Tag Archives: attachment wounds

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

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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…

The True Love/Twin Flame Relationship

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Disclaimer: this is my vision of what true love is. Some call it the twin flame relationship. Some call it soulmates. I will be sharing my vision and writing about true love in a way that sounds like my way is true. It is true for me. Maybe it is also true for you. I honor the differences.

First I would like to say what true love is not. It is not a soulmate relationship. Soulmate relationships, whether romantic or otherwise, are souls who travel through lifetimes together. In romantic soulmate relationships there is usually karma to be worked out and often soulmate unions are racked with strife due to all the hurt feelings that are being carried into this life from another. A soulmate may also be a true love but not always. It all depends on the the willingness of the two lovers…

A true love relationship is not a fixed, destined, and written in the stars union. I personally do not believe such fixed unions exist. (I do sense some aspects of human life being “already written”. I used to feel every aspect of our human life was already written but this shifted for me after 2012 when I felt the old form of pre-written destinies collapse as we entered a new structure where the human will could shift and change destiny with each moment.)

True love is an art project, a verb, and a possibility that requires the will’s motivation and dedication, the heart’s devotion and attachment, the mind’s awareness and skill and the for body to keep learning how to be present.

True love can happen in monogamy or polyamory and with or without vows of marriage.

True love is a creative structure for experiencing romantic union as a life long love affair and often, a beyond one life love affair. For some, this life is not the first one and for some it is the first life two souls choose to create the true love relationship. If two souls share a past life where they already dedicated to one another there may be a sense of written destiny, yet this choice may also change in the current life.

Going around the sacred medicine wheel we start in the north, with body. Learning to be present and embodied is imperative for true love because all the issues arise in true love unions. All your stuff from the past; attachment wounds, projections, fears, worries, doubts, bad habits, trauma, insecurities and anxieties will reveal themselves.

If either partner is seduced into thinking the other is really the “bad guy”, the whole structure can come toppling down. How often the partner wears the mask of mom, dad, sister, brother, classmates, ex partners, or any other hurtful or neglectful relationship from the past, is more often than not. Being present allows both lovers to recognize when they are triggered and projecting the past onto the other.

We move into the east here, into the mind. True love builds the skills of sustaining a long term relationships of romantic love. Communication skills. Self awareness skills. Discernment skills. Timing skills. Not everyone will be as therapeutic about healing in relationship but some skill is needed to be able to let go of your own stuff when you are projecting onto a partner. Some skill is needed to communicate your needs so that you don’t build resentment, sacrifice too much of yourself, over-give or over-take.

Examining the self is always a process that beautifies true love. Yet the process of self examining and self growth is hard for many due to feeling shame around not being good enough and other feelings that rise out of the shadow to be examined. This is no easy task but this leads to…

How true love requires two lovers to learn how to trust one another over time so that shame and wounds can rise up and be met with patience and love by self and the partner. This brings us to the south, the will. The will is where true love makes that dedication to stick through the storms and rough times that rise up, sometimes on the regular. Trust is learned here in a very pragmatic way. The more two lovers stick it out and grow through pain, challenge, and hurt, the more trust is learned through actual experience versus blind faith.

In the south is where your true self feels motivated to enter this form of relationship. True love is not better or morally right. It’s only one form of having a romantic union. If you have the impetus for it in your will, you can create it.

This motivation moves us into the west, the feelings. Here we feel and express our longings, desire, romance, love, and attachment.

The romantic partner is the closest mirror to the parent child union. Our egos developed by how we were parented. Our brains were hard wired with an attachment style under age seven. Even if there was no trauma or abuse, avoidant and preoccupied (anxious) attachment styles of parents shapes us with an immense pre-verbal impact that shows up in how we attach with the lover. For the heart to devote to true love we must face our attachment wounds and styles and learn about the partner’s attachment wounds and styles.

Back in the east is where we may become self aware and communicate our attachment wounds and styles. In the west we feel our wounds and style. In the south we dedicate to the lover even when attachment styles and wounds cause hurt and they always do.

Islands or avoidant types almost always attract waves or anxious types, creating a pursuer and avoidant pattern that mirrors the past. Sometimes two waves mate and have that emotionally charged and passionate high drama union always riddled with strife. Sometimes two islands mate and get along great as both equally avoid to not feel threatened but the romantic love might not feel very strong.

Sometimes one or both lovers has a disorganized attachment style and wounds that stems from abuse and trauma. This causes a lot of pain and shame to rise up and test the container of true love.

No matter what the blend, attachment truly is the root and hence awareness, communication, and dedication are necessities to help partners endure the pain or hard times that rise up as secure attachment is being designed and fortified in the continual art project of true love.

Can you and do you want to dedicate to your mate even when they literally trigger the hell of you?

Can you and do you want to love your mate even when they ping all of your hurt inside and bring out shame, doubt and insecurity?

Can you and do you want to keep working on being present in the now so that you can see your lover for who they are see through the masks of loved ones from the past that you put over your lover’s eyes?

Can you and do you want to learn how to communicate better, let go of the past, become more self aware and heal the attachment wounds that cause constant insecurity and anxiety?

Do you desire to be with one mate (whether one only or a one among others) till death do you part? (It’s not about it succeeding, it’s about the journey you choose to take.)

These are the questions to ask yourself to see if you are truly wanting, willing, and ready to enter into a true love union.

As for timing, true love can happen at any time in your life. It might show up as your very first relationship, it might be a past relationship returning (in this life or a past life) or maybe you don’t find your lover until you are in your elder years. The timing remains mysterious.

As for knowing who the true love is….this is not a question of destiny, it is a question of mutual willingness, desire, and dedication between two who both say yes.

Often times an avoidant type can hold out for some elusive destined person who meets every single need and is easy and perfect (in their mind) as a way to avoid real intimacy with a real person which has its messy, awkward, and hurtful times.

Often times an anxious type will endlessly vacillate about whether a relationship is wrong or right, giving in to their deep insecurity of not being lovable enough and projecting their insecurity onto the partner.

Often times a disorganized type with engage in both of the above attachment wound behaviors and then feel so bad about themselves because they cannot find their sense of self and don’t trust their feelings at all.

We are all born into a wounded society of human beings and nobody is on the mountaintop.

The spectrum of having a secure healthy attachment style exists within all of us. Some are twenty or thirty percent secure, some are only five or ten percent secure, some are eighty or ninety percent secure. Nobody is better or worse for how secure they are.

Sometimes a highly secure type partners with a highly insecure type and becomes the safe container for the avoidant/anxious/disorganized person to learn trust and to heal. This may be more uncommon but it does exist and I know a few who have this form of true love union.

There are infinite ways we can manifest and express the art form of true love.

Point being, don’t think because there is pain, insecurity, avoidance, and anxiety that it is not true love.

The spectrum of how easy or hard a romantic union is has nothing to do with a prewritten destiny and has everything to do with the present moment of two lover’s mutual love, desire, dedication, and skill in each present moment.

The guarantee is an illusion and true love requires courage to face pain and hurt.

True love union encompasses all the aspects of being human. Lovers have fun together, have great chemistry, are best friends, hurt each other, disappoint each other and struggle through difficult times and circumstances.

True love is the constant verb of two people relating and also a container that holds the journey. The container strengthens with effort, trust, forgiveness, awareness, dedication, and also…humor!

The romantic part of true love is mysterious. How can two lovers stay in love for so long and through every wave of light and dark, pleasure and pain? I love that I don’t have an answer to this. I humble myself and only claim to understand how to create and sustain the mystery that is soulful and profound romantic love.