love – Carrie Burnett, LMT, Ph.D Candidate

The other night my family was sitting at dinner in one of our favorite restaurants and while my kids entertained each other, me and my husband got to enjoy this really amazing conversation where the love and emotional connection were overflowing.

“I really love you, I really love this feeling of emotional connection. I’ve longed for it so much over the years and I just wanted to tell you that I really love it.”

He looked at me and smiled. We both felt it. We BOTH made the choices to show up to this point.

You see this past fall we got so close to getting a divorce that I was actually looking at rentals to move into. Things were bad.

Years of emotional disconnection and desires left unmet had us both drained and frustrated. The crux of this disfunction came this summer as I discovered some hurtful choices he had made and I felt like “what am I even fighting for?”

I can remember so many times feeling so lonely but moving forward because I love my husband so much and I was willing to be patient in his processes.

This was the last straw though, and it felt like a slap in the face. I felt like I had been duped.

I looked at him after the news came out and just said “if it were not for the kids, you would not be in this house right now.”

That is when he says it hit him. He realized I was serious and he should be too. That is when he made the choice to show up.

Fast forward to now – our lovely moment in the restaurant. How did we make it? What’s the one piece of advice I can give you to save any marriage? What did I do to fix it?

I have no advice. I have no fixes. I don’t know how we made it – or what our future looks like.

I’m lucky. The timing and effort put forth worked out for us.

To pretend like we succeeded for any other reason really points to a huge problem with the way we view marriage and love in our society.

You see we talk so much about “failed marriages.” What an odd combination of adjective to noun.

As if a marriage that ends in divorce it has failed. BLACK AND WHITE. FAILED OR SUCCEEDED.

My value in this relationship, my personhood is subjected to failure or success. That’s pretty messed up when you think about it.

Subjecting a relationship to failure or success strips a relationship of the fact that it is made up of two beautifully emotional people with beautiful cognitive ability and choices. It implies that if a marriage ends in divorce there is nothing to be had from it.

It’s bred in a society of soul mates and love at first sight. As if we can possibly know the future. Yes you may know you love someone, maybe even right away but who knows if that person will change or if you will both make the choices to show up when necessary. Who can truly predict their own personal growth trajectory led alone another person’s. When we put so much pressure in predicting the future at the beginning of a relationship then it’s no wonder we feel like we have failed if it doesn’t turn out how we thought.

When we think in terms of divorce or ended relationships as a failure, it takes away so much. What about the value in self growth and self identity? After all isn’t part of the real beauty in a relationship that we are two individuals and we make the choice to love, the choice to be present. Is it not beautiful when a person grows, even if that growth is rejected by their partner?

If you are in a marriage that ends in divorce you are “failed” even if you showed up emotionally and your partner decided they did not want to. You are “failed” even if your partner leaves you and decides alone that they don’t want to be with you. You are “failed” even if the process of leaving your abusive partner was empowering and a sign to you of your true strength. The list could go on.

Subjecting a relationship to failure or success strips a relationship of the fact that it is made up of two beautifully emotional people with beautiful cognitive ability and choices.

What is lost when we put the outcome of the relationship over the experience of the journey? Can you even consider it a failure when we have tried to love in the first place. What a brave and wonderful thing to pursue. Don’t we hold the act of loving and pursing love in higher regards than that?

At some point love was exchanged most likely, and that should not be completely lost because the relationship is over. Yes, it is possible that the love existed because you where broken and felt comfortable in a dysfunctional relationship; it’s also possible for people to change and for the connection to be lost over time. However, rejecting the love you once had because it is gone, or because it was bred in a place of disfunction serves as a real way of rejecting your past self.

You do not have to agree with the choices you made to appreciate the process you needed to take or the person you used to be. This is one of the most complex ideas in self love to grasp and honestly I am still trying to navigate it, but I am guaranteeing you that if you throw the emotional baby out with the bath water here there is something truly lost.When the relationship is about the success or failure it opens the door for my partner to stay with me solely because they want to avoid the idea of failure. This makes the relationship status about ego over a genuine loving of another person. If someone only shows up when faced with failure then that doesn’t really lead to lasting happiness or lasting love.

It creates a type of minimal maintenance love. It creates an environment of appeasement and no one wants to just be appeased.

The reality is that relationships are full of failures and successes. Failures do not equal the end though. Failure is just a place where we missed the opportunity to love fully and well. We can either show up in this place or not, but the reality is that this choice has to be made by both people and has to be warranted by a healthy relationship environment. There are so many factors that go into the choice to move forward through each and every obstacle. If you are fortunate enough to have a partner with whom you can safely make the choice to move forward each time and they do too, then you are truly blessed. Not everyone has this and we have got to start making space for that in our community so that people feel free to be loved because they truly deserve it.

In a healthy heart the journey is more valuable than the destination. If we can truly strip this idea of success or failure from our mindsets and our language I think we have the power to free ourselves and those around us from loveless relationships and really open up to lasting love that is real and genuine. No one deserves to feel guilt or like a failure if they come from a relationship that ended, because they have tried to love and have undoubtedly learned to love themselves in the process.

Self awareness. WTF is it?

When I describe TruBirth sometimes what I often find myself talking about is how the class is a tool to create connection and self awareness in your reproductive journey. One way I actively promote this idea is through my online Facebook community. I regularly post questions designed to get members thinking and talking about their feelings and growing their tools of self awareness. Throughout my TruBirth E-learning course I have tools to aide in this process but I wanted to spend some time really identifying a general ability to be self aware.

You may be saying, “I am self aware! For instance right now I know that I really want to read this blog post.” 😉

You may be saying, “I feel like I’m self aware most of the time, sometimes I forget to turn off the toaster oven or eat lunch but I’m generally on top of my feelings.”

You may be saying, “Most of the time my emotions catch me off guard. I wish I had a better handle on what I felt and why.”

You may also be going, “Emotions??? What are those?”

Wherever you are this can be helpful, especially if you are even thinking about starting your reproductive journey! So let’s look at ways you as an adult can go back and create an inward environment that welcomes your emotions and, in turn, self awareness. Let’s talk about the 5 steps to self awareness.

Step 1. Creating an open space within your mind and heart.

This will be something you may need to return to frequently but it is simply saying to yourself, “I am open to feel what is with in me, and I will love myself wherever that is.“

You can just say this to yourself right now, but the more frequently you are saying it, and the more visible this is to you, the more your heart will open up to the reality of this statement. This is your self awareness key.

Maybe consider making it a note on your desk at work, or on you bathroom vanity. Maybe embroider it on a pillow or get it tattooed! The point is the more visible this is to you on a regular basis the more powerful it will be.

Step 2: Spend time in thought daily.

You may be thinking this seems too easy to be including in the 5 steps to self awareness, but stick with me for a minute. In today’s world where technology is handheld and can even join us in the bathroom for our daily poop, most people are spending what in the past would have been time to think or process on Facebook or reading their Kindle.

Now this post is not a guilt fest for using technology or even to imply that technology is the root of all evil. I’m not saying technology is intrinsically bad by any means, because at the end of the day you have the power to control your devices. You can chose to put them down. You can say “I will no longer take a device with me to poop” or “When I nurse my child I will not look at a device.” It’s up to you what is right for use of your technological devices, all I am suggesting is finding SOME sort of time that YOU want to be in thought.

That is all, just find time and be in your own thoughts. This time is not meant to be structured at all. What we are looking for here is unstructured time in your open thoughts.

All self awareness is the ability to assess right? But what do you have to assess if you do not sit with yourself regularly? It’s kind of like time spent with a good friend. Generally speaking you have no real objective other than just to be together. You probably are not doing regular psych evaluations with them yet you probably still feel you have a good idea of who they are. That is because there is so much to see when you just spend time with someone. When you just learn to listen.

So go for a walk without your phone, workout without music, turn off the radio on your drive home. It doesn’t have to be constant, just some time everyday. Who knows you might actually find that you enjoy being with yourself! 😉

Step 3: Broaden your emotional vocabulary.

We might all know things like mad, or sad or happy. Maybe you know more than that and that’s great.

There are literally 100s of words to describe your feelings!

A great assessment tool (perhaps you would call it a self awareness tool) would be to write down all the words you know that describe feelings. Maybe even try to define what they are or give examples. Then when you are all done, look up a list of words and commit to learning 5 or 10 new words! You might realize you already know more than you thought, and even this can be a great reminder!

With limited language skills comes limited ability to assess (see I keep using that word). If you only know the colors red and black, how well are you going to be able to dialogue about the sunset and refer to your assessments? This will be much easier the more language around the subject you understand! This is true with all areas of study, including your emotional self!

Step 4: Notice trends.

When you are spending time with yourself daily (DO IT!) do you notice any trends?

For example I might notice that when I think about writing I start to feel bad. Or when I think about the conversation I had with a co-worker I feel happy! You can really help yourself out in the beginning by writing theses down. Note in the examples that this does not have to look like some sort of PHD-level paper on emotions, this is very basic simple feelings, with whatever emotional language you might have. (It helps to have lots of language around this! Don’t you agree?)

This is what I call peripheral self awareness, in other words, this is the outer edge of your self awareness and is a step that can be/should be done ALL THE TIME. Like a reaction to stubbing your toe, the more you do this the more of a reflex it will become! Thus paving the way for you to further assess whats going on!

Your truth stands in your trends. If you can access these reactions and trends then you begin to find your deeper belief systems. Knowing these is like finding the road map to yourself.

Step 5: Asses your trends and draw conclusions from them.

Note: You are not on trial here. These do not have to be perfect or even 100% accurate – it is all a process. You are navigating new waters and you may follow an idea, only to realize it doesn’t really resonate with you after all and that time was not wasted! The process is what we are looking for NOT THE OUTCOME!

Let’s take a second here to remind ourselves that all feelings are welcome. Maybe re-read your self awareness key from Step 1? In order to be able to dig this deep you must create an open and loving environment for yourself so you can avoid defenses coming up and stopping the reflection process.

When you hear yourself saying “no don’t go there,” or “no don’t write that,” take note of that. This could be your mind’s way of pushing feelings down that we have deemed socially unacceptable or even “bad”. Be kind to yourself. This can be scary but if you feel ready push yourself there. This is most likely an area of yourself that really needs love and healing. This part of you may need to hear.

Look at the trends you wrote down and try to see if any conclusions you come up with feel right to you. By feel right I don’t mean that they don’t meet any resistance, but that they seem to fit. Finding this feeling might be hard, so if you cannot find one that feels right you can just write out as many as you can come up with and leave it at that. Next time you are thinking about it in your unstructured time, it might just come to you.

Examples of conclusions:

“When I think about writing I feel bad.” Some conclusions might be:

I am scared to write
I don’t like writing
I feel insecure in my writing ability

“When I talk to my co-worker I feel happy.” Some conclusions might be:

I feel connected to this particular person
I have feelings for them
They remind me of my father

Listen to the things that pop up in your mind, because this is WIDE OPEN. There are so many things that you could come up with. At the end of the day we are looking for the things that sit right with YOU and feel the most true. (it could be multiple)

You are a work in progress just like every other person on this earth. We are all navigating this life and trying to find our way. This can be a tool to help you find more joy and confidence in yourself and to feel deeper and truer connection with those around you. I hope these steps are helpful. Please feel free to comment any other ideas you may have that have helped you find your self awareness!

Tag: love

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5 Steps To Pursuing Self Awareness