What's going on with me?

“Im just feeling sad, realizing that all this time, I have actually allowed myself to be in this place for a whole decade”

A courageous admission from a group participant I am co-coaching.  The program has just started, we are in our third week….and like clockwork, the nature of being involved in any growth program that promises a shift in our lives…..calls up resistance, anger, sadness and the like……to be dealt with.  

As we address what comes up….we start disarming the barriers we have in place to the life we want for ourselves.  And this is the key…..addressing the walls that have been built throughout our lifetime to protect us, but simultaneously preventing the very thing we pine for.


She has been resisting this emotion, keeping herself busy…..”It’s thankfully been so busy at work that I haven’t lost myself in it”….she says.  A common and understandable fear.  “But I am bringing this to you to tell me what to do with it”.  She is clearly sad, recognizing that she has been denying herself, unconsciously, the very thing that she has been craving, working towards, dreaming about.

Our beautiful minds create these tensions……this conflict……for a purpose.

Part of you wants to stay safe, and why not?  Who would walk into a fire knowing it will hurt and scar them?  Simple cause and effect.  Walk into the fire, get burned!!!

Can you relate to this?

But did you know that you developed this belief when you were under the age of 8 years?  Hard to believe, but we actually create a road map for life by the time we are 8 years old.  But if you give it some thought…….8 years involves many new experiences.  And if we don’t share our experiences, or if we don’t have the guidance necessary to navigate through our emotional terrain…..then we are left to our own devices to come up with guidelines around our self conduct in relationship to the world.  And to be fair, even in the best of upbringings…..our parents cannot possibly know all that is going on within us…all the beliefs we are forming….and it is barely within our awareness that we are creating these beliefs in the first place.

Another woman shares about her resistance to doing the homework assigned in the program.  When asked what the resistance is about, she shares “I wont’ be able to be who I am if I open myself up to a relationship”.  A relationship is what is on her particular radar at this time in her life.  ​

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Afraid of change, afraid of not knowing what it will entail, perhaps an experience of being unaware of what she gave up in the past to be in a relationship ( having the awareness only after the fact), and…..a belief that no man will fully accept her for all that she is…..this self-protective part of her brain is rightly saying……don’t go there!!!!!

However, the conflict is in our biological pre-programming to be attached, connected, loved, adored, supported, cared for…….  We begin this attachment, this programming.....the moment we come out of the womb…if not before.  Without this attachment, safety and survival are impossible.

This lovely woman wants what attachment and connection promises without the growing pains of deepening intimacy….both with herself and with the potential partner.  Logical.....no one wants the pain.
In a perfect world….that would be great wouldn’t it?  Perhaps.  It would save us from the suffering we have experienced.  

​But I would like to offer here that without any sort of suffering….whether it’s just in the knowledge that we want something we don’t have.....to the other end of the spectrum…..we would know very little about ourselves, and have very little personal intimacy.  Without that…..we don’t get to experience the joy of knowing all that we offer, loving who we are, loving our lives….the people and circumstances within it.

How much would you like that kind of joy in your life?

Shifting and transforming are amongst the most delicious rights of passage we are gifted here, what are you doing to completely capitalize on this opportunity offered to you?  What are the joys you have gotten to experience along the way?

I would love to hear……transformation is delicious!!!