fbpx

Avoiding Our Unconscious Influences

Relationships: As We Evolve Our Relationships Improve – Part 1/3

2022-07-30T03:34:06+00:00

Relationships are the vehicle that best allows us to work out our issues. Our pains and fears. Our neediness. Our aggression. Our protective devices. It is where we most play out our reactionary or passive styles. This is especially true in our familial and couple relationships This article is based on ch. 5 "Relationships" in Your Journey to Peace ... Our Couple Relationships What most of us look for in our intimate relationships is companionship, and for the other to love, help, and support us in life.  In our younger days, we may look for the right person to build a family with.  We may also look for a partner to offer us security. And from a human perspective, this is all fine. However, from a higher, spiritual perspective, the purpose of all our relationships is for soul growth: to connect more fully to our True Self - so that we can live life coming from a place of LOVE. In fact, all our interactions with others offer us opportunities to come from that place of love: to offer the qualities of love to others.  (See my post The Qualities of Love / the Qualities of Fear. The link is also at the end. Because of the intimacy required, our relationships are the best vehicle to work through our unprocessed hurts and pains from our past. In our day-to-day life, any  Unconscious Influences we may hold, like neediness, defensiveness, or aggressive, controlling, or passive tendencies. naturally arise. It is unprocessed hurts and pains from our past that caused us to create these Unconscious Influences to protect our hearts and psyches. These, along with our individual personalities, differing ways of approaching life, and the various defensive and protective mechanisms we created to protect our hearts and psyches are what creates hurt feelings in us and conflicts with others. Our couple relationships also often hold expectations that cannot be met. And our communication skills are often weak. With presumed, unvoiced, or misunderstood expectations and poor communication we may get hurt feelings or react badly in frustration, and our unconscious, habitual responses rear their ugly head, and instead of coming from a place of love and understanding, we unknowingly invite conflict into our relationships. Our relationships are actually set up to trigger our Unconscious Influences - by others pushing our buttons. This is why our relationships are often so difficult! Unconscious Influence create havoc in our relationships. They cause us to navigate life from a place of fear, protectionism, defensiveness, and suspiciousness. We are overly sensitive and prone to blame to other for how we feel and for not understanding us. The emotional instability and feelings of disempowerment created from past unhealed wounds or conflicting messages we received about love, create ineffective, habitual patterns of negative reactions and behaviors that cause hurt feelings for us and conflicts with others. Our unaddressed wounds get triggered in our communications with others as we erroneously bring echoes of past hurts or fears into present issues or situations with others. However, our sensitivities are [...]

Relationships: As We Evolve Our Relationships Improve – Part 1/32022-07-30T03:34:06+00:00

What Would Love Do?

2023-02-28T18:38:09+00:00

What Would Love Do? is a concept I came across when studying A Course in Miracles. We can ask What Would Love Do? regarding ourselves, others, and situations. Our responses to what happens to us, to situations with others, or to issues that crop up are what dictate how we will feel once whatever is happening is past. ? If we come from a place of love – and express love’s qualities (understanding, compassion, etc., there is a link below to my post on Love's Qualities) we will feel better. Calmer. And we will be able to deal with anything that needs our attention with more clarity. We will get on our day feeling light. ? If we allow our mind to focus on the negativity of it all:  he/she did – didn’t do xyz, it’s not fair, or this should not have happened and anger or frustration take over, or we resort to judgment, blame, or revenge - or any type of aggression we will carry the dense energy of this with us throughout the day. We are only ever coming from a place of Love, or a place of Fear. Read my related post, the Qualities of Love / the Qualities of  Fear.  If we want to better ourselves - or to feel better, we must approach life differently than we were. In my past and before I started doing personal development work (I didn't even know that term), I  just wanted to find peace in my life. A feeling had started to grow in me that there was something wrong with the picture of my life -  of how I was navigating life. That it was not others - but me - who were causing my unhappiness and frustrations.  Not me-me - but that somehow I was missing the mark. And so, my journey to peace (the name and themes of my books) began. Slowly, I began to realize that my frustrations and what I was feeling were not about the others - what they were or weren't doing. It was all coming from within me. I learned that my perceptions of others and situations were not reality - and that I brought past hurts, feelings, biases, and beliefs into present situations.   From these echoes of the past and their beliefs and biases, I created protection mechanisms and default ways of responding to life. I call these Our Unconscious Influences (see below for info on my upcoming book 2, Overcome Your Unconscious Influences ... in my "Our Journeys to Peace' Series). I had started to understand that based on what I experienced or witnessed when growing up, I had been projected my fears of what was or what might happen onto the present.  I allowed actions and innocent remarks to echo in my mind as proof that I would be criticized, wronged, stepped-on, and/or disempowered – just like my mother and many women of the 50’s generation were. All my Articles / Blog Posts are based on my [...]

What Would Love Do?2023-02-28T18:38:09+00:00

Show Your Vulnerability (True Feelings) Instead of Anger, Newsletter #54, Sept 2022

2023-01-12T00:59:01+00:00

This post is from my September 2022 Newsletter message.  Sign up or Read  my past messages. When we become frustrated, get hurt feelings, or another disappoints us, our default is often to react with anger or to lash out at the other in some way. And although we may feel some satisfaction at getting our frustrations out, reacting with anger, criticism, judgment, bullying – or any other aggressive way is counterproductive to giving us the ultimate results we are looking for. So is being passive-aggressive and burying our feelings. We all want to feel loved. And we all want to feel we matter to our loved ones. These are some of the many ways we feel the love and that our loved ones care about us. We all want to be understood, appreciated, listened to, and have our loved ones respect our wishes and do what they said they would do. When we feel frustrated or hurt and get angry at someone, one, some, or all of the above ways we might feel loved are not being met. However, rather than expressing how we truly feel in an attempt to get what we ultimately want, we lash out at the other. And often, we are not even in touch with our true feelings and have lost a connection to what we ultimately want. We are caught in a habitual pattern of reacting – and projecting our frustrations outward towards the other. Getting in Touch with Your True Feelings – and what You Ultimately Want For those of us not used to showing our true feelings – of being vulnerable, it is scary to step onto that ledge. Most of us who are used to hiding our true feelings, or no longer have a connection to them, have had our feelings trampled upon in the past to such a degree that we clammed up. We may have been bullied, belittled, shushed, or our feelings ignored. Maybe we were made to feel our feelings were unimportant or didn’t matter, or were told they were silly and childish when we expressed them. Physical or emotional abuse also makes our hearts close because our past experience tells us we cannot trust others and life. This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Relationship Intelligence ... – due out later this winter. See My Published and Upcoming Books Whatever happened in our past to turn our heart cold will cause us to keep our feelings to ourselves. Past hurts may also have caused us to unconsciously bury our feelings so that we cannot tap into them enough to find the words to express them. We unconsciously created a barrier to our heart, and its feelings nature, to protect it from further pain. When protecting our hearts, our default is to project our pain outward towards the other with anger, criticism, blame, etc. – rather than reaching out from our hearts and showing our true feelings. We are afraid to be vulnerable by putting our hearts [...]

Show Your Vulnerability (True Feelings) Instead of Anger, Newsletter #54, Sept 20222023-01-12T00:59:01+00:00

Title

Go to Top