We are set up to fail to get our needs met in Romantic Relationships in the same way that we are set up to fail in life - by being taught false beliefs about who we are and why we are here in human body, false beliefs about the meaning and purpose of this dance of life.

Facet # 3 -  Shame Core - Inner Child Healing

"The dance that we learn as children - the repression and distortion of our emotional process in reaction to the attitudes and behavior patterns we adopt to survive in an emotionally repressive, Spiritually hostile environment - is the dance we keep dancing as adults.

We are driven by repressed emotional energy.  We live life in reaction to childhood emotional wounds.  We keep trying to get the healthy attention and affection, the healthy love and nurturing, the being-enhancing validation and respect and affirmation, that we did not get as children.

This dysfunctional dance is Codependence.  It is Adult Child Syndrome.  It is the tune that humans have been dancing to for thousands of years.  Vicious, self-perpetuating cycles of self-destructive behavior"

"That shame is toxic and is not ours - it never was!  We did nothing to be ashamed of - we were just little kids.  Just as our parents were little kids when they were wounded and shamed, and their parents before them, etc., etc.  This is shame about being human that has been passed down from generation to generation.

There is no blame here, there are no bad guys, only wounded souls and broken hearts and scrambled minds"

"If we are reacting out of what our emotional truth was when we were five or nine or fourteen, then we are not capable of responding appropriately to what is happening in the moment; we are not being in the now.

When we are reacting out of old tapes based on attitudes and beliefs that are false or distorted, then our feelings cannot be trusted.

When we are reacting out of our childhood emotional wounds, then what we are feeling may have very little to do with the situation we are in or with the people with whom we are dealing in the moment.

Codependence is a dis-ease of reaction.  As long as we are in reaction we are being a victim.  We are not owning our power if we are reacting.  Many of us have reacted to being hurt in Romantic Relationships by going to the other extreme - overreacting to the point where we spent many years out of relationship.  Then we try a relationship again and have another disaster because we are reacting to our childhood programming and we again react to our reaction by overreacting to the other extreme.  In Recovery we are working on getting the pendulum swing smaller and smaller - finding the middle ground, the place of balance.

Overreacting to our patterns is just as dysfunctional as reacting to the wounds that caused the patterns.  If we discover a pattern - say, that we leave relationships before we can be left - and we overreact and decide to stick it out in the next relationship no matter what, that can lead to us accepting a lot of abuse in the name of recovery. If we are in reaction and trying to figure out what is right and wrong - we are giving power to the disease.

There are no mistakes only lessons - which are painful but not that painful if we are not judging and shaming ourselves.  What makes lessons so painful is the shame the disease lays on us - in other words - the disease creates all of this fear about getting hurt until we are terrified of being hurt - but what is so painful about being hurt is the shame that the disease beats us up with after we get hurt.

The hurt itself passes - the shame and judgment the disease abuses us with is what is most painful.

We are programmed to believe that making a "mistake" is horribly shameful.  We are programmed to believe that if we do not find "Happily-ever-after" in a Romantic Relationship then we have made a mistake, or something is wrong with us.

When a relationship doesn't work our we torture ourselves with recriminations about what we did "wrong" or what is "wrong" with us.  We rip ourselves for the shame of "failing".

"Our intuition/gut/heart tells us the Truth - it's our head that screws things up. I understand perfectly why my friend is in reaction the way she is - I am just very sad that it means she can't be in my life.  She and I both come from a place of having so much terror of intimacy that we were relationship phobic - sometimes what is necessary for someone with a relationship phobia is to jump right in, that may be the only way past the fear.

I am happy to say that I don't have a relationship phobia anymore - I welcome another chance to explore a relationship now that I know that my worst fear can come true and it can make me stronger and better and happier.  The reason for that is that I did not give power to the shame - what a miracle!  What a gift!  I am so grateful."  An Adventure in Romance by Robert Burney