Relationships can help us break old patterns
Relationships are a mirror for what we need to heal.
In relationships, we see our reactions, our traumas, our fears…they will mirror back to us the areas in which we need to heal, and they can mirror back the love and healing we’ve created. We show up with our wounds, we get triggered, and we work to break the old patterns that no longer serve us.
Good News
The good news is relationships can help us grow and evolve out of our potentially traumatic relationships with childhood caretakers.
When those childhood fears surface, try to notice where you get triggered and write your fears down. Accept them and be kind to yourself. Then, try to act in new ways to reprogram when you’re able: Your partner takes more than 15 minutes to answer your text and it makes you panic? Take a walk, or even put your phone away while you wash the dishes or answer emails.
Relationships are healing and important, and the relationship with ourselves is the most important; Dr. Nicole LePera reminds us that how we speak to ourselves, betray and honor ourselves, and meet and communicate our own needs will influence how we interact and how others will interact with us.
LePera notes, “Most relationship focus is our external relationships — the relationships we have with others…. Many of us don’t know who we are. We are so conditioned to focus externally — to make others happy, to chase achievement, to meet an ideal someone set for us (that often we didn’t even consciously choose.)”
Let your relationship be the mirror you can use to go inwards, to see your full self with compassion and understanding, and to heal the wounds you acquired early on.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash