Liberation from your painful patterns in love begins with seeing your source-fracture story clearly.
For once you make conscious the underlying beliefs that have been driving you to duplicate your old painful patterns again and again-- wreaking havoc with your love life, and preventing you from realizing your higher potentials in love, you’ll then have the power to challenge—and to shift that story; awakening to a deeper truth about your value, your power and your worthiness to love and be loved, as well as the possibilities you hold.
For happy, healthy love in this lifetime.
1. Become Still. Find a quiet space to sit for a few minutes uninterrupted. Close your eyes, take a deep breath as though you could breathe all the way down into your hips, and relax your body to the best of your ability.
2. Become Aware of Your Feelings
Regarding Your Relationship Become aware of the all of the feelings you’re holding around this relationship. Notice where these emotions are in your body. For example, “The emotions are like a burning in my solar plexus,” “They are a heaviness on my heart,” “ deep rest in my soul”
3. Welcome in Your Feelings.
Breathe deeply and notice the part of you able to witness these feelings with deep compassion. Extend love to the part of you experiencing those feelings, welcoming each one with a sense of kindness and care. Repeat your Step One Practice, by asking yourself what you are feeling, and tenderly reflecting back each of your feelings one at a time. Notice that in doing so, your ability to step back and lovingly observe your feelings, rather than be swallowed up by them, grows stronger.
4. Notice the Meaning You Are Making of Your Relationship
Let go of trying to figure anything out from your mind, and drop your awareness down into your body, becoming aware of the emotion center of all your difficult and dark feelings.
As though you could let the emotional center of your feelings speak for themselves (not your mind)
I invite you to answer the following questions:
“What am I making this relationship mean about me?”
For example, “I’m not loved,” “I’m not wanted,” “I’m alone,” “I’m disposable,” “I’m not good enough,” “I’m inferior,” or “I’m a failure.”
“What am I making this mean about my relationship with men/women (whichever gender you’re attracted to)?”
For example, “Men always choose other women, not me,” “Women don’t like me,” “No one really cares about my true feelings and needs,” “People only love me because of what I can do for them” or “Men only want me for one thing.”
“What am I making this relationship mean about the possibilities I hold for happiness in love?”
For example, “Life doesn’t support me to have love,” “I can never have what I want,” “My love life is cursed,” or “It is dangerous to let anyone get too close.”
5. Identify Your Source Fracture Story.
I now invite you to weave these beliefs together to name your source fracture story.
For example,
“I’m not enough. Men like other women more than they like me. There’s never enough love to go around.”
“I am not valuable. Women just use me for what they can get and then dispose of me. I have to work really hard all the time to try to prove my value.”
“I’m not worthy. Men leave me if I don’t constantly try to please them. My life is empty and void of love.”
6. How Old Is This Part of You/How Big is the Energy Held in Its Center?
See if you can now identify the chronological age of the part of you that is stuck in this story. This answer need not be literal, but more like a felt sense in your body of the age you were when you first came up with this perspective.
Ask yourself,
“How old is this part of me that’s stuck in this story?”
For example, “I’m just a baby,” “I’m about 5 or 6,” or “I’m 12.”
Notice also how big the energy is that is being held in this center.
Ask yourself,
“How big is the energy that I’m holding here?”
For example, “It’s huge, taking up an entire city block,” “It’s extending about 6 inches out from my body,” “It’s a dense, black knot that is wrapped around my entire heart.
7. Break State! Open Your Eyes and Shake It Out.
To help you return to your strong, adult self in order to challenge the meaning being made by your younger self, open your eyes and shake your body.
Ask yourself,.
“What’s the best thing about being my current age as opposed to being me when I was ______ (the age you discovered you are at the core of that story)?”
For example, “I have a lot more choices than I had back then,” “I can set healthy boundaries to protect myself,” or “I have a lot more resources than I did back then and can get the help I need.”
Stay identified with your adult self and be aware to not become overly identified with the younger self that is holding the false meaning.
If this happens, break state, and reflect on what you had for breakfast - ( break state) that morning -
and then reflect upon strengths as a wise and competent adult person.
Clearing the Air Exercise
In order to dissolve the tensions still churning between you, you’ll need to be a lot less interested in being understood, and a lot more interested in understanding the impact of your choices and actions.
A lot less invested in being right, and a lot more invested in how you might actually make things right.
1. Understand the Sole Purpose of this Exercise is to Clear the Air.
Recognize the purpose of this exercise is simply to clear the air of any festering hurts and resentments between you and your partner.
As such, I invite you to set aside the goals of getting your needs met, changing your partner’s mind, winning an argument, or resolving your differences.
2. Identify the Active Hurts and Disappointments You’re Each Still Struggling With.
I invite you each to list the hurts and festering resentments still incomplete for you, even if apologies have already been offered.
3. Become Willing to Take Responsibility for the Impact Your Behavior Has Had On Others.
Decide who will speak, and who will listen, first.
For the Speaker: You’re invited to share the hurts you’re still struggling with and the impact your partner’s behavior has had on you.
For the Listener: You’re invited to put aside your defenses, and strive to be present and available to hear what your partner is saying.
Regardless of whether you think he or she is telling the story accurately, try seeing the situation from his or her perspective.
Recognize that many of the ways we hurt each other are unintended; we unconsciously repeat old patterns, we’re distracted, self-absorbed
or simply assuming that others are like us.
Whether you meant to hurt your partner is not the point. That he or she was hurt is all that matters.
Set aside who’s right or wrong (unless you can now see how you may have been wrong), and become willing to take responsibility for the impact of your behavior.
Don’t negate, minimize, or dismiss what he or she is saying.
Instead, be interested in discovering how you may have contributed to and co-created the pain with which your former partner is currently struggling.
4. Let Your Partner Know What You Now See About the Impact Your Behavior Has Had Upon Him or Her.
For the Listener:
Do your best to not interrupt the Speaker, unless you are requesting more clarification about what he or she is saying.
Allow your heart to genuinely be touched by what your partner is sharing about their experience.
Without explaining why you did what you did, or how the situation may have impacted you, place your attention fully on him or her and extend a sense of authentic care and concern for the impact your choices and actions had upon them.
With deep humility and a willingness to tell the truth, mirror back to your partner what you can see about how your choices and actions impacted them and/ or others.
For the Speaker: Do not move on until you feel that your partner truly understands the impact their actions and choices have had upon you, and others that you love.
5. Offer to Make Amends By Taking Wholesome Right Action.
Past hurts don’t go away just because we feel badly about what we’ve done. Nor does saying “I’m sorry” always restore wellbeing to the relational field. What genuinely clears the air of toxic emotional residue is an amends that clearly intends to restore wholeness to the situation.
For the Listener: Consider the amends you can now make to your partner. While you can’t go back and undo the choices you’ve made, you can take
wholesome right action to try to repair the damage that’s been done. For example, offer to pay for what your mistakes cost the other, take steps to clean up a mess you helped make, or make a promise to never do this again to anyone else in the future.
For the Speaker: Think on what would actually help repair the damage done by your partner and allow yourself to receive the restitution being offered. While nothing can undo what has happened, an act of genuine contrition and retribution can set you and everyone involved up to heal from this experience and move forward unchained to the mistakes of the past.