suggest, first, that couples set an intention, together, to re-create empathy in the relationship.  While this is not necessary, it helps to start with a conscious decision that’s named. Perhaps both of you want to deepen the intimacy or trust, or perhaps just ease the resentment.  The intention can be different for each of you, but what’s important is that there’s an agreed upon desire and willingness to bring attention to this issue in the relationship. Sometimes one partner is not willing to set such an intention, often because of precisely the resentment that’s being addressed. But if that’s the case, nonetheless, you can set an intention on your own; while it’s not ideal, it can still bring positive results.

Once an intention has been named, I recommend making a deal to officially press the re-start button on your relationship.  You can ritualize/celebrate this relationship re-start date as perhaps a new anniversary, the day you committed to begin again—without the poisons of the past.  It’s important that you mark this re-start date in some tangible way that makes it real and sacred.  A re-start date means that as of a certain day and time, you are beginning again, so that when you express your feelings to your partner, those feelings matter simply because they exist, and cannot be invalidated because of something that happened in the past.  Pressing the re-start button means you get a new point zero, a point at which you are both innocent and entitled to kindness and support.  A clean slate.  This one step, albeit manufactured, if agreed upon and followed can open up a brand-new field in which to be loving and meet and take care of each other once again.

Along with this, I recommend beginning a new way of communicating with each other.  I call this new way the taking turns way.  Taking turns means when one partner brings upset or anything difficult or less that positive to the other, she is heard and understood fully.  The experience of the other partner, what we might say caused him to behave in the way he did that created the upset, is then held for the next day. While again I am suggesting an imposed way of communicating around difficult issues, this process can encourage non-defensive listening and even compassion.  Because you know that your time to tell your side of the story is not coming until tomorrow, you are more able to hear, listen and be present for your partner’s experience.  You can also try mirroring back to your partner, through words, what you are hearing him say and feel.  And to do this mirroring until he feels that you have correctly “gotten” his experience.  Being able to hear your partner without defending yourself (since it’s against the rules for now) can lessen the chances that the exchange will end up feeding new resentments. So too, taking turns at expressing your experience, knowing that you will get to be listened to, without rebuttal, that there will be a guaranteed safe place for your experience to be heard, will ease your anxiety, anger, desperation and despair.  It will also vastly improve the possibility of building a newly empathic bond.  By communicating one at a time (with a breathing and sleeping break in between), at least for a while, you are creating a garden for kindness, curiosity and support, the defining aspects of intimacy, to at least have a chance to take root and bloom.

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Jane, a woman in her 40s, recently had an experience with a parent that set off a strong and somewhat unexpected reaction in her. She met her father for a meal and he behaved the way he always behaved, asking her no questions, acknowledging nothing about her, completely invisibilizing her, while simultaneously demanding that she act as a mirror to reflect his own grandiosity. It was an experience Jane knew intimately and one she had been living for decades. But on this particular day, sitting across a table from this man she called her father, a man who had never shown Jane the kindness of acknowledgment or curiosity, it all broke—the dam that had protected her from her actual experience was gone. Without warning, Jane discovered that she could not keep pretending this kind of interaction was okay. Even if she had wanted to continue the same relationship with her father, her body had decided otherwise: being unseen and unknown, receiving nothing, inauthentically playing the role of the loving validator, was no longer possible.

Midway through the meeting, Jane took off the hat she had been wearing her whole life; she stopped confirming her father’s importance, and also stopped playing the role of the grateful daughter, who would happily enjoy the glow of his greatness while remaining forever invisible. She even went so far as to suggest that something he had said about himself might not be true, a first. The encounter ended abruptly and with obvious prickliness. While no words were spoken about the tectonic plates that had just shifted between them, it was clear to both father and daughter that their usual way of interacting was suspended, if not finished for good.

Very shortly after the meeting ended, Jane’s body started crying and vomiting and didn’t stop for hours. At the same time, her mind was in an intense swirl, trying to make sense of what had just happened, to create the narrative that would give her some ground in this emotional storm. The casing that had contained decades of grief, rage, and longing was broken open.

Interestingly, within a day or two, Jane had moved on from the experience. She was feeling fine and also empowered by a new-found, never before experienced clarity. She knew at a cellular level, without any doubt, that she was no longer going to continue subjecting herself to her father’s unkindness. A new reality had emerged entirely on its own. While she would have to continue seeing her father in family settings, she would no longer be participating in a “close” relationship with him or playing the role she had formerly played. She wasn’t angry, just clear and decided. She was lovingly and steadfastly on her own side.

And then, shame appeared. While Jane was aware that something profoundly important had taken place within her, and that she had behaved in a radically new way, and that she would not be continuing the relationship with her father in any kind of similar manner, she also felt a sense of shame. She shamed herself for having had such an intense response to her father, for being so impacted by him. So too, she was upset with herself for visibly reacting, which she believed shamefully revealed to her father that she was indeed affected by their relationship.

As someone who had meditated and practiced spirituality for many years, Jane began convincing herself that her reaction to her father meant that she was a spiritual failure. And furthermore, that her pain meant that she was also psychologically weak, someone who couldn’t be flourish unless in ideal, kid-glove circumstances.

And, as it turns out, Jane was not alone in administering shame and blame. Jane’s partner was pouring his disdain into the mix with a common cultural belief, namely, that after years of spiritual practice, she should have found a way to be immune to her father’s behavior, to build appropriately thick walls around herself. If she knew that this was how her father behaved, which she undoubtedly did, she should expect and be prepared for his behavior. She should not, still, be so devastated by her family. He accused Jane of being “fragile” and too sensitive to live in the real world. This was how he chose to support her in her transformation.

After being subjected to her partner’s and her own shaming however, something magnificent happened.

The same grace that had allowed her to know the truth with her father showed up and awakened Jane to yet another truth. Jane realized that she was indeed a spiritual grown up, now. She understood that spiritual and emotional wellbeing has nothing whatsoever to do with being able to deny, not feel, push away, or become immune to our experience. Indeed, quite the opposite. Spiritual maturity means having the courage to welcome whatever emotion is happening, to let reality be what it is. It means being willing to allow the full mystery, majesty and catastrophe that is the human experience, being willing to live with what is, which includes pain.

With spiritual and emotional maturity, we learn to welcome whatever emotion is arising and to do so without creating a narrative or personal identity out of its contents. As in Jane’s case, she could feel and internally validate the sadness of her relationship with her father and yet not cling to it, create a personal narrative or build an identity out of it. She could experience the sadness without being it. She had the wisdom to let the tsunami of emotion move into and through her, but also, by not grasping onto it, to allow it to move through and out of her, just as swiftly and effortlessly. Both processes, the in and out, are part of the same grace, of which we are not in control.

Furthermore, spiritual wellbeing is not about building thicker walls around our heart or finding freedom from difficult emotions. It’s about the willingness and bravery to deconstruct the walls around our heart, to let them dissolve so that we can live the full human experience: joy, sadness, and all the rest. We cannot reside behind walls and imagine that the emotions we want will get through while the ones we don’t will be kept out. A closed heart is a dead heart. When we live behind walls, we lose out on the whole enchilada that is life.

Growing up spiritually means living with a warrior’s heart, which is not a more armored heart but rather a less armored and more vulnerable heart. It means being willing to offer a seat at our inner table to whatever emotion is arising, and at the same time, to know ourselves as the compassion that holds the experience in company. It means trusting that the continually changing internal weather can move through us with great ferocity and yet, simultaneously, something can remain steady and well, holding the space in which life happens. A warrior’s heart contains the strength to open the doors and windows, to let life come in and also to let it leave.

There is a strong cultural belief that when you’re spiritually and emotionally well, you should stop feeling pain and stop being affected by life’s difficulties. This is a false belief. When we grow up spiritually, we don’t stop feeling difficult emotions or being fully and fallibly human. Rather, we stop fearing and judging our emotions; we embrace our imperfect humanness. With spiritual maturity, who we are evolves, from the one to whom our feelings are happening to the loving presence within which they happen. We feel our emotions and witness their comings and goings, both, simultaneously. Ultimately, we come to know that our heart can get bounced around and broken into pieces, that we can feel everything, and still know a wellbeing that perfectly holds the whole dance.

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New York Times, May 18, 2017

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