Having looked at our basic needs relating to Empowerment, Pride, Security now we can move up a level and look at how negative/problem thought patterns impact us in the area of Belongingness, Acceptance and Love. As social creatures the key is to have balance in the relationships with others but this area of our lives can quickly can get out or balance because of negative/problem thought patterns around how we relate to others and create the relationships in our lives.
Love and Belonging in your relationships
For example how many people do you know just cannot be alone and are so wrapped up in having a man or woman in their lives that they tolerate bad emotional dynamics such as co-dependency? On the other hand how many people do you know are commitment phobic and isolated because they are so afraid of getting hurt? How many of you have been in one or the other or both of these places at some point in your life?
Now we all have times when we have trouble navigating our relationships. We may be feeling insecure and so we cling on tight or we may feel like we will be smothered so we pull away. The key is to become aware of how we are out of balance in the relationships in our lives.
Let’s look at a common relationship pattern for many woman and men. When I do readings for clients I often hear these people say desperate things like: “I can’t live with out him/her can you make them come back?”
Their desire to maintain the status quo is so strong because they want to gob on to this person and hoard that individual’s energy and so they will do anything to hang on the the lost lover’s energy even if the relationship was very negative.
Why can't you raise your self-esteem so then you can raise mine?
On the other extreme, those that fear commitment and isolate themselves hoard their own energy. They are not willing to flow and share and are stuck in their problem/negative thought patterns.
"Fear of heights".... "Fear of Commitment More like"
Again it is time to ask yourself some questions. Get out your journal. Write down some questions.
Am I afraid to be alone?
Do I make others responsible for my emotional happiness?
Do I avoid doing things by myself and make others (my friends, kids, spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend) do them with me?
Do I use communication patterns to make others feel guilty and obligated?
Do I shut down rather than communicate?
Do I isolate and blame others for my unwillingness to connect to others?
Do I use my fear of the future, attachments to past or my own insecurities as an excuse not to maintain relationships?
Do I resort to a pattern of push you pull me pattern of being in relationships?
The key here is to become aware of extremes. Once you know your patterns you can choose to use your energy differently knowing that co-dependency on one end and emotional isolating on the other end are both forms of energy hoarding.
Once you are more aware of your own habits you can change your communication and interaction style to balance the flow of energy between yourself than the people in your life. Quite simply you will begin to consider and treat others in the way you would like to be treated.
The key thoughts will become: would I like it if they did that to me? and why am I choosing to communicate and interact in this way? At first you will need to journal things out to get to the real reasons behind your actions but eventually you will catch yourself in the middle of a problem/negative thought pattern and be able to turn it around if you really want to.
Once we look at how we relate to others we can look at how we measure our self-worth in other ways. In the next blog we will look more closely at negative problem thinking in the area of Esteem, Success, Achievement and Logical/ Rationality.
