Pop Thought: It Was Never You They Saw. You Have Always Been Perfect.

I sent a version of this message to a friend recently and they found it helpful. I was wondering if it might be helpful to someone else as well.

 

“So, what's clear to me is that, with that person –insert name of a person you feel incredibly attracted to but who hurts you with their behaviour or words or bad treatment and you know it’s unhealthy to maintain a relationship with them but feel like you can’t stop-, you are living out your infant self's experience. That infant sensed the love/potential love/lack of love of its mother/father/caregiver/etc. and then that mother/ father/ caregiver/etc., because of their own trauma and life experiences, acted in unloving ways. The infant, having no way to understand why this happened, assigned the blame to itself. The infant took on the belief: "It's because of something that I am or I do or that emanates from me that the person went away/treats me badly/won’t interact with me/harms me/speaks to me that way". 

If you can take that information deeply in, the truth that you (as that infant and, as an extension, the you of today) TRULY deserve the love, attraction, attention, warmth, care, etc. and NOT the abandonment/bad treatment, you will be able to explain to those people kindly that their behaviour and bad treatment of you is no longer allowed and walk away from the relationships where that is not respected.

 

The truth is, it never had anything to do with the qualities that that infant had or didn't have nor anything it did or it was or it emanated. This is where "I’m not worthy" (or insert your most damning belief about yourself here) comes from. It's simply not true. You may appear “not worthy” but only to people who have similar issues to that caregiver's. You are somehow the mirror for those issues in their own lives that they don't know how to deal with. 

Any other person who loved children and didn't have the particular emotional baggage that your caregiver had would have looked at that infant and loved it completely, accepted it entirely and never, ever abandoned it, always tried to fulfill its needs, always treated it well and you would never have believed that you are not worthy. The abandonment/bad treatment only happened because of your caregiver’s internal experience... we can't know what exactly but some combination of...  intense emotions (ex. shame, fear, anger, distrust, disgust, grief, etc. ad infinitum), beliefs about themselves or others, beliefs about the world and its safety and their past trauma and experiences.

 

I feel that seeing this type of intense, difficult, love relationship through a karmic lens instead of a psychological one might be detrimental. Through that lens, it might appear that you are somehow "responsible" for that person treating you the way they do. Some interpretations of “karma” permit or expect bad relationships or treatment from others as “the other side of the coin” for things you “did/said” in a past life or lives, something you have to learn, something you need to change or do. From the psychological view point, it was NEVER about you - the infant you. The only thing you need to do or change is your level of love for yourself. When there is true self-love, chronic bad treatment or abandonment are never attractive.

 

The problem of how those people your are attracted to see you is all theirs, the decisions are all theirs and relate only to their own past and inner experiences. What I'm trying to say is that what makes you seem not worthy to that person is not something that comes FROM YOU but rather something that comes FROM THEM, hits you (you are a mirror) and bounces back in their own face which causes them to have a negative reaction. There is a big difference.

 

It's important to understand that you cannot change their internal experience, you only have the power to change your own.

From the moment you can believe that, you will know in your heart that you can have the love without having to put up with the abandonment/bad treatment. When the truth of your worthiness becomes clear to you (if you had been welcomed by an emotionally and mentally healthy caregiver this would have been clear from the start), then that belief/issue of “unworthiness” (or whatever your personal painful belief is) will be truly healed. If not this time, then the next relationship or the one after that or the one after that.”

 

Wishing each and every one of you that deep healing!

Pop Thought: Love does not excuse consistent bad behaviour.

It's not because I love you that I should allow you to consistently treat me in ways that are disrespectful of my time, my physical body, my energy, my feelings or my space.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

A couple of years back, I was in a relationship with someone I loved very much and who loved me. I knew his love for me was real. However, when I would reach out to connect with him, he would consistently: not respond to my messages, ignore questions or requests, make no effort to contact me, give me "the silent treatment", etc. I always got the image of being a dog locked in a room with him on the other side of the door holding the door shut with his foot. Then, all of a sudden, when he decided it was time, he would reach out and open the door. We would then get together. When we were together, I knew he loved me and his love was enticing and delicious to me but his behaviour was unacceptable and I had to end the relationship. Not in anger, just with the knowledge that I deserve (and need) to be treated with respect. Even now, we love each other and we are not together and that feels right.

Recently, a friend was telling me about a budding friendship/possible relationship he was experiencing. It was both exciting and very painful and confusing. When he would just bump into the woman by accident, she was always incredibly enthusiastic about seeing him. Huge, warm hugs, giant smiles, deep eye contact, long conversations in hallways. He could see from her reactions that she sincerely enjoyed his company. However, as soon as they would make a plan to see each other (whether he initiated or she did, whether the next day or the next week) she would either not be there when he would go to meet her or she would send him a note to cancel with a feeble, implausible excuse. The distressing behaviour was very consistent and she is now locked out of his heart. Their relationship will go no further.

And then there are those who often hit their partners and truly regret what they've done. And those that often cheat on their partners and really wish they hadn't. Or those who simply don't or can't help their lover when help is requested. There are always two sides to any story and in most cases people deserve a second chance but when we're talking about 3rd, 4th and 5th chances something is very off and needs to be reassessed.

Often, it's emotional immaturity, childhood attachment styles, trauma or some other mental health issue that gets in the way of the love that is really there. These causes are sad and not necessarily the person's fault. However, the healing is absolutely that person's responsibility. 

Image by geralt on Pixabay.com

Love isn't always enough and, despite what rom-coms might try to tell us, it doesn't heal all wounds... unfortunately. Love can help, support and encourage but the person themselves are the only ones who can take the necessary action-steps to change. If they're not open to becoming aware of their issues or are not willing or able to broach the subject or make strides to adopt more healthy behaviours then we need to think of ourselves first. It is up to us to decide when love is and isn't enough and when the pain from the behaviour is not worth it. In most relationships, we get to choose how we allow ourselves to be treated. 

In a relationship of any kind, love and painful behaviours are two separate things. We need to measure both the love and the pain that the behaviour causes us and make our choices. Just begin to notice whether you want the person to change their behaviour more than they want it themselves and take that into account. 

If you leave the person, it doesn't necessarily mean you don't love them. It may just mean that their behaviours are no longer acceptable to you, not good for your well-being or your self-esteem/self-respect and those are very valid reasons. Your beloved partner is sometimes doing the best they can and sometimes it's still not enough for you and your needs. And that may be painful to understand but it's valid, too. 

Don't excuse consistent bad conduct because you love someone. Love would be horrified, I think, to be the reason someone would accept disrespectful or unacceptable behaviours. Love wants people to be and feel like their best and most satisfied selves, not distressed or abused in each others' company.

Pop Thought: The point of creating is not the creation.

The point is the act, the verb, the movement of creative juices.

The "final product" (the thing that was created) doesn't matter.

It's like physical exercise. It's good for your body, your soul, good for all of you, whether you can see the difference on the outside or not. 

It's the inside and the doing of it that matters. 

AND it doesn't have to look anything like "art" or sound like music or smell like roses. 

Do it! Move those juices! Create!

Pop Thought: Acceptance always helps everything.

So, what is acceptance, then? Hmmm. Good question.

 

To me, acceptance is … I suppose… surrendering to reality. Surrendering to what really IS. It usually takes me a while to get there with lots of fits and fuss and denial and resistance beforehand. I don’t go lightly or easily into acceptance. I’m a control freak at heart and acceptance, by its very nature, makes me squirm. 

Acceptance forces me to admit… I cannot control this. It implies that something larger than (or at least outside of) me is happening here, is in charge, and no matter what I do some essence of it will not be changed just because I work at it or whine about it or fuss about it or get pissed off about it or whack at it with a hammer… 

So, acceptance then is both a giving up of my (imagined) power and an experience of relief or peace at giving it up. When I release this idea that I will or can have an effect on the person, situation, experience, instead of being worse off which is what I always EXPECT, I experience a relieving type of letting go which makes everything somehow better.

This "surrendering" kind of sounds like powerlessness but my physical and emotional experience of it is NOT that. Where as the fighting, fussing, resisting and denial beforehand feel like contraction and discomfort, acceptance feels, in my body and even in my mind because it too lets go, like expansion and openness.

I suppose it’s something like when your hand is gripping something, you’ve got a very narrow contracted focus, not room for much else in there, whereas once you let go, your hand is open and anything can come into it.

What acceptance DOESN’T mean to me… It doesn’t mean that I have to like what I have accepted. What it does, though, is allow me to really feel my emotions about not liking it. It allows me to face and feel the pain, the anger, the fear… whatever… fully. Just by doing that, by not repressing them, not resisting them, I am inviting movement into the issue, into the situation. I’m allowing myself to know what’s true for me and, therefore, to keep it from stagnation, to keep flow happening. As long as there is movement in what is happening, I am not stuck in it and it keeps changing and evolving and always moving toward something better (just something I’ve noticed over my life). 

“Stuckness” and resistance and teeth grinding and not wanting to see the truth, these are the things that often cause us the most pain which is funny because usually we are doing these things to try and stop or avoid pain or painful situations. And when we stop trying to avoid the pain, discomfort, anger, etc., when we finally accept things as they are then we can just allow them, just feel them and move slowly on to the next thing we will be fighting, resisting, in denial or fussing about. Ah, the irritating paradoxes of life!

K. xo

Teach Yourself "Down the Line" Perception

What in the world is that, "Down the Line" Perception? Well, I think I just made it up, not the concept but the title.

It's a way of thinking, of catching certain types of thoughts and swapping them out for others. I taught myself to think this way for practical reasons. Why suffer if you don't have to?

What lead me to this way of thinking was that I suffered a lot from believing that I had lost things or that I had missed things in my life. However, when I really looked at all the experiences in my life, I noticed that once I had gotten far enough past most difficult situations, I saw how beneficial those experiences turned out to actually be. After reviewing a certain number of experiences, large and small, that I had been disappointed about in my life, I realized that what had seemed awful at the time turned out to be, not just "not-so-bad" but, truly a good thing.

Example: A devastating breakup back in 2001 had me depressed, bitter and shunning men for over 2 years. At the time, it seemed like I had lost something really precious that I would never be able to replace. In the long run, I was right, I was never able to replace that relationship... and THANK GOD for that!

The person I was with had a permanently dissatisfied disposition. He was never happy, always looking for better, never convinced I was good enough, didn't really see what was good in me or our relationship. I exhausted myself mentally and emotionally in trying to keep up, be better and "improve" to suit his idea of what I/we should be. It was a huge blow to my self-esteem being with him. Now that I'm many years "down the line", my perception of those events is very different than it was at the time. I look back and am incredibly grateful that we weren't together longer than we were. I now feel blessed that things fell apart as I feel I was spared even worse self-esteem issues and wasting more of my time on a relationship that was deeply unhealthy for me.

What this and many other events that I am now "down the line" from have taught me is that very few things that have happened or which I have "missed" are as bad or disappointing as they seemed at the time. Because of that, I am teaching myself to assume that what is happening to me in every moment, however seemingly disagreeable and apparently "wrong" is actually "right" and that I will be able to perceive it in that light once I am "down the line" enough from it in the future.

My thinking now is: Why wait? Why wait to be "down the line" to see what is almost always the case? Why not assume right away that what is happening is actually the "right" thing and stop the suffering before it starts? Suffering comes from our perception and judgment that the experience is happening in the "wrong" way. Start thinking of ways, right now, that it could be interpreted as "right".

We are always a work in progress but more and more often I catch myself if I begin to feel disappointed about something and flip it off like a light switch. When I hear thoughts like: "things don't work out for me" or "I never catch a break" or "I've missed my only chance", replacement thoughts pop into place. "Maybe I just missed being in an accident" (if I'm held up and I leave later than I wanted)", "I wonder what the Universe has in store for me that's even better than that?" (if I seem to have missed an opportunity) or "These people needed a more personal touch to get the learnings" (if a class I'm giving doesn't fill up as I would have liked it to).

Being able to do this type of reverse thinking means that things that would have previously been upsetting aren't. I can let them go with little or no disappointment or sadness. In fact, in some instances I actually get excited when things don't work out as I wonder, "Something better than THAT is coming my way? Fantastic!" And it almost always does.

I can't swear to you that everything I miss out on is always replaced by something better but if my personal past is any indication of my future, a really large percentage of the time that will be the case. I don't see a point in feeling bad 100% of the time when such a small number turn out to be truly unfortunate events. This has been my personal experience - your life may be different but have you ever really evaluated it. I can always feel bad about those few times later if I "need to".

Give this method a try. Start asking yourself: "If this is actually the right/better way for things to go for me then why/how could that be or what would that mean?" See what answers you get. Let me know in the comments below.

Redefining Success

How do you measure or define success? 

I measure it in units of freedom. 

Freedom to do what I want, when I want, with the people I want? 

I consider myself highly successful because I have greatly gained in freedom over the past few years. 

Not in money, not yet. I admit that hasn’t been as abundant as I’d have liked but my life is becoming more and more something that is fun, interesting, stimulating and exciting.

Generating extra money is taking a bit more time but it, too, is coming. When you are making a new trail that you have not gone down before, it may take a while to figure out which direction you want to go and to cut down the trees blocking your way.

Certainly, money can have an effect on our freedom (below certain levels, choices can be extremely limited) but for most of us in western cultures, money is not the issue we believe it to be. Understand that I am not independently wealthy. I am simply able to live the way I enjoy with a salary that is on the lowest end of the lower middle class income scale.

I've made many choices in my life that others might not have made and the quality of my life has gone up, by MY standards and my measurements. Mainstream society might not agree with me.

My unusual choices:

• I have never wanted nor had any children
• I have an old car
• I live in a very small apartment
• I do not have a romantic partner at the moment
• I work only 3 days a week at a "normal" job
• I do not have a TV, I have a computer with internet
• I do not have cable or Netflix
• I do not have a landline, I have a cell phone

My unusual results:

• I work two days a week at a job I adore
• I volunteer two hours a week at a holistic cancer wellness centre
• I occasionally give evening or weekend classes on subjects that I'm passionate about
• I can have breakfast, lunch or afternoon tea with friends, colleagues and family members pretty much when I want
• My colleagues in my beloved work are also often my good friends
• I'm mostly on the road at non-traffic times
• I get massages in the middle of the day in the middle of the week
• To create long weekends, I can switch around my days off when I need to
• Four out of seven days a week, I can pretty much go to bed and get up at any time I choose
• I attend conferences, talks and trainings that interest me a few times a year, both near home and further afield

These choices may seem unappealing to some of you and impractical for others. I only illustrate my life and my interpretation of success as freedom so that you understand that we can deviate from the TV stereotype of a "good life" and we can be happy, satisfied and live wonderful lives anyway. Probably, in many cases, BETTER lives.

We can question cultural norms about the expected size of our home, the quality of our car, what is "acceptable" work and what is not. We can question these social ideals and decide that we don't share them and that we don't need to do things the way everyone else does. In doing this, we can choose differently and create lives for ourselves that WE prefer, that make us more happy than the big house, fancy car or high paying job ever could.

I've never had a family who tried to make me conform so it has been easier for me to be different and choose differently. I encourage you to begin to consider what your own idea of success might be if not for these social pressures.

If you decide that just maybe you would like to be successful in another way, start small. Make little changes at first, if you need to, but figure out what you want more of and what you want less of in your life and multiply the more and subtract from the less.

One tiny change at a time, we can carve out lives that are fulfilling for us and model that freedom of choice for our children and all those around us. If we value joy and satisfaction above money and perceived prestige, we can change our personal worlds to ones that we appreciate more.

For a fulfilling life, please consider all your options, not just the typical ones.

What does Spirit think of suicide?

A woman on one of the FB groups I frequent had a question regarding legalized, end-of-life, assisted suicide. She wanted to know what we thought the "heavens" think of all that as so many religions disapprove of and even condemn suicide. She was asking the psychics in the group specifically what they thought but that didn't stop the rest of us all from having and giving our opinions. :)

This is my take on it (for the moment, my beliefs and my spirituality are ever changing): 

Many who have had Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), ex. Anita Moorjani, Eben Alexander, etc. say that there is absolutely no judgement on the other side of the veil, only complete acceptance and unconditional love unlike anything we can even imagine here on Earth. 

All judgment seems to happen here, in human minds. I'm not psychic nor have I had an NDE, however, it seems to me that religious beliefs are mostly human interpretation of divine messages received by other humans. And most religious doctrines come from documents written by other humans.

Even if the messages and documents are channeled, as I'm sure they are, they've come through a human vessel. That person who received the message and/or wrote the document lived in a certain body (male or female), at a certain time in history and came from a certain culture. All of those elements colour the message that they received. Like air moving through different organ pipes make different sounds yet the air creates ALL of those sounds so none can be said to be the "correct" one that represents the air. Air is so much more than just the different sounds it can make through even a multi-piped organ.

I guess I don't believe human brains can ever capture the entire story that just "is". All that means to me is that our holy words and religious scriptures are not God's word. They are only a representation of that word because God/the Universe/Source/The Light/whatever you like to call it... IS the word and cannot ever be represented in its entirety in any Earthly form.

Our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and words are not enough to express that being. And if there is any judgment in our version of Spirit (toward suicide, toward someone who has a particular sexual orientation, etc. ad infinitum) then I think it is the vessel through which the air is passing that is to "blame" for that judgment and not the air itself. Air just is.

Make no mistake about it, you have been hypnotized!

If you hypnotize someone into believing that they are a chicken in a barnyard, what happens? We’ve all seen enough stage hypnosis shows to know that what happens is the hypnotist will get the person to start clucking like a chicken.

Well, here’s the thing… your beliefs about yourself, about life, about the world… have hypnotized you. Whatever or whoever you believe you are is who you will be. Your behaviours and actions, or lack of behaviours and actions, only ever come from your beliefs. Unless you make a conscious effort (and it is a very big effort of willpower that you will need), you will never take an action that falls outside of what you believe to be possible.

If you believe you are a chicken, you will cluck like a chicken. If you believe you are a loser, you will act like a loser and get a loser's results - reinforcing that belief. If you believe women or poor people can’t do X, Y or Z and you identify with being a “woman” or a “poor person” then you won’t be able to do X, Y or Z… but you are only hypnotized.

Maybe it’s your family who unwittingly or intentionally hypnotized you. Perhaps your culture or your teachers repeated the same things to you over and over until you believed them as well. In some cases, it was just one very emotional and negatively interpreted experience that made you take on a particular belief. 

All of this is only hypnosis and a hypnotic trance can be broken. Waking up from the trance means opening doors to other possibilities, opening doors to a new life and a new you.

Hypnosis happens in a number of ways but the two most common are repetition (all forms of advertising use this tactic) and emotional impact.

Repetition as hypnosis

If you hear the same string of words or see the same happenings over and over again, it sinks into your subconscious. Your mind, being a meaning-making-machine, attempts to make sense of it and that "sense", which is quite often nonsense, becomes something that you believe. X begins to = Y.

High levels of emotion induce trance

Any experiences we have while we are feeling highly emotional (fear, joy, anger, love, shame, etc.)  become embedded in our subconscious minds. That is why it's often easy for us to call them to memory. Again, our minds are always trying to comprehend what is happening. Whatever our interpretation of this situation is, it becomes our belief.

"The Truth"

What we believe is NOT “the truth”. This is very hard for us to grasp and understand because what we believe FEELS true to us. “The truth” is that what is true for you may be completely false for someone else in the exact same situation as you.

An example: Imagine you have to give up your home and most of your possessions. You own only a backpack worth of "stuff" and must go live with friends. To some, this would be their worst nightmare ever and yet there is another interpretation. I know of a person who has this happening to her yet she is feeling great. She feels free and unfettered. This is one of the best times of her life. She is not interpreting this situation to mean she has no worth, she is not interpreting it to mean that she is going to starve in the future, she is not interpreting that she’s a burden to her friends… she is enjoying her time feeling free, happy and light.

Here’s another thing that it’s hard for us to hear and believe: it’s NOT the situation, it is the interpretation of the situation, it’s the judgment we put on the situation. Our beliefs and judgments can be changed so that we can view “bad” situations differently, find peace with them and enjoy life more fully… no matter the situation.

So, coming back to beliefs and hypnotism: If we can become aware of our beliefs, we have a better chance of de-hypnotizing ourselves. We can also ask for help in finding our beliefs and reinterpreting our situations. There are many techniques that allow us to explore and release these beliefs and the pain they cause us: my favourites are EFT, The Work of Byron Katie and PSTec, among many other options.

Don’t allow life and other people to keep you stuck in your hypnotized state. It may have taken many years of childhood or one very emotional experience to hypnotize you but the state can be broken in an instant.

When you notice that you don’t like how you feel, ask yourself “What am I believing about this person/this situation, that makes me feel sad/angry/ashamed/afraid”? Pick up a healing tool or technique – maybe all you need to do is take some deep breaths – and de-hypnotize yourself or ask for help to do it. Know that it can be done.

Hugs,
Kelly.