For years I intentionally choose to live as a victim. Yes, it’s true.
I choose to be a victim. At any time I could have chosen not to be a victim in any situation, but I didn’t make that choice. I chose to drift through life blaming others for my issues and complaining about my problems as if I would one day receive the highest achievement award for “most miserable”. Most importantly, I choose to be unhappy.
There was one particular evening I sat faintly and hopelessly in my seriously consideration whether or not I should drive myself to the emergency room as I waited for the red light to turn green. My kids were out of control, my head was spinning and now the cars behind me were honking at me to go. What a day!
I had just finalized my second divorce and started a new job. While I should’ve been somewhat happy about my new found freedom and job opportunity, I actually felt as if I was losing my mind.
I couldn’t picture myself as a mental patient so the battle in my head was over how bad off I would be if I waited to get treatment. Meaning that if I went now, I won’t be as “crazy” and could probably cope better than I’ve seen others. I felt like I was having what they called a nervous breakdown.
I’d experienced a lot of hurt over the last 30 plus years and carried the barrels of poison around with me. Not really sure what I was hoping to gain by holding all that toxic waste inside but the load finally became too heavy for me to carry. I knew first hand that medication would only cover up the symptoms and wouldn’t give me the peace, love, and wholeness I was longing for.
At this point I was way beyond sick and tired of being sick and tired. Instead of driving myself to ER, I went home and I prayed. I’m talking about a 72 hour spiritual rally, 3 day conference of soul seeking, crying, and knee bowing come to Jesus meeting. I asked God to remove the things that was not of him from me, to cleanse my mind and heart, and to show me how to love.
Acknowledge your past pain
Acknowledging your past pain is the first step in healing. I grew up not knowing who my biological father was. On top of that, my step father and mother divorced shortly after I announced that his brother had been molesting me.
My step father had been around since I was 2 years old. He was my father, the only male figure I saw each and every day for the last 10 years. Now he was gone.
This stuck with me for a while. I had split my family apart. Well this is what the 12 year old child thought. What else would I think? No one said anything to me about what was going on.
Never was there a talk between my mother and I about my step father not coming back home. He was just gone. He had abandoned me. He left us and never came to see me. He didn’t even call to say “Hi”. I wasn’t even worth a phone call?
My pain was the feeling of abandonment which involves the sense of loss. There is little or no closure just like grieving from a departed friend or love one. No farewells and no last words; just loss.
Unlike death which is certain, abandonment is uncertain.
Questioning and wondering whether the loved one will ever return, why they left, and struggling with if I could ever trust people again in fear they will abandon me. Similar to being rejected, being abandoned can accompany a great loss of self-worth.
Step 2: Identify your symptoms
Abandonment hurts deeply. Coping with abandonment you will either become overly needy or require a lot of attention and reassurance, or you go to extreme measures to never allow yourself to truly care for anyone ever again (avoiding relationships).
I fell in the never allow myself to care for anyone again category (re-abandonment). Keeping everyone away from my heart and at arm’s length so I wouldn’t get too deeply involved. So just in case abandonment occurred my hurt wouldn’t be that bad. I didn’t pick and choose who I put in this category. Therefore, I put everyone in the same category including friends, relatives, and romantic partners as well.
In my book, He Loves Me Not: Buried Tears of Betrayed Love, I tell of my dating experience and strangely how I repeatedly dated the same men but each with a different name. None of my relationships ever lasted longer than 9 months. After the breakup, this is when I would enter the re-abandonment stage re-living the pain from my childhood all over again.
On the flip side of this, you may deal with abandonment by attempting to fill the empty space in with anyone who is willing to give you attention. This may make you appear to come on too strong too in a relationship, which can scare off a potential partner or friend and increasing your sense of worthlessness. Again re-living the pain all over again.
Step 3: Take action
To identify and put some closure to my pain, I sought out a psychotherapist. We were able to identify my trigger points that caused me to feel emotional sad, hurt, and unworthy in certain situations or even around certain people. I traded my pain for love and created healthier relationships.
One technique that I used to increase my self-love was looking in the mirror and telling myself “I love you”. It felt very strange and awkward at first but I continued to say the words in the mirror and eventually became my own best friend.
I chose love myself and from here I can truly love someone else.
Life does not give you the absolute certainty that our relationships will always remain the same and consistent. However, with time, and even counseling, healing the wound of abandonment can begin and even allowing yourself to trust again.
Say “Yes” to love. Self-love.
In all, be aware of how you feel in every area of your life, situation, and how other people make you feel. This may be your body warning you or it may be a trigger from an old undealt with issue. It’s important to be happy. And if you didn’t know, being happy is your choice.
It doesn’t matter what happened or who did it, it’s still your choice to forgive and choose to be happy in life. Being aware of how you feel, acknowledging your pain, identifying your symptoms, and taking action is the greatest act of self-love you can give to yourself.
Give yourself compassion rather than judging yourself as weak. Take this healing process as an opportunity to build self-reliance and unconditional self-love. This process can be slow and require you to accept yourself as an individual. In the end you’ll be more self-assured and emotionally stable.
Start today by making a decision to be happy and heal your pain.
Author, Transformational Coach, and Inspirational Speaker, Kimesha Coleman works with individuals who have experienced some form of abuse, suffering from low self-esteem, or feeling of unworthiness to break free from their invisible jail. Kimesha recently published her book, “He Loves Me Not; Buried Tears of Betrayed Love” that tells of her own compelling story of how she went from victim to victor. Visit www.coachingbykimesha.com or www.facebook.com/yourstorytolive for more information.
“…the search for the perfect person to ‘fix’ us is one of our biggest psychic wounds, and one of the ego’s most powerful delusions…” Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
Are you having difficulty finding Mr. or Ms. Right?
Have you spent years, decades even, looking for that dreamy, ideal person who will complete you and make you whole?
If you’re like me, you’re probably dreaming up this man or woman who will uncompromisingly love you, heal your wounds and be your emotional soulmate.
Each of us desires this “holy relationship” and seeks a partner who will love and complete us.
I’m guilty of this.
Friends and family of late have been introducing me to women whom they say are “perfect” for me.
I’ve chatted with some, emailed a few and even met a couple, but each encounter has ended quickly.
I’ve found faults with every one of them, and have come up with reasons why each person will not do.
I don’t know if I was looking for a partner as much as I was looking for a savior.
Marianne Williamson’s book, A Return to Love, was my wake-up call.
Marianne Williamson, a spiritual teacher and author, points out that we are being delusional when we seek this ideal or “perfect” relationship. These fantasy notions of the ideal person are nothing more than our ego at work.
While we seek wholeness and love, our fantasies of the ideal, in fact, separate us and prevent us from having the love we desire.
What your ego is doing when you seek this special and magical relationship is arguing that the love you need must come from someone else and that only one special person can fill the deep hole in your heart.
This thought comes from a belief that you’re separate from love.
The desire for that one special person symbolizes the separation and the guilt you feel because of it. In search of love, you separate yourself from divine love. You separate yourself from the love within.
You don’t believe that everything you have and need is already within you – so now you have to seek love. This is the separation.
“This is why so much anger is often aroused in our closest relationships,” Marianne writes. “We’re projecting onto someone else the rage we feel against ourselves for cutting off our own love.”
Your ego tells you that the special person will heal your pain. The movies, the media and advertising reinforce this message – that there’s someone out there who will heal you and make you whole.
The reality of the matter is that you – and I – don’t “need” someone else.
You believe you’re not whole when, in fact, you are.
You think you’re not enough when, in fact, you are.
You don’t feel you have enough love within when, in fact, you do.
“Special love is a ‘blind’ love, seeking to heal the wrong wound.”
Our ego, in its lost and confused state, asks, “What can I get?” instead of, “What can I give?”
The ego blinds us and “…seeks to use other people to fulfill our needs as we define them.”
In our search for a special relationship, we are continually fearful because we believe that if we get too honest or too vulnerable, the special person will leave.
We try to become people we’re not. In the process, “we’re actually fostering our own self-hatred and lack of self-esteem.”
You can transform your views of relationships by adapting what the Course in Miracles describes as the “holy relationship.”
“A holy relationship starts from a different premise. Each one has looked within and seen no lack. Accepting his/her completion, (s)he would extend it by joining with another, whole as himself/herself.”
The holy relationship is a friendship. It is a relationship of support, forgiveness and healing one another.
Instead of being a relationship in which we expect our partners to be a certain way or to never press our buttons, the holy relationship drops judgment, gets rid of any personal agendas and shares pure love between partners.
“We love purely when we release other people to be who they are.”
Instead of changing someone, extend love and compassion to them. Love them fully for who they are today.
A holy relationship allows you to be yourself, wounds and all.
A holy relationship is “a common state of mind, where both give errors gladly to correction, that both may happily be healed as one.”
Your goal in a relationship is not to find someone who will heal you and change your life. Your goal isn’t to find someone who will take away the pain and fill the hole in your heart.
This is a romantic notion, perpetuated by storybooks and movies. Think of a relationship as a school for love.
What if our relationships brought our pain to the surface?
They would demand that we use all of our human skills to cultivate “compassion, acceptance, release, forgiveness and selflessness.”
Don’t expect or desire a relationship that will take away your pain. Don’t expect a perfect person who is “complete” or “finished” in his or her growth.
Marianne orders us to stop glorifying romantic love.
“We seek desperately for love, but it is that same desperation that leads us to destroy it once it gets here. Thinking that one special person is going to save us tempts us to load an awful lot of emotional pressure on whoever comes along that we think might fit the bill.”
Think of a relationship as an opportunity. As learning. As a school to expand your heart and become more loving.
When you’re learning about and removing the obstacles that prevent you from loving yourself, you won’t have to harp on someone else. Instead of finding ways to change someone else or fix someone else, you have the opportunity to work on yourself, heal yourself and love yourself.
You don’t have to find a perfect person – any person can be your spiritual teacher and lesson.
Instead of looking for love and blocking love when it shows up, we need to work on ourselves.
Working on yourself means loving yourself. It means “…learning how to support another person in being the best that they can be.”
“Partners are meant to have a priestly role in each other’s lives. They are meant to help each other access the highest parts within themselves.”
How do you do this, you’re asking?
To change your perception of relationships, Marianne suggests in her book, A Return to Love, a twofold process of noticing and prayer.
1. “I see my error or dysfunctional pattern.”
2. “I ask God to take it from me.”
When you’re asking God, you are committing to the choice to let healing occur on your own.
This means the choice to make a change in your life.
You have the power within you to make the changes, to heal yourself and love yourself.
Instead of replaying past events or continuously reminding yourself of emotional wounds, actual change occurs because of decisions on your part – the decision to heal and the decision to change.
Marianne concludes by saying that you have the power to reprogram your emotional computer.
You can establish a new pattern of thinking, a new way to respond and a new way to live.
Your own healing is available to you through the choices you make.
Underneath your pain, suffering and wounds lies your true nature.
You can return to love by making the decision to do so.
To pick up a copy or A Return to Love, click here.
You won’t be able to find love or love completely until you work on inner love for yourself.
I’ve rewritten and now releasing this new ebook on Amazon, called the Self-Romance Manifesto. It contains 21 ways to end self-loathing and self-hate and practice self-love. You can pick up the book here on Amazon for free this week only.
If you want to know what love and compassion for yourself looks like, pick up this book and learn about 21 ways to practice both in your life. Learn about how we develop self-loathing in our lives and what it does to us.
Read about how I made the shift in my own life and you can too. Practical strategies for dealing with thoughts, feelings and inner blocks. Learn about the toxic and dangerous things in your life that are contributing to self-loathing and how to manage them.
Finally, learn a set of skills and practices that will help you remove the barriers to self-love, accept yourself for who you are and feel at home in your own body. Once you feel the your own love in your life, be ready to welcome and invite romance in.
For The Self-Romance Manifesto: 21 Practices to End Self-Hate and Invite Love In (free this week only) click here.
You’re the type of person who doesn’t like being called selfish.
You like to be the go-to person, the fixer-upper and the peacemaker.
You worry about what others will think of you if you put yourself first. You feel guilty when you say “no”.
You imagine what your life will be like if you do put yourself first, but struggling with not knowing how others are going to react. You are afraid people may start to dislike you.
Well, you’re right.
Some people may start to dislike you, but I can guarantee not everyone will stop liking you. The ones who truly appreciate you and understand the give and take balance will stick around. And those who don’t are the ones you weed out in your life so that you can have more energy and time to replenish yourself to give to the people and activities that matter to you in life.
You see I was raised in a culture where speaking my mind and sharing my feelings was frowned upon.
To be loved and accepted, I needed to excel in education, mask my imperfections and not trouble others with my woes, as people would think I am weak and undesirable. This impacted my life, specifically when it came to relationships.
I had a hard time trusting people and letting people into my life fully. I was afraid of being judged if I wasn’t able to meet up to other people’s expectation giving them a glimpse of my flaws yet, I would judge others if they didn’t live up to mine. It was a vicious circle.
I would also often compare myself to others, which made me miserable.
Eventually, this led me to not wanting to get up in the morning because I didn’t want to participate in the charade of life. I was mentally exhausted.
Luckily, my parents saw the severity of my unhappiness and said to me one day, “your happiness is more important than what we think or expect of you. Please do whatever you need to do to make yourself happy.”
That was the turning point in my life, where I decided I am going to put my needs first. In doing so, I was able to shift other areas of my life for the better, because I was happier and was able to give more willingly, where I gave it my all but not give it (my time and energy) all away.
Now, I know some of you might think well you are lucky to have parents who understand.
That is true. But this doesn’t mean I don’t still struggle from time to time in communicating and not being able to see things eye to eye with them.
Instead, I’ve realized we may never understand or see eye to eye on certain things but if we truly love someone, the best we can do is respect their choices so long as it makes them happy.
Because deep down do you believe your loved ones would rather see you be happy than miserable?
Yes, certainly as you change you’ll stir things up and it may take time for them to adjust and understand but in the end when the decision you make leads you to be happier that’s what life is about isn’t it?
So if you are ready, it’s time to kick the habit of shouldering obligations.
Here are 5 reasons why you need to take care of your needs first.
You will be more successful and gain more respect
When you say yes to everything, people will think you don’t have a backbone. It can be seemingly unattractive when it comes to navigating your dating life and your work life.
As I mentioned, I use to be the biggest people-pleaser!
Along the way I was an emotional wreck and lost myself in the process. It hurt my relationships and the opportunities of being seen as a leader in work.
In my dating life the guy would fall out of love with the girl who used to have her own life because I became dependent on him for my happiness. And at work, not only could I not say no, I’d be afraid to ask for a raise or a promotion hoping someone would see what I am doing and speak for me.
The thing is if you don’t respect, speak up for yourself who will? You make it easy for people who take all the time to start taking advantage of you. This leads me to the next point.
You’ll have better relationships
When you say yes to yourself and take care of our own needs first, it shows that you are not afraid to make yourself a priority.
It also gives the people in your life the permission to take time for themselves to recharge. So when you get together with your friends, family, partner, you both will be rejuvenated and are able to give from your overflow the attention and support each other needs. After all wouldn’t you rather be in the company of someone who is healthy, happy and not stressed?
You will be more productive
Your mind and body works more effectively and creatively when you find time to give yourself some love and the care you need to unwind and de-stress.
Since you are in a better headspace you will be able to think more clearly enabling you to deal with problems more easily and effortlessly. The work you put out will be from a place where you are as your best self.
You Will Burn Out If You Don’t
If you give, give and give, you will eventually burn out physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually that you will have nothing to give at the end of the day. You’ll be living an unhealthy lifestyle.
If you don’t have your health, how are you going to spread your wealth in whatever form it takes? Like a car, you need to maintain yourself so that you don’t break down along the way.
You Become Dependent On You For Your Own Happiness.
When you are in control of filling up your own love tank, you will be happier.
Think of yourself as your own bouncer. You have the power to choose let in people, activities and things that are positive and energize your soul desires. That elevate and fires up your life party. You say no to all other things that drain and brings down the party.
Being human, sometimes we do slip up, we make wrong choices, forget to take care of ourselves when things are difficult as we try to juggle what we’ve got going on. When this happens and you become aware of what’s going on, learn from the lessons and forgive yourself. Know at any moment you can choose to change your thoughts, change your focus to get back in flow with what your mind, body and soul needs to create the life you want to experience. This is what ‘healthy selfishness’ is all about.
It’s time to take responsibility for getting your own needs met. What are you waiting for?
Theresa Ho is the Founder of HappyFreeLifestyle. She’s an 80’s music lovin’, freedom lovin’ wellness expert sent to help people travel to recharge from their daily grind. Get ideas for your next getaway and tips on how to stay well HERE. For more inspiration visit her on Instagram @happyfreelifestyle and Facebook.
I help people overcome their devastating breakups and divorces and find love again. Instead of visiting the Himalayas, sign up below and join me. I am taking a writing break but will be back soon.
This guide is free. A ticket to the Himalayas is $2000. Your move.
