Did you know that relationships mirror to us aspects of ourselves that need attention and healing?
Those triggers that you experience with your partner (or ex partner’s) are signs trying to direct you back to wholeness, back to yourself.
Here’s a personal example from my own life to help you make better sense of this…
I have a very toxic past when it comes to relationships (about 15 years worth!) I often got attached to men who made me feel unworthy, rejected and inferior to them.
What I later learned through my own healing process is that these were beliefs I held about myself, and so therefore my outer experiences mirrored that. I tolerated certain toxic behaviors in my life because they were comfortable to me, it was what I knew and what I subconsciously believed about myself.
Our belief systems are SO POWERFUL because they literally dictate how we think, feel and behave, whether we’re aware of it or not. You can envision your beliefs as your minds roadmap…Unfortunately however, if we don’t input new directions (aka new beliefs) into our minds, we will keep experiencing the same patterns and results.
My reality started to shift when I was able to identify and challenge these beliefs that were reflected to me in my relationships. I began aligning my actions to the beliefs I wanted to create about myself…
The unworthiness I felt in my relationship taught me I had to add things into my life that brought more meaning and value. Personally, this looked like leaving my toxic ex FOR GOOD, going back to school for my master’s degree, exploring new places and adding activities into my life that brought me joy and purpose.
Feeling rejected by my ex-partner’s taught me I had to value myself more, to choose to surround myself with people that actually cherished me and to not take it so personally when people didn’t give me the love or attention I wanted. Learning about Attachment Theory gave me great insight into my core needs/triggers, as well as helping me understand how other people operate according to their own attachment styles.
Feeling inferior taught me to stand up for myself, honor and express my opinions/individuality. This feeling of “smallness” I experienced for so long stemmed from being an ethnic person in a predominately white school as a child and having a mother with an authoritarian parenting style. I had a hard time feeling seen, heard and understood, which was greatly mirrored in many areas of my life, especially in my romantic relationships.
Do you see how the beliefs we adopted early on can affect us greatly in our current life? And do you see how our relationships mirror those beliefs to us from the triggers we experience?
Maybe you feeling helpless in your relationship is teaching you to take back your power.
Or maybe your fear of deeper intimacy is teaching you to learn to be more vulnerable or to strengthen your trust with yourself and others.
There’s a lesson in every painful experience…
To begin unraveling these lessons in your own life, I invite you to:
- Look at your own relationship (or past relationships) and identify how they make you feel. What are the underlying beliefs about yourself that they are triggering?
- What are some new beliefs you want to create about yourself and what actions do you need to take in order to begin embodying this new identity?
Identifying your current “mental roadmap” and beginning to implement new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving is key to your transformation.
If you need more support in this area, you can book a free 15 minute Clarity Call with me HERE to learn about my 1:1 Relationship Coaching services.
