The last year taught me more on subtle nuances to boundaries, and opened up a whole new aspect I have not yet engaged with. I was shown which hopes and desires, born of deficits and woundings of my childhood, still hold a level of power that effortlessly crosses and blinds me to my boundaries until harm has been incurred. A painful insight into the workings of patterns alive in me, which let me replay old scripts to affirm negative expectations like neglectful indifference, emotional unavailability, egocentricity, rejection and abandonment. A necessary and humbling reminder of the work I still need to do in order to gain more consistency in balanced and healthy relating.
Accountability
The aspects I want to share pertains to how I currently respond to the needs or neediness of another.
Still not fully comfortable with neediness, which expresses through a victim narrative or whiny tonality, I find myself struggling to calm myself and dig deeper for compassion, as I am triggered to reject and and turn away from the experience. Realizing that the desire to distance myself from the emotions and expressions of the other is no longer solely rooted in conditioning but also in service of a primal knowing. A knowing that engaging with and entertaining such energies feeds the victim/whiny aspects in me, which I no longer wish to feed or strengthen, to the contrary.
And as I take full accountability of reacting in a poorer way than I would like, I am acknowledging the need to use better tools and practice being with energies I am integrating without a feeling of or being ‘tainted’ ,aka ‘contaminated,’ by them. In reflecting deeper on that, I became aware that I already can do so in connections that have a certain emotional depth and fluidity. Pointing towards the relationship of feeling emotionally disconnect, resulting protectivity, and the fragility to such energies. An obvious relationship, but as so often, not something I was conscious of in the moment. This needs some repetition and deepening of knowing to ensure access to it when I feel insecure or triggered.
Choice
A more novel aspect to that is the spaciousness I have gained in how I want to respond to another’s need in the moment.
Until now my nature and conditioning didn’t even allow for a pause and reflection if I want to show up in the way the other needs or asks me whenever I saw or sensed they were in pain. It was as if pain disabled any thought of myself and put me into a self-sacrificing autopilot or trance state of giving my all. Now I am allowing self love to enter and transform this hereto unconscious layer of relating in me.
This trauma reflex is also why I had such a hard time understanding, and respecting, people who could turn a cold shoulder in the face of another’s moment of need or pain. I still see that as an unpalatable thing but the emotional charge has lessened dramatically thanks to this insight and spaciousness entering this contracted aspect of self.
Discernment
Faced with someone whose idea of support consisted of making myself into a receptacle (or ‘dumping ground’ as my protectors would call it) for their narratives and emotions without asking question for clarity nor commenting in any other way, allowed for another insight.
Something in me balked at their expectation, mind you this was not a request to me but an expectations dripping with judgement. Which is why I celebrate my resistance as an expression of progress in setting self loving boundaries.
Their expectation was reminiscent of something I observed and verbalized in my mid twenties about the dynamics of relating with men. I felt they used me as ’emotional landfill’ as they would come to me and dump their unresolved shit to then saunter off and enjoy their new-found lightness in pretty much total disregard of me. A lightness bought at the cost of my emotional balance and energy. Infuriatingly they remained ignorant of the fact that they have dumped their emotional shit on me, necessitating me to carry the weight of it as enabler of their avoidance. Yuck! Thankfully another murky pattern I have patiently worked my way out of. Which is why I did not show up in the way they wanted but in a way that was aligned with what I know to be healthy for me and caring for another.
I am expressing ever more clearly a resounding NO to subtle ways others (un)consciously try to avoid doing their work, non-consensually dumping their load, and abusing my willingness to support another. Even if someone is in pain, or pulls on my heart-strings I am no longer blind to the pattern of turning me into a complicit in their self-disempowerment and avoidance of taking full responsibility for themselves and their experience of life. I am putting an end to my part in this dysfunctional dynamic pattern. And I cannot express how happy it makes me to see the expansion of this transformative process.
It makes it worth having had the low vibe experience that allowed for these insights and reflections.
Sovereignty
If it really needs mentioning:
The final say on if and how I support someone lies with me. Even though I am inviting you to share your requests, and open to negotiating with you what and how I can offer – No one gets to decide how and where my energy is invested apart from Self, Spirit and myself.
Trying to manipulate your way to controlling my behavior and self expression will get you one thing only: The end of relating as I walk away.
I remain fully available to growth-oriented relating based on sovereignty, freedom, humor, playfulness, self knowledge, compassion, and love/consciousness. And when I speak of growth, I am using the term in a deeply spiritual definition of the willingness and capacity to face, acknowledge, love, and integrate one’s shadow and learn to do the same with the shadow of the other. I am fully aware that this is calling for the master class of relating, it takes a ton of courage, resilience, responsibility for self, self knowledge, and willingness to vulnerably and openly share your internal world to allow another know and feel you in your light and shadow. And I am fully willing to learn to fail better in this way of relating and learning with another, to deepen in awareness and discernment, to become better at repair and gentleness with self and other… to go through all highs and lows of this path as long as we meet on this ground.
This is my baseline for relating.
Meet me there or watch me move on to better aligned experiences and beings.
Photoart by Zac Cannon
