Confession time.
You might want to grab a cuppa and a comfy chair for this one because I’m going to go a little deep.
Full disclaimer – if you have been in the abuse cycle in your own life and relationships, this post could be a little triggering. But understanding our cycles and recognizing familiar patterns in others is power and allows us to move into a healthier space both in our relationships and in our own minds and bodies.
To quote Aristotle, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
For anyone who has read my work or knows me as a human, you know that a huge part of my purpose here on this planet is to uplift, educate and enlighten, especially when it comes to understanding the science (and spirit) of how we each create our realities – and that it all starts with our thoughts. I hate the term “Coach” and I am no one’s guru, but I have had a fundamental understanding of the mind’s ability to alter our lives since I was a child and have been studying it for most of my adult life.
I am full-on geeked out, slightly-obsessed, so-excited – can’t-keep-still-have-to-share passionate about it. I literally read about, listen to a podcast or take a class in some aspect of the subject nearly every single day. For years. It really is so freaking cool and lights me up like nothing else. Well, not much else. 😏
The human mind is an incredibly complex system of organic programs that are largely formed in our early childhood. This can be wonderful if we had a healthy, loving childhood but can really f#ck us up into adulthood and sometimes for the rest of our lives if our parents did not have the tools to give us a healthy beginning to life.
We can overlay this circuitry even as adults (neuroplasticity) which is also super cool, but only if we are aware of those programs running our lives in the first place. These subsets run every aspect of our lives from what information we take in (Reticular Activating System) to our happiness baseline and the amount of Dopamine, Serotonin, Oxytocin and Endorphins (happy brain chemicals) available to us – and conversely, the degree of adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormones) that are chronically cycling through our system, causing not only higher degrees of perceived stress but also inflammation and ultimately, disease. (dis-ease)
The problem is, most of us aren’t aware of these programs controlling our subconscious mind and affecting our everyday lives. The way we perceive and navigate the world is just our “personality” (personal-reality) and we rarely go beyond that unless we have some sort of a come-to-God, radical wake-up call such as the passing of a close loved one or a NDE, ourselves.
This largely-ignored circuitry also creates our attachment styles and the way that we approach relationships. This is where my confession comes in.
In spite of years of study of neurobiology, the mind-body connection, quantum physics and how it applies to our ability to create our personal reality – and a healthy dose of psychology, because I believe healing past trauma is the doorway to everything else – I have had a major blindspot or achilles heel in my personal life as a result of the relational patterning of a deeply abusive childhood – my personal relationships. If you can relate, you probably understand this perfectly. We tend to repeat the emotional patterns we learned as children.
For me, since I was a “pleaser/enabler” with abandonment issues and a healthy dose of “Fixer” syndrome, I was both avoidant and anxious in most of my closest relationships.
As a result, I’ve experienced what you might call a smorgasbord of abusive personality types from my very first “real” intimate relationship; a physically beautiful, wealthy specimen of man that I met when I was barely 19 years old and living on the East Coast. The chemistry was instant and I thought I was in love. I was certainly starstruck. He swept me off my feet in every way possible. Including, after I had moved in with him, knocking me to the floor when he punched me in the face. I had grown up in a family of martial artists. I had begun “playing” karte with my dad, who is my Shihan (master) when I was quite young and studied under other teachers as a teen. Yet I could never fight back – because my circuitry says that I don’t hurt those that I love. I just allow it. I had been physically abused as a child, so there was a degree of “acceptance”as a result.
I eventually left him, fleeing (for my life) back to the Pacific Northwest where I avoided relationships for many years. I was not going to repeat that experience, ever. (Incidentally, I went on to earn six black belts, become a “Shihan”, myself, and have owned and operated a number of dojos since. I’ve also taught battered women’s groups and held many women’s self-defense classes; partially because I love it and it’s a family thing and partially as an aspect of my healing process from that experience).
I think it’s important to pause here to say that just as I was drawn to different forms of abusive relationships because of my lack of awareness of my own unhealed and dysfunctional relational patterns, I believe that those we become involved with are in exactly the same space, but usually from the opposite end of the spectrum.
The man I was involved with on the East Coast committed suicide a couple of years after I left him. I believe he hated himself for the damage he caused, but did not understand his neurological patterning to change the circuitry that created cycles of abuse.
When we think about suicide, it is not the Self that we want to see die. It is those parts of our personality/egoic constructs that are no longer serving our growth that need to go. Recognizing this can be the difference between living a long and nappy life – or not.
Which is exactly why I write this now. It is not easy to be deeply open and vulnerable to an audience, but how else will we ever change as a society to create better if we don’t start a dialogue about acknowledging and altering our own patterns?
This goes for our parents or caregivers, as well. I think most of the time, people are doing the best that they can to parent with the knowledge they have inherited, themselves. We can not hold ourselves as a victim and our parents or caregivers as the perpetrator into adulthood because that just keeps us stuck. We have to forgive, move forward and take accountability for changing our patterns.
That said, le’ts go back to my own “blind spots”.
I kept my word to myself, because we humans are learning creatures. I never allowed myself to be physically abused again. But because I had not healed all of my trauma and was still “stuck” in old programs, I found other ways to repeat the unhealthy relational patterning from childhood. Both my biological mother and the stepmother my father married when I was young were narcissistic personalities. I only received affection when I was “doing” or being good – behaving in whatever manner they needed on any given day, which was an ever-changing and complex thing. So I repeated that cycle with my next relationship. And the next.
I learned from these experiences and each relationship I tried was “better” (which is to say the unhealthy or toxic patterns became less obvious). But even now, though I seek only partners who are able to show affection and love deeply, I find myself drawn to “conflict avoidant” personality types who tend to mirror still-unresolved issues from my early life. We draw to us those people and experiences that best help us to learn and grow, even if those people and experiences don’t always feel great until we learn to recognize the pattern or growth opportunity.
But those “aha” moments where we see ourselves and gain self knowledge are powerful catalysts, so though it is not always easy and sometimes downright hard, I continue to go into those dark closets of my subconscious mind to face my demons, unlock and alter those programs and circuits that keep me from living the fullest and most whole expression of who I am.
I keep seeking wisdom and understanding of myself and the world to continue to grow.
Beautiful friend, whoever you are and wherever you are, I hope you will, too. Because through awareness, self-knowledge, compassion and most of all, love, we will not only become more personally and relationally happy, but will build a healthier, stronger and longer-lasting brain and body, and gain an amazing sense of freedom and self-mastery.
And while we are at it, we just might change the world, too. 🥰
I’d say that is well worth the discomfort of acknowledging and vanquishing – or perhaps just coming to an agreement with – the skeletons in our closet and the monsters under the bed that we may have ignored out of survival or fear.
What patterns have you been ignoring that you would like to see changed?
So much love and huge hugs.💖💖💖
- Terah
This Blessed Sacred Life 