Attachment Wounds with Self

Posted on July 15, 2025 by bluelilystorm

Another way to understand the impact of attachment wounds is to look at the relationship you have with yourself. Is there an anxious, avoidant or disorganized wound present between you and you?

Do you avoid yourself by always focusing on the other in relationship? Making them happy, morphing more into the type of person they are, doing what they want to do, being who they need you to be? Are you always the liquid in another’s container? Codependency is one way to understand this dynamic. Experiencing an avoidant attachment wound with yourself adds a layer of awareness. You might feel insecure and unsafe with yourself. You might lack self trust. You may need the other to be your focus in order to feel secure.

If you experience an anxious wound with yourself you might find yourself over analyzing yourself all the time. Analysis paralysis happens because when you put a period at the end of how you feel about yourself in any given situation or relationship, or with what direction you want to take in life (among a million other decisions) it creates too much anxiety and ambivalence is the result over and over again. Or you may find yourself stuck in ambivalence with yourself, unable to tell how you think or feel about yourself or what direction to take.

Whether avoidant or anxious the root is how your sense of self formed by how you were parented under age seven that created ruptures with self love, self worth and a sense of security with yourself.

A disorganized wound with yourself would show up as a mixture of avoiding yourself and being stuck in analysis paralysis, depending on the day or the situation. Sometimes you might bounce from over analyzing yourself to throwing your focus on the other person and what they think. The other could also be society, the world, or the internalized voice of a parental figure.

A secure relationship with yourself looks like trusting yourself, loving yourself unconditionally and feeling worthy just for existing, outside of conditions.

Attachment wounds and styles tend to express on a spectrum. You might be forty percent secure and sixty percent anxious, for example. An attachment wound with yourself might get triggered by a specific person or situation. Becoming aware of how the wound shows up is less equational and more a flexible mix of feeling into your relationship with self while being able to zoom out and analyze yourself.

Healing attachment wounding is a life long journey. It is often said that what gets broken in relationship must be healed in relationship. This also includes the relationship with yourself.

Through a parts work or depth lens, the self has many aspects; the ego, soul, inner child, protectors, archetypes etc. There are many ways to label the parts. This can be a helpful way to heal the psyche. On a scientific level, your neural pathways literally are the sense of self and these pathways can be rewired through parts work and reparenting the inner child. More ancient practices did the same thing when the shaman would give a soul retrieval to the wounded person.

Through a mindfulness lens you can heal through not identifying with thoughts or feelings and building awareness as the witness watching thoughts and feelings pass through the body and mind. And through cognitive behavioral work you can reframe negative narratives about the self and change negative behaviors through conscious choice. These are just a few modalities.

Many paths up the same mountain. I like to use a bouquet of modalities, finding usefulness in all of them. May you find the methods that work best for you as you develop a more secure attachment with yourself.

The Alchemy of Becoming

Posted on June 25, 2025 by bluelilystorm

This June 25th, 2025 Cancer New Moon conjunct Jupiter is a lunation cycle that amplifies your capacity to trust emotional intelligence as legitimate information. Cancer doesn’t just feel, it attunes to what genuinely sustains life versus what merely appears nourishing. Jupiter’s expansion here means that subtle emotional signals you might have ignored become impossible to dismiss. Jupiter is making the feelings bigger on purpose so that you can attune to your heart’s intuition and wisdom.

You may find yourself more sensitive to environments, relationships, or commitments that drain your vital energy, even when they look good on paper. This isn’t about reacting and being overly emotional (though that could be the unconscious expression of this energy) but about developing a more sophisticated attunement to what actually serves your wellbeing or the wellbeing of others. Feeling is healing and your feelings are valid and important. See where 4° of Cancer is in your natal chart.

This expansion squares Saturn conjunct Neptune in Aries, creating a paradox that’s both disorienting and essential. Aries is the self-at-center and demands immediate self-assertion, knowing what you want, and taking action. But Saturn applies pressure, limitation, and delay while Neptune confuses your sense of self as it dissolves rigid or outworn concepts of who you are, who you have been, and how you act.

The square of Neptune/Saturn to the New Moon/Jupiter forces you to act from deeper authentic feelings and impulses you may not understand yet mentally, rather than the should-based identity or actions you’ve been accustomed to for many years. You might discover that some of your most cherished ideas about who you are were actually constructs designed to win approval or avoid rejection. Neptune dissolves these false selves while Saturn ensures whatever emerges can withstand reality. See where 1 and 2° Aries is in your chart.

The Finger of God points this tension toward transformation of self through loss. This is known as a Yod and it is pointing to Pluto, the planet of death and rebirth through rising from the ashes of loss. Yods are mysterious and take time to understand and fulfill. Look where 3° Pluto is in your chart to see the point of transformation. There may be a loss in your external world or this might be more of an internal sense of loss. The discomfort you feel between caring for others and honoring your self and needs isn’t meant to be resolved through compromise, but through a fundamental reconstruction of how you operate.

Pluto demands that you stop trying to balance opposing forces and instead allow them to synthesize into something entirely new. You’re being asked to become someone who can be deeply feeling, care for others AND unapologetically honor the evolving self, not by switching between modes but by integrating them into a more complex way of being. This transformation might be a pointed event but typically happens through every day situations that make your old patterns impossible to maintain (people pleasing and avoidance to name a few), forcing you to grow.

The tension you’re feeling isn’t something to fix or escape, it’s the exact pressure needed to birth a more authentic version of yourself. Instead of choosing between tending to others’ needs or your own, allow yourself to honor both simultaneously. Notice where you’ve been operating from an either/or mentality, believing you must sacrifice your desires or needs to be loving or abandon care for others to claim your power. The discomfort of holding these seeming opposites is what breaks open old limitations and creates space for a more integrated way of living and loving, aligned with your true self.

New Moon Blessings. 🌑🌹

Full Moon in Sagittarius

Posted on June 11, 2025 by bluelilystorm

Today’s full moon in Sagittarius isn’t soft. It isn’t gentle. This full moon arrives with truth and a purpose. It wants to take you out of the familiar comfort zone and to sit still long enough in the discomfort to feel into your truth, that felt sense that comes when your soul remembers something your mind has forgotten.

The Sabian symbol is 20 degrees Sagittarius. An image of people cutting ice in winter for summer use. It’s a strange kind of metaphor. Why would anyone do that unless they had foresight about what would be needed in summer? That’s what this moon is revealing. How to prepare for a time you cannot yet see. Can you do something now that only your future self will understand?

This isn’t a moon of trying to manifest ego dreams. It’s a moon of getting in touch with the promise your soul made, that may or may not be aligned with ego’s need for security, pleasure, or validation. The promise made before life’s hard losses. Before the tiredness set in. Before the doubt became everyday noise in your head. It’s the promise of your inner truth.

This full moon cares that you’re listening and wants you to prepare.

The Sagittarius moon always wants to point you toward something larger and more honest within yourself. And this one especially isn’t satisfied with avoidance, half-truths or surface roles. It’s going to burn through the noise, through your outworn identities, through the masks you wear out of habit. That can feel like grief for what is dying. It can also feel like clarity for what is newly birthing. Sometimes both at once. Whether it be personal and internal, about relationships or the collective, who you are becoming and how you show up is changing.

There’s no pressure to leap right now. Just to begin to understand where you are headed. Maybe you feel like something is not working the way it used to. Maybe the old forms have dried up and the new ones haven’t shown themselves yet. That’s exactly where this moon wants to find you. Not in the perfection of clarity and strength. But in the rawness of the conflicts and in the honesty of truth that is not giving up.

If you feel discouraged, that’s part of the path. If you feel like you’ve given everything and nothing’s come back yet, this moon sees you. And she knows. She is not asking for proof or a solution. Just your openness and presence. Just the willingness to believe in your true self that wants to create and wants to love even though life hasn’t gone the way you imagined. Even with the wounds and mistakes. Even in the dismantling happening all around us.

Let this full moon remind you that the blossoming of knowing and preparation you’re doing now matters. Preparation might look like setting intentions, taking an honest assessment and reflection on who you are now, where you’ve been and where you’re going. Or it may manifest us something more tangible and clear. Allow your openness and curiosity to explore inwardly or outwardly. Try something new that speaks to your inner truth, no matter how subtle or small.

A Ritual to Work with This Moon:

Write a letter or a list or a sentence of what is within yourself or in your life that you are ready to release and let go of that does not align with your honesty, integrity, or truth anymore. If you need a prompt you can pull a few tarot or oracle cards to ask what it is you need to let go of before writing.

Choose and hold one small special stone, seed or crystal and allow your hands to transmit the newly growing version of who you are becoming or the new version of your inner truth into the object… this can be poetic, fragments, loose ideas, images. It doesn’t have to be a full clear logical picture. Take your time with this, close your eyes, allow your heart to speak.

Light a candle (red or what your intuition tells you).

Burn the paper from the flame of the candle as you say:

“I release the old and outdated with love and gratitude”.

Put the stone, seed or crystal on top of an ice cube that you put in a small container with a lid (use one or as many ice cubes as your intuition tells you) and say:

“Full moon show me the way for my honesty, truth and integrity to root within and into the world. Show me how I need to prepare and bring me your auspicious blessings”.

Jupiter rules this full moon and he wants to bring you those auspicious blessings. He wants to help humanity evolve and prosper, each individual, relationships, families, and the collective.

Once the candle is done burning, close the lid on the ice turning into water with a stone on it and keep it on your altar or in a sacred place for 24 hours. The next day drink the water and keep the stone or seed on your body or on your altar.

The journey may not be simple or easy. This full moon asks you to embrace the challenge and step out of the comfort zone. Trust in your becoming and take the first step onto the invisible bridge, into the new.

Past Life Healing

Posted on June 4, 2025 by bluelilystorm

One aspect of transpersonal healing is attachment healing seen through the wider lens of the soul. When you begin to understand your attachment wounds not just psychologically but spiritually, you see some aspects may not have begun in this life. The ache of abandonment, the grief of loss, the hurt of not belonging, these patterns also have roots in other lifetimes. They carry forward through the soul’s continuum, waiting for you to meet them again with more awareness, more choice, and more compassion.

Some wounds are older than this lifetime. You can try to explain them, analyze them, wrap stories around them, but they still hum quietly in your nervous system, unexplained and unresolved, waiting for your presence. These are not just psychological wounds. These are soul wounds.

In astrology, soul wounds are reflected through Chiron, Pluto, and Saturn. Chiron represents the soul’s attachment wound, where you feel most insecure, where love feels most precarious, and where the longing for healing may never fully resolve. Pluto carries the wounds of power, where you have been controlled or controlling, betrayed or destroyed, and where intensity or fear still lives in your system. Saturn brings the karmic weight of responsibility and soul contracts. Wherever Saturn appears, there is work to complete, limitations to transcend, and lessons to integrate.

These soul wounds often reveal themselves through relationship, and not just with anyone. Often it is the same souls returning in new forms. A soulmate is any soul you have shared one or more lifetimes with. They return not only for love but for healing. The one who rejected you or whom you rejected. The one who left too soon or whom you left behind. The love that died in tragedy or the life that ended before the love could fully bloom. Soulmates return as different possibilities from the life before.

Sometimes this possibility means coming together again with more presence, freedom, or in a new form that brings joy. Sometimes it means letting go and accepting that the relationship cannot continue, and finding peace through forgiveness or release. The healing is not in the outcome. It is in your capacity to meet the soul bond and yourself with clarity, compassion, and strength. Often the lessons arrive through pain and loss.

What you do not resolve, you carry, and that is karma. Karma is not punishment. It is the continuation of the inner journey. The same stories, emotions, and attachments will echo through your psyche and your life until you choose differently. But karma does not only repeat wounds. It repeats longing. It repeats unfinished love. It repeats joy that never had space to land. You are not here to suffer in your patterns. You are here to bring them into the light, to recognize them, and to let them go.

As you do this work you also prepare for what comes next. What you release in this life becomes freedom for your soul when you cross the veil. The more you let go here, the more choice you will have there and in returning. The body dies but the soul continues, weaving its tapestry of evolution. And yet the trauma of death for those still living is real. The grief held by the ego is not less sacred than the journey of the soul. They sit side by side. One does not cancel out the other. The sacred lives in both.

If you want to tap into this healing, try this:

Bring to mind someone who feels karmic to you, someone with whom there is unfinished business, deep longing, or wounding. Sit quietly, hand over heart, and say:

Whatever our connection has been across time, I release the suffering. I open to the awareness in my mind and the love in my heart. I forgive what could not be. I forgive you, and I forgive me. I allow the soul lesson to be revealed.

Breathe. Let your body respond. Notice the sensations that arise. See what unfolds in your imagination. Trust what you feel and what you see. You may wish to work with a psychic or medium for support but always remember that you know more than anyone else. You are capable of opening your intuition and receiving the guidance yourself too.

If you want to go deeper, you can be led into a past life regression or gently guide yourself if you are able to enter a meditative state. The exact details of a past life are less important than the feelings, images, and body memories that rise to the surface. That is where the medicine lives.

This aspect of transpersonal healing goes beyond the limits of the thinking mind and touches the deeper truth carried in your heart and soul. While it isn’t an exact science and the path may not always be clear, it offers a kind of healing that purely ego-based work cannot reach. It brings meaning to the pain, connection to the myth of the Self and peace to what once felt impossible to resolve. The soul remembers what the mind forgets and when you listen deeply, healing moves through you in ways the intellect could never orchestrate.

Baby, You’re a Firework

Posted on March 24, 2021 by bluelilystorm

Today on my morning jog the song “Firework” by Katy Perry played when I used “shuffle” mode to ask the Universe to give me a sign about love (try it, it’s uncanny). Katy sang and my heavy kvetching jog suddenly picked up into a buoyant gallop. I am always amazed at how emotions effect energy levels so quickly. Emotions are energy. My energy shifted from being an anxious anvil to being brightly inspired and my jog morphed from slog to spree. The lyrics and melody got to my true self and woke her up. Music is magic. Music, art, and any creative expression speaks directly to the true self, the heart, the essence.

“Firework” by Katy Perry

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Drifting through the wind
Wanting to start again?
Do you ever feel, feel so paper-thin
Like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?

Do you ever feel already buried deep
Six feet under screams but no one seems to hear a thing
Do you know that there’s still a chance for you
‘Cause there’s a spark in you?

You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine
Just own the night like the 4th of July

‘Cause, baby, you’re a firework
Come on, show ’em what you’re worth
Make ’em go, “Ah, ah, ah”
As you shoot across the sky

Baby, you’re a firework
Come on, let your colors burst
Make ’em go, “Ah, ah, ah”
You’re gonna leave ’em all in awe, awe, awe

You don’t have to feel like a wasted space
You’re original, cannot be replaced
If you only knew what the future holds
After a hurricane comes a rainbow

Maybe a reason why all the doors are closed
So you could open one that leads you to the perfect road
Like a lightning bolt your heart will glow
And when it’s time you’ll know

You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine
Just own the night like the 4th of July

‘Cause, baby, you’re a firework
Come on, show ’em what you’re worth
Make ’em go, “Ah, ah, ah”
As you shoot across the sky

Baby, you’re a firework
Come on, let your colors burst
Make ’em go, “Ah, ah, ah”
You’re gonna leave ’em all in awe, awe, awe

Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon
It’s always been inside of you, you, you
And now it’s time to let it through, -ough, -ough

I love these simple lyrics. Let’s scrap the teeny bop aspect of the song but also, we all have an inner teen still wondering inside… am I good enough? Am I pretty enough? Am I sexy enough? Am I smart enough? Do I belong? The feeling statements underneath these questions are; I feel rejected, I feel lonely, I feel insecure, I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel confused and I feel lost, among others.

When feelings don’t leave the body (through feeling them) they get trapped and turned into negative narratives that play on repeat in your head. Neurosis ensues. The complex grows. Your insecurities become a storyline that sticks.

You might be aware or unaware of these negative narratives. Conscious or subconscious, they are poisonous because they turn passing temporary feelings into lasting negative self fixations that can further turn into what I call dark narcissism which is when an aggrandized story of how horrible you are takes over the sense of self and self worth hides completely in the shadow.

The ego often intellectualizes difficult feelings, saying they are immature. The ego loves to moralize feelings, saying they are wrong to feel due to the worse suffering of others. Many egos squash difficult feelings with a false story that feelings are weak. This story is deeply embedded by the multigenerational toxic patriarchal narrative that this blog is not about but it effects everything psychological.

The psyche is constantly being programmed and reprogrammed by cultural narratives. What you value and how you narrate your sense of self is largely due to what culture has inadvertently programmed you to value and narrate.

The ego is the conscious aspect of the mind. Ego is the you that you are aware of, the you talking, thinking, expressing and doing. The personal shadow, unconscious, subconscious is where all personal parts of you live that you are unaware of, be it wounds, gifts, feelings, and often times, the true self. True self can be called the authentic self, the soul, the essence. Call it what you will, it is the you that you feel is the real you in contrast the you formed by your upbringing. Nature versus nurture as they say.

True self is timeless and like your fingerprint, unique. One of a kind. Your soul lives on after the body and incarnates again and again. True self is the merging of soul with body. (If you don’t believe in the soul, toss this part out and view true self as authentic self).

True self is usually shadowed because the ego’s main motivation is to be wanted, valued, and liked by the pack. Therefor, most of us become what we think will bring us validation by others. Unless your true self matched what your family and culture wanted you to be as a kid, true self hid in the shadow of the psyche and may still be hidden. It’s a spectrum of course, parts that are not valued hide while parts that are valued shine.

Due to ego needing to belong and be valued by others, we tend to get all of our self worth from other’s perception of us. This is very natural. No judgement. It’s ego’s function. But when you add in the abuse, neglect and trauma so many of us endure as a child the ego fragments and self worth shatters very early on before the ego is developed. I always see the neural pathway metaphor as wet cement drying. Around age seven, eight, nine, the neural pathway. which is the material form of ego, has fully dried. Self worth is cemented by this age.

To learn to experience an internal sense of self worth requires creating a new neural pathway and awakening the true self. This is the quest for the holy grail and the treasure at the bottom of the sea. Recovering your true self is deep shadow work. When you can bring soul out of the shadow, it will shine. Your true self is your firework. Making new neural pathway is like building a new highway, it takes a long time and daily work to build it. Soul work and neural pathway work are two distinct practices and paths that will let your colors burst, as Katy sings.

Katy Perry makes it seem easy because that’s what pop songs do and it’s also easier for people who match the toxic patriarchy’s image of beauty. Famous stars are the very pinnacle of the cultural narrative’s image of special which is why we get so obsessed with them. We project our desire to be special onto them. No offense against Katy Perry, who probably has major insecurity issues as most famous stars do because to match the toxic cultural narratives image of being the best does not provide an internal and secure sense of self worth.

Being thin, wealthy, pretty, successful or brilliant will not provide you with a secure internal sense of self worth. It will provide a momentary good feeling that leads to needing another momentary good feeling. You know how hard you have to work to keep getting that validation hit. It’s very conditional. Gain five pounds and self worth is gone. Lose your position and it’s gone. Don’t get enough social media likes and it plummets. Self worth can flush down the toilet real fast.

Every one us is measuring ourselves up to others to keep getting hits of validation. Those who don’t get cultural, familial or relational validation feel like crap. Depression is a result. Isolation is a result. Escape is a result. Mental illness can grow from external conditions as much as stem from a chemical imbalance and the two are usually always connected. Shame becomes chronic.

Shame. The scariest feeling of all.

The way to move through shame so it does not bully you is to stop identifying with it. You are not the shame coursing through you. In fact, you are not any of the feelings coursing through you but that’s another blog. You are not the shame. Shame is a natural human feeling built into the body that fires off when the pack does not accept you. The cultural narrative knows this and many people make bank off of all of us by getting us to buy the products and experiences needed to get the validation hits.

We all want to be special and we all want to avoid shame. The cultural narrative is like a mirror of what is in our collective shadow. Shame. And where did shame come from? We made this reality. It isn’t a devil making it. It’s us. Collectively. Learning. How to love. Ourselves and each other.

Could it be that shame originates in the fundamental fact that as a human being, you are wired to be conscious of the self? You can watch self consciousness develop in an infant as the brain becomes aware of self being separate. Pride in all nuances is the good feeling that results while embarrassment, humiliation, and shame are the bad feelings.

Self consciousness is intense for just about everybody and if you don’t experience the intense embarrassment of being human from time to time (or often) then you are working really hard to match the cultural narrative’s version of good and you are hardly ever being vulnerable. To match the cultural narrative’s version of good (attractive, in control, successful, smart, wealthy, white, male etc etc) you must already have a certain amount of privilege to begin with at birth. To stuff your vulnerability into the shadow you must keep getting those hits of validation because the hits substitute real intimacy and connection with others, self, and life. Real intimacy only happens when you allow yourself to be vulnerable.

No wonder so many famous stars are tormented. They are getting abundant hits of validation but many probably suffer from lack of real connection and intimacy. Self worth is probably completely addicted to external hits of validation to such a large degree that a constant chronic anxious fear flares within that takes up a ton of psychic space. This is my theory anyhow, Where is the self worth of Katy Perry, I wonder? Can she feel a secure internal sense of self worth separate from her looks, talent, and privilege? Has she awakened her true self and connected authentically with others? Is she creating a new neural pathway? Does she feel shame or run from it?

I often see life like a video game (though I don’t ever play them). Shame is like one of those ghosts in Pac-man (can you tell how old I am now with my reference?) that Pac-man needs to eat in order to not get killed. If you don’t identity with shame and you see it more like a ghost in Pac-man, you can “eat the shame” and keep moving. To eat the shame is to feel the shame course through your body without taking it personally and perpetuating a story that you are not good enough. You gotta starve out the low self worth neural pathway by not identifying with shame when it pops into your field of vision. See shame as storm coursing through your body (changing the metaphor here). The shame storm will pass through you and leave you unharmed if you do not identify with it. Over time, this starves and dissolves the old pathway.

Shame is not to be feared. Shame is to be tolerated. It’s a chemical storm that comes with being a pack oriented human animal. That’s all. Guilt operates the same way. It’s built into the operating system of the human body to fire off when ego feels it has let the pack down in some way. Or a member of the pack. These ancient firewalls were originally meant to stop the ego from doing harmful things to others. In its original form, shame and guilt are meant to keep the ego in check.

Yet through thousands of years of toxic patriarchy, guilt and shame have morphed into toxic versions that act as firewalls in your brain that stop you from being authentic and feeling an internal sense of secure self worth. If you can turn the volume down when guilt starts playing and if you can ride out the shame storm without identifying with either guilt or shame, you level up. You build the new neural pathway that is feeling a secure internal sense of self worth independent of what the pack, your partner, family or culture thinks of you. You can keep diving deeper into the shadow to retrieve your true self. You can become the firework realistically which is incrementally through effort with skill. Katy’s song brings the inspiration as music does.

I want to end this blog with sharing that I too have struggled which is why I am therapist. The best therapists are the ones who suffer and heal as much or more than you do, not some “expert” in a lab coat. I come from childhood sexual abuse, attachment wounds, being the pariah at school, disordered eating, body shame and struggling through mental illness as a teen and young woman, adult sexual assault and feeling incredibly low self worth. I too am one of Persephone’s children.

I have healed myself and know results are possible first hand. I recognize the privileges I have had that helped me tremendously. I also honor that it was my effort that healed me along with my strong connection the spirit world/collective unconscious, Universe, Goddess. This work is my labor of love. I am here for you because I was here for me.

Here I am today, a forty eight year old woman in menopause (cultural narrative negative witch), with a big belly (the opposite of cultural narrative desirability), and an ugly autoimmune disease (talk about shame storms) that I have in remission through diet which forced me to heal my food addiction and finally connect with my body in love (new neural pathway at last). I have yet to find a life mate, another cultural narrative no-no (spinster). Oh and I am very spiritual in a supernatural metaphysical way being psychic and talking to beings in other dimensions which is very poo-pooed by the cultural narrative (I really do not like being referred to as woo woo but whatever). I experience the privilege of being caucasian and financially secure and want to name that because it’s two less aspects I have to fight against in this toxic cultural narrative world.

I have healed myself yet I still suffer because suffering is part of being human. Healing myself did not bring me the soul longings in life. It only brought me the internal treasures: self love, self worth, moderate inner peace, unconditional love and true self out of the shadow.

I feel beautiful because I am me. Sure, I have my days where I hate parts of myself. I slip and fall. I struggle. Don’t care. I am far from any need for perfection. I can speak from experience that the effort of healing brings results. I can speak from experience that self love and self worth feels better than being thin, rich, successful, or desired by others. It feels better because it cannot be taken. It’s like feeling an internal glow that never goes away. I can be going through the worst life has to offer and still feel that glow. That glow is love.

Baby, your’e a firework too. Cheesy, I know. Yet….it’s true.

Reflections on Fear…

Posted on December 5, 2019 by bluelilystorm

Fear is the inspiration for this blog. Good old human creature fear and how it effects the psyche, the body, and the human experience. My intention for this blog is simply to reflect. I want to honor the process of contemplating, intuiting, and understanding in service of allowing the unconscious to unravel in the moment…

When fear is pushed deeply into the shadow of the psyche, going unfelt and unseen, it manifests as physical ailments. Digestive issues. Constipation if the human body retracts and tries to protect itself. Or diarrhea, the other direction, if the temperament of the creature tends to run more anxious than withholding…

Attachment wounds reveal themselves inwardly as much as outwardly. When we are not securely attached (most of us) we tend toward avoidance or anxiousness, the former being anxious too but withholds/hides/avoids and so it doesn’t seem to present emphatically.

It’s not just how we are raised that determines our attachment style and wounding, it’s the temperament of the body which has everything to do with the multigenerational family system. Avoidance style (the island) or anxiousness style (the wave) may be a pattern running down the DNA line. Digestive issues may run in the family through the female or male bloodline with each creature carrying fear that gets pushed into the shadow.

Feelings have to be felt to be released. Healing is feeling. Must fear be felt to be released?

How hard might it be to feel fear if you are wired to push it into the shadow and present with digestive issues and probably a neurotic mind. Usually when fear is hiding in the shadow the mind is defensive, controlling, and fanatical or extreme in certain ways to compensate for the unseen fear.

Fear is big. The country is big with fear. The family system is big with fear. The creature if big with fear because living a human existence is scary. We are not given any guarantee of safety, control, or happy endings. People experience undeserved tragedy all the time.

I think about animals that experience tragedy and how they are not conscious of themselves with a cognitive mind so they don’t have the ability to think, “why did this happen to me,” or “I am not good enough” or “this person is bad and I am a victim of evil,” or any such conclusion that only a self aware cognitive mind could come up with through the thinking process.

Fear is not the summation the mind makes. Fear is present in the body and then leaves. In animals, it presents and leaves if the animal gets to live a healthy life but trauma from abuse or neglect will collect just as much in their bodies, proving that the consequences of trauma live in the body first and foremost. The human mind only makes it worse.

The body collects what is not processed and this is a region of the shadow. I am thinking of an abused or neglected doggie living on the street that presents as mean and vicious (the wave) or through slinking and hiding away (the island) if anyone approaches to bring love. The doggie’s body is filled with fear from the trauma of being abused or neglected.

The only way to heal the doggie is exposure therapy to love.. First the doggie must be tricked into being caught (maybe a piece of food in a cage). Next the doggie must slowly be introduced to loving care, allowing her body to slowly release the fear and accept love. This proves that love is the healer of fear.

Humans are the same. Fear collects in the body from trauma, abuse, or maybe there is no abuse/trauma but there is the multigenerational absence of affection, attunement and acknowledgment of being seen, heard, and loved without conditions (the feminine side of the psyche). Only love can release the fear the body holds.

Not some parlor trick for the mind. Ok, I have a bit of irreverence for certain modalities of therapy I think trick the mind into “feeling better” by changing the chemicals but I don’t think this is healing. I think it is temporal band-aid. I feel true healing is always rooted in the experience of being loved, listened to, and acknowledged.

The feminine aspect of life knows this. Knows that love heals all. And what is love? Love is how we behave. It is not a concept. It is not an ideal. It is how we care for the self, others, and life. How we show up. How we tend to fear. Fear, like with the doggie, will leave the body with love. It just will.

Self love is a start and usually the base of love. Self love releases fear beginning with not listening to self-sabotaging neural pathways, the well worn path, the shitty narrative in the mind that says, “I am not good enough, who do I think I am” etc….or the other direction of, “they are ruining my existence, they are to blame for how I feel,” etc.

Ignoring the sabotaging narrative is key and the base of self love but then what? It is it truly different for everyone. For me, self love is practicing mindfulness so I don’t listen to the narrative of doom, keeping up with my exercise and creativity practices that make me feel balanced, inspired, and confident, and being nurturing and easy on myself.

I truly believe in being easy on the self. Sure, there is a time to face fear with a wand of courage and determination. But back to the doggie, if you push him he will fall apart. If you give him time, patience, understanding and slowly expose him to love and new life, he will heal.

I am somebody who needs to go very easy on myself in order to heal, maybe more so than the average person (is there an average person?) and so I attest to this path as being pertinent in healing because I have been healing with great results over time. I speak from my own lived experience and find that the gentle path brings proven results.

Fear needs to be handled with skill and fear is attachment. We fear because are attached to security, health, love, and success….as we should be. Nothing wrong with being human! Yet in this messed up world with broken bloodlines riddled with too much suffering, we need major skill to bring healing to fear.

Like the doggie, learning to let more love in is an exposure process. Love will dissolve fear but it’s so scary to let love in. Letting love in may feel scarier than the fear. What a paradox.

Unfortunately the doggie cannot respond to humor but I think for humans, humor is a major healing tool for exposing the self to the fear of letting love in.

My god can we laugh at life for a second? I say this with emphasis because my own typical tendency to take life too seriously. You could say it is a privilege to have a light heart…and…it is also temperament. There are those who seem to have a light heart even when enduring the worst of circumstances.

But don’t beat yourself up if you have a heavy heart. I have a fairly heavy heart and I love my heavy heart because it allows me to sit with people in their deepest pain and give love, it allows me to analyze the psyche and discover new territory, it allows me to sit for hours and write about big ideas. I would not want to be romping around like a Pixie but more power to the Pixie.

Honor your temperament is what I am getting at here. You can heal from fear with a heavy or light heart but even heavy hearts can heal from humor. Laughing is vital. Laughing at the self releases the grip of those pesky narratives that shadow the fears.

Life is unsafe. We can create as much safety as possible by living in sheltered homes and communities with organized cultural institutions that allow us to experience more of the light and less of the pain. We can learn to love more so that we don’t have to feel unsafe with each other too.

At the same time, life is unsafe, suffering exists and it always will. People will cause violence and tyranny over others. Nature can wipe out a community in one cataclysm. Illness strikes even the most healthy. The dark side of life is not evil and cannot be eradicated. We can reduce suffering and achieve balance but we cannot be rid of darkness. Dark and light are equal forces of nature.

Fear will rise again and again, Fear is as natural as love.

All this being said, learning how to deal with fear is more pragmatic than trying to get rid of fear forever in the mind by demanding reassurance of continual safety (the wave) or through avoiding fear by living in one safe routined rut forever (the island).

I am all about living a fulfilling life where we get to keep growing and evolving each day and this is rooted in healing.

There is no healing arrival point where all fear is banished. Yet results are real. Healing the psyche brings more peace, love, fulfillment, ease, and all the other desired adjectives that balance out fear that will rise again and again.

I radically accept fear. I radically accept life not being safe. I radically accept the dark and light aspects of being human. I radically accept the patient process, the gentle path, love, and humor as medicine. This is my deepest reflection…

The more there is acceptance around fear the more body can stop expressing fear through digestive problems or other ailments, the more heart can let in love, the more mind can let go of self sabotaging narratives and the more soul or true self can rise out of the shadow and express in this world.

Vulnerability and Attachment Wounds in Romantic Relationship

Posted on August 27, 2019 by bluelilystorm

This blog is inspired by the topic of vulnerability. I wanted to write about it after writing about the sacred emptiness because vulnerability is what births inside the chrysalis of sacred emptiness.

A new form of vulnerability births in the emptiness…based upon attachment wound healing…that opens us up to a more joyful and fulfilling experience of being vulnerable.

Attachment wounding is the root of not being able to be vulnerable in relationship with others and self. Attachment healing turns the tables and allows vulnerability to become a secure and happier experience.

My reflections on attachment will be very brief and stream of consciousness…

If you want to know more in detail there are a ton of books, Youtube videos and podcasts on attachment theory. I highly recommend listening to the “Psychology Today” podcast. The subscription is only $5 dollars a month for many deep dives into pertinent psychological topics. Kirk Honda is my favorite describer of attachment theory (and any topic in psychology) as he makes content accessible to everyone with a harmonious blend of knowledge and heart.

This is my reflection on vulnerability and attachment today….

Our brains are the place we develop our personality (ego) very early on in life (infant to about age seven) based upon how we are parented by our prime caretakers. The personality formation is strongest the younger we are and gets cemented after age seven.

Our attachment style is the aspect of the personality that relates with others and with self. It is the way in which we desire relationship, behave in relationship, and express vulnerability.

The romantic parter most closely mirrors the prime caretaker and hence, we face our attachment style/wounds the strongest in romantic partnering yet attachment styles show up in every single relationship including the one you have with yourself.

You do not need to have experienced trauma or abuse to have an attachment wound. If you have endured trauma and abuse your wounds are specific to that yet a child can develop a very deep attachment wound in a home with zero abuse and no big traumas.

The avoidant attachment style/wound (often broken down into anxious avoidant and dismissive avoidant) is created by the prime caretaker(s) not tending to the child’s emotions. There is no emotional attunement. The parent(s) do not talk about feelings or they may see emotions as weak, dismiss them, or avoid them. Boys may be more apt to be taught to repress their emotions due to cultural conditioning as well.

As with everything psychological, avoidance shows up as a spectrum. How much did your caretaker(s) avoid your feelings and avoid feelings in the home between family members? There tends to be a basic structure in the avoidant home with bedtime, meals, routines with school, etc and there may also be morals taught and other principals that foster the mind but the emotional realm of the child is not seen, acknowledged or nurtured.

Avoidant style people do not feel safe in close relationships because they feel cut-off from their own feelings. They experience anxiety around intimacy and tend to use dismissive remarks or behaviors to maintain a certain level of detachment, independence and aloofness in relationship. They either believe they do not need intimacy or they push intimacy away in a variety of ways that may be unconscious (flippant remarks, sexual impotency or lack of desire, minimizing issues and the feelings of the partner) or conscious (having a strong belief about the independence they feel gives them strength, for instance or saying they are not relationship oriented).

The avoidant style is often called the island.

Anxious attachment style people (often called preoccupied or ambivalent) is created when the prime caretaker(s) sometimes tune in to the child’s emotions and sometimes ignore them. The key is inconsistency in attunement and often anxiety connected to emotional attunement when it is present. There is some semblance of structure in this attachment style as if there were no structure in the home it would fall under the disorganized attachment style but the structure does tend to be as inconsistent as the emotional attunement. Maybe meals and bedtimes are not always around the same time or maybe the structure is generally chaotic though the child is fed, taken to school, and put to bed at some point. Perhaps the child switches homes a lot or is handed off in a chaotic fashion. The anxious attachment style is often referred to as the wave.

To be clear, emotional attunement is when the care taker responds to the child’s feelings, names the feelings for the child so they may learn to name feelings themselves, nurtures the child when upset and models how to tend to feelings in a loving way no matter what feeling is arising. Emotional attunement when secure in the caretaker, does not cause intense anxiety. The caretaker is not anxious when the child is hurting nor are they living in anxious fear of the child getting hurt in the unforeseeable future.

Anxious attachment creates a person who is not sure if they are loved. Do you love me now? How about now? If you find out (insert trait here) about me will you still love me? The anxious person needs constant validation and reassurance that they are loved. They don’t have any consistent sense of being tended to that is imbedded in their sense of self. They fear love leaving, being abandoned, and being betrayed. They may put themselves at constant fault for creating abandonment or they may build a false case where their partner will leave them due to (insert criticism here).

The wave is very overt with their insecurity and feelings. The island is very covert as beneath every island is a wave but the island is too anxious to deluge. Avoidant people want intimacy deep down underneath their fear just as much as the overt wave. It’s as if islands have an extra defense mechanism around their anxiety that the waves do not posses and this is molded by how we are parented.

The wave is usually the pursuer of the island. Islands and waves tend to attract each other because the island needs the overt display and pursuit of the wave for them to feel loved and the wave is used to feeling insecure about not being loved and very familiar and comfortable with chasing the unavailable island. It’s a recipe for healing or disaster depending on how willing and skilled the partners are in dealing with these wounds. Without skill or willingness the island first pushes the wave away and then the wave overwhelms the island when they express needing more and this pushes the island away more until both express extreme versions of avoiding and deluging.

Disorganized attachment is molded in the brain when the there is abuse in the home, major trauma, or the care taker(s) do not provide adequate structure or emotional attunement to the point where it is neglect. Disorganized people may vacillate between being an island and a wave, never feeling a consistent sense of self. The disorganized wound is chaotic and never follows a certain pattern other than the pattern of not being patterned.

Not having a strong sense of self is also the case for the island and the wave. Sense of self is developed in the brain by the child being emotionally attuned to and given proper structure by the caretaker(s). This is a literal process that happens in the brain (mirror neurons) that forms sense of self in relationship with others, self, and the world. With all attachment styles other than secure attachment, the sense of self is shattered in varying qualities and degrees of intensity based upon upbringing mixed with temperament (nature and nurture).

The temperament (soul, true self, the mysterious uniqueness we each posses) of the child plays a big if not a bigger role in the shaping of the sense of self.

A shattered sense of self is the attachment wound.

Secure attachment happens when there is no trauma or abuse and the caretaker(s) tune into the child’s feelings in a nurturing and loving way while also providing the child with a consistent structure. This assures the child develops a healthy sense of self if there is no trauma or abuse outside the home and if the child is not born with a struggling temperament due to multigenerational wounds or a past life wound (if you believe in this).

It is important to note that a child may also absorb anxiety from any family member conflict even if it has nothing to do with them. Families usually have the one “healer” or empath of the family who tends to absorb the anxiety from other family members and become mentally or physically sick as a result. These types are more apt to struggle and often cannot discern their feelings from the feelings of others due to their sensitivity levels yet they are also meant to be as sensitive as they are because they are the healers of this world.

Attachment wounds also present inwardly with self. For instance, you can have a disorganized attachment with yourself where sometimes you tune into your feelings and validate yourself, sometimes you avoid your feelings using some form of addiction or avoidance to ignore them, and sometimes you tend to your feeling but feel filled with anxiety and self doubt about whether you are good enough.

You can also express different styles consciously and unconsciously. For instance, you can be a wave consciously and an island unconsciously by consciously wanting and choosing intimate partnership yet always unconsciously attracting unavailable islands…or…when you attract an available partner you really like, you start pushing them away by finding fault with them at every turn. In this way the island and wave within the self and in partnership tries to find harmony.

The healing of attachment wounds is rooted in learning how to be vulnerable in the relational field and with self. This starts to show up when you no longer need to build a case against self or the partner, drink booze or take recreational drugs to feel comfortable, lay on the criticism, demand proof that you are loved, or push away the other with conscious or unconscious tactics of any kind.

Being vulnerable and intimate looks like letting each other in your feelings, communicating your feelings, being transparent about your feelings, and tending to one another’s feelings….whether during an argument, when times are rough, or during times of passion, joy, and tenderness. It means showing the real you and allowing yourself to trust your partner.

First you may need to do this for yourself but this is not always the requirement. Some people heal more through being vulnerable with a partner (or friend) first. We can build a sense of self love by going within and being alone and also through being in a relationship. It takes the right relationship if it is the latter. You cannot build a sense of self love with a partner who is unable to create intimacy and be vulnerable with you much of the time. Maybe not all the time, as we are flawed beings learning how to love….but a good chunk of the time at the very least.

Also, if you are an island, being vulnerable and close with another may not feel good for a long time. Perhaps years. You have to be willing to enter the not feeling good zone and go through the anxiety and fear. You have to be willing to enter intimacy with more courage to learn how to be vulnerable in the first place. This may feel awkward and challenge your avoidant personality that has protected you for so long. You have to learn how to trust another to care about you and you have to learn how to want to be cared about.

If you are a wave you may enjoy intimacy and even being vulnerable but you come on like a deluge every time you get triggered. This is important to understand for the island and the wave…

The moment you are triggered your animal brain takes the driver’s seat and your higher mind takes a hike. This means that you go into flight/fight/freeze mode and you cannot come out of it through logic, talking, or anything cognitive. When the wave is triggered they deluge the partner who is usually an island. When the island is triggered by the deluge they minimize the communication from the anxious wave which then triggers the wave more who thinks the island is a jerk which triggers the island more who thinks the wave is crazy and the storm intensifies into destruction.

When you get triggered in the relational field all you can do is breathe, touch, and/or take space from the other in order for the higher mind to get back in the driver’s seat. If you both are triggered, stop arguing and breathe, touch one another or allow one person to take some space. Nothing will change how to recover from a trigger because it is brain chemistry. Skill is vital when learning how to become vulnerable in a way that creates feeling more safety and joy.

Most of us are used to vulnerability feeling scary, disappointing, taxing, overwhelming and leading to our detriment. Islands build a mote around them acting like they don’t need a partner or intimacy, in order to survive. Waves desperately try to make the partner their one safe place in all of life’s pain and chaos. Both feel slayed by vulnerability. Both need to learn how to build trust through building a sense of self.

This is the key of all keys. Building a sense of self.

When you have a strong and solid sense of self you can allow yourself to trust getting hurt in the relational field because you can return to yourself as the safe place.

This is the healing of codependency, toxic unions, and everything relational. When you no longer fear being hurt, rejected, disappointed, broken up with, being single, or left alone because you have a safe, reliable, and loving sense of self to return to if the worst happens. Life never gives us a guarantee in the external world so we need the self to be the security and foundation. Islands, don’t contort this to mean you don’t need intimacy in one form or another. The sense of self is a home base and not an escape hatch to avoid the relational field.

It can be safe and feel fulfilling to be vulnerable in the relational field if you build your sense of self and love yourself with more emotional attunement and loving structure. You won’t give your power away to the partner or to addiction or avoidance. You can handle emotional pain and discomfort and in turn, experience a form of joy in relationship that arises only by being tuned in and true to self. Reparenting the self blossoms us into our true self.

True self creates vulnerable and intimate relationships that heal and fulfill our essential needs and desires in waves…and when the waves wane we can return to self for sustenance on a healthy island that can still welcome the other….

Reflections on the Sacred Emptiness

Posted on August 26, 2019 by bluelilystorm

This blog is inspired by the sacred emptiness that most often is the mental and emotional space we enter when letting go of patterns, attachments, identifications, and addictions.

Ego wants the immediate gold star or the metaphorical cookie whenever we do something we feel awards us. A feel good moment. Satiation. A happy arrival into a never ending sunset. These are expectations of ego when we do the healing work of letting go of what is not serving our health, thinking if we have the courage to let go, right on the other side is an arrival into fulfillment.

But the fulfillment of letting go takes time because you are reversing the flow from getting love outside of self to feeling love within self. Building a secure attachment with self is a learning process…

The reward for letting go of patterns, attachments, identifications and addiction takes time to feel in an embodied way.

Suffering initiates ego into the dark night of the soul or the process of letting go of what is not healthy for self. We are used to suffering and have become familiar with low self esteem, shaky self worth, self doubt, unhealthy relationships, addictions, and all of the patterns of thinking and behaving that support a comfort zone of pain.

Suffering only initiates you into the dark night of the soul when you are ready to face the new an unfamiliar suffering of letting go. Suffering that comes from letting go is temporary and necessary, unlike the chronic and familiar suffering of a painful comfort zone.

The familiar comfort zone of pain is a neural pathway in the brain paved over the years by patterns of thinking and behaving that form from attaching to a person or thing outside of self because inside a wounded self feels lost, powerless, fearful, and insecure.

For instance, you may have a pattern of thinking that love is stronger and more valuable than logic which rationalizes the behavior of staying in a relationship that is logically very unhealthy for you. You are used to unhealthy attachment because you grew up with it in your family system. The neural pathway has been paved in your brain to accept the current unhealthy union because your inner child ego developed self worth wounds early on and knows nothing else. Your adult ego identifies with a compromised sense of self worth either consciously or unconsciously.

You do not realize staying in the unhealthy union is a continual and often addictive attempt to get mom and dad’s love and attention on an unconscious level. The inner child in the shadow is operating through the adult ego by projecting onto the person the role of being your care taker or savior in some way. You do not realize you either play a victim role or blame self and glorify the other, when neither are true. The truth is that you need to let go of the unhealthy person, heal your wounds, and create a secure attachment with self. You need to be your own savior and heal yourself.

Addiction forms when the person becomes your everything and you can no longer live without them. This is when the brain chemistry relies on the external person or object to literally keep self afloat. Be it a person, food, drug, alcohol, shopping, working, you name the thing; when wounds are not healed and the sense of self is insecure, the external world holds all the power and we get hooked on it in one way or another.

Readiness to heal and let go is key.

When you are not ready, you are not ready. Our patterns, attachments, identity, and addictions serve the ego by helping us stay afloat, feel valued, safe, secure, and loved…until we are ready to let go.

Pushing before readiness might lead to a mental breakdown, too much fear at once, crisis that cannot be overcome. Suffering is our initiation into the dark night of letting go but suffering in just the right amount is key. Too much suffering and you won’t heal.

The timing is the timing. Patience and love for every stage is needed.

When you are ready you let go it may feel empowering or you may have to force it mentally and enter the grief despite your fighting heart and instinct telling you to hold on. Usually it is the latter.

Letting go and entering into the dark night means the ego is not going to receive the gold star or the metaphorical cookie. Letting go means entering the emptiness.

You may first may go into withdrawals, kicking and screaming your way through. During this stage of the dark night you might try to talk yourself out of letting go and you might succeed and hop back into the safe zone of the familiar pain.

If you make it past the withdrawal, kicking, and screaming stage you enter the stage of the sacred emptiness.

In the sacred emptiness there is nothing to replace the security of that well-worn neural pathway. Even though it’s a pathway of pain and self worth wounds, you knew what to expect and you were used to the crumbs and the anxiety. You did not have to try and risk failing or risk the vulnerability of succeeding which can feel very exposing.

There is nothing to soothe the ego in the sacred emptiness other than….

the sacred emptiness itself….

In the sacred emptiness you may find comfort in the nothingness if you can allow yourself to not resist the nothingness by trying to get that dopamine hit from the outside world, person, pattern or thing that feels like love (but isn’t). You sense of security that comes from familiarity will be gone so you must also not resist feeling scared.

If you can allow yourself to feel scared and empty without resistance to those feelings you can discover a sense of comfort and inner quiet as you traverse through this stage which may take days, weeks, months and maybe even a year.

Stop trying to make anything happen in the external world to try to get the cookie or sense of security and instead find a reliable and self soothing routine to support the emptiness stage.

Maybe you need more solitude, more sleep, going to bed and waking up early, exercising more, eating healthier, taking life more slowly, getting out into nature, coloring or knitting or some form of soothing creative outlet…watching Netflix may help or reading books and allowing yourself healthy escape in the stories of others…or maybe sweating, running, dancing and having a more fiery and yang type of practice is your balance.

Find that balance within self by rooting into a routine that becomes the foundational structure to build a new healthy sense of self, heal the wounds, awaken the soul, and fully shut down the old neural pathway.

If you can allow yourself to surrender into the emptiness and into a routine, slow yourself down, and move through the scary unknown….you will enter the next stage of the dark night.

Here, you may still be in the emptiness but also be tested and need to say no to the old pattern showing up again. If this is the case, do not take it personally. It takes a certain amount of experiences for a new neural pathway to become paved and it only becomes paved through experience. Each time you say no to the unhealthy pattern, you pave the new healthy pathway. It’s science You are not being punished.

Surrender is the key to moving through the emptiness stage whether you are being tested or laying low like a seed in the dark soil. Initiation is surrender.

The suffering of the emptiness stage may show up as needing to say no to the familiar pattern rising up again. If this is the case, say no as quickly as you can and if you mess up, it’s ok. Healing happens in a spiral not a line. Fall and get up again knowing every human being grows through making mistakes.

Suffering in the emptiness stage may also show up as feeling perpetually insecure, bored, doubtful, stagnant, confused, disoriented, and lonely. Know that these feelings are natural and do not take them personally. Allow these feelings to express as you would allow a child to express their feelings without judgement or making a big deal out of them. This will allow the feelings to leave the body.

Surrendering to a higher power is what the Anonymous (AA, NA, OA, etc) philosophy teaches and it is a real quality that provided real results. The transpersonal aspect of life is larger than self and requires no spiritual belief or experience. Call the transpersonal anything that feels right for you, the Collective Unconscious, Nature, Life, Consciousness, God, Goddess, Spirit, Source, Prime Creator, Oneness, The Infinite, Jesus, Isis, Odin, Lakshmi, Universe, Ancestors, Angels, Allies, Archetypes…it does not matter…when you call out to the transpersonal you invoke help from the great mystery and from love.

You do not have to do this work alone and truly, you are never alone. The sacred emptiness is here to serve your liberation and initiate the ego into becoming the true self securely attached and connected to your true source of power within.

Romantic Love Musings Inspired by Cheers

Posted on August 19, 2019 by bluelilystorm

Contemplations on romantic love…with plenty of ellipses…

I have been watching the tv show “Cheers” for a stint. Haven’t seen this show since I was a teenager when it aired in real time. I want to give kudos to the writing and I see also how watching this show is like watching theater, especially in the scenes between Sam and Diane.

Sam and Diane play classic star-crossed lovers who are complete opposites. Sam is earthy, grounded, simple minded, pleasure seeking, and a conceited player with women. Diane lives in her head and is intellectual, romantic, deep, complicated, and moral.

Cupid shoots his arrow and they cannot help it. Sam and Diane are in love with one another. This is how falling in love goes, it is a mysterious experience that happens to us out of the realm of control.

Sam and Diane’s relationship, whether romantic or trying to just be friends, always winds up returning to romantic love but it’s always fraught with conflict…not so much due to being opposites but due to how they treat one another.

Who we fall in love with is out of our hands. You love who you love and you love them for as long as you love them.

Knowing real love from some form of attachment wound projection happens once you have formed a bond and made it past the initial stage of any form of relating. Once you get to know somebody the projections fall and you see one another for who you actually are…and this is when love really begins.

You see this happen with Sam and Diane quickly as television goes. They realize each other’s true nature and they drive each other nuts on a constant basis with their opposite ways of expressing love from these opposite natures. Yet they always come together sexually.

It may not always be the sexual bond that is the glue as with Sam and Diane. It might be the emotional, the spiritual, even the mental where romance expresses. Romantic love is a feeling radiating deep down beneath the constant shifting and changing of the emotions moving like weather through the body.

Love is a constant even if you are able to avoid or detach from it. You cannot escape love. Love can seize in one instant or can grow over time. Love chooses how it moves, not us.

When relationship conflict rises up between two people in love it is not due to a lack of love but usually due to the psyche’s state. Sam and Diane did not handle conflict well due to not treating each other well in their opposite natures but you also see why in their similarities…

Both Sam and Diane are competitive, stubborn, and hot headed and so they both tend toward arguing, holding their point and not seeing the other’s, and both want to be right.

This is a major cause of continual conflict for many. If you cannot come out of your perception to see the other’s as valid, you won’t turn conflict into intimacy or harmony.

If you cannot find some kindness and compassion for the other person’s way, you are doomed to fail. Diane always expects Sam to be romantic and moral and deep like herself. Diane lacks having kindness and compassion for Sam’s blind spots and for his nature too at times.

Sam always hopes for Diane to accept him as he is but he also desires to be a better person and in a way, needs her to push him to be a better version of himself. This is another aspect of relationship conflict. Sam relies on Diane to help him grow and as a result, pushes her away by being nonchalant when he feels too scared to level up.

It’s natural for lovers to need each other to grow, feel secure, feel validated…this interdependency only goes wrong if the other holds too much of what we need to hold for ourselves. Maybe Sam needed Diane to hold too much of his own integrity…

Diane may have integrity but she cannot see Sam with enough kindness and respect when he acts like a buffoon. She does not trust Sam. Sam feels belittled by her and maybe not good enough for Diane. He makes Diane hold all of his integrity and cannot see that perhaps he is not good enough for himself.

Diane makes Sam hold all of her security so she can avoid her own deep rooted insecurities. Her lack of trust is rooted in her lack of trust in herself.

This is what we do in romance. We make the other person the bad guy instead of looking within and facing our own struggles and insecurities. Becoming vulnerable to our inner stuff allows us to move through relationship conflict without destroying the entire container. It’s hard….

Sam and Diane both hold their own perspectives like flags raised high and mighty, refusing to be supple with each other’s needs or way of being because Sam needs self integrity and Diane needs self trust. It becomes quite complex when we refuse to look within to see how we mess up relationships…

If you cannot look within and do your self work then you cannot let go of the mighty expectations you have for your partner…and then you cannot sustain the partnership.

But…what’s the difference between an essential standard to uphold and an expectation to release?

An essential standard is a core value.

Does Diane need Sam to be deep and romantic in her core values or is it an expectation for Sam to be like herself so she feels validated because she cannot validate herself?

Does Sam need Diane to take love day by day without romantic gestures and grand commitments or is this an expectation he places on her because he is fearful of failing due to being out of integrity?

This is the big exploration if you want love to sustain in a partnership and there are many compromises to be made. Where can you meet in the middle? Where do you need to hold a standard? And what’s an expectation you can let go of?

The compromise is what you do when it’s an expectation you have some wiggle room to play with.

Core values are standards to be protected and upheld.

Sam and Diane both value marriage and monogamy (TV, especially back then tends to only show dominant cultural values…) There is no conflict in their standards about the kind of relationship they want. Sam only wants Diane to be more in the moment so he can have time to grow into his integrity and Diane only wants Sam to be more romantic and sweeping in his expression so she can feel trust and validation.

In real life maybe you want one version of a relationship and your partner wants another. This cannot be compromised. A poly with a mono cannot flow. Someone who wants kids wont flow with somebody who does not want kids. Core values and lifestyle are usually the non-negotiable aspects they may bring tragedy to star crossed lovers.

Love will express in harmony, tragedy and everything in between.

Expectations are usually more shallow and rooted in wanting your lover to be just like you so that you feel safe, secure and never have to face conflict, failure or not getting what you want. Wanting the other to enjoy doing the same things, like the same music, look a certain way, act a certain way, and express in a certain way…all fall into the category of expectations…

You want to enjoy some things together but you don’t need to enjoy everything. One person can love going to museums and another can hate it. One person can be extroverted and one introverted….so long as you enjoy time together in certain ways.

Sam and Diane have fun together even though he hates intellectual cultural activities and Diane hates sports. When Diane dates Fraiser she gets to be with the male version of herself and yet even having all her expectations met with Fraiser, Sam is the man she loves.

Doesn’t matter how similar or different lovers present. We love who we love.

Love wants to be a mystery and we never know what our karma will be around love…if we are meant to be with somebody very opposite or very similar…or be with somebody through very difficult circumstances….lose lover early on or have it last a lifetime and experience the grief of death…

Love is a mystery without a clue….this was the first line of the first poem I wrote when I was in the sixth grade and it sticks like a tattoo in my heart because it speaks deep truth to me. I don’t know my karma with romantic love before I live it. I take love as it comes…

Sam and Diane never fully commit to one another in the show. It seems as if they will infinitely break apart and come back together. I am sure neither wishes for their love karma to be as such…

My inner child hope is that they eventually learn how to stay together. If Diane can lighten up on her expectations and if Sam can grow as a person and if they can both learn to let go of their pride and needing to be right when conflict arises….maybe?

I hope for love to work out between star crossed lovers because it is my temperament to be hopeful and idealistic in my heart (to a certain degree). We all have our ways. I am not right or wrong. Perhaps this resonates with you and perhaps not.

I am also a very pragmatic person and I honor self liberty at all times. I think conscious divorce, separation and breaking up is important and valuable. Very hard to do though because of our short comings…

If you fall out of love it is best to not stay out of morality and model for your children to sacrifice your core values (if being in love is a core value to begin with) to protect them from painful experiences. Painful experiences are not bad or wrong even if they are painful. Pain is meaningful lesson and growth tool. This is my opinion and there are many opinions to be valued…

If you are both still in love but cannot find harmony no matter how many times or how hard you try, maybe try to be with somebody else? Falling out of love makes it much easier to separate, as does not having a family to consider.

Sam and Diane have no kids and are archetypal representations of lovers in love coming from opposite sides of below and above…

I find is easy to see both sides and validate both Sam and Diane. I always see both sides with couples in real life too. I see how harmony can be found from a bird’s eye view. Yet to accomplish harmony we must learn how to take care of the brain.

Lovers trigger the most in one another due to mirroring when we were teeny ones with our care givers. It is what it is, we all work the same. Once triggered the animal brain takes the driver’s seat and fight/flight/freeze, projections, and intrusive thoughts dominate like massive storm in the psyche.

The logical higher thinking brain can no longer operate when these storms occur and this is when couples destroy the relationship, themselves, or each other with the actions taken and words spoken during the many storms that rise up in the relational field.

It’s only natural to grow through these storms but without skill you either repress it all and unhappily stay or sabotage and kill what could have grown (but that’s for another blog….)

Thank you Sam and Diane for inspiring this blog. May we all keep learning, growing, and loving the hell out of one another.

True Self Love (Part Two on the True Love Relationship)

Posted on August 1, 2019 by bluelilystorm

I am writing part two after writing with a friend who was mentioning the importance of self love as the root of a true love relationship. Yes!

I did not get into the healing process in yesterday’s blog on the true love relationship. The healing of attachment wounds from childhood is what develops self love in the present. We learn self love through our relationships.

Having a secure attachment with self is the root of all roots in a true love relationship and in any relationship. A secure attachment with self is self love.

A secure attachment with self means that you treat yourself with unconditional love, that you take decent care of yourself (and you are kind to yourself when you do not) and that you value yourself unconditionally (this is written about a few blogs back).

A secure attachment with self means you are a loving and caring mommy and daddy to yourself.

Being a loving and caring mommy and daddy to self means being unconditionally loving, setting healthy boundaries, naming and expressing your emotional needs, valuing your unique true self essence, and doing the practices and routines that keep you balanced, healthy, and growing.

Self love is a verb just like true love is a verb. It is the action of getting proper nutrition and sleep, of being able to moderate the indulgences, of setting healthy boundaries with others, of pursuing what you value and honoring yourself each time you mess up, and of healing the wounds living in the psyche.

Self love is not always being happy with yourself. It is not an ethereal feeling of self bliss. It is not always liking who you see in the mirror or being proud of your actions. Self love is being kind and compassionate with yourself when you are not happy with who you are being, how you are looking, what you are doing or what you have done.

Self love is the root of a true love union because a true love union will bring up every issue, wound, block, insecurity and karma that needs healing inside of you. It’s as if true love in an elixir that uproots all that has been repressed into the shadow by ego’s rational. This uprooting can be quite unsettling to say the least.

When this very uncomfortable uprooting of the pain that has been hidden inside of you happens the first reaction is to blame the partner or self or project onto the partner somebody who hurt you in the past, usually a parent but often an ex or sibling.

Developing self love during this uprooting means being able to communicate what comes up, to pull back your projections, to admit your shame or vulnerability and to give each other a break when it gets hard and messy.

For most of us being triggered is so scary that the cognitive communicating mind gets hijacked by the animal brain’s anxiety and we go into a flight/fight/or freeze response. This means we will argue, freeze up and not be able to speak, or leave and withdraw. When this occurs talking is useless, as the cognitive brain can only take the driver’s seat back when the animal brain is soothed through co-regulation or breath or touch or medication or space (to be continued in another blog).

Learning how to take yourself out of the flight/flee/freeze response is vital and deeply impactful in the true love relationship because it allows the lovers to communicate with each other instead of getting stuck in the shame and blame the anxiety creates when one or both people fight, flee or freeze.

How we react in relationships is heavily scientific and not anything to be ashamed of because as animals we all react in the same way. It’s just how we are wired.

The science behind healing becomes very simple when you understand your internal experience. If you own, acknowledge, and express the feelings coming up from the shadow, the feelings will leave the body. As feelings leave the body, you feel liberated and lighter, that feeling of what was hurting so much no longer hurting. This allows you to create new stories around intimacy.

You can learn over time how to honor yourself and not see painful experiences in relationship as defeat, blaming self or the other. Whether blame is directed at self or the partner, it is always a way for the ego to avoid feeling the shame and vulnerability lurking right underneath the blame story.

If you can allow shame and vulnerability to be felt and expressed with your partner, you can free yourself of the blame and defeat stories you create around intimacy.

This healing process is a challenge and the more you develop self love the easier it gets. As self love increases shame loses its power and becomes a “no big deal” experience that you trust is temporary and rising up from the shadow to be met with love and released.

Over and over this is the process. Acknowledge and express the feeling. Remove blame. See the story you have been telling yourself about self, partner, and intimacy without identifying with the story. You are not the story. Beneath the story is shame to be met with love and released through continual acknowledgment and expression in the moment.

The wave and the island union is a mutual trigger where the island triggers the wave into feeling insecure and unloved through withdrawal until the wave overwhelms the island with anxiety around their needs causing the island to feels so insecure they withdraw even more creating more anxiety in the wave who gets more overwhelming in the pursuit of their needs not being met by the island backing away feeling terrified and inadequate…on and on.

The anxiety becomes shared as it grows between two lovers. Anxiety gets passed back and forth like a ball. This is not a sign of wrong love. This is the most natural process in the world when it is understood that we all have attachment wounds that have wired our brains to freak out. Shame around this is the result of this scientific process not being a known and accepted process taught to everyone.

To break the cycle, both can honor their own insecurity and shame when it rises. Both can learn how to get the cognitive brain back online and to move out of anxiety. Both can reassure each other that love is present. Both can take their attachment stuff to therapy. Both can continue to develop self love.

Through this dedication, intimacy becomes easier over time as self love increases.

Karmic (past life) relationships can be healed too through this process of self love that develops through healing attachment wounds. Often we are still holding shame and blame from intimacy wounds in a previous lifetime.

Some go through many years not in romantic relationships and maybe without close friends or any close attachments. In these cases, self love may be developed internally with spirit, nature, the transpersonal on some level.

I am one of these souls who has spent more time in this life not in romantic union. Through being unmated I have developed self love through the Hermit archetype, going within to heal through developing a secure attachment with self and spirit. This is my karma.

Some people move from relationship to relationship to learn. Some people are in one long term relationship for most of their lives. We all have our unique karma to live out and it’s best to not compare your relationship life with others.

Self love is the root of all relationship love on every level and our true source of power we share as souls having this human experience…

Bloom Counseling

depth psychotherapist, life coach, tarot/astrology reader

Tag Archives: attachment wounds