Other times when I look at myself, I see the small parts of myself. These are the times when I am excruciatingly aware of the ‘little me.’ The little me can get stuck in many things. One minute I am fine and then a plan gets changed or something else occurs and I see myself momentarily ‘fall’ into a bad mood. Sometimes there is a big challenge that is in my life. Perhaps I feel afraid or frustrated. Perhaps I am starting to obsess.

For example, I have been feeding a wild (sort of) pair of mallard ducks that come to the pool. Except I was out of town for a day and so the ducks missed some meals. My fiancé told me that when I was out taking the dogs for a walk the ducks came and were banging against the door – obviously hungry. But he didn’t feed them. What if they hadn’t eaten? What if they didn’t come back? But they did come back a few hours later and I fed them. Later I realized that I had lost perspective. I had ‘fallen’ into my childhood where I was often alone in caring for the animals I rescued. In the moment however, I could not see any humor in the situation. I only saw potential tragedy and pain.

Why do I allow myself to have this response? What can I do?

As I continue on my path of releasing the parts of me that get stuck in negativity or where I give away my power, I have to find new ways to ‘vision’ my life. I have to find new perspectives. Sometimes I can see the way out – I can see that if I just take a small step out of my self, there is another more expansive place to stand – almost like I am another person. Other times, I cannot see past the ‘obstacle.’

In order to ‘get myself back,’ I can ask myself – what is the gift of this challenge? What am I being asked to learn, or overcome? What qualities am I being asked to develop in myself?

This can be a tricky question because we have to know ourselves well enough to answer it without self-deception. We have to know our strengths and weaknesses. We have to know where our edge is – where we are growing. This is where we can be misled if we seek advice from someone who has his or her own agenda or who doesn’t accurately see the trajectory of our growth from the past moving out into the future. For our path depends on what we are learning – not what it may look like from the outside. In other words, if someone is working on developing her boundaries and increasing her ability to care for herself, what she may need to do to continue on this path of growth may look selfish or reactionary from another’s perspective, and yet, it is completely appropriate from the perspective of this person’s path of greatest growth.

How do we figure this out? Ask yourself, historically what are my issues? For example:
• Bad boundaries
• Emotional instability
• Giving too much and then being angry
• Getting caught in ego instead of seeing the higher spiritual point of view
• Inflexibility or difficulty going with the flow
• Seeing events from a perspective of fear
• Needing to be in control

Further, some of these may pair together. I may need better boundaries while also going with the flow. These pairings indicate a greater lesson of fine-tuning and balance. How do I hold better boundaries while also letting go and allowing?

There are two key pieces to assist in making this leap into a lighter more functional you.

Gratitude.
When I find myself brooding, I have learned to stop, and self correct by focusing on gratitude. I can create the feeling of gratitude regardless of what is occurring on the ‘outside.’ This in effect disconnects me from allowing my outer life to dictate my experience, my thoughts, and my mood.

Accepting what is. Accepting limitation.
Perhaps I didn’t get enough sleep and I am tired. I hang onto the thought that I need more sleep. I hang onto the grumpiness that thought creates and my tiredness reinforces. Or I can accept that this particular day has the limitation of tiredness and not fight it.

Or perhaps there is a person in my life who is ‘pushing my buttons.’ Can I accept this person and their limitations instead of needing them to be different? If I can accept what is, I will be free of my fighting this thing. I can allow it to be what it is and release my inner battle, choosing instead to take whatever actions are most appropriate.

Or perhaps something I am working on is in the embryo stage and I get impatient for the birth. I can accept the gift and learning of this stage instead of pushing for what will be next – the birth and flowering.

Life is cyclical. It cannot always be flowering. Sometimes the roots are growing so that the future plant and flower will be supported. Sometimes I am developing and overcoming my ‘smaller parts,’ or learning patience, persistence, vision or something else.

Life’s challenges may give us an opportunity to sort out our small ego reactions and develop the bigger perspective of the soul.

As a child, I had areas where I excelled. I also had areas where I felt unworthy, ugly, and not good enough. I was given the message that I was a burden on my father’s life. This left me with a very specific sense of shame that I fought by becoming very independent in my career. I was determined to take care of myself and not allow anybody else to take care of me.

As I entered into the world of relationships, I discovered that I was not well equipped for them – largely because I grew up in a family with a lot of relational dysfunction. Eventually I met a man who I thought I could marry. We fell in love quickly. About six months into our relationship some major problems emerged. He would become very critical of me at times. I gave him an ultimatum. Attend couples therapy with me or I would leave the relationship. I didn’t want to end the relationship. I don’t even know if I would have had the strength to do so at that time. But I knew what was going on was not okay.

We started our first round of couples’ therapy. He got angry and fumed. I cried. This was our ‘cycle.’ When we weren’t in this dynamic we mostly got along. After 3 years of every other week sessions, we stopped. 2 years later we started another round of couples’ therapy for several more years with a different therapist. We eventually stopped. I was tired of trying to make our relationship emotionally satisfying. We had both made some changes. But it wasn’t enough. We were both very focused on our careers and had other parts of our lives that nourished us. Our personal connection ebbed and flowed – but there was a lot of distance and big areas where we could not find a sense of safety or connection with each other. I had learned much about myself and developed many parts of myself in this relationship. I was not the person who had entered into that relationship years earlier.

Eventually I knew that I wanted to leave. I hung in for a few more years hoping that things would improve. Finally one day I went through what was to be my last disappointment over my husband’s lack of emotional availability. It was as if a switch was turned. I was simply finished. I told him that I wanted a divorce.

That began a whole new and stressful cycle. My family was hurt and disappointed. The process of separating our lives was stressful and painful. My husband moved from grief at his loss and a sense that perhaps he had let me down emotionally to fury at me for doing this to him. His shame at having failed in his marriage was huge. I became hated. His anger at me was easier for him to tolerate than his shame over having failed.

I had my own shame to contend with as we split up the life we had created together. Was what my family was saying true? That because he had contributed more financially, because I had initiated the divorce, that because he wanted to have another go at it, that I deserved less – much less than him? That I should walk away and hang my head in shame?

We live in a world of impermanence and imperfection. How we deal with this has much to do with the feelings we hold. If I cannot accept the seeming imperfections of my life or myself and tend to blame others or myself, I will undoubtedly have shame under those attitudes. If on the other hand, I can accept who I am, the cards I have been dealt and am working with them to the best of my ability, I do not have to feel as if something isn’t right about me – I do not have to carry shame, nor defend against it.

I had to reach down to a part of myself that wasn’t fully formed – the part that could stand up for myself and know that I had done my best, the part that had to say no to my families’ beliefs and ideas. I could see the root of this belief system – right back to my father telling us that we were eating up his life – literally – and that we were shameful and undeserving of using any (his) resources.

I had not previously been able to talk about my feeling of not deserving, my feeling that if I didn’t pull my own weight equally in every area, I was not okay. I’ve had to reframe this concept differently. I’ve had to accept that my life has been laid out for me to confront this. I’ve had to decide that not only is my contribution to the planet valid, but that it is okay for me to be helped by others along the way.

What is shame? Shame is probably the most difficult and debilitating emotion that there is. Shame tells us that we are not okay and that there is something deeply wrong with us that cannot be fixed or cured. When we feel shame, it is as if there is a stain on us that we cannot remove. Shame separates us from other people for it requires secrecy to survive.

We feel shame over areas where we do not feel that we are the way we are supposed to be. We get stuck in these places. Often these areas are parts of ourselves that we do not accept. For example:

• I fantasize about men even though I am a straight male.
• I was sexually molested and feel as if I am damaged.
• I should be able to take care of myself (or you) and am bad that I need help
or can’t do it.
• I shouldn’t need anything.
• I should have been able to save my family (but couldn’t).

The list goes on and on. There are gazillion things we could feel shame over.

As a therapist, much of our training is to help others talk about the parts of themselves that they have shame over – opening that up so that it can be expressed, seen, accepted and healed. This is because healing shame involves allowing what we think is shameful to be seen and learning that we are not the horrible thing that we thought we were – undeserving, unlovable or damaged.

How does a couple resolve shame that may be at the root of some of their most difficult dynamics – like I had in my first marriage? It is a question that has emerged for me as I have moved through my life and deeper into my work as somebody who helps couples work through their most difficult issues. Luckily for me, I had training in ‘relational gestalt therapy.’ Relational gestalt means that we share our own experience if it is helpful to the other person. It is a more transparent form of therapy with more self-disclosure than some of the modalities out there. It focuses on the relationship between the client and the therapist. Because this is the point of focus, instead of the client herself, we move into the realm of intersubjectivity – how do I impact you and how do you impact me. And this is exactly where we end up in relationships and couples work. There is no real objective right and wrong (barring things like abuse), but simply how we impact each other and how we connect and heal each other. This perspective has been invaluable to me. It is one of the keys to healing relationships and to finding ways to create more safety in our relationships.

We all have areas where we may feel shameful. Do you know what your voices of shame are – the areas where you may feel as if you are not okay? Do you know how you fight against them? And how does that fight impact your life?

Having shame does not make you shameful. Shame is a feeling. But it is what you do with that feeling that is important. Are you working on healing your shame? Or do you hide it and fight against it, or the parts of your life that trigger it? Do give your shame to others by judging them?

Remember the old saying, ‘you are only as sick as your secrets?’ That saying is talking about shame. The antidote to shame is acceptance and empathy. See if you can find a way to bring that to the parts of yourself that you judge and hide.

When we get triggered ‘old voices’ can show up in our heads.  Among other things, these voices may say things like:

• No matter what I do, it doesn’t matter.
• I’m not important.
• Nobody cares about me.

What are some of your ‘old voices?’

Sometimes the limitations or perceived limitations of others and ourselves hurt us. Often these voices are triggered by our disappointment and reflect our deep longing for love. Underneath those disappointments are our very real needs to feel that we matter:

• What I do makes a difference and is noticed.
• I matter.
• I am cared about.

Can you find what you long for that is under your ‘old voice?’

Personally, I don’t want to get stuck in the part of me that gets angry, frustrated, or afraid.  I don’t enjoy those feelings.  Remember the Charlie Brown character Pig-pen?  Everywhere he went he was in a cloud of dirt. Or Joe Btfsplk with a small, dark rain cloud that perpetually hovered over his head.

That is how I feel when I am in a feeling state that is ‘negative.’  Not to put the negative down: we have to experience all of our feelings but sometimes sorting through them is confusing and we can get stuck.  Living in these difficult feelings can leave us feeling ‘stained’ like Pig-pen.

Essentially what I worked on in that session was stepping out of my small self and into my bigger self.  My small self is vulnerable.  It sometimes gets upset, hurt, has trouble with acceptance and struggles.  But if I were to be able to step into a bigger perspective, see all that I am, have been and will be, that new perspective would get me more space.  As Ellen said to me, an elephant isn’t afraid of an ant. When you see the largeness of whom you are, those fears and hurts become smaller and more transient.  They release their grip.

Self-acceptance and acceptance of other people and situations is an inside job.  You cannot make it happen.  It takes place when you finally ‘get’ that what is occurring is not anybody’s fault, but is instead the result of our limitations.  Acceptance is the opposite of control.  When we control – contra, meaning against – we are going against the flow of life, we are swimming upstream.  When we accept, we have more space and room inside of ourselves.

Take a moment and ponder:

• Who have you been?  What have you lived through, learned, accomplished?  Can you see the vastness of your past?
• Who are you now?  What are your talents, wisdoms and capacities? Where does your magnificence reside? Can you see it and feel it?
• Who are you becoming?  How will you grow into the future? Can you trust that you only have to co-participate with life and that you don’t have to ‘make’ it happen? Can you see that your path will allow you to grow and dance forward into your life?

We are all more than we know. We are more than our conflicts and confusions, more than our struggles and pains.

One way out of the smaller perspective is through the practice of gratitude.

I have been meditating on gratitude – not just the thought of it, but the feeling and experience of it.  I am doing this because I decided that gratitude is the feeling place I wish to reside in.

We can choose our attitude even if we cannot control much of what occurs in life.  The point of choice is our point of power.  This is what we do have control over.  Even if we ‘fall’ out of it, we can re-choose it. This means that as we ‘practice,’ we choose it over and over.

To do a simple gratitude meditation, find 5 or 10 minutes alone.  Sit down and close your eyes. Think of someone or something you feel grateful for. Focus on your heart.  Bring that feeling into your heart.  Allow yourself to experience whatever feelings come up for you around gratitude.

In what energy do you wish to reside?

Perhaps you too will make the energy of thank you – gratitude – a choice and guiding principle in your life.

Like everyone else, I have my own weaknesses and shortcomings. I know that I am self-protective and tend to trust slowly. I do not open up and share deeply quickly. I can fall into worry about what will be, instead of focusing on and being grateful for the miracle of each moment as it occurs. I know that I feel safer when I am in control than when I am not. These qualities do not serve me. They do not help me feel gratitude and joy. They act as iron bars – a prison actually – around a new self that is attempting to be born.

How does the old form give way to a new being that is being birthed? How do we create out of what was, the new, like a baby, with its nascent, tiny and perfect fingers and fingernails, heart and lungs, eyes and eyelashes?

Somehow I get caught between the person I was, and the person I want to be and am becoming. SometimesI feel I need help here, help releasing my old ways and fully embracing who I want to be. Sometimes I feel that I need help moving from the person I was, to the person I am becoming.

Each of us can choose to transition from the old world into the new one that awaits us, one that so depends on our intention: Our intention to be bigger than we have been, to do the right thing whether others are doing so or not, whether we are afraid or not. Our intention to be aware, to hold compassion and gratitude, and to live by the compass of what we want the world to be, not the compass of conforming to what it already is or the compass of our habits and fears.

With our intentions, each of us contributes to the creation of reality. If you believe that sharing is important, then you contribute to that world. If you always take the best for yourself, then you contribute to reinforcing that world. If you believe the lies of others, then you contribute to a world where you are disempowered and tricked. If you hold others accountable, then you contribute to a world where people are accountable.

The qualities we align ourselves with emanate outward, contributing to the creation of our reality. What intentions do you hold for yourself as you step forward as the creator of your life and one of the many co-creators of the world?

What qualities will you choose? Here are some to consider.

Compassion – I feel your pain and I care.

Truth – I have no need to hide.

Gratitude – This moment will never be again and I recognize and honor the sacredness of it.

Accountability – I am willing to look at myself and correct my shortcomings.

Courage – I do not take the safe and easy path. I take the right path.

Equality – I treat you as I would treat myself.

Generosity – I act out of what is for the greatest good for all, not just my own self-interest.

In order to transcend our flaws, we must be aware of them. In order to re-align to a new configuration of who we are, we must find our moral center. The question changes from ‘What about me,’ to ‘What can I do for the greater good of this situation.’ This question will reveal a new truth.

How do we go about this process?

As we begin a new year, the first step is willingness. We have to be willing to say that we want more, more of ourselves, more for our world.

Second, we have to be aware. We have to be able to see our self clearly and experience where we are weak. That includes the possibility of experiencing the pain and possibly the shame of how we have hidden or sold our self or others short.

Third, we have to communicate what it is that we want to change. This could be to another person, or simply be between ourselves and whatever our god or higher power is. This allows us to fully claim our desire to release the old and bring in a new way. As we do this, we are setting an intention. For example, we might say, ‘I intend to step out of allowing fear to influence my actions.’

Can you imagine what would happen if each and every one of us stepped out of our small self and embodied our larger and more actualized self? I know for me, that as I slowly untangle the smaller parts of myself and allow the ‘larger’ parts to emerge, I feel better about myself.

May 2012 lead us to a new connection to and gratitude for what is beautiful in each of us. May each of us release our ‘old’ and more crippled ways of being and find our generous and courageous selves, creating, as we step forward, a more beautiful and happier world for all.

Most of us tend to see ourselves as good and see others as more flawed. But like the tree with the stunted side because it grew under a bigger tree, we all have a stunted side.  If we look closely, we all have aspects of ourselves that are beautiful and aspects that are less so.  On the global scale these aspects are fairly easy to identify – philanthropy and acts of heroism as well as wars, murders, scandals, fraud, theft etc.  But seeing our ‘stunted’ sides within ourselves is more difficult because we tend to hide them: our jealousies, insecurities, and our fears – even from ourselves.  Like the Christmas tree, we show our better side.

Like everyone else, I too have parts of myself that developed in a weaker way.  While this stunted side of myself reveals where I was overshadowed and how I survived, it is also where I have my own character issues.

What is meant by character?  Character refers to qualities or traits, which determine a person’s response, regardless of circumstances, to the events of our lives.  These qualities include: courage, trustworthiness, responsibility, benevolence, compassion, accountability, honesty, insight, integrity, patience etc.  In reading the list, we recognize these qualities as important in our human development and our relationships. The absence of these same qualities will reveal ‘character issues’ – areas of greed, entitlement, fear, laziness, or some other way in which we are not fully in standing in our own power.

Obviously, we tend to look up to people who have developed these qualities of character and will be more wary of those who have not – because they can (and do) more easily cause us injury.  And often people have uneven development of these qualities that make up character.  For example, they may be generous, yet also unable to be accountable for their own actions.

Yet we often don’t ‘see’ the character of those loved ones closest to us clearly because of ‘attachment.’  Attachment means exactly what it sounds like – that we attach. I was very attached to the parts of my father that were beautiful ­– his intelligence, his talent, his uniqueness and his sense of humor, despite his flaws, his dark rages, his depressions, his selfishness. I was attached to him because I needed him and because I loved him. Attachment is part of being human, of being a mammal actually. We attach to our pets, our children, our friends, our partners, our teachers, our co-workers.  And we generally attach quickly – often before we’ve had a chance to fully ‘see’ the entire spectrum of character of the person we attach to.

Over the years, I have at times been confronted by ‘run ins’ with character issues – both my own and others.  It is not enjoyable to suddenly be confronted with one of our flaws.  Yet there is an important challenge here.  Abe Lincoln has been quoted as saying, ‘Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.’ In this he alludes to the importance of character. What kind of a tree will we be? What kind of shadow will we be casting on the world?

The wisdom of ‘know thyself’ is becoming more apparent. Will we look at ourselves and see our own flaws – those parts of ourselves that we have pushed aside and hidden away? And connected to this, when we have ‘messed up,’ can we make amends? Will we say that we are sorry and take the actions needed to strengthen the ‘weaker’ parts of ourselves?  Will we be accountable to others and ourselves? Will we build our character?

When it is an other person’s failing that impacts us however, we are often left feeling angry, sad or betrayed.  We may have to take our attachment and break it – because to stay attached would be a betrayal to ourselves.  How do we then move through these feelings to a place of acceptance and compassion?  How do we not get stuck in feeling victimized by what occurred?

It can be helpful to remind ourselves that everything that occurs to us has the potential to help us grow.  Everything can be an initiation – meaning a way to trigger transformation to a higher way of seeing things, of relating to others and ourselves.

Lets look at some guidelines to help with this process of developing ourselves.

1.     Witness yourself and your feelings. For example: I feel rejected because you aren’t treating me respectfully.

Write in your own:

2.     Allow yourself to experience the feelings connected to this fully.  For example:  hurt, anger, shame.

Write in your own:

3.     Look at what your part is – whether it is just naivety, or accepting too little, or fear, greed or entitlement.

Write in your own:

4.     Look at what the other person’s part is. For example, ‘you took advantage of me and treated me badly.’

Write in your own:

5.     Look at your choices in this moment – you may not have external choices, but you do have internal choices.

External– I cannot change this.

Write in your own:

Internal – I can choose to find another way to experience this. For example, I don’t want to hold onto anger or hurt so I decide that I want to hold an attitude of compassion and acceptance.

Write in your own:

6.     Decide what shift you are going to make, for example, ‘I do not accept being treated badly.’  Put it in a statement of intention:  ‘I will not allow myself to be mistreated.’

Write in your own:

7.     Accept that everyone is doing his or her best – if they could have done it better, they would have. This means that I accept my response and I accept the other person’s position or limitations.   For example, ‘this person is doing their best, but it is not good enough for me. They have limitations that effectively remove them from my life.’

Write in your own:

8.     Release – for example, ‘I release this person from my life with compassion.  There is no place for them, given whom we both are.’

If you can shift to this attitude of acceptance and release, you will feel lighter. You will be able to release the emotional turmoil that this event caused.  You will feel more peace and move into a place that holds more wisdom.

Write in your own:

9.     Trust – I trust that this event was part of a natural process of my own growth.  ‘As I grow, things that I no longer need fall away, like a snake shedding it’s too tight skin. As I grow, I will look more closely at the parts of me that are limited and continue to refine who I am.’

Write in your own:

Tend the stunted side of your tree – let it have light and love.  As you love that part of yourself, you will fill out and grow.

The character trait of accountability is a good way to guide yourself through this process.  Are you being accountable? To what part of yourself? To your truth, your integrity etc, or to your fears?  Is the other person willing to be accountable and to look at himself or herself?

Accountability is an essential ingredient of a relationship.  Accountability allows a person to do relational work because it means that they are willing to look at and deal with their flaws.  If only one person is being accountable, then the relationship will be lopsided.  With accountability, two people can accomplish anything in their relationship.

What I most take away from this event is how wronged both of us felt.  My father had been horribly abused as a child.  He had a chip on his shoulder that was huge.  He absolutely could not see anything except that he wasn’t considered.  He couldn’t see that I was trying to care for our cat.  He couldn’t see what Sissy needed. He could only see the huge gaping wound of not having been considered.  His internal reality was completely different than mine.  And at the time, I didn’t have the skill (who knows if it would even have been possible) to talk to him and help him see the bigger picture, help him not feel so unconsidered.

One of the things that I have always been good at is seeing both sides of a situation and being able to step into somebody else’s shoes.  This has been invaluable in my career as a therapist.  It has made my life incredibly difficult in other ways.  In the past, I have often been unable to hold onto my own point of view.  I step into someone else’s vision of reality so easily and mine slips away.  As a result of this, and the volatility that I grew up with, my history is such that have I bent too far for the other person’s needs and tried to make mine small or even go away.  I have been a master of self-sacrifice.  I am not that person anymore.  And I am thankful for this.

I’ve recently parted with a good friend: a friend with whom I have shared a lot, somebody who I’ve at times spent nights up worrying about, someone who I have always wished the best for.  That hasn’t changed.  The underlying feelings are the same.  It is just the outer connection that has been released.  It is like a death where you carry the person in your heart, but no longer see them in your life, because they don’t work in your life anymore.

I’ve parted with an occasional friend over the years. It is never easy and always brings up both self-questioning and grief for me.  It is hard to leave behind someone you love – or be left behind.  Sometimes the split occurred because my actions hurt the other person – even though my actions were unintentional and I was unaware.  In those situations those friends ended the friendship rather than discuss what had occurred to hurt them.  They waited too long before they found their voice. Unspoken, too many hurt feelings built up and without the ability or understanding of how to work through these differences, it cost the friendship.  Other times I did my best to let the other person know what I was struggling with, and the changes I needed made if I were to be able to continue. They were unable to address my needs.

How is it that we cannot speak our truth or hear another’s?  Why is it that we cannot tell those we love what we are experiencing or listen to each other?  If my father had only been able to talk about his feelings instead of screaming, his 200 lb 6’4” frame looming over me, we might have come to some kind of understanding.

We aren’t used to working out the hard stuff.  We aren’t use to looking at ourselves and finding our own flaws.  Doing so is a type of emotional courage that has not been well developed in our culture.  We don’t want to look at our failings.  Instead, the other person’s difficulty with us is perceived as a judgment.

As I think back, I can see that these friends felt entirely right in their position and so there was no way to bridge the gap, or to have my needs responded to.  And for me, their actions were causing debris to spill into my life.  While I did care about them, I also care about myself and so will step far enough back that I not impacted.

The problems I have in this relationship I cannot talk about with my now ex-friend.  There is no place for that dialogue.  There is no place for me to speak.  If I see a pattern going on, actions that are impacting me, and there is no place for me to speak about it, then I will have to leave. This isn’t about right and wrong. This isn’t about judgment. This is about my need to have a voice, to be considered, to be part of a living breathing connection that honors who I am, my experience and what I see.

Sometimes each of us has to walk our own path.   My path at this time is about honoring what I need.  Perhaps for this friend, she too has to walk her own path – to answer the questions of her life by the process of living it.  Somehow what I need and what she needs clash.  Each of us sees the situation from our own perspective, in line with our own evolution.  Each of us is doing what is necessary for ourselves. So the break is organic and part of the path we are both on.  I can trust that and I do.

I find it important to be able to talk about how I feel.  I find it important to listen to how the other feels. I find it important to be able to speak honestly how he or she is impacting me, in both the negative and the positive and vice versa.  And having the space to do this is necessary in any long-term relationship.  It takes the eyes of others, of our friends, to see our own failings.  Isn’t that part of why we are here, to take the rough diamond of ourselves and cooperate with the polishing of life, increasing our beauty and our brilliance?

My life’s work is about dialogue.  It is about creating the space between two different vantage points and bridging that.  It is about allowing space for feelings to be expressed and seeing if there is a way to honor both of us or even both aspects of oneself.

I talked to her recently to see how she was doing, after not talking to her for several months.  She told me that her life was hell.  Her husband had recently told her that he had been having an affair for a number of years.  She was blindsided.  She hadn’t seen it coming. Nor had I.

What?  Wow.  I had liked her husband a lot.  Yet he had been living a lie for years – to his wife, his children, his friends and family – to the world. How did this happen?

As I pondered on this very disturbing news, memories of past conversations came back. I remembered things she had told me over the years where her husband had said no to some requests that she had made and had gotten defensive in a way that hadn’t really made sense.  We talked about a few of these situations and she told me that she had been reviewing many interactions between herself and her husband over the years, and a lot of situations now looked different to her. She now saw many situations where he had pushed her away and acted defensively towards her – in a way that wasn’t okay.

Her husband had gone through a work change and what now appeared to be an identity crisis a number of years ago. But he didn’t reach for his wife.  He reached for someone else instead. And then began his double life.

How does this happen to our long-term bonds and between people who love each other?  Why is it sometimes easier to push our partner aside rather than work towards reconnecting?  What are we pushing away in ourselves in the moment we make that choice?  And then, rather than rocking the boat and dealing with what is happening, how can somebody lie year after year to the person who they have made a commitment to, whom they love and have a family and life with?

We have two choices to look at here:

• My friend’s choice to give her husband the space she thought he needed, rather then challenge him on situations that felt off, allowing him to in a sense, ‘hide.’

• Her husband’s choice to find comfort elsewhere and to lead a secret life.

From her perspective, it made sense to give him the benefit of the doubt because she thought that they had a trusting relationship.  She really did believe that he was an honest man who loved her and had good values. She trusted him. She didn’t want to pounce every time his tone seemed off.  She chose to be kind rather than question him. She made the choice to be loving and give him the space she thought he needed. She didn’t realize that the space she gave him would be so dangerous to their relationship. My friend can now see how she had accepted his reasons and behavior instead of demanding more, or challenging him more. Had she understood her husband’s flaws better, she would have done it differently.

Now looking back and understanding who he is differently, she wished that she had given herself some more space to wonder about why he was reacting and to talk to him about this.  Her trust and goodness got in the way.  It prevented her from wondering and perhaps questioning him more deeply. Had she done so, it probably would have created more tension between them, but there is no guarantee that it would have changed the ultimate outcome.

Perhaps it would have shortened the length of his lie and they would have crashed and burned sooner. Perhaps he would have chosen to look within. Only if he was willing to be curious about his own issues and look within could the outcome have been different. Relational work requires that both members of a couple be willing to look at themselves deeply. It is by taking responsibility for your own internal struggles that we  have have the capacity to be there for someone else.

Trust is important. But it is also important to listen to the little part of us that notices when someone isn’t fully there. Sometimes we have to challenge the people we love or hold them accountable.  We have to trust that we have the right to do that, because that means we are taking care of ourselves.  Maybe we have to push our point, stand our ground, be a pain in the ass, or bring something up that we know will make our partners mad or upset – because if we don’t do it, we may be betraying ourselves.  There is a delicate line between letting go and allowing someone space, and talking about what doesn’t feel right to us.

My friend was a loving and responsive partner.  Her fault wasn’t in being a bad partner.  If anything, it was that she was too trusting and too accommodating.

In the case of her husband, it is one thing to make a mistake and stray, admit it and make a correction, or even realize we have to move on and end our marriage. It is another entirely to lie to someone who trusts us, take advantage of that trust and lead a secret life. His own issues caused him to look for someone else to tell him how great he was. His mistress got to be the one to make him feel special, as he betrayed and diminished his wife.

My friend’s husband was unwilling to look at the cause of his dissatisfaction – his inability to feel okay about himself without the accolades of others, his sense of emptiness  – issues that demanded to be explored if he was to mature into a solid human being.  Instead, unexamined, they caused him to reject his wife by making her mundane and finding someone else to make into ‘the answer.’  It was easier to love his wife when she was young and beautiful, and made him look good. But after a few kids and a few years the ego boost just wasn’t the same.  And this man didn’t have the self-awareness or the ability to look inside and see that what he was looking for couldn’t come from the outside – and maybe he didn’t want to.  Instead, when it wasn’t happening in his career, he fell into his narcissistic need to be applauded and he went for the quick fix – that turned into the very long fix that broke up his marriage.

What does this say about someone who does this?

• It means that we need something (because of our undeveloped areas or wounds) and that we can’t get it any other way – so we break our word, our promise, and our commitment.

• It means we are so hungry to take care of our own needs that we are unable to treat our partner with honor, respect and as someone with value.

• It means we rationalize what we do in order to act badly.

• It means we aren’t truly capable of committing to a relationship, because our own individual needs are too big.

• It means we will betray someone else to take care of ourselves – making us untrustworthy.

This marriage is over. The breach of trust was too great.  And of course, over time ‘the other woman’ also became a real person who brought up conflicts and issues – the work that every relationship requires.  So that too ended.

What about you?

Will you step forward and listen to the small voice of your intuition when your partner acts in a way that doesn’t seem right or that doesn’t honor you?  Will you give them the space they need because you trust them or want to give them the room to work it out?  Will you be able to find that delicate line between those two places?  This is a line I have found challenging at times in my own life.

If you make a mistake and stray, will you quickly make it right?  Or will you go the way of corruption and lying so you can get what you want – but at the expense of your integrity, your relationship and your partner?  Why?  What are you afraid of that causes you to be less than your full self?

Being a good partner is tricky.  It requires taking care of yourself, as well as fully showing up and being there for your partner.  It means that you don’t hide, but talk about the hard stuff, the disappointments; the things that make you feel distant or push you away.  If you always take the easy way out, looking for the thing that makes you feel better, instead of looking deep into your self, then how can you be trustworthy?  If you aren’t trustworthy to your partner, can anybody really trust you? Or will you sell them down the river too, the next time the going gets tough?

Hank’s life had been interwoven with mine for over 14 years.  He greeted me at the door when I came home, insisted on drinking running water out of faucets, and loved to ride on my right shoulder only, among a myriad of other things.  I went shopping for him thoughtfully, deciding which types and flavors of cat food would please him.  The last few months of his life, I got up about 4 times a night to feed him, because he was sick and I was willing to do whatever he needed. There were a zillion different ways and moments that we interacted over the years. There are countless memories and thoughts of him that are moving through me.

The Hindu wedding was long and steeped in tradition with the recognition of marriage as a threshold into a new world – the entrance of a new person into a family, and the understanding that this was a significant event. I wasn’t raised with ritual: just the regular birthdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions. But these were not given the weight of markers of a new and changed world.

Birth, death, marriage, divorce and children leaving home are all markers of big transitions.  Life isn’t the same or may be radically different after these occurrences.  Our moment-to-moment reality is forever altered.  Someone who was part of the fabric of our life is no longer there, leaving big open gaps, or someone new steps in causing our life to reorganize.

I grew up in a family without the recognitions of this.  I do not believe that a true understanding of relationship – the sacredness of the meeting of two souls, was recognized or honored. Events came and went, pets came and went.  Transitions occurred with no reverence of the significance of them.  My family was simply not tuned into the bigger cycles of life.  We lived in a small day-to-day world of survival and getting the tasks of the day done. The significance of what it really meant to be connected to someone else, to share our life with others in a holy way was not part our consciousness.  I believe that our family missed the significance of the spirituality of connection and love.  Not until my father died in 1998 was there any real recognition of this due to the impact this event had on all of us in my family.

I cannot explain my connection with Hank; I was simply closer to him than to any other being on the planet.  I think of the specialness of our relationship and the many moments that can never be again.  I think of the beauty of his soft grey striped fur and his speckled belly. I believe that my relationship with Hank is a metaphor for all of our relationships with each other.  They are each unique and whether they are filled with a big love (as with Hank), compassion, irritation, resentment, or something else, they take up a specific time and place.  They fill the space of our psyche and are the threads of the fabric of our lives.

Our lives are embedded in relationship – relationships that come and go, as our lives come and go.  Who will know the story of Hank when I am gone?  Our story will be in the rustling of the dry autumn leaves, part of the echo of the universe, a beautiful note among many other notes.

For me, relationships reveal an awesome responsibility; the responsibility to truly see another and grapple with what that connection means to us and does to us – the feelings it triggers in us, whether grief or anger, resentment or guilt, love or adoration – and how we choose to deal with these experiences and feelings. Because this process actually is our life.   And the opportunities and experiences of today, will not necessarily be here tomorrow.

Hank had not been feeling well. I took Hank to the vet for a check up and a blood test. The blood test revealed abnormalities. It appears that his feline inflammatory bowel disease has progressed and that he has ulcers somewhere in his digestive track. We increased his current medication and added some others. Tomorrow he will get an ultrasound.

As life would have it, I was leaving on vacation several days after the vet appointment and was worried about the best thing for Hank.  I was stressed.  Yesterday, the day before my trip, Hank had a particularly bad day.  He threw up the appetite stimulant and I had to give it to him again.  He hardly ate.  His tail twitched with discomfort and he wouldn’t purr.  He wandered around the yard and house restlessly.  I felt powerless and boxed into a corner as I became more and more upset.

As I lay in bed in misery that night, a memory emerged.  I was maybe 11 or 12.  I had grown up in the country, and we had horses, goats and other animals.  Our pony Dusty had a baby named Nickel. We found him with Dusty up the hill in the horse pasture shortly after he was born and had to get him down to the barn as it was starting to snow.  It was a long slow trip coaxing mommy and newborn down to the barn.

Nickel was a small and fluffy grey being. I loved him instantly.  Throughout that spring I would come home every day after school and run out to be with Nickel. I spent the summer brushing him and teaching him things – how to lift his feet for them to be cleaned, how to pull a small cart, how to be led with his halter.  I was a shy child and veered away from people.  My father was often explosively violent and my family was not a safe place for me.  Nor was the surrounding area of people who hunted and killed for sport.  Animals felt safe to me. I could count on them for love. Nickel was my friend and companion.

One day, that fall, the school bus dropped me off in front of our house. I ran out to the pasture to find Nickel.  I couldn’t find him.  I looked everywhere.  Finally I asked my father if he had seen Nickel.  He said, ‘we sold him.’  My mind screamed, no, no, no.   ‘Can we go I can say goodbye to him?’ I asked.  ‘We didn’t’ get their number or address.  They came by and put him in the back of their station wagon and drove away.’ I was numb. I didn’t know if he was safe, or being taken care of properly.  I would never see him again.

I don’t know what happened to my heart that day.  I fell into a depression.  Somehow I pushed that event away.  I didn’t remember it again for 20 years; I was at a workshop and that memory exploded into my consciousness.  But the other night, yet another 20 years later – 40 or so years after the initial event, the pain that ripped through me was almost unbearable.  I related to all the enslaved peoples of the world who have had their babies and children taken away from them.  I thought of all of the loss and pain that exists in this world.  I felt like I was dying, like I was being ripped apart.  Enormous pain was running through my body.  Eventually I realized what was happening. I was in the process of emotional release.

That old event was intensifying my current pain about Hank.  And through that memory and the re-experiencing of that pain (perhaps more completely than what I was able to feel at the time) I began releasing a very old experience that I don’t need any more.  Yes, Hank is not well; I feel sad and it is painful, but this time period also feels so intense because I am carrying in my body the residue of that earlier wound. In that earlier event the pain, grief, helplessness and hopelessness I felt were almost unbearable. That old event imprinted my consciousness and affects my current experiences.  That imprint needed to be released.  Releasing this degree of pain to alter an old pattern is an intense process. Ultimately the pain softens and I am left with a clearer perspective in the now.  Those two events – the past and the current – become ‘unlinked.

I will do whatever I can to make the rest of Hank’s life as good as possible.  He is going to leave me, as we all leave each other at some point in time.  But the feelings that are coming up needed to be released.

Emotional release is not well understood. When somebody is releasing their emotions, it may seem as if they have gone off that deep end.  We can judge ourselves or be afraid that we are ‘broken.’ Generally that is not what is occurring.  Instead, what is happening is that feelings are being discharged from experiences that are locked deep within our selves for a long time.  These structures of pain are dense and we don’t need them anymore.  We don’t need their influence on our current experience.

If we allow ourselves to experience the depths of our feelings, they actually release them and we become lighter.  We move into the world with less heaviness and more understanding.  Our current difficulties become more manageable and we become less reactive.  That old lens we were experiencing though dismantles. We trust what is happening in our lives more, and look for the themes we need to recognize and let go of, the feelings and experiences we need to release so that we can continue on, less encumbered.

Look at the events that are occurring in your life that are intense.  Don’t be afraid to let your feelings emerge.  Allow yourself to experience your deep feelings in relationship to them.  Your feelings may need to be felt and be released.  Memories may need to surface. Ask the universe to help you understand what you are releasing. If you understand what is happening, this process will be easier. Eventually you will move to a place where the pain is less and the dramas that trigger you dissolve and disperse.

There is a common error in thinking that if we cannot render – meaning draw something ‘realistically,’ like drawing an apple, to look like an apple – that we are then not creative.  Or that if we are not making an object that exists in the external world that we are not creating.  I can only say ‘wow.’  Who misled you? Who told you that you aren’t creative? Don’t you know who you are and what is possible?

Life is creative and creativity.  Creativity is how bacteria adapt to antibiotics.  It is how sea animals evolved into land animals.  It is how somebody came up with the idea of sending a man to the moon and how Einstein imagined E=mc².  We are being creative when we explore new attitudes or new ways of thinking or behaving. Creativity is how we engage with our world so that we can adapt, make sense of, improve ourselves etc.  It is much bigger than being able to draw or make a piece of art.

We grow our lives. We do this with our attitudes and perceptions.  We use our minds to transform our beings. For me, this may be the most creative act possible.  We look at what we have chosen to believe.  And we get to see the results of our creativity and then make another choice, have another outcome.  For example, as a species, we believed that we could ‘use’ the earth and all would be okay.  We have found out differently.  As we explore other beliefs, for example the belief that we are part of the earth and both her caretaker as well as being supported by her, our actions change, and the outcome changes.  Or for example, if I am in a difficult relationship and I believe that I don’t deserve more, then things probably won’t get better. But if I choose to believe that I do deserve more, that relationship will undoubtedly change or end.

We grow our lives.  Using our beliefs and attitudes, as well as using or cultivating qualities such as patience, persistence, courage, wisdom, joy etc., we take where we are, and build a future that has the potential to be different.

This concept can be a bit tricky. Do you tell yourself that you are ‘bad” because of how your life is?  Like it is 100% up to you?  That creative act probably isn’t going to work for you in the long run.  Nor is the creative act of telling yourself that none of it is your fault, that somebody else messed things up for you. (Of course if you are in that category, you may not have any idea that you are creating your life.) Luckily, if you want, you can look at yourself (another highly creative act) and find a new belief.

Some of us grew up in households where we survived by trusting only ourselves. We may not trust life. If something happens that we don’t like, or are disappointed by, we may make it our fault.  We forget that life is bigger than us – a web of interaction. This is a paradox that we must hold.  We are both the creators of our own lives yet we are not 100% in charge.  For example, if you are trying to get a job, you can do your best, but ultimately, the person looking through the stack of resumes has to say to him or herself, “I like that one.” That is not your decision and not in your power.

Our control resides in our attitudes and perceptions. Regardless of how we were raised, we can revise our beliefs or our attitudes.  So when I don’t get that job, do I say, “Why does this always happen to me? What’s wrong with me? Or how long do I have to deal with this shit?” Either way, our attitude is off.  Our use of our creativity is not serving our own empowerment.

How do we not take disappointment personally?  If you looked at yourself as a little kid cleaning their room, would you want to say, “I hate this, I always have to clean my room” (not very empowering). Or “This won’t take that long and its not that bad and this is just what kids have to do.”  Can you hear the difference in self-support?

People, who hold more positive and self-supportive attitudes, tend to have doors open for them more quickly.  They are the ones who find the parking space right in front of the store when nobody else can find one.  How does that happen?  Read or Google Masaru Emoto’s book, ‘Messages from Water,’ if you want to see the physical response of matter to thought.

Our attitudes impact our world.  This also applies to our relationships.  What are you doing in your relationship that doesn’t work?  Hiding? Controlling? Assuming? How we treat others and our selves is paramount.  It is part of what makes up the fabric of who we are and our lives. Are you treating yourself with an open heart?  Your partner? Your friends?  If not, what are you doing instead, and why? Our histories have a lot to do with how we act in the present.  If you start unraveling why you do what you do, you will find the answer in looking at how you coped previously with difficult situations.  Every ‘issue’ is a strategy to avoid a wound or get a need met.

Exploring wounds and traumas allows us to understand ourselves better and allows us more choices in the present.  Instead of being on cruise control, we have more space to make a choice, more room to be creative.

Can you send yourself gratitude instead of dissatisfaction?  Can you send your world gratitude instead of dissatisfaction?  Can you send your partner gratitude instead of dissatisfaction?  This creative act alone will change your life. It doesn’t feel good to be generating criticism.

Sit down and see if you can FEEL gratitude for the many aspects of your life, your pet, friends, the color of the sky, your job, whatever.  Put your hand on your heart.  Let yourself feel.  Gratitude is an uplifting emotion.  Remember, you are a creative being and you are growing your life.

For help growing your relationship, check out www.weconcile.com. It will be launched later this year.