Ooo well that little foray yesterday ended with me in quite a lot of tears as I described my experience as a child in the hands of my mum to a visiting close friend. Pain that I still have stored inside coming up to be set free.
It was such a lovely experience reconnecting with my pal S, I have felt a bit estranged from her since she moved away. We had a really deep long session.
It hurts to love and adore a parent and to be treated harshly, aggressively, unlovingly. Think remembering how much I loved my mum and how desperately hard I tried to make her happy set me off. Quite a betrayal really. Reconnecting with that love that I then, for my own safety and survival, I had to bury. Is it still there? Must be. I’m not feeling it right now.
We can only conclude with our limited cognitive ability as children, that we are unlovable. And that is a painful belief to walk about with through life. And in itself causes all sort of secondary behaviours e.g. people pleasing, over achieving…
And it’s not true that we are unlovable, we are lovable. And underneath we know that. So there’s this dissonance that’s painful too.
Then at some point we get with the truth is that we are lovable, whether we fully believe it or not. So then comes the process of prising apart from the lie that we aren’t.
We concluded that we aren’t because of how we were treated, if that treatment was anything like being hit, shouted at, not having our needs and feelings responded to compassionately….if painful things are happening we conclude that’s what we deserve. That’s our worth.
If they treat us with love, we conclude we are lovable. That seems to be quite rare, and most of us end up with a belief we are not lovable or not good enough and we walk about with a deficiency story our whole lives.
I’m so thrilled that I have discovered that I’m lovable, that I love and cherish myself. Life has got a whole lot more fun, interesting and fulfilling.
About how to undo those false beliefs we have stored. this is the blurb
“Russell chats to Michael A. Singer, the author of the New York Times bestselling book ‘The Untethered Soul’, about whether the current political system is designed to keep us in fear, why the elites want power so badly and how to cope with mental health in a culture that appears to exacerbate it.”
And here’s a fab room.
Learning to Rest with it All 