we choose love

[abundance-choice]

How to manage a painful emotion

From a post on Instagram by @thesecurerelationship about how to manage a painful emotion:

1. Notice what's happening in your body. 

2. Put a name to the sensation. 

3. Sit with the sensations in your body. Try not to escape into thoughts. If you do start to escape into thoughts, redirect yourself back into your body. Make space for your body to experience the sensation.

4. As you sit with the pain, soothe yourself in ways a parent would soothe a child. Be your own parent. Be kind and gentle with yourself.

5. Continue to let the sensation flow through your body without fighting it or getting stuck in your head and thoughts. The energy needs space to flow. The only way out is through.

6. Let your nervous system settle.

7. When you're feeling more settled, explore your feeling.

[abundance-choice]

A no BS guide on how to build a healthy sustainable relationship.

- What is your definition of love? - What is your definition of attraction? - How were these different now than they were in your early 20s? - Think about the sex and intimacy you're having today. What does it look like? What do you wish it looked like? - What do you want love to look like? Make a word collage.  - What are your non-negotiables?

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I lived much of my life from the perspective of someone who is always self-protecting: walls, keeping people out, boundaries, limits, protection amulets, you name it. Then I met my emotional sovereignty teacher, Maryam Hasnaa, whose modus operandi is diametrically opposed. Remember the conversation we once had where I was telling you that boundaries should be flexible, light and loving things where if someone comes at you with their bullshit, it doesn't hit you like a bullet, it hits like a beach ball. You are so present in your own energy that you feel incursions like a beach ball lightly hitting you on the head and you smile and you laugh and you hit it back in their direction and it goes away because you are in your life and your life is beautiful. That is what I learned from her. She believes that you don't need to worry about protecting yourself and view people as invasive forces that are going to take over your life, who want to do things to you, who are demanding things from you. They're just people. They just have wants and it doesn't matter what they are because you are full of choice. You can wake up to 500 notifications and you have the choice to say 'I'm not looking at my notifications today. I'm going to scan my inbox really quick for the names I recognize and I'm going to archive the rest.' That's living in choice. That's being so abundant. That's exercising discernment all the time. And one of the things she talks about is developing the home frequency. The home frequency is the vibration that you go back to that is full of your abundance, your love of life, your choice. We each have a home frequency we cultivate.

A.

[abundance-choice]

M: I was imagining myself talking about my latest adventures in travel and love and romance with my friend whom I'm seeing this evening and I imagined myself in this very soft energetic place smiling and saying, 'I don't know where I'm going or what's happening with me or him or what will happen.' It was such a pure place of not being attached to any outcome. And it was just so sweet. It's not coerced or forced. It's not an intentional 'okay. Time to surrender.' It's just soft. Underneath the veneer and defense mechanism of wanting or needing to always be right, wanting or needing to know, wanting or needing to look for problems, wanting or needing to see what's going to happen, wanting or needing to put myself on guard or whatever it is, is just pure softness and that is a very powerful vibration because it's subtle and quiet and beautiful and confident and slow. It's knowing, but not in a loud or boastful way.

A: That is so beautiful.

[abundance-choice]

I said, 'I'm smoking. I'm smoking again because I'm dating again.' He said, 'Well, that doesn't sound like a good thing.' I explained to him I was really alone for two years, had no romance, no sex, anything and now I recently have and all these feelings are coming up, all these fears and traumas and triggers and hopes and dreams and desires and juicy, great, amazing, beautiful, lovely, pleasurable feelings and horrible, tragic feelings and miracles and sagas and good things and bad things and neutral things are coming up and he said, 'it sounds like you're doing a great job at not adding any layers to it. It sounds like you've figured out how to see things that happen for what they are and be in it, be in that feeling, but not add a bunch of other shit to it that's unnecessary.' And I said, 'wow! Thank you. I'm so thankful that you picked up on that. I don't even know if that's true, I never thought of it that way.' That's a really great visual and distinction to make. The fact that I only had a conversation with him for five minutes and he saw that is a really good sign.

M

[abundance-choice]

I love you, but compassion doesn't require me to self-abandon. I will not be the gateway through which your pain is transmuted.

A

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A: Maybe you're not being avoidant. It's not like you are refusing to feel your feelings. You have acknowledged your disappointment and if you want to shift your focus to the beauty of your life, then you get to do that. The question is this -- does it feel in flow? This is the same practice -- we are not just trying to be in flow in relationship. We are trying to be in flow with our lives and ourselves. Ask yourself -- are you swimming upstream, pointedly ignoring the disappointment that is trying to get your attention? Or can you tell that disappointment 'I feel you. I get you. You're valid. And now I'm going to look and be in a different place. That doesn't mean that you are not important or worthy of being felt. I feel you. I feel you deeply. And I love you. I receive your message. And now I'm going to do another thing. Later, I'm going to come back and check on you and see how you're doing. And if you're still here, I will sit with you again. You are a guest in my house.' Disappointment is a guest in your house. You will bring it tea, you will bring it biscuits, and you will attend it, but you need to go into the world and you need to get resourced because you cannot be a good hostess if you are running on empty. As long as you're not acting out and doing anything funny! But you're going out into the world in order to connect with people, co-regulate, in order to experience joy, in order to vibe and thrive. The ways you go out into the world are healthful, so feel into it! I think it's a good impulse.

M: What’s happening right now is I’m still feeling through the disappointment from yesterday.

A: Yes! And that makes sense. Expanding your capacity to feel involves sitting with these feelings a little more each time but that doesn't mean you have to stay with the feeling all day. We just need to do a bit at a time. You go in and tell it, 'I'm with you,' let it talk for 90 seconds (or 30 if that's too long), then tell it 'thank you,' let it know you're going to go into you day but you'll be back to check in at night and see how that goes. Feelings are remarkably willing to work with us when we don't ignore them.

[abundance-choice]

Vocalizing the feelings practice

Sometimes feelings come up when we are engaging, causing us to want to take action. We are powerful women, full of fire and energy. We are go-getters: we want to do something about the feeling we are experiencing. But behind that action we want to take, the core thing often isn't even about the situation we are reacting to. Living in our truth doesn’t mean we need to respond to everything and everyone. A lot of the time when we are in reaction, what we are trying to do is move the feeling out of our body, trying to use a person and situation that occasioned the feeling to do so. But we don’t need them to move the feeling through. Naming the feeling can be helpful in and of itself. 

Another powerful intervention is vocalizing the feeling. Without using any words, just allow the feelings to manifest as vocalizations -- .pretend you’re Chewbacca, speaking Shyriiwook The more you vibrate your throat as you vocalize the feelings, the more you stimulate your vagus nerve. That’s a powerful way to shift yourself out of that vibration of reactivity as you move the feeling through. This can be a form of speaking our truth without the cost of sinking any time into choosing the right words or initiating a dialogue we don’t need to have.

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M: I just had a pretend dialogue in my head with him in which he’s asking me why I haven’t been in touch with him and I said 'because you’re not available.' And he said 'what do you mean?' And I said 'the only reason we were available to each other was because we lived together in Europe. And you’re not available now and that’s OK. That doesn’t mean that my door is closed to you. But it is really difficult to make plans with you because you plan everything last minute and I don’t feel like you’re available.' There is not a good way to start the morning. That is destroying my relationship.

A: Where did you leave things with yourself, with your exile?

M: I went to bed thinking: I am doing the work on myself and I am continuing to do the work. This is why I am on this planet -- to continue learning how I can be a better human and better creator and more loving and expansive in every area of my life, including romance and partnership. So I went to bed feeling pretty good. I think this morning, I'm going to focus on maybe writing some positive poetry and some affirmations and meditate and get into receiving mode and get into a higher vibration. I think checking in to our vibrations throughout the day is going to be really important. It's a moment-to-moment practice.

[abundance-choice]

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M: Can he be my garden if he's unavailable?

A: Yes. Because the cultivating you are doing is with you.

M: I guess what's tricky for me is being in a garden with someone who might not really be there. If he's there but not tending to the garden as much as me, that's different. But he's not there; I don't know how that works.

A: He is a catalyst. If his unavailability is retraumatizing for you, then he can't facilitate your gardening. Being catalyzed by these men can be confronting and even triggering, but it shouldn't be retraumatizing. If it feels retraumatizing, he is not the catalyst for you.

M: Not all unavailability is traumatizing? I'm asking because I honestly don't know. I think I get it. Discernment -- he has not been traumatizing.

A: Yes, if it feels like you are in a fog and it feels consistently bad in your body, then we need to stop and shift what we are doing. But if it's challenging and confronting as you are going down the rapids, but you can stay on the raft, then that's good, that's the work. The assignment is not to endure, but to flow in faith.

M: So with today -- first I felt sad and disappointed but then processed and then we talked me into just being up for the challenge to flow in faith, in patience, in love, and trusting. It was just a trigger and my comeback time was actually pretty quick. It was not traumatizing. It was actually a learning experience. I think healing in some ways. He didn't heal me. We healed me.

[abundance-choice]

[abundance-choice]

We are not born with tools on how to build healthy relationships. No one teaches us. So as we grow up, we do the best we can without knowing that relationships are built with tools that require awareness and a long self-discovery journey. We love blindly and end up hurt, lost, and confused. We get pulled by our feelings and emotions, reacting to our triggers and patterns, setting ourselves up for unhealthy experiences. This then gives us distorted definitions of love. We chase ideas and fantasy. Then internalize after our relationships tailspin and wonder what’s wrong with us. So we hold up shields. Dig moats around our heart. And love with distance. Afraid to touch the stove because we keep getting burned. Never hitting deeper intimacy. Or experiencing healthy relationships. Love becomes a shot. A ride. Powerful yet fleeting. We get addicted to chasing dopamine instead of actually building something lasting and sustainable.

The by-product is emotional whiplash. Falling into the same patterns. Attracting the same type of person. Get into the same type of relationships. Love then becomes a loop, fueled by past dysfunction and warped definitions. At some point, the ride gets old. It’s not worth the line. At some point, you re-examine what you want. Because what you want is different now. At some point, you decide to put weight on different things. Like energy, capacity, emotional intelligence, and moments. At some point, you ask yourself how much of these crazy love tracks are because of you. At some point, you decide to break the record. Look inward. At some point, you decide to take ownership.

I believe everyone has a responsibility to work on themselves if they choose to love someone. It’s not extra. It’s a responsibility like taking your dog on walks and doing the best to raise your children in a way that sets them up for success and happiness. Working on yourself is not just for you. It’s for them. For us. For the world. For the part of you that still believes you can have better.

[abundance-choice]

The New Love

... because the current one isn't working.

Love is about the belief, not the promise. So many want the promise. So many crave a contract. But love is not a property. Love is space. And in that space, a belief is born. Around that belief, the action of love is wrapped. Like an embrace. And that action, assuming it's healthy, protects the space where the belief continues to grow.

If you focus on the belief—the expansion, the possibilities, the greater that comes from two whole people, and the glue and growth today not tomorrow, and less on the deal, the agreement, and all the what-ifs. If you love with instead of around or at. If you stay in engaged in the here and now, lock eyes, and hold faces. Gently and long enough to see deeper. Past one's past. If you refuse to play chess and just be the most honest version of yourself. If you seek to be seen instead of wanted. You will create the space to believe. 

To love is to create the space to believe.

[abundance-choice]

It's only been a little over two weeks and I've created this whole scenario that is end-all, be-all if we don't see each other now or before the end of the year. It's like I totally forgot that being involved with someone is a journey. That means it doesn't happen overnight. You don't know the answers overnight. You definitely don't know all the answers in two weeks -- I'm reflecting on times I was dating when I was younger. There were highs and lows and ups and downs. I'm wondering if one of the reasons I've lost sight of that is that I've been in relationships with men where, like you said earlier, we burned down the forest to make things happen. And they burned down the forest too in these whirlwind affairs -- we're comfortable there because it's fast and exciting and exhilarating, but in my experience it's always burned out really fast. That is not what this is. That's not what's happening. This is a slow burn.

M.