|
Page 1 of 2 It was not our fault. We were set up to fail in Romantic Relationships. It is very important to forgive ourselves - not just intellectually, but to actually go back to the wounded parts of our self and change our relationship with our self. We cannot Love someone else in a healthy way until we learn to Love ourselves - and we cannot love our self without owning all of the parts of us.
"Unfortunately, in sharing this information I am forced to use language that is polarized - that is black and white.
When I say that you cannot Truly Love others unless you Love yourself - that does not mean that you have to completely Love yourself first before you can start to Love others. The way the process works is that every time we learn to Love and accept ourselves a little tiny bit more, we also gain the capacity to Love and accept others a little tiny bit more."
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
We can access our Higher Self to be a Loving Parent to the wounded parts of our self. That Loving Adult within us can set a boundary with the Critical Parent to stop the shame and judgment and can then Lovingly set boundaries with whatever part of us is reacting so that we can find some balance - not overreact or under react out of out fear of overreacting.
We need to establish Loving on-going relationships with the wounded parts of us in order to be able to stop reacting out of our wounds and our shame. The process of learning how to set internal boundaries is the single most powerful method I have ever seen or heard of for Learning to Love our self. Once we start Loving, honoring, and respecting our self then we have a chance to be available in a healthy way for a Loving Romantic Relationship.
"The dysfunctional dance of Codependence is caused by being at war with ourselves - being at war within.
We are at war with ourselves because we are judging and shaming ourselves for being human. We are at war with ourselves because we are carrying around suppressed grief energy that we are terrified of feeling. We are at war within because we are "damming" our own emotional process - because we were forced to become emotionally dishonest as children and had to learn ways to block and distort our emotional energy.
We cannot learn to Love ourselves and be at peace within until we stop judging and shaming ourselves for being human and stop fighting our own emotional process, until we stop waging war on ourselves."
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
"The message that you shouldn't do it because it will cause conflict with your spouse is probably not for your Highest good. If taking care of your self causes conflict with your spouse then you may need to take another look at the relationship - either by yourself or hopefully with him to see if the conflict can be mediated (setting boundaries in a relationship is about 95% negotiation - boundaries for the most part aren't rigid - some are, like it is not ok to hit me or call me certain names or cheat on me, etc. - but most boundaries are a matter of negotiation, which of course involves communication.) As I have mentioned communication is really difficult. Because we all have a little child inside of us who learned that it is shameful to be wrong or make a mistake - too often in relationships the attempts at communication end up as a power struggle between who is right and who is wrong. One person takes the others feedback as an attack and then attacks back. Again the wrong question is being asked - a relationship is a partnership, an alliance, not some game with winners and losers. When the interaction in a relationship becomes a power struggle about who is right and who is wrong then there are no winners."
Facet # 4 - Emotional Dishonesty - Emotional Intimacy
"We are set up to be emotionally dysfunctional by our role models, both parental and societal. We are taught to repress and distort our emotional process. We are trained to be emotionally dishonest when we are children".
*
"In this society, in a general sense, the men have been traditionally taught to be primarily aggressive, the "John Wayne" syndrome, while women have been taught to be self-sacrificing and passive. But that is a generalization; it is entirely possible that you came from a home where your mother was John Wayne and your father was the self-sacrificing martyr.
The point that I am making is that our understanding of Codependence has evolved to realizing that this is not just about some dysfunctional families - our very role models, our prototypes, are dysfunctional.
Our traditional cultural concepts of what a man is, of what a woman is, are twisted, distorted, almost comically bloated stereotypes of what masculine and feminine really are. A vital part of this healing process is finding some balance in our relationship with the masculine and feminine energy within us, and achieving some balance in our relationships with the masculine and feminine energy all around us. We cannot do that if we have twisted, distorted beliefs about the nature of masculine and feminine".
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
|
