There's really no way to go forward or change a pattern unless you're willing to go deep and pull it out by the roots. I am still finding deeper roots. It can feel frustrating like, this work will never end until/unless I shift my focus to my growth. Am I growing? Am I learning? Am I stronger, wiser, more open, trusting, loving?
I repeated my experience with toxic partners in back-to-back relationships because I had never healed my lifelong wound of "not good enough." I have to underscore the impact my own childhood wounding had on navigating me towards people and experiences (subconsciously) that would validate my deep feeling that I wasn't worthy. My wounding was the perfect energetic match for a man who gains a sense of power from making other people feel afraid, small, powerless, or stupid, And when I met a man like that, there was an energetic charge that said, "Bingo! You're home!" I misunderstood that charge as chemistry.
I had to look at the self-limiting beliefs imprinted on my subconscious when I was young through the example of relationships around me (good and bad), my own "practice" relationships in my teen years, and my adult relationships. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Parts Therapy, and Jungian Shadow Work were helpful for me in excavating origins as well as the work of Bessel Van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score) and Peter Levine (Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma) who demonstrate our minds and bodies attune to environment and create "normal." Inadvertently, subconsciously, we seek out situations that will repeat a pattern because (and this is an oversimplification) our nervous systems get stuck.
Tending to my own worthiness has helped me create boundaries that I have lacked most of my life. Instead of feeling the "zing" of home, I feel repelled because that's a place I no longer want to visit.
If I had to describe my journey in one sentence: I prayed for my partner's transformation so he would stop hurting me but, I was the one that needed to transform.
I'm grateful for the relationships that have taught me so much about who I am, what I want, what is alive and indestructible within me, and most of all, that I am worthy and good enough.
Comentários