What My Anxiety Taught Me About Love
It’s never easy when you come up against your ego.
Or to be more specific, when your shadow behavior is pointed out to you by someone you love and trust.
Recently I had a conversation with my husband in which he shared that over the past year I’d demonstrated more controlling behavior. He gave a few specific examples, some I agreed with and others I wanted to immediately reject.
My insides squirmed listening to him.
I just wanted him to stop, to go away and leave me alone.
Didn’t he understand anything?
It wasn’t that I was being more controlling it was that I was finally coming in to my own, doing what I wanted as opposed to what other people were telling me to do.
I felt hurt and rejected. Because that’s the only way an ego can feel.
My husband was infinitely kind, loving and soft when he spoke to me but what I heard was, “You’re a controllingbit** and I don’t want to be with you.”
My ego had been bruised. I felt raw, almost like a frightened little child.
It’s never easy when you come up against your ego.
Or to be more specific, when your shadow behavior is pointed out to you by someone you love and trust.
Recently I had a conversation with my husband in which he shared that over the past year I’d demonstrated more controlling behavior.
He gave a few specific examples, some I agreed with and others I wanted to immediately reject.
My insides squirmed listening to him.
I just wanted him to stop, to go away and leave me alone.
Didn’t he understand anything?
It wasn’t that I was being more controlling it was that I was finally coming in to my own, doing what I wanted as opposed to what other people were telling me to do.
I felt hurt and rejected. Because that’s the only way an ego can feel.
My husband was infinitely kind, loving and soft when he spoke to me but what I heard was, “You’re a controllingbit** and I don’t want to be with you.”
My ego had been bruised. I felt raw, almost like a frightened little child.
After our conversation, I slowly began to unpack it, trying to make meaning of his words and my reactions.
I realized that my initial response to the conversation was defense. “No. You’re wrong. This is really all about you. You don’t want me to take my power because then you’ll feel threatened.”
Perhaps some of that was true.
In relationships, we always have to be sensitive to power issues between partners.
However, being in a loving relationship, I knew his intention wasn’t to hurt me.
As I began to work through his words and, more importantly, my response to his words, I began to entertain the notion that he could (maybe) be correct. So I asked myself: “What if he’s right? What could your behavior be showing you?”
I realized that I was acting more uptight and clinging to control as a response to moving in a new direction.
In other words, because there was more uncertainty in one aspect of my life (career) it was triggering my anxiety. And I was compensating by trying to control other areas of my life, ones I could actually be in control of (my home life).
When I got to this level of understanding, I was ready to talk about it again.
I shared my new insight with my husband. And he heard me – listening quietly - and responded with love and compassion.
Within that context, my behavior made sense.
It wasn’t really that I wanted (or want) to control him or anyone, it’s just an automatic default setting my ego falls into when I come up against anxiety.
Then my husband went one step further. Thinking out loud, he wondered if what was really being triggered by this uncertainty was my core issue: abandonment.
Lots of us struggle with abandonment issues.
My mom left my sister and me when I was four years old. Although we saw her frequently and went to live with her six years later, that time was filled with upheaval. We moved so often that I went to five different schools. In my young mind, I became convinced that somehow it was all my fault and that I was not lovable.
I initially turned to food and ate to fill that void, the emptiness of undeserving.
After I released that, I filled it with people, activities, and by never letting really anyone in because then they could hurt me. I spent years yearning for love but being too afraid to actually open up to it.
In a way, it’s actually a loss of faith.
It’s my forgetting that I am safe and that the Universe loves and supports me. Instead, I fall into a fear reaction that drives me to do everything because no one can be trusted.
Over time my behaviors have changed and by deepening my spiritual practice, I now trust in God, in other people and in the Universe. And I know that I am loveable and loved.
This internal relaxing has allowed me to open up to new possibilities, to stretch myself emotionally and let love in even more.
Yet those of us on this spiritual path know that we move in a spiral direction.
We keep coming back around to the same issues over and over again. Only each time they get more subtle.
So I shouldn’t really be surprised that I'm facing my abandonment once again.
The old feeling that conjures up a scared little 4-year old girl.
In this turn in my road, I’m working on loving both the feeling as well as the frightened child.
Reminding her that she is safe and loved, that those old stories are just that, old and not real anymore.
As I embrace these aspects of myself and let love in, I know I am being healed.
Instead of rejecting my anxiety or my abandonment, my job right now is to love them and embrace them- these dark emotions that I don’t want to feel or acknowledge.
I bring them into my heart and relax.
Light and love come streaming in and I don’t have this frenzied or uptight need to control. It’s a relief in a way to be able to relax.
For me trust is the opposite of abandonment.
As I dissolve my old ties of abandonment, and let them go, I replace them with faith and trust. I breathe into my heart and know that I am loved, and that I am never alone, ever.
Curiously I came back to love through looking at my shadow behavior – my need to staunch my anxiety with control.
I’m grateful to have people in my life who love me enough to show me even what I don’t want to see. Because despite the pain of hearing the truth in that moment, the lesson it has taught me has been well worth it.
And I am the better for it.
What's your take? How do you respond to uncertainty?
Let's start a dialog. Leave your ideas below.
It's All About Trust
A few months ago, right around the New Year, I wrote about Robert Holden's idea of choosing one word to be your guide for the year. A word that you could contemplate, evaluate and ideally embrace this year, 2014.
My word is trust.
Four months into my exploration with this word, I have come to see its many manifestations in my life.
For one, I will confess to not being terribly trusting - of myself, of others, of the future. All of this lack of trust is from my past, from not feeling supported or nurtured, and from thinking the world is an unsafe place. I have worked on this for a decade but am determined to shed my lack of trust this year. And this resolution has gotten me thinking about all the ways it manifests in my life.
A few months ago, right around the New Year, I wrote about Robert Holden's idea of choosing one word to be your guide for the year. A word that you could contemplate, evaluate and ideally embrace this year, 2014.
My word is trust.
Four months into my exploration with this word, I have come to see its many manifestations in my life.
For one, I will confess to not being terribly trusting - of myself, of others, of the future. All of this lack of trust is from my past, from not feeling supported or nurtured, and from thinking the world is an unsafe place. I have worked on this for a decade but am determined to shed my lack of trust this year. And this resolution has gotten me thinking about all the ways it manifests in my life.
Whether we want to believe it or not, trust defines our lives. It is how we view everything and our place in it.
Do I trust myself and my inner knowing?
What about the future?
Is the Universe benevolent and supportive?
Can I open up and trust my partner?
As I do this exploration, I am reminded of how trust transformed my love life.
When I was in my mid 30s, my marriage fell apart. I was as much to blame as my husband. I was naive and hadn't spent enough time nurturing our connection together. Instead, I allowed life to constantly get in the way and focused too much of my attention on my career and my children.
After that, I decided I was done with relationships and would devote my life to God (and my kids). I wasn't going to pursue another love partner. But, as the Universe typically works, we find love when we least expect it. This time, though, he and I were determined to do things differently, and as part of that made a commitment of total honesty and truth to one another. It was the first time in my life that I allowed myself to open up to someone and show them ALL of me - the parts I liked and was proud of, and the parts I disliked and was ashamed of. And here's what happened, I didn't get rejected. In fact one night he told me, "when you share like that with me, it makes me love you even more."
What!?!?!?
Yup.
As he and I walked through this new love I started to see that as I opened up and trusted him, I trusted myself more, I trusted God more. It was like this relationship was the gateway to trust and all the lines ran parallel. I opened to him, and everything else expanded.
In sharing this story, I am describing what Brene Brown writes in Daring Greatly about our willingness to be vulnerable. That's why we're afraid of trust - because it means we have to be vulnerable and we might get hurt. We are exposing ourselves. But, as she writes, "we need to feel trust to be vulnerable and we need to be vulnerable in order to trust."
Relationships are a great place to start. So try it. Choose one thing to share with your partner. One fear or desire. Maybe it's something you never told anyone before. How will you say it? Is there a good time? You'll know.