|
A good way to see this hurt is to notice what happens the
moment you get upset. Notice the immediate surge of feelings and
emotion that come forth. This is the hurt that runs your life.
Any circumstance that reactivates this hurt then becomes a
threat that must be avoided at all cost. To protect yourself from
this threat, you automatically fight, resist and hang on.
This fighting and resisting then creates a state of fear and
upset that sabotages your life.
In a subconscious attempt to avoid this hurt, you will interact
in a way that destroys love and creates opposition and resistance
against yourself. Ultimately, the avoidance of this hurt is
responsible for all your self-sabotaging behavior and all your
suffering.
The irony is that the more you fight these feelings of being
not okay, the stronger they become and the more they run your
life. You then act in a way that actually creates more of the very
hurt that you are avoiding.
To see how this works, be sure and read the examples at the end
of this section.
The avoidance of these feelings is what gives them power.
Here
is a short exercise that can demonstrate this:
Imagine four large yellow balloons on the ceiling above you,
but don't think about them. Whatever you do, don't think about
those four large yellow balloons on the ceiling above you. You
just thought about them. Don't do that.
Notice what happens when you try not to think about the yellow
balloons. You keep thinking about them. In fact, you can hardly
think about anything else. Your resisting keeps the thought alive.
The same is true with the feelings of being worthless, not good
enough, or whatever your issue is. Ultimately, these feelings are
only a thought, but by your resisting the thought of being this
way, you give the thought power and carry it with you day after
day.
To heal this hurt and to be free inside, you need to do the
opposite of fighting and resisting. You need to find the specific
hurt that you've been avoiding and make peace with it. As you do
this, the hurt loses power and disappears.
The best way to find your hurt is to look at your upsets.
Make a list of all the major upsets that you've had in your
life. Then find the hurt that's under each upset. The hurt will
always be some form of "not okay."
For each upset, go back in time to the moment the upset began.
Then move to the hurt and ask yourself this question:
"What
do those circumstances say about me?"
If someone leaves you, this may say that you are not worth
loving. If you lose your job, this may say that you are a failure.
Find the words that hurt the most. The more painful the words,
the closer you are to your hurt.
As you work with your upsets you will discover that the same
hurt keeps showing up in your life, over and over. This is the
hurt that runs your life.
After you find the specific hurt that you've been running from,
the next step is to do the opposite of fighting it, which is to
embrace it.
Allow yourself to feel the hurt of being this way.
Cry if you
can. Then, while you are feeling this hurt, look at your life and
see all the evidence to prove that this is indeed an aspect of
you.
Find the evidence to prove that you are worthless, not good
enough, not worth loving, a failure or whatever else you've been
avoiding.
The evidence will be there if you are willing to see it.
It has
to be. It couldn't keep showing up in your life if it wasn't
there. You don't have to like it. You just have to tell the truth
about it. Let it in.
Worthless is part of you. It's also no big deal.
You are also
worthy. Worthless and worthy are both aspects of being human.
So allow yourself to be human. Allow yourself to feel all the
hurt of being worthless, not good enough, a failure or whatever
your issue is.
The more you let in the fact that this is an aspect of you, the
more impossible it is to run from it. When you can’t run from
it, you can’t fight it. When you can’t fight it, the issue
loses power and disappears.
It’s just like the yellow balloons. If you stop fighting them
and let them be there, they go away.
As you heal this hurt, your whole life then begins to change.
Instead of creating a life of fear and upset, you create a life
of love. You restore the happiness, the freedom and the aliveness
that you once had. You see life clearly and you become far more
effective.
In relationships, you can end the conflict and restore the
love, one human being to another.
The process for finding and healing this hurt is very simple
and very fast. All you need is the desire to be free.
Example 1
When Rhonda was growing up, her father was so occupied with his
work that he seldom paid any attention to her. When he did pay
attention, he would yell at her. She felt totally unloved.
As a result, Rhonda couldn't help but buy the notion that she
wasn't worth loving. This wasn't the truth, but this became a hurt
that she would spend the rest of her life running from.
To avoid this hurt, Rhonda would interact in a way that would
sabotage all of her relationships.
Anytime something implied that she wasn't worth loving, she
would become full of fear and upset. She would try to control life
and force people to be a certain way.
No matter how hard the men in her life tried, they could never
treat Rhonda "worth loving" enough. She would constantly
be upset about one thing or another.
She would also hang on to the men in her life. She had to,
because if someone left, that would reactivate all her hurt.
To
avoid this hurt she hung on.
Rhonda was so hard to live with, she pushed everyone away.
Finally, after her third and most painful divorce, she noticed
that there was a pattern in her life. She realized that she must
have something to do with her relationship problems.
This was the point when Rhonda's life turned around.
It wasn't hard for Rhonda to see that "not worth
loving" was an aspect of her. She spent her entire life
running from this, but now the hurt was so much in her face, she
could no longer deny it. The evidence was overwhelming.
As she owned this aspect of herself and allowed herself to cry,
the hurt that ran her life began to fade away. She then realized
that "not worth loving" was just part of being human.
What a wonderful freedom.
"I'm not worth loving, how great. Now I don't have to
prove to myself and to everyone else that I am worth loving.
Now I
can just be me." She started laughing once she saw the joke
that she had been playing on herself.
From that moment on, the hurt had lost its power.
Rhonda was then able to go on and find the relationship of her
dreams, and most importantly, she was able to keep it.
Example 2
Mark spent his life running from the hurt of failure, trying to
become a success.
In his attempt to avoid the hurt of failure, he would overspend
and take unreasonable financial risks. He lived in a state of fear
and upset. He lost his ability to see clearly and he interacted in
a way that continued to produce more failure.
Finally, he failed so big, he was forced to face this aspect of
himself. He lost everything. He lost his property, his office and
even his home. Failure was in his face like never before.
Then there was a moment when Mark let in what a failure he was.
He looked over his life and saw one failure after another.
Mark was forced to let in what he had feared the most.
He was a
failure. He could no longer avoid or deny it. Success was also an
aspect of Mark, but at the moment, all he could see was failure.
This was a very painful time for Mark, but the moment he let in
what a failure he was, something shifted inside. His fear of
failure lost its power. How can you run from something that is
always there? It's like running from your shadow. You can't.
Mark was sad for a while but soon his whole outlook toward life
seemed to change. The fear and upset that ran his life was no
longer there. He no longer had to be a success. For the first time
in many years, Mark was able to be himself. What an incredible
relief!
With the fear of failure gone, Mark was able to put his focus
on creating a life that worked. He stopped overspending and got
out of debt.
He continued to go for his dreams, but he did so in a way that
worked. As time went on, his dreams began to come true.
Now he has
a life that he could never have imagined before.
Mark's life turned around the moment he made peace with
failure.
Bill Ferguson is a
former divorce attorney who has devoted his life to showing people
how to heal their relationships and have life work. He has led
over 2,500 programs and has worked with countless individuals.
|
