Dissolve Barriers to Love

Dissolve Barriers to Love

LaShelle Lowe-Charde

The ability to receive can often be taken for granted, but if this title caught your attention, you know that it's not always so straightforward.  Receiving love can be especially fraught with confusion and reactivity.  To dissolve barriers to love it's important to do at least two things:

• Become subtly aware of your habits of turning away from love.

• Engage in practices that help you strengthen your skills in receiving.

Self study and reflection is an essential part of the transformation process.  You can't change habits that you don't know are there.  It's not enough to simply notice that you dismissed a compliment.  Each time someone offers love, challenge yourself to get very specific in your reflection.  Here are some questions you could ask yourself:

• What observable barriers were present?  That is, what could anyone next to you observe?  For example, in creating a barrier, did you break eye contact, physically turn away or step back, did you make a joke to distract, or begin to criticize yourself or the other person?

• What happened on the inside?  What happened in your body?  What did you tell yourself?  What unconscious beliefs were operating in the background?  Are there any associated images or memories that come up with that person's offering of love?

• What were the conditions of the interaction?  Where are you?  What were you doing just before?  Who else is present?

• Repeat these same questions for the moments you were able to receive.

As you gather information by reflecting on these questions, you will be able to design and engage in practices that help to dissolve barriers to love.  Here are two basic guidelines in designing your own practices:

1. The practice you design is mutually exclusive to the habits that don't serve you.  That is, you couldn't engage the old habit in the same moment you are engaging in this practice.

2. The practice is easy to remember and simple to do.  If this is true, you will have a sense of lightness and confidence about your practice.

For example, let's say that in your reflections you notice that you most often have barriers to love when in a public setting.   In these conditions you often avoid eye contact and make jokes to distract from someone's offering of love, even if, it is a simple kind word or gesture.  With this information you might set up a practice like this:  

For the next week when you are at home you will make and maintain eye contact any time someone offers love.  You will notice the impulse to make a joke and simply say thank you.  Choosing to practice in a private setting will give you confidence and strengthen your ability to receive.

The practices above rely on a very critical piece that may need your attention before anything else.  If you know you have difficulty receiving love, then there is likely a barrier to recognizing love when it's present.  You may misinterpret loving words, receive a hug as "neediness", receive a gift as obligation, or simply fail to look up and notice a loving smile.  Changing this kind of barrier is helped most by feedback from others.  Ask your closest friend, your partner, or your therapist to point out any time they see love coming your way.  For example, as you tell your partner that your co-worker agreed to stay late so you could leave for vacation, your partner might suggest that that sounds like a gesture of love.

The unfortunate thing about barriers around any need is that as one becomes depleted regarding a particular need, an internal set of standards about the way the need must be met is put into place.  These standards may become more narrow and rigid over time, thus creating a vicious cycle of disappointment and depletion.  

Perhaps the simplest practice in dissolving barriers to love is to invite love to flow through you.  Without pushing or convincing yourself, invite yourself to frame love as something that simply is, rather than, something you get and give.  Concrete practices that open the door to this experience include:

• Breath through your heart.
• Gently focus on an innocent animal enjoying life.
• Smile as you sit quietly and listen to sounds of nature.
• Look at images that evoke love.
• Everyday set your intention to live as the embodiment of love.

Practice

Take a moment now to choose one specific way you will turn towards love today.

When Compassionate Communication ISN’T Compassionate

LaShelle Lowe Charde

Most things that you want to learn fully require transformation on multiple levels.  Knowledge and understanding the concepts is not enough for true mastery.  The same is true of Compassionate Communication (NVC).  It can easily be misused by those with only a superficial understanding.   Over the years I have read or heard people talk about how NVC is actually violent, manipulative, or otherwise flawed.  Unfortunately what's usually happening there, is someone has simply learned enough to do what they have always done, but just with a new vocabulary.  This is painful and confusing for everyone involved.  You hear someone trying something new, but it isn't creating connection.

The purpose of NVC is to create a quality of connection which naturally inspires compassion.  Everything about NVC exists only for this purpose.  The hard work of NVC practice is noticing connection at ever more subtle levels.  This means noticing what supports connection, what gets in the way, and what is exactly enough connection for a given relationship or context.  This practice requires self-awareness and other awareness - mindfulness.

Unfortunately in a moment of pain, your reactive habit shows up quickly and wants you to attack, defend, or do whatever you have typically done to protect yourself.  So you grab the vocabulary or structure of NVC, but not the awareness or valuing of connection.  Here's a few ways that might look:

• Sharing a list of four or more unmet needs with someone while looking at them with dagger eyes and refusing to make a request.
• Sharing an experience using the NVC structure while demanding a certain response back from the other person.
• Sharing a list of four or more feelings and refusing to hear the other person's feelings.
• Negotiating needs and requests with reference to a relationship scorecard (tit for tat instead what truly meets needs).
• Offering empathy guesses, but refusing to share from an equally vulnerable place.
• Sharing using the NVC vocabulary and structure, but not valuing how your sharing lands for the other person, or sharing whether there is connection or not and whether the other person has agreed to the conversation or not.
• Slipping interpretations into your speech without owning them as such.
• Listening resentfully while attempting to offer empathy guesses.

In situations like those listed above, the most unfortunate thing that happens, is the person receiving reacts back.  This counter reaction often involves correction, "You're not doing NVC right!"  Sometimes the person comes away with a generalized judgment about how awful NVC is or how awful "NVC'ers" are.  The only thing that NVC is really interested in is whether or not the experience supported a quality of connection that naturally inspires compassion.

Rather than offering correction or judgment, the hope is that you could say, "Wait, I am not connecting right now and I want to connect.  Can we….?"  Requests that support connection include:

• Can we pause here so I can see if I am hearing you right? (say back what you've heard).
• Can we just stick to this one event, even though there are other similar instances?
• Would you be willing to tell me what you're wanting out of this conversation?
• Can we pause, take a deep breath, and ask ourselves if we really want to connect right now?
• I didn't connect to what you were saying.  Would you be willing to say that again another way?
• I notice I have the impulse to defend and justify.  Can we come back to this after lunch when I have calmed down?
• It sounds to me like you are wanting to prove how wrong and terrible I was and hearing you that way I am shutting down.  Can you express a guess at any good intentions you think I might have had?

The common element of all these requests is that they prioritize connection.  This means making connection more important than being heard first, problem solving, clarifying the details of the situation, figuring out who's right, who's to blame, or why they behaved in a certain way.  While you want your airplane pilot to be focused more on the details of the situation than connection, most of the time prioritizing a particular quality of connection will contribute deeply to a compassionate, authentic, and fulfilling life.

Practice

For the coming week, once a day reflect on one interaction that was satisfying, that had just enough connection.  Notice what you both did that supported that connection.

Making someone jealous

LaShelle Lowe Charde

Jealousy in an intimate relationship is a painful thing to feel.  It arises from a sense of threat and insecurity.  But from the perspective of your partner, jealousy may be interpreted as a sign that you are invested in the relationship, that you care. Because of this your partner may feel a sense of reassurance by seeing you get jealous. They may even attempt to trigger jealousy to meet a need for reassurance.  You might call this a tragic strategy for reassurance because the need for reassurance is met at the cost of your need for security.

The most helpful thing is asking for and offering this reassurance directly. This is hard because it requires vulnerability and you have likely experienced some shame around vulnerability.  Beyond that you have also likely encountered some pressure to be tough, calm, and confident. The difficulty of asking for reassurance becomes compounded when your partner attempts to give you reassurance in a way that doesn't really meet the need. When this happens and you go to ask for reassurance your partner is likely to react with exasperation and impatience thinking they have already offered it and what more could they possibly do.

The reality is that as human beings we are hardwired to create a secure bond with each other and to maintain that bond through verbal and non-verbal forms of reassurance. It's up to you to let your partner know exactly what that looks like for you; how you most easily have a sense of security and bonding. When your partner shares this with you as well, they will no longer need to engage tragic strategies like "making you jealous" in order to have a sense of reassurance.

The important thing is to make space for differences. What offers you the most reassurance may be very different from what offers your partner the most reassurance.  Take a look at this list of common forms of reassurance and notice what resonates the most for you and make a guess at what resonates the most for your partner.

• Eye contact
• Smiling
• Physical affection
• Verbal expressions of love and appreciation
• Sharing intimately about your experience
• Collaboration on a shared project or vision
• Public signs of partnership
• Sex
• Gifts
• Showing up 4 significant events in each other's lives
• Expressing delight and celebration about the unique qualities of your partner
• Anticipating and considering your partner's needs when they are not present to speak for them
• Offering and receiving empathy

With consistency around reassurance, care, and consideration both of you may feel more secure over time.   As this security grows, behaviors and words that promote a secure bond become more, not less frequent. With a greater sense of security comes a greater ease in giving and receiving love and care.

Practice

Take a moment to reflect on how your partner might most easily receive reassurance and offer that today.

 

Slippery Conversations

LaShelle Charde

Have you ever been doing your best to be heard, repeating and clarifying and still the conversation slips away from you and you don't feel heard?

Often what is missing is simple turn taking.  Let's take an example with Jonah and Alexis.  Alexis expresses clearly her observation, feeling, need, and then asks Jonah to say back what he heard.  Jonah really wants to meet Alexis' need to be heard, but is feeling vulnerable and needing understanding so he mixes what he heard with what he wants to say.

For example, Alexis offers this neutral observation along with her feelings and needs: "When you left around 7 that evening and didn't return until after 1am, I felt . . . ."  Instead of giving back the neutral observation, Jonah says, "When I left that evening to comfort my friend  whose mother had died".  He begins to tell his story here without first hearing his partner.  He goes on and little bits of his story appear in the midst of otherwise clear reflection of what Alexis said.  She feels confused with this.  She wants to honor that he did get much of what she said and at the same time has a sense that he didn't.  Mixing his story with her experience doesn't make space for her experience to stand alone and be valid.

There are several ways to avoid this trap.

1.  Ask to be heard and then reassure your partner that you want to hear their experience too.

2.  Start with the clarity that you want your experience to be heard rather than argue a memory of what really happened.

3.  Own the fact that all experience is subjective by using phrases like:  "As I remember it",  "It seemed to me",  "My perception was".  "I told myself the story that", "My interpretation was" , etc.

4.  Set up regular and intentional conversations in which you take turns giving and receiving empathy.

5.  Use a talking stick to remind each other who the speaker is.  The person without the talking stick can offer empathy and ask clarifying questions, but doesn't express any of their experience until holding the stick.

This week practice reflecting back someone's experience to them and notice if you start to tell your own story before checking to see if they feel heard.

Say it like it is

LaShelle Charde

Say It Like It Is

Some of the most confusing suffering comes from shame or embarrassment about the basics of how you thrive and don't thrive in relationship.  Shame or embarrassment arises when you have some set of rules about what you are allowed to need and you aren't allowed to need in intimate relationship.  As you compare your actual experience to this set of rules, you inevitably feel discouraged and may fall into a puddle of self-criticism.

For example, you may have a rule that says:  "In a healthy relationship you should be satisfied with connecting with your partner on the weekend and not want anything more if you don't connect during the week".  But the fact is, it's pretty hard for you to feel secure in relationship.  You could reflect on your childhood, read about attachment theory, or consult your horoscope to explain it and yet even with more understanding, the fact remains:  to thrive in relationship you really benefit from multiple connection points in a given week or given day with your partner.  This is just the way it is for you right now.  It doesn't mean that you aren't doing your personal work and growing and changing.  It simply is the way your system works right now.  You have typically learned about what doesn't work for you the hard way, through resulting reactivity.

Sometimes it helps to gain acceptance about what truly works for you, by imagining that before you were born, you were handed some "karmic packages" (e.g., patterns of reactivity, unique challenges & strengths, types of wounding, etc.) and told that these are for you to unwrap and work with.  These  karmic packages are NOT who you are; understanding this allows you to find equanimity in your relationship to them.  Part of being responsible for your packages is being honest about what they are and how they work, understanding of course that they shift as you work with them.

When you are caught in shame or embarrassment about your "karmic packages", the result is usually confusing arguments, sudden hurts or outbursts, shut down, and sometimes manipulation or keeping secrets.  It takes self-awareness, courage, and responsibility to be honest with your partner (or anyone close to you) about how you really thrive in relationship.  Often you will find that your honesty and courage inspires others to meet you and share equally.  Sometimes though, you find out that not everyone can meet you at that level of vulnerability.  Regardless of how grounded and skillful you are another may still hear demands and expectations rather than vulnerable sharing.  In this case a relationship may need to end.  While this is painful, it may save you months or years of investing in a relationship that doesn't work.  

When another can receive your honesty and then share honestly about how much they can offer and with what they are willing to work, new doors of creativity and collaboration open up.  You may be able to negotiate and find new and creative ways to build a sense of security even when your partner doesn't show up in the way you are asking.  The tragic thing is that you won't be able to get to this creative collaboration without honesty about the way it is for you and hearing back from your partner what they can truly offer from the generosity of their autonomous heart.

Saying it like it is, is important in the beginning of a relationship to help you both enter into a commitment with honesty and mutual respect.  And since you are an ever changing flow of life energy, saying it like it is, is really an ongoing practice of self-reflection and honest communication that arises out of a compassionate and equanimous relationship to one's experiences, including one's karmic packages.

Practice

Take a moment to check in with something you would like in your relationship, that you haven't yet shared with your partner.  Follow these steps for reflection:  Name clearly the feeling, need, and request that goes along with what you would like, name any shame or embarrassment that comes up.  Breath through your heart, offer yourself reassurance that's it okay to experience what's present.  Allow yourself to rest there for a couple of minutes, just being with in compassion.

Achieve Radical Love

Gala Darling

In a world where self-hatred is a multibillion-dollar industry, loving yourself is a revolutionary act. Choosing to disconnect from the messaging that tells us we can never be too thin, white, or wealthy can completely change our lives.

Best of all, by making the decision to live as your fully embodied, entirely realized, unapologetic self, you embolden others to do the same. You let other people know that it's safe for them to be who they really are. You don't even know how massive a change this can be. By living as your whole self, you can literally tear the fabric of reality and create a new paradigm for yourself and the people around you.

"Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion." —Rumi

How do we move this theory out of the intellectual and into the practical? It's easier than we think. You don't need to move to Bali and meditate on the meaning of life every day! You can learn to love yourself in the suburbs in Australia, on the gritty streets of New York City, or on a farm in Belgium. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

1. Stop running away from your feelings.

Many of us use sugar, alcohol, drugs, television, or compulsive shopping to suppress any unpleasant emotions that we experience. It works for a little while — there's no denying that the high from sipping hot chocolate or purchasing a new pair of kicks can be thrilling.

But eventually, this temporary ecstasy fades, and we're left alone with our feelings again. After all, whatever we resist persists. Those uncomfortable feelings will keep cropping up until we finally take a deep breath and deal with 'em.

Next time you start to experience the tingling of an unpleasant feeling, pause before indulging in your vice of choice (whether it’s eating a piece of candy, browsing through a gossip magazine, or shopping online).

It only takes a second to disrupt those old habits that don't serve us. Instead, allow your feelings to wash over you. Rather than denying and repressing how you feel, say "yes" in your mind. Surrender to the emotion. This simple act can be massively powerful: when you no longer hide from your feelings and instead greet them at the door, they are much less frightening.

Now play detective with your feelings. Use your intuition and memory to dig out the root cause of your discomfort. Here's a hint: most discomfort or pain is a result of fear. What are you really afraid of? Once you know the answer to that, you can look at the situations in your past that echoed this experience.

For example, perhaps you feel jealous when your lover talks to other women. What is the root of your jealousy? It might be a fear that you're not good enough or that your lover is going to reject you. If this is your fear, it’s likely that you’ve experienced rejection or the feeling of not being good enough in your past.

Knowledge is power. Once you know the root of your feelings, you can deal with them. I love tapping for dismantling old, limiting beliefs and taking the sting out of a story. You could also try journaling, talk therapy, hypnosis, or simply having a frank conversation with your partner about why you feel the way you do.

2. Burn your fears.

An incredibly cathartic way to release negative feelings or obsessive thoughts is to literally set them on fire. In pride of place on my hot pink altar sits a miniature cauldron — I call it my "travel cauldron"— since I have taken it all over the world with me. I buy magic paper which sparkles and sizzles as it burns, tear it into small strips and write down the things I want to release. Then I crumple them up, drop them into my cauldron, and set 'em alight. There's something primal and wonderful about watching your fears literally go up in smoke.

3. Keep your best qualities on file.

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to forget a compliment? On the other hand, that critique you got in 1992 still echoes in your head today. So frustrating, right? It's not your fault: we all have a negativity bias that makes the insults stick out while the praise shrinks into the background. Oh, humans. We're so complicated!

You can get around it, though. When you're just getting started with radical self-love, it can be hard to see yourself as the magnificent, cosmic miracle you are. Sometimes it's easier to see yourself through someone else's eyes.

I want you to start keeping a list of the compliments you receive, and keep the list where you’ll see it every day. Read them aloud to yourself as often as you can. With a little time, you'll start to believe the beautiful things other people say about you, and you'll be able to accept them gracefully.

4. Stop putting off your passions.

Your time on this incredible planet is unbelievably limited. You are going to die one day, and nobody knows how much longer they have. Why waste your time doing things that you don't care about?

You absolutely must carve out time to do the things that light you up from the inside and make your heart chirp like a baby bird. No one else is going to help you make time for these things. Guard your schedule aggressively and make space to write, or dance, or invent, or whatever it is you adore.

Here's the truth: nothing will make you feel better than working on something meaningful. Pouring energy into your passions makes you vibrate at a higher frequency, and it is so life-affirming. When's the last time you spoke to someone who was truly passionate about something? Didn't it make you feel alive? Make it one of your goals to become one of those people.

5. Count your blessings.

There's a lot of chat about the importance of gratitude. It can seem like it couldn't possibly be that easy to be happy, so we overlook it. Ultimately, it's just like anything in life: You can only infer so much from thinking about something. Transformation occurs when we actually TRY things.

If you're unable to appreciate what you have now, it doesn't matter what happens to you in the future: it will never be enough. Cultivating a daily gratitude practice helps you to be in the moment and to see the joy in everything. 

You could also rope your family and friends into it! Every morning and evening, ask the people you're with to list the five things they're most thankful for. Encourage them to be specific. "Having a job" is generic gratitude, but "The coffee shop was playing Al Green this morning" is deep gratitude. That means you have to really think about it. The benefits of being specific are massive and to be encouraged. This extremely simple practice can truly change your life. Try it and see for yourself!

There are so many ways to fall in love with your life — these barely scratch the surface.

7 signs you're with the wrong partner

Margaret Paul

You have to start with knowing why you want to be in a relationship, and when it comes down to it, there are only two reasons people do this:

1. To get love, security, validation, and safety, or to have a child. Someone to complete you — to fill your emptiness and make you feel adequate and worthy.

2. To share love and companionship, and to grow emotionally and spiritually.

You need to BE the right partner before you can know if you're with the right partner. That means you need to learn to love yourself, define your own worth, and fill yourself with love to share, rather than pursuing external validation. Ask yourself, "Am I filled with love to share, or am I needy and desperate to get love?”

If your intent is to get love rather than share love, then it's likely that no relationship will ultimately be right for you. You have some internal work to do before anyone will be the right partner for you.

You don't need to be "perfect" at loving yourself, but you do need to be working on learning to take responsibility for your own feelings of worth, adequacy, and safety.

If you fall into the second category (wanting to be in a relationship to give love and to grow), then ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is the person you're with open to learning about themselves and about you?

Being open to learning how to love yourself and others — rather than being closed and defensive — is essential for sustaining a loving relationship. Partners cannot resolve conflict without being open to learning. The question to ask yourself is, "What does this person do in conflict?"

Some people can appear to be open and loving until a conflict occurs and then they get angry, withdrawn, resistant, or overly compliant. If they do close up, how long does it take them to open again? Obviously, if they get emotionally or physically abusive, they are not the right partner for you.

Being open to lovingly resolving conflict is essential for perpetuating a loving relationship.

2. Is your partner capable of caring, compassion, empathy, and acceptance for who you are?

If you find that your partner is incapable of feeling empathy, then he or she isn't the right partner for you. A lack of empathy is one of the signs of narcissism.

3. Do you feel a basic spark of attraction? Do you like to be near this person? Do you like their smell?

If you do not feel physically attracted to this person within the first six months of the relationship, it's likely an attraction will not develop. This person might be a good friend but not a romantic partner.

4. Does this person have a compulsion to win and be right?

This is the opposite of being open to learning and does not bode well for a relationship.

5. Do you share interests?

Can you do certain things together, or is there no overlap in what you like to spend your time doing?

6. Do you have common religious and political values?

Do you agree on topics like spending, parenting, eating, fitness, neatness, and punctuality?

7. Does this person have any addictions that you find intolerable?

Alcohol? Prescription or recreational drugs? Food? Sex addiction and/or porn? Gambling? Shopping or spending? TV, Internet, or video games?

When we love someone deeply, we love their essence — who they really are. But we all have an ego-wounded self, and the worst version of your partner needs to be tolerable to you. Don't expect them to change. You get what you see.

If, when you go through this list, you find there are things that are not tolerable but you keep hoping they'll change, you're not with the right partner. You need to accept or leave. Expecting change will only lead to heartbreak.

Remember, you need to be the right partner to find the right partner. We attract at our common level of emotional well-being — self-abandonment or self-love. The better you are at loving yourself, the better your chance of attracting and sustaining a loving relationship.