Do you believe that your emotional wounds only affect you? Do you realize how much your wounds can hurt your relationships?
Your past affects every relationship you have. You learn how to relate to others as you grow up in your family, go to school, and interact with your childhood friends. Anytime you were wounded as a child you bring that with you into your adult relationships.
Many times we blame others when we feel hurt. Are you ready to try a different approach?
Wounds and relationships
Do you ever wonder why and how you attract friends and romantic partners?
There are many ways to bond with other people. One of the less healthy ways is to bond through our wounds. The wounds can be the same. You both grew up with alcoholic parents and the chaos of a dysfunctional family feels normal to you both.
The wounds can be complimentary. Your wound may cause you to feel anger and your partner’s wound may cause him to feel like a doormat. Your wound may cause you to save others and your partner always needs rescuing.
This may be hard to hear, but you unconsciously chose those relationships.
Why do we bond through our wounds? There is a deep part of you that wants to be whole and healthy. In a strange way attracting people who trigger your wounds is a path to the life you want.
This only effective when you use the information you are getting for growth. As you find a wound you now have an opportunity to heal it.
Another way to look at dysfunctional relationships
You can think of your dysfunctional partners and friends as your teachers. Take a moment and think about someone who really bugs you. Could this person be your teacher? Remember we are attracting these people at an unconscious level. The part of you that wants to heal may also be unconscious.
You can begin to think of any problem – whether it is a person or a situation – that comes into your life as your teacher. If you are struggling financially, what is this teaching you? If you hate your job what can you learn?
What happens when the world is your teacher?
Suddenly, you don’t need to take the world so personally. The world is providing you important information to help you heal your past. As you release your wounds that particular teacher will leave or change for the better. A certain problem situation will stop showing up.
I remember helping my mother with a problem she was having with her sister. I helped my mother see the situation in a completely different light. A few days later, she called me and told me she talked to her sister and her comment was, “Boy, she has really changed!”
My mother didn’t realize that she was the one who changed. By healing herself she healed a dysfunctional dynamic in their relationship. The problem did not reoccur.
What can you do?
Seeing everyone as your teacher might seem like a giant step. So, let’s break it down into an experiment. For one hour, see everyone as your teacher. Tomorrow try expanding that to two hours and so on.
When you find a wound, release it. One method is the poetry of emotion process.
Another important step is to keep track of your experiment. Keep a journal to track the changes in yourself and those around you.
Are you ready to change your world?
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(Image: Matt Mallett @ Flickr http:// www.flickr.com/photos/39matt/8036579516/)
