Where's the Line?

When you find yourself struggling between giving to your partner and being true to yourself, it's a warning sign that your relationship might be heading towards a downward cycle of sacrifice and resentment rather than a thriving sense of interdependence and mutual respect.

There is much to consider and reflect on in this situation.  For now, let's consider two things:

1) Requests and how they change into demands over time and impact your ability to be true to yourself

2) In being true to yourself, let's examine a simple way to discern what's right for you using mindfulness and body awareness.  

First, let's take a look at the nature of requests of the partner who is asking you to give more.  The most important part of any request is that the person making it recognizes and respects your freedom of choice.  This means that your partner only asks for the gift that is freely given.  If you say no to a request she or he is willing to get curious about your no, enter negotiation, and/or look for other ways to meet his or her need.

This sounds simple, but, especially in intimate relationship, unconscious patterns of reactivity show up in the form of beliefs about what you should or shouldn't do as a partner.  Rigid expectations manifest as demands and criticism.  If your partner is caught in this, s/he is not able to make a true request.  S/he will attempt to make you responsible for his or her needs, by finding fault with you when you don't show up in just the right way, exploding in anger, and/or attempting to send you on guilt trips.  In addition, s/he will deny responsibility to meet needs in other ways or refuse to negotiate so that things work equally well for both of you.  Often there is a lack of empathy or curiosity about your experience.

If you are dating someone who is doing this, you might be baffled about how you could have fallen in love and enjoy this person so much.  These behaviors might have snuck up on you.  Expressions of criticism and anger may have been subtle at first, leaving you feeling a little disoriented or unsure of yourself.  In your excitement about all the good things happening, you might have brushed these experiences off, hoping they would go away or were just a fluke.

If you find yourself questioning your sense acceptance or worth and perceive that your partner's needs are in competition with your own, then the impact of criticism, anger, demands, and guilt tripping is beginning to outweigh the hope and excitement you once had.  Your emotional resourcefulness is likely low.  It's a good time to spend time with supportive and nourishing others and check in with boundaries.  

Whether you want to set boundaries with your partner or simply create a sense of mutuality in your relationship, it's helpful to be clear about what it means to be true to yourself.  There's all sorts of way you can fool yourself about what's right, and what's right for you.  You can drive yourself crazy with endless standards, comparisons, and ideas about how things should or shouldn't be.  When it comes to discerning what it means to be true to yourself, thinking a lot about it isn't necessarily helpful.  Your body, on the other hand, tells the truth in a straightforward way.

Learning to check in with your body is one of the best gifts you can give yourself.  You can create greater access to this source of truth by doing intentional experiments.  Take a few minutes to sit still and become mindful of body sensations.  Then, think about doing something that you already know isn't right for you and notice how your body responds.  You will likely notice one or more of these responses; tightening in your stomach, chest, or throat, the beginning of a headache, a sense of nausea or stomach pain, a general sense of contraction or imbalance, and a sense of feeling distant from your center.

Do the same experiment again only this time imagine doing something you already know is right for you.  You will likely notice one or more of these responses;  a relaxation in your stomach, chest, or throat, a sense of clarity or solidness, a sense of alignment from the center up through your crown and down through your perineum, and a basic sense of expansion.  

Checking in with your body and felt sense of expansion and contraction is not the same as identifying emotions.  When you are being true to yourself, all these responses listed above can occur at the same time as fear and anxiety or any other other emotion that might come up when you are challenging yourself.  Emotions often arise from a misperception of threat.  Smaller parts of you may be in reaction while a bigger you has a sense of solidness about doing what's true for you despite your own reactivity.

When your partner is asking you to give more and you feel your body tighten, pause, ask for time to consider the request.  If it is a true request and not a demand, your partner will wait for your response.  In your reflection, continue to focus on your body sensations.  This practice alone may yield insight about how this request is asking you to be untrue to yourself.  Otherwise, continue to focus on your body and ask yourself the question, "What's truly right for me in this situation?  OR What do I need before I can consider this request?"  After asking the question return to just noticing your body.  Something will arise all by itself in the form of sensations, images, impulses, words, memories, or a shift in energy.  As each new experience arises stay with it, not thinking or analyzing, just holding your attention there and noticing the next experience.

In summary, there is no line between being true to yourself and giving to your partner.  There is only being true to yourself.  When you give to your partner out of fear of doing something to push him or her away, out of obligation, to win love and approval, or out of fear of anger, you plant seeds for a toxic relationship.  When you are grounded in your own authenticity; wise discernment about healthy boundaries and generosity of heart flows naturally.  Your own mindfulness practice along with surrounding yourself with empathic others that actively welcome your authenticity is essential in remaining true to yourself.

Practice

Take a moment now to come to stillness for one full inhale and one full exhale.  At the end of the breath cycle drop your attention into your body. Notice if there is a basic sense of contraction or a basic sense of expansion.  To continue to cultivate body wisdom, do this simple practice as many times in a day as you can.

LaChelle Lowe Charde

Loving again

Love Again After the Narcissist = Equals = Loving Yourself First

by Lucy Wright

Loving someone who doesn’t love you back, who is only capable of loving themselves… is like waiting for a ship at the airport.

One of the happiest moments of life is letting go what you can’t change. Let. It. Go. Easier said than done when you’ve devoted yourself to, and tried so hard to love the self-absorbed.

When I was finally out of the marriage – and starting to discover who I was again – I asked my counselor how I would “not do it again.” How would I not find, not be attracted to, and not end up with, ever-ever-ever again, another Narcissist. Would I know the red flags? Being with a Narcissist was all I knew. My father. My NEx. How would I “not do it again.”
“You have to love yourself first” is what I heard.
What? Who? Me? Love Me?
I didn’t understand.

I had been a shell for so long. To remember who I was, I had to forget what he spent so many years telling me to be; what he spent so many years telling me who to be.
I was curious about “moving on” after the ExN, but I made a pact with myself to remain solo – just me, myself and I – for at least six months post getting out of my abusive relationship and having my divorce finalized.

Inwardly I knew I wasn’t ready to date. I was scared of the very thought of even trying to go out and meet a man for a cup of coffee and attempt to carry on any sort of thought-provoking, intelligent conversation. Who was I? What did I like to do? What were my goals? Where did I like to travel? After being told the answers to all of these questions for so long – you are this, we do this, we like to go here but not there – I couldn’t even answer these simple questions for myself, let alone think I might sound interesting to someone else.

Before the relationship with the ExN began, and even during the first few years we were together, I was social. I had confidence. I had a lot of friends. I was smart. I enjoyed reading and keeping up with world events. I kept myself in shape and I enjoyed wearing pink. I felt good.
I smiled.
Throughout the years I was married to N-him, I lost all of that. I had no friends, no confidence, and had to ask for validation and permission before making even the most simple, seemingly obvious decision.
He went to the gym. I stayed home with the kids.
I rarely left the house.
I wore dark sunglasses.
I never smiled.
……………………………
I knew I needed to learn to be Me again. But… who was Me?
……………………………
Fast forward six months when I finally took the leap to go for that cup of coffee. With a man.
I struggled, a lot, but I ended up learning about myself. And eventually I had some fun.
I was slowly figuring out who I was again. It took a long time initially, and the learning is still a work in progress. To this day, so many years later, I continue to struggle, at times, with who I am, who I was before, how I changed so drastically with N-him in order to survive, and how all of that affects me even to this day. Difficulty making decisions? What did I do wrong? Why doesn’t he understand what I’m trying to say? Why do I have so little self-esteem sometimes — still?
I took time to start learning to be me again. I am still learning.
………………………………
I have learned to love myself again after life with a Narcissist But I continue to have “triggers” from my past that cause me to doubt myself sometimes even now.
Bless my current husband for being patient with me. And understanding. Many times I don’t even know what is going to set me off – why I start crying, or what is said that revives some memory in my brain from the past, and causes my walls to go up so quickly.
Real men love you for who you are. They know your baggage, and they still love you anyway. They are caring, gentle and kind. They do not judge. They will never hurt you. They treat you with respect. And by standing by your side, through thick and thin, good and bad, better and worse, you, a survivor of domestic abuse, can finally begin to understand what it means to have trust in someone again… to love someone again.
I am a different person from who I was when abuse was my norm. I want my kids to know that there is no abuse in true, unconditional love.
<3
Learn to love yourself first.
Then find your ship – not the one at the airport – and determine your course forward.
Have some fun.
And when you are ready to…
Trust in Love again with someone else.

Dangerous Minds

We’ve all been burned by psychopaths largely because we fell for their lies and their lines.  The better informed people are with their techniques of deception, the more they can recognize them and protect themselves against them. A psychopath gets you within his power largely through deception. As Cleckley noted in The Mask of Sanity, the main reason why people are easily taken in by their lies is not because the lies themselves are that convincing, but because of the psychopaths’ effective rhetorical strategies. What are those?

1. Glibness and Charm. We’ve already seen that these are two of the main personality traits of psychopaths. They know how to use them to their advantage. Psychopaths lie very easily and in a smooth manner. They often pass lie detector tests as well because such tests register emotion, not deception. Psychopaths tend to remain cool under pressure. They can tell you the most implausible stories–such as when they get a call from their girlfriend but tell you that it’s a random call from a jailbird–but do it so matter-of-factly that it makes you want to believe them. Sometimes they distract you from the content of their words with their charm. They look at you lovingly, stroke your hair or your arm and punctuate their speech with kisses, caresses and tender words, so that you’re mesmerized by them instead of focusing on what they’re actually saying.

2. Analogies and Metaphors. Because their facts are so often fabrications, psychopaths often rely upon analogies and metaphors to support their false or manipulative statements. For instance, if they wish to persuade you to cheat on your husband or significant other, they may present their case in the form of an analogy. They may ask you to think of the cheating (or breaking up with your current partner) as a parent who is sparing his drafted child greater harm by breaking his leg to save him from going to war. This analogy doesn’t work at all, of course, if you stop and think about it. Your significant other isn’t drafted to be dumped for a psychopath. You’re not sparing him any pain by breaking his leg or, in this case, his heart. You’re only giving credit to the psychopath’s sophistry and misuse of analogy to play right into his hands, thus hurting both yourself and your spouse.

3. Slander. A psychopath often slanders others, to discredit them and invalidate their truth claims. He projects his faults and misdeeds upon those he hurts. To establish credibility, he often maligns his wife or girlfriend, attributing the failure of his relationship to her faults or misdeeds rather than his own.

4. Circumlocution. When you ask a psychopath a straightforward question that requires a straightforward answer, he usually goes round and round in circles or talks about something else altogether. For instance, when you ask him where he was on the previous night, sometimes he lies. At other times, he tries to divert you by bringing up another subject. He may also use flattery, such as saying how sexy your voice sounds and how much you turn him on. Such distractions are intended to cloud your reasoning and lead you to forget your original question.

5. Evasion. Relatedly, psychopaths can be very evasive. When you ask a psychopath a specific question, he will sometimes answer in general terms, talking about humanity, or men, or women, or whatever: anything but his own self and actions, which is what you were inquiring about in the first place.

6. Pointing Fingers at Others. When you accuse a psychopath of wrongdoing, he’s likely to tell you that another person is just as bad as him or that humanity in general is. The first point may or may not be true. At any rate, it’s irrelevant. So what if person x, y or z–say, one of the psychopath’s friends or girlfriends–has done similarly harmful things or manifests some of his bad qualities? The most relevant point to you, if you’re the psychopath’s partner, should be how he behaves and what his actions say about him. The second point is patently false. All human beings have flaws, of course. But we don’t all suffer from an incurable personality disorder. If you have any doubts about that, then you should research the matter. Google his symptoms, look up psychopathy and see if all or even most of the people you know exhibit them. Of course, even normal individuals can sometimes be manipulative, can sometimes lie and can sometimes cheat. But that doesn’t make our actions comparable to the magnitude of remorseless deceit, manipulation and destruction that psychopaths are capable of. Furthermore, most of us, whatever our flaws, care about others.

7. Fabrication of Details. In The Postmodern Condition, Jean-François Lyotard shows how offering a lot of details makes a lie sound much more plausible. When you give a vague answer, your interlocutor is more likely to sense evasion and pursue her inquiries. But when you present fabricated details–such as when you are with your girlfriend in a hotel room but tell your wife that you were with your male buddy named X, at a Chinese restaurant named Y and ate General Gao chicken and rice which cost a mere $ 5 at a restaurant and discussed your buddy’s troubles with his girlfriend, who has left him because he cheated too much on her–your wife’s more likely to believe your elaborate fiction. Because they excel at improvisation, psychopaths are excellent fabricators of details. Even novelists have reason to envy their ability to make up false but believable “facts” on the spot.

8. Playing upon your Emotions. Very often, when confronted with alternative accounts of what happened, psychopaths play upon your emotions. For example, if his girlfriend compares notes with the wife, a psychopath is likely to ask his wife: “Who are you going to believe? Me or her?” This reestablishes complicity with the wife against the girlfriend, testing the wife’s love and loyalty to him. It also functions as a subterfuge. That way he doesn’t have to address the information offered by the other source. To anybody whose judgment remains unclouded by the manipulations of a psychopath, the answer should be quite obvious. Just about any person, even your garden-variety cheater and liar, is far more credible than a psychopath. But to a woman whose life and emotions are wrapped around the psychopath, the answer is likely to be that she prefers to believe him over his girlfriend or anybody else for that matter. Even in such a hopeless situation–if a psychopath’s partner doesn’t want to face the truth about him–it’s still important to share information with her. Psychopaths form co-dependent, addictive bonds with their so-called “loved” ones. They’re as dangerous to their partners as any hard drug is likely to be. If their partners know about their harmful actions and about their personality disorder, then at least they’re willingly assuming the risk. Everyone has the right to make choices in life, including the very risky one of staying with a psychopath. But at least they should make informed choices, so that they know whom they’re choosing and are prepared for the negative consequences of their decision.

Deception constitutes a very entertaining game for psychopaths. They use one victim to lie to another. They use both victims to lie to a third. They spin their web of mind-control upon all those around them. They encourage antagonisms or place distance among the people they deceive, so that they won’t compare notes and discover the lies. Often they blend in aspects of the truth with the lies, to focus on that small grain of truth if they’re caught. The bottom line remains that psychopaths are malicious sophists. It really doesn’t matter how often they lie or how often they tell the truth. Psychopaths use both truth and lies instrumentally, to persuade others to accept their false and self-serving version of reality and to get them under their control. For this reason, it’s pointless to try to sort out the truth from the lies. As M. L. Gallagher, a contributor to the website lovefraud.com has eloquently remarked, psychopaths themselves are the lie. From hello to goodbye, from you’re beautiful to you’re ugly, from you’re the woman of my life to you mean nothing to me, from beginning to end, the whole relationship with a psychopath is one big lie.

From www.lovefraud.com

Deceit & Manipulation

By Joel Akande

No one likes to be manipulated. It belittles us all and make a mockery of our intelligence. Besides, being deceived and manipulated breaches the trust we may have in individuals. In addition, being deceived implies that we are being fooled and could considerably affect our individual confidence.

What is Manipulation?

To be manipulated implies that truth and lies are being mixed together all at once or interchanged and presented as the whole truth.  A manipulator's  aim is to control the victim. That is to say, a person tells you lies and package the lie as the truth, present the lie to you to make you believe in the fabrication. Unaware, you are taken in: You accepted untruths as authentic. Manipulation can also be a situation whereby the victims are misdirected or simply twists facts in a "mix and match" of lies and truth. Manipulation is not the same as "negotiation" or "agreement".

Why Does Manipulation and Deceiving Occur?

The objective of a manipulator is to control the victim and the manipulator may go to any extent inculding using the Police, Courts and the Law, and any means to control the victim.  All said, the victim of manipulation are almost always in one form of relationship or another with the perpetrator. Also, manipulation occurs and it assumes that the victim is not capable of finding out the truth about the matter(s). Thus, from the victim's position, manipulation may occur when the victim and perpetrator:

1. May be in position of trust such as children trusting adults or their peers. Adults may deceive or  "mis-educate" and manipulate or misdirect  the children so that the perpetrator is able  to gain different forms of  advantages such as affection, attention, being kept in company and so forth.

2. It may occur whereby the victim and perpetrator are in intimate relationships such as husband and wife situation. Clearly, one party may trust the other or the two individuals may actually actively manipulate each other.

3. Politicians, may deliberately manipulate facts to suit an existing situation. So the followers and the public are the victims of  lies and deceits.

4. Employees of companies, business partners,  students and anyone under authority of another may be a victim of manipulation.

The Perpetrator.

The perpetrator of manipulation:

a. Fears the truth as some Countries and politicians do. In the same way marital partner who fears that his or her sexual adventures may be discovered may start to manipulate the other unwary partner.

b. The perpetrator may be apprehensive that telling the truth  as in politics and businesses, may lead to loss of revenue, income, loss of political position and self-esteem (Please read here: How to Deal With False Accusations)

c. Perpetrator of manipulation may want to keep a state of duress and fear upon the victim to that the victim is always in submission to the authority of the perpetrator. This is common in political settings in authoritarian countries and autocratic states.

This may also happen between a vulnerable partner in a relationship, between children and adults and the other over-lording partner who wants to maintain a condition to continually exploiting  the other in the relationship.

d. Manipulation by the perpetrator may be as a result of mental illness such as grandiose delusions of hypomanics or in mania or personality disorders. On the other hand, manipulator may simply be sane but criminally minded persons.

e. Manipulation may also occur as a result of drugs such as cannabis misuse leading to weird claims of paranoia.

f. Manipulation does occur in religious situations of "the bad or evil" attempting to manipulate the truth or the good people.

Signs and Symptoms That You Are Being Manipulated
a. The manipulator fails to back up the claims with factual evidence
b. Manipulator prevents you from wanting to establish the evidence. You may be asked to "act now" which is in fact a false sense of urgency. Warning: Do not so act.
c. You feel under duress and uncomfortable.
d. You may be threatened with severe consequences. This may be the case when children are manipulated. They may be asked to respond to inquiries from outsiders in certain ways or not answer at all.
e.The story of the manipulator keep changing facts and scenes. No consistency.
f. The storyline may just be too strange to believe.
g. Manipulator present as if they are on your side. They tell you what you want to hear while they have different intention
h. If manipulator is questioned intensely, his or her defences will collapse

How Does Manipulation Occur?

a. Deceiving another person is always a pretense by presenting a false facts as the truth. A weird story may be told to cover the truth.  False accidents may said to have occurred where there is none.

b.Manipulators are good at double dealings. They may tell one story now to Mr. A and then for the same alleged event, tell another story to Mr C, all in the hope that Mr A and C will not find out the truth.

Happy New Year!

In keeping with my tradition of not making New Year’s Resolutions this blog will not post a Happy-New-Year-this-list-will-make-your-life-measurably-better entry.

Each New Year brings the chance to adopt a list or resolutions that will herald health, wealth and happiness within the next 12 months. It’s also a chance to dump the resolutions you never achieved.

Here’s the thing, I can understand wanting better health. If it’s within your control –fix it. Don’t like your weight? Watch your diet and exercise. Don’t want to start today? Make February 1^st your new fitness shoe day.

Money? It’s not always the answer. Material things do not define your well-being. Chances are when you look through a picture book of fond memories you are looking at experiences and adventures and not a Lexus or Rolex.

I suggest if you want to focus on improving one area of your life this next year that you shift your attention to improving your relationships (and as a result  your experiences.)

The Lexus may fancy up your garage and the Rolex might sparkle on your wrist but the hand that grasps yours is priceless.

Happy New Year & Happy New Beginnings,

Lesa

The Authentic Therapist

Every single minute of every single day is a new beginning. Every morning that you open your eyes is a fresh start. Every opportunity is a chance to make a change.

Why your relationships lead to growth

We read an endless supply of books that teach us how to be the most authentic version of ourselves. We go deep within to understand our needs, desires and longings. We become open to exploring things like meditation and yoga, if we think there's the potential for finding peace. 

But if you really want to grow and evolve in your journey, look no further than your closest personal relationships. 

The people we are closest to (and specifically our relationships with those people) are the greatest teachers for our lives. Each one of our relationships powerfully reflects back to us all the parts of ourselves that are strong, happy, compassionate — and those parts that need more growth and evolution. It's as if each of our loved ones was deliberately placed in our lives to become close with us, to provide us the opportunities to become the people we need to become in life.

Within the context of relationships where I am neither inspired nor challenged, I tend to remain the lesser, smaller version of myself. So, in order to grow into the woman that I am today, I actually had to leave behind the safety and security of the familiar. 

A man that broke my heart wide open taught me that when I really love someone, I don't hold back, even if it may hurt.

A friend has taught me a great deal about myself and connections at a soul level. She taught me that it is only when we can love, accept and forgive ourselves that we can then love, accept and forgive everyone else. 

My love has taught me that it is only through great honesty and vulnerability that you can have great intimacy and love. 

Everyone in our lives is a spiritual teacher. Their purpose is to expose our hidden parts. They're there to open us up to the deeper truths in our lives.

Our spiritual teachers are there to help us awaken, recognize and understand our own true nature; to bring about the core of who we are and to evolve further in our souls' journey. Who better to assist us in our journey than those to whom we're closest?

There's something divine about it all. 

So, as you spend time with family over the holidays and  feel yourself getting irritated pause and  identify the source of your irritation and then look in the mirror about what you're unconsciously hiding. 

As you reflect on the past year and realize you're still carrying a wound, see if you can identify what that person taught you. What do you know now that you didn't know previously about yourself? 

As you're wishing to create more loving relationships in the coming year, go within and ask yourself, "Am I willing to think about this differently or see a deeper truth in order to have the love I want in my life?" 

Authentic Living

By John Kehoe

People talk about living a happy life, a successful life, a meaningful life. But an authentic life? What is that? It's a good question, and one I would like you to think about.

Just as “a successful life” can be defined in many ways, so too can an authentic life. For example, some people will define a successful life as one where one has earned a great deal of money and become financially affluent. For others it will be measured by their accomplishments. For still others it will be in the service they performed for humanity. Others again in the amount of happiness and peace of mind they have enjoyed. I have long taught that each of us defines success in our own way, and according to that definition, we set our goals and priorities on the way achieving this success. So too with living an authentic life. Each of us must define what this means to us. For me, being authentic means being true to yourself, and living the truths and vision you find within.

Being authentic means “living” your truths as a day-to-day practice, not holding them as mere “intellectual concepts.”

All truths must be lived not just believed. That is why we are here in a body in time and space. This is what life is truly about. We each have an opportunity to practice what we believe. To act out our deepest visions. To have a life that is deep and rich and filled with meaning and purpose.

Being authentic means knowing and trusting yourself, honouring the conscious and subconscious minds. Being authentic means listening within to hear the truths that lay awaiting our discovery beyond the inner chatter of day-to-day living. Then once these truths are discovered, to bring them to life by living them through conscious action. It is through action not thought that one becomes authentic.

We live in a society that is generally preoccupied with happiness, material success, self-gratification; these messages are in our face all the time, on the TV, the Internet, in magazines. There are winners and losers in life, we are taught, and you want to be a winner at all costs. This is the culture we presently find ourselves living in. It is important to know and acknowledge this.

However, being authentic means looking beyond the superficiality of life and finding meaning and purpose in a way that resonates as truth with our soul and heart, as well as just our mind.

Being authentic means living your truth day by day. And if your truth changes? Then let your actions change. And if you find you've been living a wrong truth? Then make amends and begin living your new truth.