One of the hardest things for any of us to do is to learn to have compassion for our self. In childhood we felt like it was our fault that our wounded parents treated us in the way they did. We felt that any abuse, deprivation, neglect, and/or abandonment (actual or emotional) was because there was something wrong with who we were - that we were defective or bad or evil or unlovable in some way.
As long as we have not done the work to heal our relationship with the child who we were - with the inner child wounded places that still exist within us - we are not available to Love our self. When we are not able to Love our self, then we are more comfortable in relationships with people who are emotionally unavailable. Being emotionally unavailable to our self makes us emotionally unavailable to others - and will cause us to sabotage any relationship where the other person is Loving us more than we feel we deserve to be Loved.
And I am not talking about consciously telling our selves we are Lovable. I am not talking about an intellectual - or even an intuitive - level of awareness where we know and believe we are Lovable. It does not matter how much we believe intellectually we are Lovable - although working on believing that by introducing Loving programming such as positive affirmations is a vital step in the process of healing - if we have not worked on changing the emotional programming.
When I use the term emotional programming, I am referring to both the emotional wounding / unresolved grief and to subconscious and conscious intellectual ego programming that resulted from the ways we were traumatized and how we interpreted the messages we got from the behavior, communication, and role modeling of our parents and any other significant older people in our lives in childhood. We have within us emotional wounds - inner child places - that are a result of arrested states of ego programming from different ages in our childhood.
It is impossible to become aware of all the subconscious programming without doing our grief work. It is necessary to go through the black hole of our grief in order to bring the subconscious programming to Light. Anything that is in the dark within us has power. The emotional wounds and old tapes from our childhood have power as long as we have not done the grieving and the ego reprogramming work that is necessary to start opening our hearts to our self.
As long as we are disconnected / disassociated from ourselves emotionally, we cannot be emotionally honest or intimate with ourselves. As long as we have not been willing to go through the black hole of our grief so that we can own and reconnect emotionally with the child who we were - we can not be fully or clearly in touch with our own heart and soul.
Intimacy is "in to me see." We need to be able to see into our self - and be willing to take the action necessary - to stop allowing the emotional wounds and old tapes to run our lives and sabotage our relationships. We need to learn to open our hearts to our self, in order to be capable of Truly opening our hearts to another person. If we can't open our hearts to our self, then we will continue to choose emotionally unavailable people to get involved with in our romantic relationships. We are doomed to be in relationships that do not meet our needs - or to avoid relationships - until we start learning to have compassion for the child that we were.
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Have a nice day.....
-- Edited by Phil at 08:30, 2006-03-04
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Life is short..Live it sober to the fullest...One day at a time...
I'm saving that one, Phil. It is sooo true. It may be one of the hardest things for us to do. I was convinced that I was unlovable and that that was why my parents treated me like that. That it was not abuse but my just deserts. When I came into AA and ACoA and started doing the Steps,, I thought that God was like my parents, only bigger,, and that He also saw me as guilty and bad and a failure,,, and like my father liked to find excuses to vent his wrath. But in doing Step 2, not just for a week, but keeping on it while I also did the others, I found that God loves me,,, and so I am lovable,,, and that God loves everyone He creates. I found out that God is Love. I didn't even believe, before that, that real caring love even existed. What my mother and father were doing while they said that they loved me,, was not this kind of Love at all. I cried for almost two years as I learned, as I came to believe, in Love, 'a commitment to work for the well being of the beloved' that is merciful, unconditional, and eternal. It is sooooo amazing! That is a kind of spiritual awakening,,, but Love is a thing that to have must be given away. If we keep it, we lose it.
we're on the recovery road here together,
love in recovery,
amanda
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do your best and God does the rest, a step at a time
