What are you hooked on?

When we are not aware of or have healed our own wounds, we end up chasing them out there and become hooked on to other people's wounds and issues. Instead of listening to our own inner wisdom and being guided by our own feelings, we dismiss them. We tolerate behaviour that is unhealthy, or makes us feel uncomfortable, or is hurtful to us. We try to get them to change, behave differently, think differently, so they’ll treat us better – the way we want to be treated. And when the other doesn’t change, we start pushing down our own feelings, justifying their behaviours, making excuses for them or for ourselves, fooling ourselves, and doubting our own thoughts.

What we are really trying to do, I believe, is have the other validate us and the more they don’t, the more we try to prove our worth to them. BUT, what we are really trying to do is prove our worth to ourselves. It is us who do not believe we are worthy or special enough.

And there is my hook.

That’s why I kept sticking around, even though my head and heart were saying, “this seems unhealthy”, “he has unresolved emotional issues around relationships”. When I felt his actions (not his words, so much) were not honouring me, respecting me or valuing me…I stayed. Hoping he’d see my worth and change. Yes there is many “wrongs” in that statement.

But what really awoke those painful, almost hidden beliefs was what happened after the relationship. After the break up. Sure my insecurities and lack of belief in myself had me be and stay in the relationship, but I am not a wimp or a pushover in a relationship. It was the break up that woke up the beast! The wounds broken wide open! He didn’t fight for me, he didn’t change, he didn’t fall apart (that I saw), he didn’t validate me, rather he disconnected from me AND he found a new girlfriend soon after…one that is still with him almost 2 years later (how invalidating to my thoughts and feelings). Not fighting for me, not falling apart without me, seeming ‘okay’ to let me go and getting a new gf fairly quickly had me hearing my old wounds and beliefs LOUD & CLEAR: “YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH”.

And I realize it was this feeling “I am not good enough” that had me clinging, obsessing over him, holding on to the pain, doubting myself, and a plethora of other self-defeating behaviours, not the break up…not him. I was just chasing my own wound and trying to get it healed by him!?

The more I tried to get him to validate me and prove to me that I am worthy and special enough to fight for, change for, stay with, the more I was invalidated and ‘proved’ otherwise…and then the more I clung and obsessed and held on to the story and the pain of the ‘break up’. Ironically, it is these actions, that not only reinforce those feelings within ourselves, but also adds yet another layer of pain onto that self-defeating belief.

All the clinging and obsessing is not really because I want him (or I wouldn’t have broke it off in the first place), nor is it a measure of my love for that person, it is because I am now looking for proof that I AM GOOD ENOUGH, so I don't have to believe my own demons. And who I am ultimately trying to prove it to, is not him, it’s myself. And I am looking out there for proof of it, driving me to behave in codependent, obsessive, and unhealthy ways which are self-defeating and get me further and further away from “I am good enough!”

The fact is no matter what he did or does, no matter how much I obsess, cling, beat myself up, doubt myself, analyze it all or get the 'proof' that I am looking for to validate my thoughts and feelings regarding him and that relationship,  it is not ultimately going to make me feel like I am good enough because the truth is, deep down it is me that does not believe I am good enough.

My wound just hooked on to him. I'm hooked on to my wound.

Fate or Free Will?

This is the question I was left with after my, perhaps, “fateful” meeting with a homeless, gypsy Tarot card reader the other day as I stepped out into the streets from my friend’s downtown apartment. “Would you like a reading”, greeted a friendly and a little disheveled man holding up a worn deck of Tarot cards. “Sure,” I answered, a little too eagerly without asking what this would cost me … financial or otherwise.

He guides me to an empty bench on a quiet side street as we chat and immediately find a connection through our mutual hometown 3000 miles away. This is fate, I thought, I was meant to bump into this homeless gypsy so that he could offer me some profound insight into my future!

I won’t bore you with the details of my reading…okay just a little bit…I am going to live to be 100+, I am going to be successful, write a novel and have an animal sanctuary. Oh and he said I am very youthful and look much younger than my age (yes, flattery works!) I must admit that writing a novel and owning an animal sanctuary have been dreams for me, but does his prediction of such mean this is truly my destiny no matter what choices I make?

First, I actually think there is a difference between what is termed Fate as opposed to what is our Destiny. I think fate is something we subconsciously create for ourselves as we make choices from fear, insecurities, the need for security, beliefs, family structures, wounds we carry from the past and so on. The cage we create for ourselves leads us to a certain fate.

Sure there is free will involved, in so far that we are making our own choices, but we’re operating from a subconscious place. One of security and familiarity, self-imposed limitations and old patterns. Like a gerbil running on its wheel in its cage, but always ending up in the same place. We are fated to something as we keep making the same choices from the same place and end up just recreating the same experiences … maybe different people and different scenarios, but all part of the same theme. That seems to be fate.

Destiny I think is what we are supposed to be, our purpose; that innate calling we feel inside and the yearning in our soul. It is what we could be if we let go of our fears, insecurities and ego. If we truly follow our hearts, listen to our instincts and truly make choices out of self-love, self-esteem and self-value. This is authentic free will, perhaps. The freedom to break out of our own self-created cage.

All our own choices, but choices made from different parts of ourselves. Choices made from fear or from love. One seems to fate us and almost seems to steal our free will and the other sets us free to live our destiny. Although I think many of our fated events are the unfolding of our destiny … if we learn and are willing to change.

Free Will? Absolutely. But we can “free will” ourselves into fated lives or living our destiny. Therefore, every choice we make is an investment of either our Fate or Destiny, that’s our free will.

So was my encounter with this gypsy fateful? I guess fated to be out $30 by placing my trust in someone else to tell me what I am destined to do, to be.