The Cuckleburr Times » Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Are You and Your Partner Hurting Each Other?

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 07:00:29 +0000

Are you aware of how you may be hurting your partner?

Are you aware of how your partner may be hurting you?

Are you aware of the painful feelings of loneliness, heartache and heartbreak you likely feel when you are disconnected from your loved one and unable to share love?

The sharing of love is the most wonderful experience in life. You connect and share love when you are open hearted with your partner – kind, caring, gentle, tender, understanding, and compassionate. You connect and share love when you are open to learning – listening well and caring about your own and your partner’s feelings, even if your partner is upset about how you might have hurt him or her.

DO YOU CARE ABOUT HURTING YOUR PARTNER? DOES YOUR PARTNER CARE ABOUT HURTING YOU?

In close relationships, we are very sensitive to each other’s energy. Closed, protective, controlling energy – energy that is harsh, dismissive, defensive, resistant, shut down, judgmental, blaming, or angry creates a disconnection between partners. So does complaining and being a victim. While you might cover up the pain of the loneliness and heartache of this disconnection with your own closed, protective, controlling energy, inside you are hurting and not attending to your pain.

When you haven’t learned to compassionately connect with your own painful feelings of a loved one’s disconnected energy, and attend to your loneliness and heartache with deep kindness and tenderness, you will have a hard time caring about your partner’s hurt. You want your partner to care about how he or she is hurting you, and your partner wants the same thing, but if neither of you are caring about yourselves, then it is likely that you are not caring about each other either. When you disconnect from yourself by closing down from feeling your loneliness and heartache, and your partner does the same, there is no way of connecting with each other. You have created a disconnected protective circle where both of you are hurting.

HEALING THE DISCONNECTION

The beginning of healing this disconnection is to be willing to feel your loneliness and heartache with compassion toward yourself. This awareness about your own feelings will enable you to gently speak up to your partner, saying something like, “What you are saying right now is hurting me,” or “Your judgmental tone is hurtful to me.” When you can gently tell your partner what he or she is doing that is hurtful to you, and your partner can do the same, you can each learn much about yourselves and each other.

When you react with anger, judgment, or withdrawal, your partner may not know what he or she did or said that was hurtful to you. Most of us are not very aware of our own protective controlling behavior, but when you are open to learning about it with your partner, you can learn so much that will bring you closer to each other.

Relationships are fertile ground for learning about ourselves – about our unloving behavior that creates the very disconnection we don’t want, and about the loving behavior that brings aliveness, joy, and passion to our relationship. The key here is to stay open to learning with yourself and your partner about your feelings and behavior. By staying open to learning about your painful feelings and your partner’s feelings, you can both learn to be kinder, gentler, more connected and more loving with each other.

Isn’t this what we all want – the sweet tender moments and the alive passionate moments that occur when we are loving and connected with each other? You will be able to have more and more of these moments as you learn how to take loving care of your own feelings so that you don’t disconnect from your partner with your protective, controlling behavior.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® process – featured on Oprah. Discover real love and intimacy! Click here for a FREE CD/DVD relationship offer: http://innerbonding.com/relationshipmicro/relationship-micro-1/ and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available.

When Should You Take It Personally?

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 01:07:09 +0000

We hear so often, “Don’t take it personally.” What does this really mean? The answer is NOT simple!

Let’s say that you are in a great mood, feeling loving and expansive, and someone – either someone close to you or a stranger like a clerk in a store – is withdrawn or attacking.

This is when it is important to not take it personally. Their behavior is coming from whatever is going on for them – they are tired, not feeling well, feeling inadequate, angry from a previous interaction, judging themselves, coming from their own fears of rejection or engulfment, and so on. When you take their behavior personally, it is because you want to believe that you have some control over their behavior. You want to believe that if only you were different, they wouldn’t treat you badly. This is a huge false belief, as you have no control over what is going on with them, and their behavior has nothing to do with you.

On the other hand, let’s say that you are in your ego wounded self, and you are shut down, harsh, attacking, blaming, or people-pleasing. When this is the case, if others are also shut down or attacking, their behavior might be personal to a certain extent. They might be taking your behavior personally and reacting to it from their own ego wounded self. While you are not causing them to react with withdrawal or attack – it is the fact that they are taking your behavior personally that is causing them to react – you are also not innocent in the interaction. So it is always important to notice your own open or closed energy to see whether their behavior is not at all about you, or whether they are being reactive with you.

Another scenario to be aware of is: if you are open and loving and another is closed and harsh, their behavior DOES affect you. Even if you do not take their behavior personally, their unloving behavior can cause some deeper core feelings of loneliness, helplessness, heartache, heartbreak, and sadness. Taking their behavior personally may be a way to cover over these deeper painful feelings, because when you tell yourself that their behavior is your fault, then you might feel anxious, depressed, guilty, or shamed. As bad as these feelings feel, they are actually easier to feel because you are the one causing them by taking their behavior personally.

Likewise, if you are the withdrawn or harsh one, and a person close to you is not taking your behavior personally and are feeling their own core painful feelings caused by your unloving behavior, they may choose not to be with you. They might not want to be with you when you are withdrawn or attacking. In this case, it is important that you DO take their behavior personally and explore what you are doing that is resulting in exactly what you likely don’t want – their moving away from you.

The bottom line is that if you are being open and loving, then it is important to never take another’s behavior personally. If you are operating from your wounded self and are withdrawn or attacking, then you might want to explore your own behavior when others are also withdrawn, attacking, or when they disengage from you because they don’t want to be around you. Your open and loving behavior is NEVER the cause of another’s unloving behavior. Your closed, withdrawn or harsh behavior is also not the cause of their closed, withdrawn or harsh behavior, but can be the cause of them not wanting to be with you, and it is important to open to learning about your own withdrawn or harsh behavior.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® process – featured on Oprah. Discover real love and intimacy! Click here for a FREE CD/DVD relationship offer: http://innerbonding.com/relationshipmicro/relationship-micro-1/ and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available.

Relationships and Emotional Connection

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 02:26:06 +0000

Do you love it when you feel deeply emotionally connected with someone? When you feel seen, understood, valued and cherished? This is what initially draws two people together and leads to falling in love.

Then what happens? Why does the connection go away?

When most people first meet, they allow each other to see only certain parts of themselves, but they often hide the deeper parts of themselves.

Why?

Because they fear being rejected for who they really are.

They fear being rejected for who they really are because they think there is something wrong with them. Believing there is something wrong with you is called core shame – the belief that there is something inherently wrong, bad, or flawed about you.

Core shame may be governing much of what you do and how you respond in your relationships. It certainly governed much of my life until I learned how to heal it.

I learned to heal it when I learned how to connect with my spiritual Guidance – my higher mind that can see the truth of who I am. As long as I was defining myself from my limited ego wounded, programmed mind, I was operating from the false belief that I was somehow not good enough.

Developing your spiritual connection is not hard. Whenever you move into a deep desire to learn about love and truth, you raise your frequency high enough to access the wisdom that is always here for you. But in order to do this, you have to really want to know the truth. As long as you are afraid of what you will learn, you will stay stuck with your core shame. I assure you that what you will learn about your true Self is how incredible you are!

The Courage to be Vulnerable and Authentic

In order to emotionally connect with another, you have to be vulnerable and authentic about your feelings, which you can’t do if you think there is something wrong with you. So before you can sustain emotional connection and intimacy, you need to heal your core shame. You will not be able to take the risk of experiencing the pain of rejection unless you are not rejecting yourself.

It takes courage to be authentic. You cannot be authentic without the willingness to be vulnerable to being hurt, and you can’t connect on a deep heart level without vulnerability and authenticity.

It is only when you deeply value who you are that you have the courage to reveal yourself authentically and risk being hurt. This is what creates deeply connected relationships. What it takes is two people who have done the work of healing their core shame so that they can share their heart and soul with each other.

Healing Core Shame

* Start with noticing how judgmental you are of yourself. Every time you notice yourself judging yourself, stop and say to yourself, “I’m not going there.” And do not judge yourself for judging yourself! Just keep noticing and stopping each time. You will find yourself judging yourself less and less and feeling better and better.

* Practice opening to learning with your Higher Self. Keep asking your Guidance with a sincere desire to learn, “Please show me what is wonderful about who I really am.” Over time, you will learn to love and cherish your true Self – your essence – for qualities such as kindness, compassion, generosity, curiosity, creativity, humor, playfulness, gentleness, inner knowing, determination, loyalty, integrity, honesty, and so on.

The more you value your true Self, the easier it will be for you to be vulnerable and authentic with the important people in your life, and create the emotional connection that we all long for.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® process – featured on Oprah. Discover real love and intimacy! Click here for a FREE CD/DVD relationship offer: http://innerbonding.com/relationshipmicro/relationship-micro-1/ and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available.

Resistance to Gratitude: Why Isn’t The Law of Attraction Working for Me?

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 17:28:21 +0000

Most of us know that expressing heartfelt gratitude is a powerful way to raise our frequency and connect with our spiritual Guidance. Yet many people rarely or never express gratitude, and when they do, it is more rote than truly heartfelt.

In a phone session with Deb, one of my clients, we were talking about this very issue. She was telling me how much trouble she has ever feeling gratitude.

“Deb, there must be a good reason you have problems feeling gratitude for what you have – your health, your home, work you love, your relationship, and your friends. What do you think is in the way of feeling grateful for what you have?”

“My life does not meet my image of what I thought my life would be like. I thought I’d have much more money, and live in a much bigger home. I thought I’d be able to travel more.”

“So until your life fits the image you created when you were younger, you can’t feel grateful for what you have?”

“Right. I just can’t find the feeling of gratitude. I feel resentful that I don’t have what I want.”

The law of attraction states that “Like attracts like.” Manifesting what we want comes from being in a high frequency of gratitude for what we have and the joy and excitement of moving ourselves toward what we want. Resentment has a low frequency, which keeps us disconnected from our ability to manifest our dreams.

“Deb, you have done enough reading about the law of attraction to know that you cannot manifest what you want from the low frequency of resentment. Yet you seem so resistant to gratitude, and you are telling me that you cannot feel gratitude because your life doesn’t fit your image of your dreams. Can you see how you are keeping yourself from being able to manifest your dreams, keeping yourself stuck where you are by your resistance?”

“Now that you say this, I can see it. I’ve always wondered why I can’t feel grateful for what I have, as I know that I have a lot. Now I understand that I’ve been so attached to my image of what I thought my life would be like that I’m not enjoying what I do have.”

Deb is not alone in being so attached to her image of her life that she is missing the joy of her life.

Are you so attached to your life being “perfect” that you are missing the joy of the moment? Are you living in the past regarding your image of your life rather than fully living your life right now?

Being in heartfelt gratitude means that you stop focusing on what you don’t have and start focusing on what you do have and on what you want for yourself in the future.

Are you trying to “control” your life from your ego wounded self who believes that resentment will somehow get you want you want? It is vitally important for you to understand that your “frequency” has everything to do with manifestation. Feelings like anxiety, depression, anger and resentment have a low frequency, while gratitude, love, excitement and joy have a high frequency. We connect with Spirit only in a high frequency. The manifestation gurus state that manifesting results from repeatedly visualizing what you want with positive emotion. I know this to be true from my own personal experience.

Gratitude is one of the most positive emotions we have. Start today to move out of the negative circle of focusing with anxiety and resentment on what you don’t have and instead focus on what you do have and what you want with gratitude, excitement and joy!

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Are you are ready to heal your pain and discover your joy? Learn Inner Bonding now! Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding Course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome, and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

The Happiness Choice

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 02:18:53 +0000

“Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.”
–Stephen R. Covey,? Author and Speaker

This is a powerful freedom. And, from my point of view, another way of putting this is that the ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide our own intent:

* To protect against pain with our controlling behavior
* To learn about what is loving to ourselves and others

When our intent is to learn about love, that is when we get to decide how others will affect us.

If my intent is to control how other people feel about me, then if they don’t like me, I will be upset. I may feel rejected or unworthy. I’ve made them responsible for my sense of worth, which then means that I have to try to control how they feel about me by being perfect, being nice, doing things right, saying the right thing, looking right, performing right, and so on. This is a very hard way to live!

When my intent is to be loving to myself, then I don’t make others responsible for me sense of worth. Instead, I define my essential worth – not by my looks or performance – but by my essential qualities of compassion, loving kindness, caring, understanding, creativity, perseverance, basic goodness, and so on. I learn to define myself, not by my programmed ego wounded mind, but through the eyes of my higher self. If someone doesn’t like me, I don’t take this personally, since I accept that I have no control over who they are or how they feel, and it is not loving to me to take their behavior personally.

When my focus is on loving myself and sharing my love with others, I behave in ways that bring me joy. While painful outside events can momentarily affect me, when my intent is to be loving to myself, I quickly move into compassion for my own feelings, bringing in the comfort of Spirit to help me move through the loneliness, heartache, heartbreak, grief, sorrow, or sadness of a situation.

This all depends on who I give authority to – my personal source of spiritual guidance, or others and events. When I give authority to others and events, then I become a victim of others and circumstances. When I give authority to my personal source of spiritual guidance, I always have access to a source of truth, peace, and joy.

MY HAPPINESS OR MISERY IS MY CHOICE, AND IT DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON MY INTENT – WHICH IS MY ULTIMATE FREE-WILL CHOICE.

The moment my intent is to control that which I cannot control, or that which is unloving toward myself, others, or the planet to control, I will create my misery. Whether I try to control my pain with various addictions to substances or processes, or I try to control my feelings by getting others approval, or I try to control others and outcomes by acting in ways that are not in integrity with that which is loving to myself and others, I will make myself unhappy. Operating from a belief that the end justifies the means will never bring me joy.

The moment my intent is to be loving to myself and others, then I will treat myself, others and the planet in ways that are in alignment with what is in my highest good and the highest good of all. Loving behavior toward myself and others always brings a deep inner sense of joy.

When you choose the intent to learn about loving yourself and others, you move yourself into personal power, integrity, and connection with the Source of wisdom, truth, and joy.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Are you are ready to heal your pain and discover your joy? Learn Inner Bonding now! Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding Course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome, and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

Beyond Misery Junk!

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 02:11:43 +0000

What creates your misery?

Junk!

What kind of junk?

Junk thoughts
Junk Food
Junk drugs

Junk Thoughts
Junk thoughts are any thoughts that create anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, blame, resentment, jealousy, envy – any thoughts that create misery.

We all have junk thoughts at times, but many people never connect their junk thoughts with their misery. They think that their misery is coming form other people, or from events or circumstances. Yet research on happiness and unhappiness shows that only about 10% of unhappiness comes from outside circumstances, while fully 50% of happiness or misery comes from your own thoughts and actions. The other 40% is genetic – i.e. some people are born with sunny dispositions while others are more serious or morose. However, the research also shows that even those who are born more serious or morose, have the choice to be happy by developing the habit of thinking thoughts and taking actions that bring them joy.

What kinds of thoughts do you have most of the time? What kinds of thought do you have as soon as you wake up on the morning? Do you think, “Oh no, another day to face. I’m too tired to do this day,” or do you think, “Thank you for this great day! I’m alive and vibrant and ready to embrace this day!” The first thought is a junk thought, guaranteed to being you misery, while that second is energizing and likely to create feelings of happiness.

Junk Food
Are you tuned in to how food affects your feelings? Do you know how sugar, too much coffee, processed devitalized pesticide-and-chemical-laden foods affect your mood? Do you know which foods allow you a good night sleep and which ones keep you up at night? Do you know which foods give you tons of energy and which ones rob you of energy?

Just as you need to start to get conscious of how your thoughts affect your feelings, you also need to attend to how food affects your feelings if you want to feel joy most of the time in your life.
While some people are more sensitive to foods than others, everyone is affected by junk food. And even healthy foods can have a bad effect if they are not right for your body. I’m very sensitive to carbs, even healthy vegetable carbs. I love my green smoothies filled with raw veggies and some fruit, but if I drink them after lunch, they keep me up at night. So each of us needs to be aware of how what we put into our bodies affects us if we want to move out of misery and into joy.

Junk Drugs
One of the things that can occur with many drugs, both recreational and prescription, is what is called a rebound effect. A rebound effect is when the drugs ends up causing the very symptom it is geared to suppress. For example, I can’t take any antihistamines because, while they work for the moment, they end up causing me to be highly allergic. It is well known that many antidepressants can cause suicidal feelings, making the person even more depressed than they were before taking the drugs. For some people, drugs for relaxation can case the very stress they are meant to heal.

It is vitally important to be conscious of the effect of anything that you put into your body. Trying to put a lid on feelings rather than addressing the junk thoughts and actions that might be causing them can keep you stuck in misery.

Happiness is a choice that we all have the power to make.

Needs vs. Neediness

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:51:04 +0000

I recently received the following request:

“Hi Dr. Paul — I would be interested in an article that talks about having needs vs. being needy.

I was brought up to be ashamed of my needs. I was supposed to be self-sufficient. As a result, I am ashamed of neediness and often don’t recognize my own needs. I also don’t know how to tell if others are “being needy” or simply expressing a need.

What I am learning is that humans are INTER-dependent and everyone has needs that can only be filled by another person. One example is the Romanian orphans who were brain damaged because they were never held or touched. In order to be healthy I need others, because I can’t hug myself.

So I can take care of myself, but I think my “self-sufficiency toolbox” isn’t complete if I can’t recognize valid needs, express them to others, and ask for help from them.

Please if you can, I would love an article that differentiates between being needy and having needs.”

The woman asking this question is referring to emotional needs – needs beyond the basic physical needs such as food, water, air, shelter, and so on.

We do not thrive without love, so I consider love a basic need. Even though we might muddle through without love, I believe that many people get ill and die from a lack of love – dying of loneliness.

Most of us know that infants and small children need love to survive. Many babies have died or, as stated above, suffered brain damage, due to not being held with love. “Failure to thrive” is the term used when an infant dies due to not being held with love.

There are times when we need another to hold us and empathically help us through core pain such as heartache and grief. There are times when we are ill and need another to soothe us. This kind of loving care is a basic need.

The sharing of love is also a basic need. However, there is a huge difference between trying to get someone else to love us, and our need to share love.

We all need to learn to bring love to ourselves through our spiritual connection. It is only when we can fill ourselves up with the Source of Love that we have love to share. When are not taking responsibility for developing our spiritual connection and learning to fill ourselves up with love, then we become needy.

When someone is not taking responsibility for their own feelings and pulling on others for attention and approval, they are being needy. You know they are being needy because it feels like they are draining you rather than sharing with you. You know you are being needy when you feel empty inside and upset with others when you don’t get what you want from them.

Part of taking loving care of ourselves is to recognize our need to share love and reach out to others who also want to share love. But asking for help from an empty place, hoping that another person will fill you up and make you feel worthy and safe, is needy. We are needy when we emotionally abandon ourselves and expect others to give us what we are not giving to ourselves. We are legitimately asking to have a need met when we reach out to others to share love, or to receive the help we might need to heal. Our need to share love can only be met by another person.

The difference between need and needy is mostly about energy. We are needy when we are empty because we have abandoned ourselves by not taking responsibility for our own feelings. We are expressing a need when we are taking loving care of ourselves and sharing our love with others, or reaching out for legitimate help. While the actions of need and neediness may look the same, then energy behind the actions are completely different.

How do you Define Success?

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 06:29:54 +0000

Take a moment to go inside and see how you define success. Is your success defined by:

How much money you have?
Having a big house and an expensive car?
How expensive your clothes are?
Traveling first class on airlines?
How attractive you are?
How attractive your partner is?
How famous you are?
Winning or being the best at something?
How many beautiful people want to have sex with you?
How many friends you have?
How much attention and approval you get?

Unfortunately, the media often supports defining success in many of the above ways.

But are you successful just because you have a lot of money, even if you had to use others to get it? What if you made millions and others suffered as a result of your choices? What if you live in a big house and drive an expensive car but find it difficult to be loving to your partner or your children – or to yourself?

What if you defined success by how much to you contribute to another or to society? What if you define success by how kind you are to yourself and to others and by what you contribute to the world? What if success is not defined by how many widgets you sell, but by how many people you help and how joyful you are?

There are many people who find it easy to make money, or achieve fame but find it very difficult to be kind to themselves and to the people closest to them. There are many people who are outwardly successful yet act out in ways that are harmful to themselves and others. Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, and OJ Simpson come to mind of people who achieved everything but never defined success and inner worth by being loving to themselves and to their families. Instead they defined success by getting sex or by whom they possessed.

What if these people had defined their success and their sense of worth by how well they took loving care of themselves, how kind they were to their families, and how much they contributed to society? Would they have chosen to harm themselves and others to fill their emptiness and avoid the pain that they were causing by their own self-abandonment?

Another example is Michael Jackson, who was incredibly unkind to himself, constantly distorting himself rather than learning to be kind and accepting toward himself. If he had learned to fully embrace his true Self and to define his worth and success by his ability to love rather than by his looks or approval, he might be alive today.

The movie industry is riddled with stars who have everything – money, fame, looks, admiration – and who struggle with various addictions, such as alcohol, drugs, food, and sex. We see various stars on TV, constantly losing and gaining weight, or going in and out of rehab. Why are they so unhappy and empty that they keep turning to addictions?

Obviously, everything they have externally does nothing to fill the void INTERNALLY. External success actually does nothing to fill the inner emptiness that leads to substance abuse, sexual addiction, and other forms of addiction, as well as to anger, blame and rage. External success is great for financial security and freedom to do whatever you want, but being a truly joyful person demands a different definition of success.

What if love, kindness, generosity, caring, compassion, empathy, and understanding toward ourselves and others, and helpful contributions to society were lauded as the hallmarks of success? What if our newspapers and news channels devoted their stories to people who had learned how to truly love themselves enough to be able to extend their love out to others and contribute to the good of the planet? What if supporting our own highest good and the highest good of all was valued more than money? What if kindness – to yourself and with others – was your guiding light?

The chances are that you would know, deep within your soul, that you are a huge success – that you are doing what you came to this planet to do!

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Are you are ready to heal your pain and discover your joy? Learn Inner Bonding now! Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding Course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome, and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

Women Who Wish Their Spouses Would Die

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 04:00:17 +0000

“I feel awful saying this,” Mary told me during one of our phone counseling sessions, “but I often wish my husband would die. I feel like a terrible person saying this, but I think about it a lot.”

“I hear this fairly often,” I responded. “You are thinking this, not because you are a terrible person, but because you feel trapped and you don’t know how to get out of the trap.”

“But my husband is a really nice person and he loves me. Yet all I want to do is get away.”

Mary consulted with me because she was deeply depressed. Through our work together, it became apparent that Mary had completely lost herself in her marriage. While her husband was a “nice” person, he was also a very needy person who took no responsibility for his own feelings and needs. Mary felt constantly pulled on to fill him up and make him feel okay about himself. She was exhausted and drained.

Angie, another one of my clients, also fantasized about her husband dying. Angie’s husband was not nice like Mary’s husband. Instead he was an angry, blaming man who often attacked Angie for not doing what he wanted her to do. Angie was emotionally battered and bruised from the constant verbal abuse, and not only fantasized about her husband dying, but often had suicidal thoughts.

Why didn’t these women leave rather than wish their husbands would die or think about killing themselves?

Sometimes women don’t leave because of money, and sometimes because of children, but this was not the case with either of Mary or Angie. Mary and Angie wouldn’t leave because they felt completely responsible for their husband’s feelings. They knew that even if they left, they would still feel responsible. In their minds the only way out for them was for them to kill themselves or for their husbands to die.

Fortunately, there is another way out of feeling so trapped. The way out is to let go of responsibility for others’ feelings and start to take responsibility for their own feelings. However, for many people, this is a huge challenge.

Both Mary and Angie had been deeply programmed as children to be caretakers. Their sense of worth was completely tied into being “selfless”, which they equated with being loving. In their minds, taking care of themselves instead of caretaking others was selfish – and therefore wrong. The thought of taking care of themselves rather than caretaking their husbands left them feeling unbearably guilty. This is what was causing them to feel so trapped.

Through their Inner Bonding work with me, Mary and Angie discovered that caretaking is a form of control – that rather than loving their husbands, they were giving themselves up to get approval or avoid disapproval. They were shocked to realize that they, like their husbands, were also making their husbands responsible for their feelings.

Through practice, they gradually learned to take responsibility for their own feelings and let go of responsibility for their husband’s feelings. They learned to take time for themselves, speak up for themselves, and trust their own feelings. In the course of learning to love themselves, they found that they could express love to their husbands without taking responsibility for their husband’s feelings. The more they let go of responsibility for their husband’s feelings, the freer they felt to love themselves and love their husbands.

Without their wives constantly taking responsibility for them, both their husbands gradually learned to take more responsibility for themselves.

Both Mary and Angie are still married to their same husbands and they no longer feel trapped, drained, or depressed – and they no longer want their husbands to die!.

Hurt Feelings vs. Hurt Heart

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:22:28 +0000

Clifford, 42, married with children, told me during a phone session that he was tired of not feeling happy and joyous.

“As a small child, I remember being so happy and excited about life. But my parents didn’t receive me at all. They were indifferent to my creativity and excitement.”

“Clifford, how did you feel when they didn’t receive you?”

“Shattered.”

Yes, shattered. And the shattered feeling was too big for a sensitive little boy, so Clifford learned to put a lid on his joy to protect himself from feeling shattered.

He also learned to protect himself by taking his parents’ indifference personally, deciding that he wasn’t good enough or important enough to be received.

Hurt Feelings

Clifford learned to take his parents’ rejection personally as a way to feel in control of their unloving behavior: “It’s my fault,” he told himself as a small child, “that they are not loving me, so if I can just figure out the right way to be, I can get love and avoid pain.” When he took his parents’ behavior personally, his feelings got hurt. He learned to prefer getting his feelings hurt rather than experience feeling shattered.

If you look inside, you may discover that underneath hurt feelings is a deeper hurt – the kind of hurt that feels shattering.

When you are in your wounded ego self, it is easy to have your feelings hurt from telling yourself that you are wrong or bad or that it is your fault that you are being treated unlovingly. You feel hurt feelings whenever you take another’s unloving behavior personally.

We all had to create our wounded selves to survive childhood, because the shattered feeling of a hurt heart was way too big for our little bodies to handle. We might have died or gone crazy if we had not been able to create our ego wounded selves.

Hurt Heart

Now, as adults, we all need to revisit the heart hurt that we have been protecting against all these years. Heart hurt is the authentic core feeling that is under our hurt feelings.

Heart hurt = loneliness, heartache, heartbreak, sorrow, sadness, and grief in response to the loss of loved ones, to others’ unloving behavior toward us and others, to helplessness over others’ unloving behavior toward us and others, and to our own unloving behavior toward ourselves and others.

These are the feelings that were too hard to feel as a small child. These are the feelings we now need to feel and show up for as a kind and compassionate loving Adult. These are the feelings that all addictive and controlling behavior cover up.

The moment we try to cover these feelings, we are in our wounded self. When we decide to feel our authentic feelings, we open to our core self with deep kindness and compassion for our hurt heart.

The Power and Freedom of Living Our Truth

As long as you do not have the courage to feel the heart hurt, you will continue to give yourself up, get angry, blaming and defensive, and turn to substances and activities to avoid your authentic feelings.

Yet when you finally decide to be with your truth and feel the heart hurt of others’ unloving behavior, and of your own unloving behavior toward yourself and others, you are well on the journey toward personal power and emotional freedom.

Heart hurt HURTS – a lot. Which is why we avoid it. But when we learn to connect with our spiritual Guidance and embrace it with love, kindness, and compassion, we can learn to manage it. When we do, we move beyond fear and dependency and into our power and freedom.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Are you are ready to heal your pain and discover your joy? Learn Inner Bonding now! Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding Course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome, and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

Healing Social Phobia

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:09:20 +0000

What is Social Phobia?

Social phobia – or social anxiety – is the fear of interacting with others in various situations: groups, work, school, parties, on the telephone, in a market or store, and so on. People with social phobia experience extreme anxiety or panic when they know that they have to talk or interact with others. They often find themselves isolating rather than risk the rejection or ridicule that they fear.

People with social phobia may be saying things to themselves such as:

What if I make a fool of myself?
What if I can’t think of anything to say?
What if I say something stupid?
What if people think I’m weird?
What if no one wants to talk with me?
What if everyone can see how nervous I am?
What if I blush?

Social phobia comes from an extreme fear of being judged and rejected by others. The fear may turn to panic when in the presence of an authority figure.

What Causes Social Phobia?

Imagine that you have a small child whom you are taking to a birthday party of peers. Imagine that you tell the child before the party, “You must make sure that you do everything right so that the people at the party like you, because if they don’t like you, then you are unlovable and worthless.” Do you think this would cause the child to be very anxious?

You would probably never say this to an actual child, yet this is what you are saying to yourself – to the child within you, which is your feeling self. You are telling yourself that your worth is determined by others liking you or rejecting you: if they like you, you are okay, and if they don’t, you are worthless.

This is self-abandonment, and is the root cause of social phobia.

Self-Abandonment

You are abandoning yourself when you refuse to define your own worth and lovability and instead make others responsible for your sense of worth. You are abandoning yourself when you refuse to take responsibility for your own feelings and instead make others responsible for your feelings of anxiety or safety. Once you make others responsible – especially authority figures whose acceptance you desperately want – there is no way you will not be anxious when with them.

Once you hand away to others the responsibility for making you feel okay, then you have to try to control how they feel about you by doing everything “right.” Trying to control how others feel about you always causes anxiety. Your anxiety is letting you know that you have abandoned yourself and that you are trying to do something you cannot do – which is to control whether or not others accept you or reject you.

When you are not giving to yourself the acceptance, approval, and attention you need to feel lovable and worthy, then you will invariably try to get approval, acceptance and attention from others, which creates much anxiety.

Healing Social Phobia

Healing social phobia is about learning to love yourself – to accept and value yourself and to take responsibility for your own feelings. People who love themselves go into social situations to share their caring with others. When you feel good about yourself, you want to offer your smile, your interest, your attention, and your caring to others. You are far more concerned with what you want go GIVE to others than with what you want to GET or what you want to AVOID.

If you want to heal your social phobia, then you need to do the Inner Bonding work necessary to stop judging yourself and start loving yourself.

A Different Kind of New Year’s Resolution

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:27:19 +0000

There are two kinds of New Year’s Resolutions:

1. What you are going to do to accomplish your goals

2. Who you want to be

Many New Year’s Resolutions are of the first kind:

I’m going to lose 25 pounds this year
I’m going to exercise every day
I’m going to learn self-discipline
I’m going to double my income
I’m going to learn to fly
I’m going to take piano lessons

And so on….

I’m not at all diminishing these kinds of resolutions. It is often very helpful to set these kinds of goals for ourselves.

But perhaps this year, you can add another kind of New Year’s Resolution – the who-you-want-to-be kind.

Who You Want To Be Resolutions

What if your primary resolutions had to do with your thoughts and actions toward yourself and others? What if these resolutions centered around being loving rather than achieving something? What might these resolutions be?

I’m going to become aware of my judgments toward myself and others and how I feel inside when I’m judgmental.
When I’m angry, I’m going to go off by myself and take care of my own feelings rather than dump my anger on others.
I’m going to stop taking others’ behavior personally and instead embrace the loneliness and heartache I feel when others are uncaring.
I’m going to remember to be grateful for every small blessing rather than complain about what I don’t have.
I will make being loving more important than avoiding the pain of rejection.
I will attend to the painful life feelings of loneliness, heartache, heartbreak, grief, sorrow, and helplessness over others with deep compassion for my self rather than turning to addictions to numb them.
I will keep my heart open to learning about what is loving to me and to others rather than close my heart to protect against the pain of life.
I will be warm, kind and respectful toward everyone I meet, even if I don’t personally connect with them.
I will take loving care of my body, the house of my soul.
I will allow my higher self to guide me in what is in my highest good and the highest good of others, rather than allow my ego wounded self to be in charge of my thoughts and actions.
I will take the time to be with those I love and express my love for them.
I will remember to stay connected with my inner guidance, my feelings, so that I can take full responsibility for them.
I will choose to love, even when I am afraid. I make love more important than control, than being right, than winning.
I will attend to what brings my joy.
I will be true to myself, neither giving myself up to others, nor expecting others to give themselves up to me.
I will support my own highest good and the highest good of others, never deliberately acting in ways that harm me or harm others.
I will be honest and trustworthy with myself and others, never compromising my integrity as a soul.
I will constantly keep in mind what I want to contribute to others rather than what I want to get from others.

I’m sure you can think of many more who-you-want-to-be resolutions. Why not take some time right now to write them out?

Imagine the world we would have if each of us made loving ourselves and others our highest priority – higher than fame, higher than fortune, higher than being the best, higher than winning or being right, higher than avoiding the painful feelings of life. Imagine the world we would have if we learned to love as God loves, to be the unconditional love that is God.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Are you are ready to heal your pain and discover your joy? Learn Inner Bonding now! Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding Course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome, and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

The Silent Treatment

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:20:38 +0000

Research indicates that children would rather be yelled at than ignored.

When prisoners are being punished, they are put in isolation, because being isolated is one of the harshest punishments there is – other than physical abuse.

The silent treatment is a form of punishment, a way to attempt to control children and partners into doing what you want them to do. It is a withdrawal of approval, and can cause much fear in people who are vulnerable to this.

You are giving people the silent treatment when you shut down to them, closing your heart and refusing to interact with them or acknowledge their presence. You act as if they are invisible, not responding to them at all or giving them a very minimal and withheld response. Your hope in treating them this way is that they will get the message that they have displeased you. They have done something wrong in your eyes and deserve to be punished, deserve to have your “love” taken away.

Of course, what you are taking away is not love at all, since love is unconditional. What you are taking away is your approval, and for children and approval-dependent adults, it is a powerful form of control.

The Consequences

While it may seem to you to work for the moment, there are huge negative consequences following the silent treatment. Children feel unloved and unlovable, developing deep beliefs about their inadequacy. While they may comply to avoid your withdrawal of approval, inwardly they are likely to feel lonely and heartbroken – feelings that they can’t handle – so they become angry and resistant to manage the feelings. Their anger and resistance may show up in others areas that cause problems for them and for you.

While your partner may scurry around to try to please you and get you to reconnect with him or her, the fact that you have so deeply disconnected creates feelings of heartache in your partner that may eventually lead to the end of the relationship. What seems to work for the moment may lead to exactly what you don’t want in the long run.

When Your Partner is Punishing you With the Silent Treatment

What goes on inside you when your partner shuts down to you?

Do you tell yourself you must have done something wrong?
Do you feel a sense of loneliness and heartache that feels unbearable?
Do you feel alone and abandoned inside?
Do you feel anxious and scared?

If you feel any of these, it is really because you are abandoning yourself and making your partner responsible for you. It is you doing this that is allowing the silent treatment to work to control you.

If you were taking loving care of yourself and taking 100% responsibility for your own feelings, here is what would be going on inside:

You would be telling yourself: “My partner is choosing to punish me rather than take responsibility for his or her feelings. Whatever I may or may not have done that he or she doesn’t like, I am not responsible for how he or she is dealing with it, and I have no control over him or her.

You would be bringing love inside, letting yourself know that you are a good person and deserving of love.

You would get out of range of your partner’s energy – taking a walk, reading a book, calling a friend, or doing something else to make yourself happy.

You would keep your own heart open, not going into anger or judgment toward your partner, so that when your partner decides to open again, there is no residue for you. You would not punish your partner for trying to punish you. You would just make sure that their punishment doesn’t work for them.

You would embrace your loneliness and heartache with deep compassion for yourself, sitting with these feelings for a few minutes and then releasing them to Spirit.

Eventually, when you are truly taking loving care of yourself, others will stop using the silent treatment, since it will no longer work for them.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Are you are ready to heal your pain and discover your joy? Learn Inner Bonding now! Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding Course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome, and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

Who Do you Want to be this Christmas?

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:18:49 +0000

Christmas is almost here and you get to decide who you want to be.

I don’t mean if you want to be Santa Claus. I mean what kind of person do you want to be? Do you want to be a person who chooses your actions according to your fears of rejection, of getting hurt, of ridicule, or of being taken advantage of? Or do you want to be a person who chooses your actions from your deep desire to be a kind, loving, caring person?

We all have free will to choose who we want to be each and every moment. Your choice of who you want to be comes from your choice of intent: to be controlling to protect yourself from your fears, or to be loving, and open to learning about loving. Your intent determines whether you are a warm, open, kind and caring person, or whether you are a closed, defensive, hard, or angry person.

Your intent also determines how you end up feeling. While you might want to believe that it is others’ rejection and uncaring behavior that cause your anxiety, depression, hurt feelings or anger, it is actually your own choice of who you want to be that causes these feelings. While others’ choices to be unloving can cause sadness, loneliness, heartache and heartbreak, if your choice is to protect against feeling these feelings and taking responsibility for nurturing them, then you will likely close off in reaction to others unloving behavior. It is 100% your choice to close off or to stay open and take responsibility for your own feelings.

Actually, you get to decide who you want to be each moment, not only during Christmas. But why not use Christmas as an opportunity to look deep inside and see who you have chosen to be most of the year? And, are you going to decide to take the risk of loving yourself and others just during the holidays, or all year?

Perhaps there a part of you inside who says, “If I’m open and caring, I will be too vulnerable to being hurt and used.”

The ego wounded part of us often believes that it is stupid to be open-hearted – that it leaves us too vulnerable to being hurt and walked over.

Yet the opposite is true. Here’s why:

In order to be truly open, loving, and caring with others, you have to first be open, loving and caring with yourself. If you are giving to others without first taking loving care of yourself, then you will likely have an agenda attached to what you give. When you have not taken responsibility for filling yourself up with love, then you are likely giving to others to get love from them. This makes you very vulnerable to rejection and to being used.

However, when you are truly devoted to being loving to yourself, you develop a strong, powerful inner loving adult who is fully capable of not taking rejection personally and of setting limits against being used or taken advantage of. When you are taking loving care of yourself, you would never reject yourself by giving yourself away to avoid others’ rejection.

This holiday season, take a chance and devote yourself to being loving to yourself and others. Consciously shift out of your intent to protect against being hurt or used and into the intent to be open and caring with yourself and others. You will be deeply rewarded by a wonderful sense of inner peace, fulfillment, and personal power!

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Are you are ready to heal your pain and discover your joy? Learn Inner Bonding now! Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding Course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome, and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

Why Do Men Change After Sex?

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:24:42 +0000

“Why do men so often change after sex?” asked Shelley in our first phone session.

“Tell me what you mean by this. What has been your experience?” I asked her.

“I meet a guy who I like. We are very attracted to each other – lots of great chemistry. It doesn’t take long before he is pushing for sex, and I want to have sex too. But most of the time I don’t hear from him again after having sex. Even if I wait a couple of months to have sex, this still happens. They seem so into me before sex and then completely lose interest after sex. I don’t get it.”

“Shelley, what are you looking for in a relationship?”

“What everyone wants – someone to love me, to make me feel safe and secure, someone to make me feel good inside.”

“Well, this is why men keep leaving you after sex. We attract people at our common level of woundedness. You are needy – looking for someone to love you and make you feel okay. As long as you are needy, you will attract another needy person. Like you, he is also hoping that you will fill him up and make him feel good. He is hoping that sex will do this for him, and when it doesn’t, he moves on. And it never can, since feeling loved and full and good inside comes from loving ourselves – not from being loved or from having sex.

“Until you learn to love yourself and take responsibility for making yourself feel good inside, this will continue to happen.”

“If I learn to love myself, why would I want a relationship?”

“To share love, and to learn and grow with a partner. When you learn to love yourself, you have lots of love to share and you get great joy out of sharing it with a loved one. When you learn to love yourself, you then attract a man who loves himself, and the two of you are able to share love, which is the highest experience in life. There is a huge difference between trying to get love and wanting to share love.”

“How do I learn to love myself?”

“This is what the Inner Bonding process is all about. It is a 6 Step roadmap for learning to love yourself. The first step is learning to be aware of your feelings and wanting responsibility for them. Instead of looking to a man to take away your aloneness and emptiness, your anxiety and insecurity, you decide that you want responsibility for learning how you are abandoning yourself that is causing these feelings.”

“I don’t think I can learn to love and take care of myself. My parents didn’t love me and I have no idea how to do this.”

“I understand. Most of us were not loved in the way we needed to be loved, but all of us can learn to do this. I assure you that you are capable of learning to love yourself. It takes time and practice, but you can learn to do this. And it is the only way that you will eventually create a loving relationship with a man. It has to start with a loving relationship with yourself. People always treat us the way we treat ourselves, so as long as you are abandoning yourself, you will feel abandoned by others.”

Shelley decided to learn how to love herself. It took time and practice for her to shift out of self-abandonment and into self-love, but she will tell you that it was well worth all the time and effort. Not only is she happy within herself now, but she also has a loving husband with their first child on the way.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including “Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?” and “Healing Your Aloneness.” She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a free Inner Bonding course:http://www.innerbonding.com or email her at margaret@innerbonding.com . Phone sessions available.

Enjoy that? Discover lots more of Margaret’s excellent articles here in our Inner Bonding section.

When is it Helpful to Apologize?

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:37:15 +0000

“When it is helpful to apologize?” asked Patricia, a client of mine, in one of our phone sessions. Her husband, Brent, often expected her to apologize and she was confused about when it was appropriate.

The answer to this question is a little complex, because there are two different reasons that people apologize:

Sometimes people apologize to try to have control over the other person. If the other person has indicated that they expect an apology and you give it to them, whether or not you feel apologetic or feel that you have anything to apologize for, then you are trying to have control over how the other person feels about you.The problem with apologizing with the intent to control is that you have to give yourself up to do it, and this will always make you feel badly inside. Giving yourself up gives yourself the message that how the other person feels about you is more important than being true to yourself. So, even if the other person is happy with you that you apologized, you may feel some depression as a result of compromising your own integrity.

The other reason people apologize is because they genuinely feel badly about something they did. They apologize because it is loving to themselves to acknowledge their own unloving behavior. They apologize out of caring for themselves and for the person they are apologizing to. This apology is coming from a sense of integrity and leads to feeling peaceful within.

“Patricia, while it may seem helpful to apologize to appease Brent, in the long run it is anything but helpful. While it may calm things for the moment, in the long run it sets up a codependent system where Brent is making you responsible for his feelings. You have to apologize for him to feel okay or feel loving toward you. It is not your responsibility to care-take his feelings.

“On the other hand, if you have behaved in a way that you are not happy with, then it is taking responsibility for your own feelings to sincerely apologize to Brent.”

“So it is loving to apologize when I’m doing it for me, but not when I’m doing it for him?”

“Well, it is loving when you are doing it for both of you, but not just for him. When you are doing it just for him, then you are allowing him to control you and you are being compliant as a way to control him, which will never make you feel good inside or foster a loving relationship.”

“But what if he demands an apology before he will be loving to me?”

“Then he is making you responsible for his feelings, and by apologizing, you are making him responsible for your feelings. You are abandoning yourself to try to get love, rather than being loving to yourself. If you genuinely feel that you didn’t do anything for which you need to apologize, then it is loving to yourself to let go of whether or not he is being loving to you and accept the responsibility of being loving to yourself.”

“Oh, I get it! If I apologize to get him to be loving to me, even when I feel that I haven’t done anything wrong, then I am abandoning myself and trying to control him instead of being true to myself. No wonder I feel so badly when I do that! It’s been confusing because it’s very easy for me to apologize when I’ve been hurtful to him and it makes me feel good to do that, but apologizing when he is demanding it and I know that I have done nothing to apologize for makes me feel awful inside. Thanks for the clarity!”

Is Your Partner Always Pointing Out Your Flaws?

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:42:28 +0000

Some people believe that it is caring to point out their partner’s flaws – that it will help to make that person a better person. But the intent behind pointing out flaws is not loving – it is controlling.

Pointing Out Flaws

By pointing out flaws, you hope that your partner will let go of the things that you don’t like and become more the person you want him or her to be. Now, be honest with yourself – is it working?

Your partner might have one of two major responses to your judgments.

1. He or she might try very hard to become what you want them to be, thereby losing themselves. You might find that the more your partner tries to comply with your wishes, the less attractive he or she becomes to you. People who give themselves up are generally seen as doormats – not as personally powerful and attractive people. So, while your partner might try to change to be what you think you want him or her to be, you might find yourself losing interest.

2. Your partner might be a person who hates being controlled – hates being told what to do and how to be. When this is the case, he or she might shut down to you, resisting being controlled by you.

Since neither of these foster close, loving, intimate relationships – ask yourself again: Is it working?

Having Your Flaws Pointed Out

Are you with a partner that is always pointing out what he or she thinks is “wrong” with you? How do you respond to this? Are you the compliant type or the resistant type? How is this affecting you and your relationship?

Neither compliance nor resistance is loving to yourself. In both of these responses, you are abandoning yourself. It is obvious to see that giving yourself up is a form of self-abandonment. It is actually a form of control, the hope being that if you form yourself into who you think your partner wants you to be, he or she will love you. Now, honestly, is it working?

It may be harder to see that resistance is also a form of self-abandonment. Instead of being who you are and doing what you want to do, you are reactive to your partner, resisting being controlled by him or her. It is actually another form of giving yourself up because you are not doing what you want to do but instead just resisting what the other person wants. Again, be honest with yourself – it is working to create a loving relationship? Is it working to create a sense of personal self-worth?

Taking Loving Care of Yourself

This unloving relationship system can change! As the one who judges, you need to learn to take your eyes off trying to change your partner and put them on yourself – on how to take loving care of yourself regardless of what your partner is doing. You need to accept that trying to control your partner by pointing out flaws only creates a lack of intimacy.

As the one who is being judged, you need to stop being a reactor and start speaking up for yourself. You might feel terrific if, instead of complying or resisting, you were to say something like, “I’m not available to be judged by you. When you want to be accepting, let me know. Meanwhile, I’m going to (read a book, take a walk, go out with a friend, etc.).” We train people how to treat us, and by no longer being reactive to being judged and instead taking loving care of yourself, you might find that your partner gives up pointing out your flaws!

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including “Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?” and “Healing Your Aloneness.” She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a free Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or email her at margaret@innerbonding.com . Phone sessions available.

Enjoy that? Discover lots more of Margaret’s excellent articles here in our Inner Bonding section.

High Maintenance Relationships

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:47:03 +0000

What is a high maintenance relationship? A high maintenance relationship is when someone is making you responsible for him or her in various different areas of life.

Emotional High Maintenance

When a person takes no responsibility for their own feelings of safety, security, worth, lovability, wellbeing, or happiness, they are high maintenance.

Elizabeth wants constant approval, attention, and affection from her husband, William. When he is busy with work or his hobbies, she calls him incessantly, whining about when he is going to have time for her. At least a couple of times a week, she insists they talk about their relationship and proceeds to blame him for her unhappiness. But no matter how much approval or attention William gives her, she is never happy for long. Because she takes no responsibility for her own feelings, her happiness is totally dependent on William. Elizabeth is emotionally high maintenance.

Daniel needs things just the way they “should” be. If the kids are too noisy or the house isn’t in order, he blows up at his wife, Sophia. Daniel takes no responsibility for the inner self-abandonment that creates his need to be in control over everything. He makes his wife and children completely responsible for his feelings of emptiness and aloneness that are the result of his self-abandonment. Daniel is emotionally high maintenance.

Financial High Maintenance

When Anthony married Olivia, he was trying to get his acting career going and Olivia was earning a lot of money in finance. At first she had no problem supporting Anthony in his passion, but within a couple of years, Anthony had stopped looking for acting jobs and was living high off of Olivia’s salary. When Olivia consulted me for counseling, she was thinking about divorce. Anthony was constantly demanding more and more money for the things he felt he needed to be happy – and to cover up the deep insecurity that resulted from his inner abandonment. Anthony is financially high maintenance.

Brenda can never have enough clothes, shoes, and purses. And she never seems to have anything to wear. Her identity is completely tied up in how she looks and her material possessions. She takes no responsibility for her inner sense of safety and security. When her husband, Alex, refused to buy her a bigger house, she become enraged and threatened divorce. She is constantly judging Alex for not making enough money, even though Alex does very well. Brenda is financially high maintenance.

Sexually High Maintenance

Brad had learned when he was young to be harshly judgmental of himself, and he took no responsibility for the pain this caused him. Instead, he was constantly demanding that his wife, Emma, make him feel better by having sex with him. Brad uses his wife and sex to take away the pain that he is causing by his own self-abandonment. Brad is sexually and emotionally high maintenance.

Chloe grew up getting a lot of attention for her looks, which she now sees as her value. Emotionally self-abandoning, she looks to her husband, Matthew, to make her feel lovable by having sex with her. She often comes on to Matthew and then gets angry when he is not turned on to her. While Matthew used to be very attracted to Chloe, now he feels pulled on to make her feel loved and worthy. Chloe is sexually and emotionally high maintenance.

As the Partner

If you have a partner who is high maintenance, you need to realize that you, too, are not taking responsibility for your own feelings. Instead, you are enabling your partner to continue to turn to you for his or her sense of worth, security, lovability, and so on. As long as you are taking responsibility for your partner, you are not taking responsibility for yourself.

I encourage you to stop caretaking your partner, which is not loving to either of you, and start learning how to be loving to yourself – which is the very best thing you can do for yourself and for your partner!

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including “Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?” and “Healing Your Aloneness.” She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a free Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or email her at margaret@innerbonding.com . Phone sessions available.

Enjoy that? Discover lots more of Margaret’s excellent articles here in our Inner Bonding section.

Relationships: Cheating

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:43:36 +0000

“Why would my boyfriend cheat on me?”
“I’m pretty sure my wife is cheating on me. I want to know why.”
“I know that my husband has been cheating on me for years. I don’t get why he does this.”

Why do people cheat on their partners? Why do others have affairs that their partners know about? Here are some of the reasons for cheating that I have encountered in my many years of counseling.

- Ed has been cheating on his wife for years. Ed is addicted to the thrill of conquest. It is not actually the sex he is after, but the sense of power he feels when he is able to get a woman in bed with him. Because Ed takes no responsibility for his own feelings and sense of worth, he uses women to fill him and define him. It has nothing to do with his wife – it is all about his lack of responsibility for his own neediness.

- Eloise cheats on her husband because she is seeking the attention from men that she refuses to give to herself. Eloise is constantly giving herself up to her husband and then blaming him for her unhappiness. Like Ed, Eloise takes no responsibility for her own feelings and needs. She seeks validation through sex and attention outside of her marriage because she refuses to learn to love herself. Eloise’s cheating has nothing to do with her husband.

- Max is terrified of intimacy. While he claims to love his girlfriend, he has a deep fear of being controlled by a woman. Instead of taking responsibility for his fears and developing a loving adult aspect of himself who is capable of setting limits against engulfment, his way of avoiding this fear is to have affairs. His cheating has nothing to do with his girlfriend.
Here are some reasons for having affairs that their partners know about, which cannot be called cheating since they are being honest about it:

- Gene and Gloria married after being long-time friends. They hoped that the passion would develop between them, but it never did. They care deeply about each other but they have no chemistry. While Gene is fine with this, Gloria isn’t and has a second relationship that meets her needs for passion and romance. Gene knows about this and accepts it.

- Roger has been with Edith for 30 years. While he loves her and doesn’t want to leave her and break up their family, they have little in common and little to say to each other. Roger has another relationship with Angie – a deeply connected emotionally and sexually intimate relationship. Edith knows about this, as Roger spends half his time with Angie. While Edith doesn’t like this, she has accepted it rather than end their marriage.
What I see is that there are basically two major reasons people have affairs, the first being far more prevalent than the second:

They are addicted to getting filled up and getting their sense of worth through sex or conquest. They are needy people who emotionally abandon themselves and use sex or power to fill the inner black hole that comes from their self-abandonment. These people generally have multiple affairs.

They are in a long-term marriage that they don’t want to leave, but the marriage is completely unfulfilling. These people do not have multiple affairs, but have a committed relationship with another person while staying married. Their partners generally know about it.

Most people who cheat are unwilling to do the inner work necessary to fill their own inner emptiness. Their cheating is addictive, and it is likely that they are also participating in other addictions to fill their emptiness – smoking, drinking, drugs, spending, gambling, food, work, TV, and so on. Until they decide to learn how to love themselves and take responsibility for their own feelings, it is unlikely that they will stop cheating.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including “Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?” and “Healing Your Aloneness.” She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a free Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or email her at margaret@innerbonding.com . Phone sessions available.

Enjoy that? Discover lots more of Margaret’s excellent articles here in our Inner Bonding section.

Giving Up: Have You Given Up on Yourself?

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 20:32:14 +0000

“I feel like giving up,” Emma told me in our first phone session. “I’ve worked and worked on myself and I’m still miserable. I’ve had years of therapy and I still feel unbearably depressed. Nothing is working.”

“It sounds to me like you are abandoning yourself.”

“What do you mean? I take good care of myself. I eat well, exercise daily, work hard and take care of finances – in fact I’m doing really well financially – and I pamper myself. I get massages, get my nails done, and buy beautiful clothes. I have a nice house, a caring husband, and two wonderful children. I DO take care of myself, which is why I feel like giving up. I don’t get why you are telling me that I’m abandoning myself.”

“What are you feeling right now?”

“Miserable and angry at you for not understanding.”

“Are you willing to take responsibility for being the cause of your anger and misery?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you willing to know that you are the cause of your misery and anger and to learn what you are doing to cause it?”

“Okay, but I don’t know what to do.”

“Emma, do you have any kind of spiritual connection?”

“No, I don’t believe in God.”

“I’d like you to imagine your own higher self – an older, wiser version of you. Are you willing to do that?”

“Okay.”

“Right now, just take a deep breath and imagine that you are sitting with a very unhappy child. Focus in your heart and imagine that your older, wiser self is with you. Ask her to bring compassion into your heart for your unhappy inner child. Find a place in you that really wants to learn about what you are thinking and doing that is causing your inner child to be so unhappy. Now ask your inner child out loud, ‘What am I thinking or doing that is causing you to be so unhappy?’”

Emma did this.

“Now allow your feeling self, which is your inner child, to answer you. Move into your unhappiness and allow that part of you to speak.”

Emma’s child: “You don’t even know I exist. You never pay any attention to me. You never listen to me. You judge me all the time. You are constantly telling me I’m not doing things right and that I’m not good enough.”

Emma was stunned. “Wow! That’s right! I am always judging myself. Is this what is causing my misery?”

“Yes, it’s part of it. Not only are you judging yourself, but then you ignore how you feel when you judge yourself. Then you project out on to others the fact that you are judging yourself and not listening to or understanding yourself. You got angry at me for not understanding you, which is a projection of you not understanding you. These are all ways you are abandoning yourself, which is what is causing your unhappiness. Now, ask your Guidance – your older wiser self – what you need to do so that your inner child starts to feel loved by you.”

Emma asks. “She says that I need to stop judging myself.”

“Emma, I suggest that you start to notice your judgments without judging yourself for judging yourself. You cannot stop something that you are not aware of doing. So just start to notice.”

Emma did start to notice, which enabled her to gradually become less judgmental of herself. As Emma learned and practiced the Inner Bonding process, she stopped abandoning herself and learned to treat herself with love.

“You know what?” she said to me in a phone session. “I feel joy for the first time in my life!”

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including “Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?” and “Healing Your Aloneness.” She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a free Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or email her at margaret@innerbonding.com . Phone sessions available.

Enjoy that? Discover lots more of Margaret’s excellent articles here in our Inner Bonding section.