There’s this falsehood that many people who are in the process of improving their self-esteem, addressing unhealthy or redundant habits, or who are thinking about doing any of these things, subscribe to, and it’s this idea that once we tackle whatever it is that we think has held us back and even “grow up” as such, that we will not be knocked by things anymore. We believe that once we do what we feel that we need to, that we won’t be put to the test. But, how would we know that we have the courage to deal with things and how would we know the length and breadth of what we’ve learned, unless these on-the-job training lessons are put to the test on occasion?

In the almost ten years since I embarked on my own personal journey of learning to like and love me as well as starting Baggage Reclaim, I’ve thought that I’m “finally” a grownup on a number occasions due to coming out of the other side of deeply testing situations. I think on some level, for a time I believed that once I had some experience under my belt of having improved self-esteem, I was never going to be ‘back there’ but if life has taught me anything in recent years, it’s that a lot of what I’ve learned along the way has prepared me for facing adversity such as different major stresses I’ve experienced with both of my parents, grieving the loss of my relationship with my father and his family, and having to face down experiences that had the potential to bring up those fears of rejection, failure, and even success.

Each time I’ve been put in testing situations, I’ve had to figure out through trial and error as well as my existing bank of self-knowledge, how to get back up.

Each testing experience, I’ve come out of it thinking, “OK – yeah, I’ve definitely grown up now”, and then down the line, something else happens and it’s, “Jaysus! Now I’ve grown up”. It reminds me of when after each breakup and disappointment, I’d think (and often say) that I’d “never get over this”.

For the majority of my life, a lot of my story was “I got knocked down” but over the last decade it’s changed to, “I’m still standing” or “I got back up”.

I’m still standing. You’re still standing. We’re still standing.

If I think about one of those experiences and I begin turning over the chain of events and as such, whipping me up, I end up, if not retraumatising me (which is more what I used to do years before), I certainly relive the events and then if I get carried away (which we can when we’re not mindful and are experiencing some form of stress), I end up having to deal with the hurt brought on from going down that road.

Sometimes we forget that we’re still standing or that at the very least, we’re in the process of getting back up.

We may have experienced abandonment, neglect, bullying, bereavements and other losses, knocks, disappointments, unrequited feelings, betrayals and more, but we are still standing. We are still here.

Our parents may not have been who we would have ideally wanted them to be or parented us as adequately as we might have desired but, we are still standing. When I think of all the things that have gone on in my own family never mind in my adult life, I realise that part of what makes me who I am is what I’ve been through, what I’ve had to survive, what I’ve had to navigate, figure out, step away from and more.

Isn’t it time that we stop thinking of ourselves as “weak”?

I hear from so many people who believe that they’re “weak” for having gotten into a situation or being attracted to a person but we must remember, it actually takes a lot of courage to become acquainted with the truth and learn from it. It takes courage to take experiences and use these as a light to open up our awareness about where we need to adapt our behaviour.

Baggage Reclaim would not be Baggage Reclaim if my story was, Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was perfect, her parents were perfect, life was perfect and she went on to experience everything her heart desires. The end.

There’s no frickin way on earth that I would choose the things that I’ve been through for my own daughters and I’m not about to break into a jubilant moonwalk, but no longer wanting to (whether it was consciously or not) live my life under a narrative cloud of negativity due to defining me, my present and my future by virtue of my background, experiences etc, I’ve been able to look at me in another way and live.

There’s still this little girl within me that experienced abandonment and pain. If I think of me as a kid, I see me, sitting in a hospital ward staring out the window knowing that my father would not be coming and feeling utter desolation. Sometimes I see me all dressed up and ready to be picked up….and it not happening. I decided my fate when I was a child and one of the things that I’m thankful for is that I’ve allowed me to grow up so that I can accept a different version of events and love the me that I was then and the me I am now.

My story cannot be, I got knocked down.

I still have the same parents, the same family, the same exes (I must tell the story of that time when a friend tells me about her shiny new semi-boyfriend and it turns out to be one of my ex’s – haha), the same experiences and the same old wounds but ya know what? I’m still standing. I could talk about those experiences and how awful they were but if I were to only focus on that and ignore the recovery, the growth, the insight, it would be the story of when I got knocked down and forgot that I survived.

We are survivors and hell, sometimes, I am in awe of the stories readers share with me, because there are some serious warriors amongst us.

Looking back, I’ve had some damn close calls. I used to shame and terrorise myself over the fact that I had those close calls and as a result, it began to feel as if I was still in the midst of one. What’s the point of that? It would be similar to nearly getting killed by a car and rather than learn from that experience and eventually get to that point of gratitude for still being alive, instead continuing to mentally beat you up for the near miss and deciding that your options are limited as a result. I’ve had some major blows but due to recovery, they’re in the remote distance, not on me like a black cloud. They’re something that happened, not that’s happening. This is good because until ten years, abandonment and being “worthless and good for nothing” was a story I lived every day as if it happened the day before.

Some of us get into the habit of feeling like underdogs, the odd ones out, the ‘unsaleables’ and often it’s because of who we were born to or where we born, or experiences we’ve had or ‘mistakes’ we’ve made along the way. That’s not fair. We can’t keep defining ourselves in this way. That charmed life we sometimes secretly wish for, was never going to grow us and strengthen us. Maybe it’s time for us to use these experiences in a different way because all of these experiences, carry illuminating positive lessons that when we heed them, we will not keep getting burnt by the same pattern over and over again. We will also know the length and breadth of our courage and know that when life puts us to the test again, as inevitably does, we are that much more equipped to not only deal with it but to also gradually bounce back.

I’m still standing. You’re still standing. We’re still standing.

NATALIE

Hi, I’m Natalie! Baggage Reclaim is a guide to learning to live and love with self-esteem by breaking the patterns that stand in your way. Whether it’s figuring out what’s going on in a troubling relationship, understanding you and self-care, or being more assertive, I’m here to help you guide you.

The post I’m still standing. You’re still standing. We’re still standing. appeared first on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.

Many Baggage Reclaimers are dealing with people who have an attitude of, “Yeah, I beat you, cussed you down, ignored you, tormented you, abandoned you, abused your parent or siblings, breached your boundaries and all sorts of malarkey, but we’re family. Blood is thicker than water. Why aren’t you carrying on as if we’re best friends / giving me your money / licking my feet / telling everybody how great I am?” And here’s a good one, “Well your friend Bessy’s mother used to beat her and call her names and they’re very close. Why can’t you be like that?” What the what now?

I’m all for forgiveness and moving on but, come on now! It’s not about bearing grudges and holding stuff over people, and I think it’s safe to say that things were very, how shall we put this – “different” back in the day. I was brought up in Ireland plus I have the Afro/Caribbean culture and there was so much turning a blind eye and ‘rules’ about what so-called ‘elders’ (the grown-ups) were allowed to do that hell, everyone might as well have been blind! I’ve often wondered, Erm, when do I get to be a grown-up with rights? When you all kick the bucket? When I’m 99? I don’t feckin think so!

I really feel for the many people I hear from who spent most of their childhoods not having a voice and feeling scared, who are now adults who are still trying to figure out who they are and where they fit into this world. Some of them still don’t have a voice (or don’t believe that they’re allowed to) and are still scared.

These experiences that are dismissed as being part of being in a family deeply impacts people, affecting their interpersonal relationships, their self-image, their assertiveness skills, and their habits of thinking and behaviour. It can have lifelong impacts because the way in which we judge ourselves as children becomes our reasoning habit that we keep using into adulthood until we become more conscious, aware, and present.

The problem with being dismissive of childhood experiences that have left their mark on us, is that we can be left with the wrong associations and actually not be fully aware of how they’re weaving their way into our interactions. We may find ourselves unwittingly gravitating to partners/people who reflect old patterns from our childhood and feeling bewildered as to why we feel so triggered, so scared, so small, and wondering why we find it so hard to say, Um, hold up a frickin second here! Your treatment of me doesn’t feel right. I don’t like it. This is wrong.

Why is this?

Because we’re still mixing up those associations where we were told that certain things were happening because we were loved or that they wouldn’t have been done ‘If only…’. No wonder it’s so easy to blame ourselves or to feel confused in bound loyalty. To acknowledge that certain things that have been happening are wrong or certainly not right for us, causes us to feel in a bind, because to step away from those patterns is to cause us to feel disloyal to the original people connected to those patterns.

I hear from so many people who are in abusive relationships that mirror aspects of their own upbringing whether it was being abused or witnessing abuse. They feel conflicted about exiting from these relationships because they love their parents (and there’s nothing wrong with that incidentally) but to acknowledge that their current relationship is unhealthy is seen as being disloyal to their parents, especially because the whole family is often colluding in whitewashing or even flat out denying the past. They don’t want to acknowledge the pain of what they’ve experienced / witnessed because to do so, is to allow the long buried pain to surface and it means acknowledging the contribution of those experiences to the current perception of their self-worth and how relationships ‘work’. It means acknowledging that there may be aspects of them that are angry. The trouble with remaining loyal to a pattern that isn’t working though, is that it keeps us stuck and that can prove to be dangerous.

To acknowledge the road we’ve travelled in our journey is not about looking to blame our parents (or anyone else for that matter); it’s about recognising the things that influenced who we are and what we’re doing today.

It helps us to understand our motivations for what we’re doing because until we do, we’re doing things for reasons that we’re not aware of while believing that we’re doing them for different motivations, and this is why we end up feeling conflicted and in our own Groundhog Day. We not only try to right the wrongs of the past but we hinder our progression in the present because by lacking awareness and compassion for the original thinking behind these habits, we end up self-sabotaging while trying to spare us from what we think is a bigger future pain. We may be trying to fight one or both of our parents corners and not realising that we’re actually giving up our life in the process. It’s not our battle.

I’ve learned through my own struggles with both sides of my family that you cannot control the uncontrollable nor force people to see or talk about stuff that they don’t want to see or talk about.

No, it’s not fair and it was a bitter flippin’ pill to swallow, but I’m really all the better for having done so because it’s stopped me from unwittingly having excessive expectations plus it’s also stopped me from putting me in a ‘child role’ while making authorities out of these people. I’ve stopped looking for validation and I’ve focused on healing instead, and a lot of that has happened because I stopped withholding self-compassion. I stopped pretending.  It’s forced me to grow up, to figure myself out, and to come up with my own boundaries based on the preferences for how I want to live.

The one thing I won’t tolerate is my experiences being dismissed by me, never mind anyone else. I’m not clutching these experiences like a security blanket, but you know what? These are my experiences and before anybody tells me that I ‘shouldn’t’ have been bothered by certain things that happened, it’s important to remember that if they are that concerned about my perception of them or their part in their story, they either could have acted better or could be endeavouring to evolve the relationship with me now. I spent a significant part of my life being The Good Girl Who Doesn’t Make People Feel Bad By Remembering. Guess where that got me? I lost me and I got badly hurt. There’s chunks of my life that are so hazy because of the deep stress of trying to forget the more painful parts.

Don’t allow anybody to attempt to do a memory wipe on you just because you remembering doesn’t suit their ego. The irony is is that we’d all find it a hell of a lot easier to move on from stuff if the people in question didn’t keep reminding us of the fact that they behaved in these ways by either repeating the same actions or by trying to make us feel guilty so that we will do what they want.

If you’re acting unconsciously and doing stuff that feels like ‘home’, the clues to why lie in your past. To leave it unexamined is to block you from invaluable insights and awareness.

Your goal in allowing you to remember and acknowledge what you’ve been through isn’t to beat you or others up with it; it’s to understand the map you’ve used to get to this point in your journey so that if you want to go somewhere else, you can now choose a different route by healing you with self-awareness, self-compassion and self-care. To dismiss experiences for which you still have an emotional charge is to dismiss parts of you that are crying out to be acknowledged and healed. You dismiss your soul. You are worthy of serious consideration. You matter.

Your thoughts?

NATALIE

Hi, I’m Natalie! Baggage Reclaim is a guide to learning to live and love with self-esteem by breaking the patterns that stand in your way. Whether it’s figuring out what’s going on in a troubling relationship, understanding you and self-care, or being more assertive, I’m here to help you guide you.

The post Dismissing those childhood experiences is akin to dismissing you appeared first on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.

At what point do we say, “Enough”? It needs to be at the point where we’re feeling so desperate to keep someone in our life that we’re willing to let go of everything that needs to matter to us – our sense of self, our values, and most certainly, our boundaries and standards. It pains me when readers tell me harrowing stories of how they’re near begging somebody who doesn’t treat them with love, care, trust and respect, to come back or stay. They’d rather have some crumbs rather than no crumbs because the relationship has robbed them of the strength to leave. I’ve often threatened to show up at their homes by coming through their roof in an orange jumpsuit, intervention style. I may make this a reality the way some of you are going!

That’s why I made this video, Set The Standard. We cannot accept substandard treatment, least of all from ourselves. Watch the video, or you can listen to the audio, or read the transcript below.

It’s vital that we set the standard for how we are treated. This doesn’t mean that we take responsibility for other people’s feelings and behaviour but what it does mean is that we have to recognise that if we do not treat and regard ourselves with love, care, trust and respect, we are putting out the wrong message. We are sending out a message to anybody that is around us that, Hey, this is the standard that I have set for myself. It is OK for you to treat me similarly or worse.

When you are able to be there for you; when you are willing to step up and take care of you, to have your own back, to set the standard of how you will to be treated, you will not accept less from anybody else than what you can already do for you. This stops you from being in unhealthy relationships. This allows you to say, “Hey, I don’t accept that. I’m not OK with what you’ve just said/done”, because you know how you want to feel and how you want to continue to feel.

If somebody is mistreating you and they are at best, taking advantage and at worst, abusing you, if you then turn around and say, “I take the blame for your behaviour” or “That’s OK, I’m not going to create any consequences for your behaviour”, or “I love you, I love you, I love you…. Come back to me… I can’t bear to be without you…”, and this is after they have walked all over you and treated you worse than a doormat, that is sending out the wrong message and it’s not one that you want to continue to put out.

What you’re basically saying is, “I don’t love me. I don’t care about me. I don’t trust me. I don’t respect me”. It’s saying, “I know that you don’t either but I’d rather accept some crumbs rather than no crumbs”. It’s saying, “I don’t feel that I have to set any consequences for your actions…. I’m saying that I don’t think that I can do without you… yeah… I don’t feel that I can do without you who actually, isn’t really there for me at all”.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that it’s better for somebody to be there in a crappy capacity rather than to not be there at all. And in the same way: it’s not better for somebody to be there but emotionally absent rather than being gone all together, because all of these things will kill your soul, they will kill your spirit and they will kill the very essence of you.

They will distort your view of you and they will distort your view of what a healthy, loving relationship should look like. You don’t need to be out there seeking perfection but what you do need to seek is to be with people who are like-minded. If your idea of like-minded folk is somebody who treats you less than something they just stepped on, something is very, very wrong.

The answer isn’t to try to change them. The answer isn’t to try to please them even more. The answer isn’t to keep editing and shaving you down in the hopes that one of these things will spark them into being a better person in a better relationship. The answer is to step right back and to invest all of your energy into evaluating and working on why you are accepting less than what you deserve even from yourself – and that is to evaluate why you don’t care about you, why you don’t even like you, why you don’t respect you, why you don’t trust you. What is it that is in your head and in your past that is telling you that THIS – this sh*tty, horrible relationship, that this horrible way of being – is the best that you can do?

Once you are able to look at what it is that you associate with feeling bad about you as well as what is it that you associate with love, you can then work on and heal those things from your past so that you are not making decisions now based on emotional reasons attached to the past that actually bear no real relation to anything that you are looking to do now and going forward.

If you are doing things because you felt abandoned by a parent or caregiver in the past or you felt rejected, or you are carrying all sorts of unhealthy beliefs about you, what you’re doing right now is responding to those emotional reasons that are not necessarily based on fact. Now, of course, we don’t always do things for logical reasons but once we recognise that we are doing things for emotional reasons that are not serving us right now, we can start to address the source of those emotional reasons and step in and be conscious, aware and present, so that we can take care of ourselves in a better way.

We cannot continue to accept less than what we deserve from others and we absolutely cannot continue to set a poor standard for treatment. We can not basically say, “This is the standard that I’m setting for myself and you can do whatever the hell you like”.

NO.

You must set the standard for treatment. You want to be treated with love, care, trust and respect? Treat yourself with love, care, trust and respect, not because you’re thinking, Well if I do this then I can force other people to do that, but because once you start to treat you with love, care, trust and respect, not only will you not accept less than what you can already do for yourself but you will also align you with entirely different people and situations. You will find that you come from a place of love as opposed to coming from a place of crushing you, or of trying to always go around and please and serve others. You will do things from a place of healthy desire as opposed to, Please! This is my need! I want you to be my salvation. That cannot be the way that you live your life.

The way that you feel right now is not going to be the way that you always feel so don’t make how you feel or see things right now into a permanent statement of your future. If it feels as if this person is the sole source of your happiness and at the same time, they’re the source of your misery, you can see where that person has become very skewed in your head and has become the thing that you are dependent on for your sense of self, for your emotions, for any sense of value here on earth, but that doesn’t have to continue.

Yes – it will take time. Yes – it will take work. Yes – it will take some reflection. Yes – it will take a bit of time for you to face up to your part in things. Not a part where you are taking responsibility for other people’s feelings and behaviour but recognising where you are not treating and regarding you in the best way that you can. Love you first. Take care of you. When you do these things, a whole other world is going to open up for you. Believe.

Your thoughts?

NATALIE

Hi, I’m Natalie! Baggage Reclaim is a guide to learning to live and love with self-esteem by breaking the patterns that stand in your way. Whether it’s figuring out what’s going on in a troubling relationship, understanding you and self-care, or being more assertive, I’m here to help you guide you.

The post Set The Standard appeared first on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.

I turned thirty-eight last week and while there are many takeaways from what was actually an emotionally tough but very much necessary year—and I’ll be sharing these in another post—one thing that I won’t be doing is stopping short of expressing what I truly feel or think on the basis of “not hurting people’s feelings”.

There are people in this world who could stand to be more conscientious and truly empathise but it’s safe to say that there are some of us who really need to get grounded and own our own and let others own theirs. We can still be conscientious and empathetic but we must not take ownership of other people’s feelings and behaviour and duck out of stepping up and showing up, on the basis that the person in question might not like the way that we’re doing it or might not like our response to their boundary crossing behaviour.

It’s my nature (and my calling) to look underneath the hood of human behaviour and to increase self-knowledge and self-awareness and so I look for the patterns and where I can tweak and adapt, not because I think it will “control the uncontrollable (it won’t) but because I have no desire to be be stuck in my own Groundhog Day.

It is OK for me (and you) to express feelings and opinions that are not all hearts, flowers and My Little Pony vibes. We have a range of emotions to draw on and each one provides clues as to how to take care of us and repeated ones give indications about our inner state.

It is OK for us to not always be able to articulate our feelings and opinions. It matters that we try, try and try again.

It is OK for us to not like being around somebody or what they represent. The sky won’t fall down. Move along. Don’t make it your vocation to try and find a “good point” so that you can be The Good Person or to try to change them. Respect the differences.

“Yes, it is OK for us to consider the feelings of others and to consider the impact of our actions but what isn’t OK is for us to bullshit ourselves about why we’re doing this and to end up doing all manner of self-destructive stuff in an effort to ‘spare’ others from us.

Be conscientious by living your life authentically. If you keep shying away from the business of being you, you are the one who has to live with the consequences and these are far bigger than any short-term discomfort and tension from showing, speaking, or stepping up.

Any person who cannot cope with you coming from a place of love, care, trust, and respect, will shuffle along. It clears the way for people who are in alignment with the way that you conduct yourself.

Remember that you can still be a loving, good, kind, positive person and express feelings and opinions that you’ve typically labelled as negative. It’s called being human and not living so much of your life in fear. You can be direct and conscientious rather than being so achingly conscious of not wanting to be vulnerable and say the “wrong thing” that you don’t really say anything at all. That’s called hinting— a slight or indirect suggestion or indication of something because you don’t want to be explicit in your communication for fear of embarrassment or negative consequences.

I’m never mad at me for being brave. Whenever I’ve been angry about hinting-related stuff, it’s because on some level I’d balked at going “all the way”. I’d known what I truly felt or thought (or I’d had a damn good idea of what the other person was saying or indicating), but struggled to find the courage to address it. Time after time, that’s what many BR stories have an underlying theme of – this sense of frustration that comes from knowing what needs to be said or done but being too scared at the time and feeling regretful.

Thirty-seven was when I learned that I have to go all the way and thirty-eight and beyond will be my continued execution of that.

I hinted at my upset with our ex-landlords, then I hinted at my frustration and disappointment with a professional acquaintance, and then I hinted at hurt and anger with my mother-in-law and mother. It felt as if I was saying a lot in each of these situations (and I was) but I stopped short of laying it down. It’s not because I typically do this but there was a theme of feeling as if I was out of control of my circumstances in a way that I hadn’t felt since I was a child. It was triggering and in the end, rather freeing.

There is a part of you in these situations that thinks, Hold up a feckin’ second here. I’ve laid it out in black and white. Sure, I haven’t gone batsh*t on you but I’ve made it clear that I’m not happy. Why do I have to give you even more? You were there too.

And you know what? It’s normal to feel this way but what it doesn’t acknowledge is that we’re only really making assumptions about how much they understand or empathise plus we’re using hinting as a way of avoiding taking responsibility.

We’re all different. We all need to communicate. We also need to do less trying to anticipate every feeling and thought that a person might have and more be-ing. We must take care of our own side of the street.

It can feel as if we’re stopping short but only “just a little”, like, I won’t say that last bit because I don’t want you to think that I’m being mean, which might not have been the conclusion they would have drawn anyway. At least they’d be able to get a sense of the gravity of the situation because we’re communicating it. They have an opportunity to respond, as do we.

Our perception of what’s ‘short’ may be another person’s ‘ long’ so we might be leaving something off the table that’s vital to truly communicating our position but also to growing us and growing our relationship. We think we’re going to “third base” but we might only be going to “first base”.

It can feel as if we were crystal clear but when we hint at stuff, we take a lot of the substance out of our communication. We apologise for our feelings and opinions or even put words in the other person’s mouth. We list our grievances and forget to state what we’re going to do or what our expectations are. So many people have heard, “This isn’t working” and not realised that the other party is saying but not saying is, “I don’t want to continue dating/working/whatever with you.”

We know we’re going “all the way” when we say what we mean instead of hoping that others will read between the lines.

Our relationships grow stronger when we are owning our own and letting others own theirs. We feel at our best when we speak and act from a place that we know to be true in the sense that we’re trying to do the best that we can by us but also trying to do the best that we can by our relationships because we value them.

What we express represents our understanding at that time. We can evolve. We can gain further understanding by not basing our perceptions of what we’re “allowed” to say or our perceptions of that person’s reactions, on the past because we can inadvertently end up responding as if we’re a kid and they’re an authority.

You cannot know what you feel if you don’t acknowledge it or express it.

We’ve got to stop being so afraid of “hurting feelings”. It’s not about going the total opposite and not giving a stuff about anything or anyone, but guess what? Whichever way we go, there’s going to be feelings out there and even when we think that we’re not saying anything, avoiding conflict, criticism, rejection and disappointment has a hell of a lot of hurt feelings that come with it— ours and yes, sometimes those of the people who we don’t trust to truly engage and communicate with. We end up carrying deep regrets about all of the things that we wished we’d said and done but didn’t.

I’m leaving my prints here on earth and yeah, I’m sure I’ll ruffle some feathers along the way but at least I’ll know that I was here and that I showed up. Please join me.

Your thoughts?

NATALIE

Hi, I’m Natalie! Baggage Reclaim is a guide to learning to live and love with self-esteem by breaking the patterns that stand in your way. Whether it’s figuring out what’s going on in a troubling relationship, understanding you and self-care, or being more assertive, I’m here to help you guide you.

The post Forget this hinting malarkey. I’m going all the way. appeared first on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.

As a child, it’s hard to conceive why a parent isn’t around or doesn’t treat you with love, care, trust and respect so we determine that for a grownup to behave in this way, we must have done something “really really bad” or just flat-out been “unlovable”. Once we stop using the same childhood reasoning habits and become more mindful of the destructive coping mechanisms that we originally designed to protect us and to make us “more lovable”, on some level we still struggle to conceive why the abandonment happened. We might get things logically but emotionally a part of us wonders:

But why didn’t/don’t they at least try? Why is it that I’m always the one that has to try? To make allowances? To be super understanding? To put aside the past and my own feelings?

In adult life, we strive for accolades. The author wants the book deal not ‘just’ to be self-published; the singer wants an album on a label not ‘just’ what they’ve created off of their own back; the hard working person wants the acknowledgement, the awards or maybe even just the shift in behaviour of their co-workers so that they feel more appreciated and validated; the one who has achieved a lot wants what they deem as their pinnacle of success— to have their ideal romantic relationship and to feel safe and secure. None of these desires are strange but sometimes we don’t stop for long enough to question why they matter and what we think will happen to us. When we experience our desires, we might enjoy them but sometimes, they don’t take the form that we imagine. We thought it would feel so much better or be that much easier, and yet it isn’t.

Since I started writing Baggage Reclaim ten years ago (yay!), part of my self-exploration has caused me to regularly reflect on why an explanation or that love matters that much. What difference would it make?

The explanation which can often be very light in comparison to the weight that we’ve carried, will only really cover so much, especially because a lot of the pain is self-imposed. Even if we get an explanation, we analyse that too and often try to look for more answers. When they don’t cover it and we’re still holding out for them, we look for other inappropriate substitutes to do it and the self-blame habit continues.

We are never going to be able to ‘fully’ understand abandonment.

We want to take away the pain or cause the periodical grief feelings that often catch us off guard to disappear forever. We think understanding and validation is the solution even though no matter how much we investigate the past, we can’t change it. We can change the narrative about those events and the judgements so that we change our present and future because ultimately, how we judge us for who that person wasn’t is the deciding factor.

The grief feelings won’t ‘vanish’. They show up from time to time no matter how good we feel about us because there are times, whether we had our parent around or not, that our younger parts feel vulnerable or when grief shows up as a result of an experience. Loss reminds us of other losses. This pop-up pain is an opportunity to grieve the loss from a different angle and heal even further, grounding and growing us. It’s too much to expect to be permanently rid of certain feelings, especially because feelings guide and direct us on what we need at that moment.

We can empathise with our parents (once we’ve cut the proverbial cord instead of seeing them as being reflective of our inadequacies) but we’ve gotta stop trying to figure them out because on some level, no matter how small it is, that little kid inside thinks that the key to peace and validation is in their pocket.

Trying to understand others to the nth degree doesn’t bring peace.

As I said in the last podcast, we often understand far more than we give ourselves credit for but we don’t like what we understand, especially if we’re judging us for it, or it means the end of a fantasy or us having to take action. We need to accept all of what we know and stop guilting and berating us for acknowledging our experience or what we know. If we don’t, we’ll just keep repeating variations of the experiences.

If you’ve struggled with abandonment, you likely already know that it turns you into someone who is reflexively guilty and prone to comparison so you have to be very conscious, aware and present.

As a kid, you feel guilty for missing the parent and still loving them in spite of their absence or treatment, especially when your other parent is still there. Or you feel bad because you have a step-parent so surely you ‘should’ be OK. If the remaining parent is angry or miserable, you take the rap for that too and then feel guilty for wanting to be a kid or to express your own feelings. Or you feel bad for no longer caring or for being angry. By blaming you, you wonder if sibling pain is your fault too. Envying your friends and others triggers guilt but then you feel worthless due to comparison. You feel guilty for feeling sad and lost even though you’re not alone or there are “bigger problems in the world”. You might associate the confusion and grief of abandonment with a lack of gratitude for being taken in or kept, so you push down feelings and then wonder why you feel so depressed and lonely. You wonder if there’s something wrong with you for not being more “over it”.

You feel guilty for speaking your mind or giving a voice to those feelings because, well, it seems that a lot of society are very uncomfortable with children no matter how old they get, flagging up their pain or their experience. You feel guilty for not being able to wipe your memory or for not being OK with the lies that everyone else is, or for feeling anger and disappointment about the entourage of people who keep propping up your parent but who never truly empathise with you, often assigning you the responsibility of building bridges.

It’s not your fault. Never was, never will be. There is nothing you could have done to change your parent. Your worth has nothing to do with their actions. You can start to consciously choose the direction of your thoughts and the direction of your life. Whatever answers you seek in them, you are the only one who can give you permission and choices.

Three-quarters of my life was about abandonment and the last decade has been about reclaiming me from that story. I’ve learned that you have to consciously redefine yourself after spending a period of time defining you based on your perception of an experience and/or other people’s behaviour.

I’ve had to consciously question guilt, blame, shame, fear and obligation each time they show up at my door. I’ve learned that we can be very hard on ourselves and our inner critic is sneaky. It goes from busting our chops for not being “good enough” and for still being affected to giving us a hard time for not being “affected enough” and for not being The Good Daughter/Son. That’s when you realise that the inner critic is nonsensical and to stop giving it so much airtime.

I have a scar on my right leg and inner left thigh from a childhood skin graft for a birthmark that I was born with that it was felt had the potential to be cancerous. For a long time, the scars were another indicator of my damaged status and I anticipated the stares, questions and snap judgements. At some point they stopped being a focal point. I stopped judging it. I have to go out of my way to notice the scar. I’ve accepted it and so closed off that area of self-rejection. When I do remember it, it’s because something else I associate it with, brings it to my mind. Remembering, acknowledging it doesn’t mean I’m not OK.

Ten years down the road from that summer that woke me up to myself and what the real meaning of my experiences were, that’s where I’ve gotten to with this whole abandonment thang– I’ve stopped judging the scar of abandonment and hating on it and me. I’ve stopped shaping my life around it. I forgive my younger self for being so tough on me and as a result, feel less shackled to the past and the parent hunger pangs have faded out. My parents are my parents but I am my primary carer. The scar fades bit by bit over time and the proximity of the pain, actual or remembered, recedes further into the distance…. as long as I take care of my thoughts and my actions right now which help me to take care of me.

Take care of you.

Your thoughts?

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NATALIE

Hi, I’m Natalie! Baggage Reclaim is a guide to learning to live and love with self-esteem by breaking the patterns that stand in your way. Whether it’s figuring out what’s going on in a troubling relationship, understanding you and self-care, or being more assertive, I’m here to help you guide you.

The post Forgiving Me For Abandonment appeared first on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.

It’s that time of the week again – there’s a new episode of my podcast, The Baggage Reclaim Sessions. I can’t believe it’s been eight weeks already!

Here’s what I cover in episode 8:

Those inappropriate and insensitive remarks to singles: When I was single, I felt like one of those bad date clowns because I would see people at social events and they’d expect to be entertained with my latest dating debacle. I also found that like a lot of people, I was questioned a hell of a lot about my choices and had my private life prodded and poked into. Turns out, not much has changed since then and I really feel for singles who encounter this so I offer my take and some suggestions for not letting these folks get to you.

Do we ever ‘get over’ abandonment and abuse?: This is one of my most frequently asked questions but it’s a question that needs to be rephrased as we may be tasking ourselves with something that gives us the impression of arriving at a particular destination. I talk about what has helped me alter my perspective and heal.

Why do we keep saying how guilty we feel?: I talk about guilt and the importance of not just ascertaining whether you’re actually guilty of something but also ensuring that you don’t end up bathing in guilt (and avoiding taking action) and instead, use the emotion to do something positive that will help you to learn from the experience and move forward.

Listener Question – Should I tell my friend’s friend how annoyed she is?: When a friend complains about a mutual friend who you’re not that close with and you feel badly for him/her, it can be tempting to get involved to help your friend address the situation and feel better but don’t – the messenger is likely to be shot!

What Nat Learned This Week: I do wonder why I have a paper diary and a calender synced up across all devices if I still end up overscheduling myself because I’m looking at a day rather than looking at the context of the week. Doh!

You can listen to this podcast below. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe on Soundcloud, iTunes, Stitcher or via a podcast app on whatever device you use.  If you’re new to podcasts, find out more about what they are and how to subscribe with this handy guide.

Leave a comment or post on Facebook and please do subscribe. If you know someone who would enjoy it, please help spread the word. It all helps! Listener questions can be emailed to podcast AT baggagereclaim DOT com. If there’s a topic you’d love me to talk about, let me know! Nat xxx

NATALIE

Hi, I’m Natalie! Baggage Reclaim is a guide to learning to live and love with self-esteem by breaking the patterns that stand in your way. Whether it’s figuring out what’s going on in a troubling relationship, understanding you and self-care, or being more assertive, I’m here to help you guide you.

The post Podcast Ep.8: Inappropriate Remarks To Singles, Do You ‘Get Over’ Abandonment and Abuse?, Guilty or Not Guilty? appeared first on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.

In case you hadn’t guessed already, I’m taking a break. I’m currently on the Spanish island of Majorca on our annual holiday and will be taking some more time out on my return so that I can continue to reboot but to also catch up on some behind-the-scenes stuff.

Eleven years ago, I didn’t know, love or like myself very much and it culminated in me being told that there was no cure for the disease that I’ve now been in remission from for ten years as of this month (yay) and that I needed to go on steroids if I didn’t want to keel over by forty. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to have kids and as you all know, I was also grappling with woeful taste in relationships and chronically low self-esteem due to the way I saw myself in relation to childhood experiences. I kept looking for love in the wrong places, searching out my father and even my mother in Mr Unavailables.

I’ve been on one hell of a journey since I walked out of the consultants office in August 2005 with my head held high, determined suddenly for the first time in my life, to fight for myself. I needed to get in command of me. I had no clue how I was going to get better or how I was going to improve my life and I’ll be honest, I got home and thought, Oh feck! What the hell do I do now?, but fear of going down a road I’d already been down or never actually living and enjoying the life I’d been given, far outweighed my fear of taking action.

I made a commitment to myself that I must honour for the rest of my days: to love and take care of me.

My life has changed beyond recognition and I have been guided and supported by trusted folk who have stretched and mentored me as well as a wonderful gang of people around the world who have been following my journey at different stages. I am incredibly blessed but do you know what I’ve discovered over this past couple of years in particular? A part of me, which has been revealed as my work has gathered pace and visibility over the years, has been playing it small.

For anyone who still thinks that self-esteem is a destination, I can attest that it’s very much a journey and that along the way, life will throw you pop quizzes, walk the lines, or lots of these all together in your own Road of Trials, where it feels as if you keep being tested and you’re almost going, Are you fecking SERIOUS? Have I not been through enough? I’m still tired from the last go-round! Do I need to remind you about what I went through in childhood or the heartbreak I’ve been through or my last Road of Trials? This is not fair! I’m a good girl. Why can’t you go after someone who does “bad” things?

The thing is, you end up being tested in such a way that you not only learn a hell of a lot along the way that will help you to live and love better in the future or to even cope with whatever the future holds, but you also as a result of going through these trials and tribulations, discover a part of you that you did not know existed. It’s more of you to love.

Everyone goes through life’s tests, no one is exempt. Also, to be fair, if we want to stop sitting the same ‘ole tests, we mustn’t be hard-headed and keep insisting that our way is the “right” way or the only way, especially when we’re not getting the results that we want.

I’ve been through a series of experiences, particularly over the past couple of years but overall for about four years (pretty much ever since I made what felt like a Not That Big of a Deal Decision But Really It Is, about who would walk me down the aisle) that cracked me open in a different way. In some respects it feels as if I’ve battled with some flying monkeys and The Wicked Witch of the West! I was tired for a while and weirdly, it energised some of my work. But it did start to get on top of me emotionally. It felt oh so subtle at the time, but some of these experiences reminded a much younger part of me that ‘grown-ups’ (so older folk, namely relatives) cannot be trusted. Many, many moons ago, Little Nat, who was probably around 2-3 at the time, thought that she wasn’t loved and that she had to be strong, clever, pleasing and the responsible one at all times and at all costs. She was always alone in a way because she didn’t dare say how she really felt. For a long while, those feelings went away and Big Nat felt like she was cracking life, but a series of what felt like unrelated things happened and on one of those times, it must have been as if, on a subconscious level, Little Nat stood beside me in the room and went, “Ha! I TOLD you! I knew this was going to happen!”.

So I leaned even more into self-care and increasing my self-awareness, so understanding why I would take my mother and mother-in-law’s behaviour so much to heart. I wanted to know that I can pull me back, utilising my own tools and what I share here through Baggage Reclaim as well as allowing me to be nurtured and supported. It has not been easy although it has definitely had some uplifting parts to it. I have cried a lot over the last year or so but I’ve needed to. I’ve needed to go through this and no doubt it will fuel the next phase of the BR journey and in fact, has played a massive part in the 30-Day projects and talks that I’ve been doing.

But for now, I need a little time out because as a result of what I’ve learned and how I’ve been changing, how I’ve been working behind-the-scenes, no longer feels comfortable or right on for me. Nothing bad is going to happen–quite the opposite–but I need some time to implement the changes I need to make so that I can show up in the way that reflects where I’m at and where I’m headed but also so that self-care remains at the heart of all that I do. If you’re on a course, or subscribed to anything from me, or due to see me soon, you will still hear from me plus the likes of Facebook and Instagram will still be updated, it’s just a little pause on the blog posts and podcast.

NATALIE

Hi, I’m Natalie! Baggage Reclaim is a guide to learning to live and love with self-esteem by breaking the patterns that stand in your way. Whether it’s figuring out what’s going on in a troubling relationship, understanding you and self-care, or being more assertive, I’m here to help you guide you.

The post Life’s Trials Reveal A Part of You That You Didn’t Know Existed (& Why I’m On A Break) appeared first on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.

It’s so hard when I witness someone who keeps throwing themselves in the front line of pain by repeatedly returning to a toxic relationship or not leaving it. It’s not just because I’ve done it myself and it felt like a gradual exorcism of the past I’d veered between burying and blaming me for; it’s because of what it means when you’re in this situation:

That you just don’t love or like yourself that much.

The amount that you don’t like and love you is directly proportionate to how much you claim to like and love the other party.

Everything is riding on this person and it’s a vicious cycle of, “Yes, treat me this badly because I’m worthless and deserve it [because of everything I believed about myself even before you came along]”, and “No, treat me better. Change for me so that I stop being in pain from what you’re doing to me and from what I’m doing to myself by being with you. You can’t just up and leave and be with someone else after everything I’ve sacrificed and after everything you’ve put me through”, and so the pain continues.

The thing is, this just isn’t what a relationship or love for that matter, is all about. Pain, sure, but definitely not love.

You need to part ways.

It is painful, horrific actually in some ways, and downright ‘inconvenient’ when you consider everything you’ve done, everything you’ve suffered through, and the ‘dream’ you have for this person, this relationship, and you, but you need to part ways.

It doesn’t matter who does it but please, whoever does, grab the exit. No, you don’t know what’s in front of you (us humans never do anyway) but better to be experiencing the clean pain of grieving the loss and recalibrating so that you heal and become more of who you are, than the ‘dirty’ pain of remaining in the toxic relationship.

You each represent something to the other that neither of you can really be around. It reflects what remains unresolved from your pasts.

The mistake is assuming that what someone is doing to you is because of you (something about you or something you said or did), and while there’s no doubt that not liking and loving you and the consequences of that (lack of boundaries) provides a fertile ground for this type of relationship, it’s not the cause of the effect (their behaviour and the totality of the relationship).

Sure, you have little or no boundaries but even if you had The Best Boundaries Ever TM, they would be who they are, just not with you.

Love doesn’t make you less of who you are or cause you to languish in deep pain while you massacre yourself on the relationship. Old unresolved wounds, deep pain, long-standing patterns–that’s what causes this.

Blaming you for other people’s behaviour is a trap because you act from a place of believing that you could have done something to prevent what they’re doing. You’re just not that powerful–I hope that if you were, that you’d use your powers for wiping out poverty, war and disease. And you know what? You can’t change their pattern and their past.

You’re in pattern, they’re in pattern.

Two people who are throwing their own unconsciousness at each other and dancing through a painful pattern.

Sure, it can feel ‘special’ to decide that they’re only like this with you or that they’ve been worst with you, but they didn’t just fall out of the sky into 2016 and get ‘provoked’ into being ‘like this’ for you.

They’re just a stand-in for who you weren’t originally able to get whatever it is that you’re looking for.

They don’t like and love themselves either, even if they carry on as if they’re the centre of the universe. They’re that way because they don’t like and love themselves and it’s their carefully constructed, habitual framework of thinking and behaviour that’s helped them to cope (but isn’t healthy). At some point they’ve vowed that they will ‘never something’ again and you’re bearing the brunt of that.

Every time you tell this person that you love them, that you want them, that you miss them, that you’re sorry for what they’ve done, and that you’ll do anything to be with them/have them back, you’re actually reinforcing all of the underlying reasons for their own self-dislike and self-hatred.

They know that they have not ‘earned’ that love. They know that they have not treated you well and that you are mistreating you to prop them up.

You’re giving them a Get Out of Jail Free Card for avoiding responsibility, again.

Be your true self and they’d give you a hard time and blame you for their discomfort. Obey them to the letter and they’d give you a hard time and rip on you for not having enough self-respect or claim that you’re ‘not doing it right’. They behave badly and you call them on it or express any form of discomfort, and it becomes about their discomfort with your reaction. What the what now?

The relationship has to end sooner rather than later, because by doing so, you’re forced to confront the pain that’s driven you to this person and to this relationship. You take responsibility for you instead of blaming you ‘for them’ and then trying to get them to make you feel better about it.

It’s also because they have their own journey to make. Depending on their backstory, they might, through the pattern of their relationships ending, be forced into confronting their pain and addressing their issues. It’s possible that they’ll experience very difficult and painful consequences that curtail them.

But there are also some people who walk amongst us who don’t know how to love and in fact cannot love because they don’t have empathy.

Their ‘task’ in life is forcing people who don’t like and love themselves, who over-empathise and who ‘over-feel’, to like, love, empathise and feel for themselves.

They teach people who think it’s their ‘job’ to make people love them and who have personalised what parents, caregivers and others have done or failed to do earlier in life, that it is not about them and to take responsibility for themselves so that they can live their lives with empathy, compassion, tolerance, love, care, trust, respect, and integrity.

Without these experiences, as painful as they are, you would be bumbling around blind to the pain, untrue stories, and habits that are holding you back not just from being who you truly are, but also from being in a mutually fulfilling loving relationship.

You would continue the pattern and keep wondering what’s wrong with you.

If being with someone has forced you to confront every ugly thought and feeling that you’ve been stuffing you and persecuting you with, as painful as it is, be thankful that it’s out. You are in the process of liberating you.

Your thoughts?

NATALIE

Hi, I’m Natalie! Baggage Reclaim is a guide to learning to live and love with self-esteem by breaking the patterns that stand in your way. Whether it’s figuring out what’s going on in a troubling relationship, understanding you and self-care, or being more assertive, I’m here to help you guide you.

The post This isn’t love: You’re in pattern, they’re in pattern appeared first on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.

Stephanie asks: One year after my ex broke up with me, I have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. We had issues; I was clingy/jealous, he was avoidant/promised more than he could keep. I offered to seek treatment, spend time apart and try again, but he said he needed a “clean break” and since then he has ignored me whenever possible. I haven’t been involved with anyone since as I am terrified of being left by and/or hurting another person. I am also not over his lack of empathy after the breakup (blanking me in the streets). Weeks after, he started dating someone new and they’re still together.

I don’t want to resume the relationship but wonder if I should inform him about my diagnosis as it contributed to things. I wonder if him ignoring me and jumping into a new relationship is his way of protecting himself/forgetting past hurt. He knows I’m truly sorry and in treatment. Do you think it would be useful for him to understand that I have a mental disorder? I don’t want him to feel absolved from everything because “I’m crazy” either. We’ve had no contact in 6 months.

**********

I imagine that this is a very vulnerable time for you as you navigate your diagnosis. Now that you have an explanation for some of your thinking, emotions and behaviour, there is undoubtedly a period that follows where you press rewind on your mental tape, watch back previous events, analyse your own actions and his, and wonder how different things would be if you could turn back time and you were both aware of your BPD. There can also be a temptation to assume that because your actions were in part influenced by the BPD that ipso facto his actions were too, and that’s not to discount that there will have been an element of that but if everything is put on your diagnosis, you won’t see the woods for the trees.

In order for you to begin to truly take care of you in and out of your interpersonal relationships and to move on from this experience which has clearly hurt you a great deal and pushed on your abandonment and rejection buttons which will be very heightened by the BPD, it’s critical that you where possible, distinguish between disorder-led behaviour and thinking versus what is being influenced by the actual circumstances that you’re in. I say this because I’ve heard from many thousands of people who were clingy and jealous with an avoidant, Future Faking partner who also have experiences in their backstory that contribute to fear of abandonment and being involved with people who fit a type that taps on old issues and allows them to continue in a pattern where they can try to right the wrongs of the past, gain validation, and try to fill voids created by their needs being inadequately met by their parents/caregivers. The overwhelming majority of these don’t have BPD and I say this to you because I don’t want you to write you off.

The degree to which you needed to gain some independence in your life (emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually) so that you can be interdependent in your relationships reflects the degree to which he needed to allow himself to be more depended on (not codependent) so that he could be interdependent in his own relationships. As a result of your involvement with him, the pain, fear and guilt that came to the fore and the way in which you reacted prompted you to seek help and get a diagnosis—you needed this breaking point.

It is not ‘easy’ to be in an unavailable relationship whether it’s a matter of two emotionally unavailable people doing the awkward tango of their issues or whether it’s full-blown toxic chaos. This relationship must have been incredibly stressful for the both of you. I know that he did not handle things well and that his lack of empathy has hurt you deeply, but your relationship will have been triggering not just for you but also for him. This is not to excuse his behaviour but more to recognise that he’s on his own journey and that he may deal with his feelings and past in a very different way to you. His breaking point may look very different to yours. He may have decided to press the reset button and move on as quickly as possible and that has meant that he has gone to lengths to ignore you.

You say that you wonder if him ignoring you and starting a new relationship very quickly is his way of “protecting himself/forgetting past hurt”? I say, how long is a piece of string? It might be anger; it might be not wanting a scene whether that’s fear of his own behaviour/feelings/words or yours; it might be shutting out due to guilt and shame; it could be trauma; it could be that he has a parent/caregiver that elements of this involvement reminded him of. You have to go back to the top line data: you described him as being “avoidant” in the relationship and that means he’s bound to be avoidant out of it.

Many people bounce from relationship to relationship to avoid confronting the feelings that surface at the end of a relationship around loss and vulnerability but his past hurt doesn’t entirely relate to you. Sure, there will be some baggage allocation for what went on between you and him but believe me, he has plenty of other stuff in there too.

This relationship was triggering for the both of you. Ultimately you were both relating in unhealthy ways and that will have dragged each of you down. As you already recognise, it’s the right thing that you’re no longer together.

It’s hard enough when you have a fear of abandonment but this will be incredibly heightened by the BPD but no doubt there were factors that pushed you over the edge. You are not “crazy”. Did you say and do things that you regret? Sure but who hasn’t? Acknowledge the different experiences along your journey that have led you to this juncture. Have some compassion not just for your present self but also for those younger versions of you that have been dismissed as “crazy” or “needy”.

You have taken responsibility for you and that is a massive step. You are taking care of you and the bulk of your energies need to be devoted to that.

If you let him know about your disorder, you need to be absolutely clear on your motivations. If there is no agenda and you’re giving him that information with no expectation of what you will get back and more a ‘gift’ for what you think is his peace of mind, knock yourself out. If however, what you really want is to divulge your diagnosis in the hopes that he’ll display more empathy and even feel guilty about his behaviour so that you can feel less abandoned and hurt, halt. You have no control over how absolved he feels of anything. He might already feel that way. If you’re going to explain and apologise, do so because you have it to give. In this way, no matter how he responds, you will feel more at peace because you know that you did what you did from an authentic place where you considered his feelings and yours too. You will then be able to get the support you need to deal with situations like him ignoring you.

What you’re looking for from him is something that you need to give you: empathy, understanding, patience, tolerance, forgiveness. Focus your efforts on getting as much support as possible which will nourish you. Get educated about your disorder. If there is anything in your past that contributes to your fear of abandonment, working on this in therapy and treatment will help you to build your self-esteem and calm down some of the triggers so that you can lead your life. One day you will be ready to try again with a relationship but for now, you need to build a relationship with you and be choosy about who you allow into your Circle of Trust.

Even without a disorder, millions of people worry about being hurt or hurting others. I can’t promise that you won’t be hurt or even that you won’t hurt others at times–we all do–but with the right support, you will be able to forge relationships.

Have you been through something similar to Stephanie or been the partner? What [compassionate] advice can you offer up?

Each Wednesday, I help a reader to solve a dilemma. To submit a question, please email advicewednesdayAT baggagereclaim.com. If you would prefer your question to be featured on the podcast, drop a line to podcast AT baggagereclaim.com. Keep questions below 200 words. For in-depth support, book a clarity session or coaching.

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NATALIE

Hi, I’m Natalie! Baggage Reclaim is a guide to learning to live and love with self-esteem by breaking the patterns that stand in your way. Whether it’s figuring out what’s going on in a troubling relationship, understanding you and self-care, or being more assertive, I’m here to help you guide you.

The post Advice Wednesday: Should I Let My Ex Know About My BPD Diagnosis? appeared first on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.

Love can seem very complicated and painful but the truth is, it’s only like that when we use our feelings to try to control the uncontrollable. We say that we love someone and next thing, we’ve rolled out a whole load of expectations about who and what we think that person ‘should’ be and do due to the fact that we love them (or that they’re supposed to love us). So, with family, we do the things that we think fulfil the role of dutiful daughter/son etc., and we expect them to play their part(s) because we, after all, have met our obligations based on the assumption and expectation that [what we’re being and doing] is required in order for them to be who we want them to be. This is a hangover from childhood where we see people and in fact life, as being a reflection of our worth, of what we think we did or didn’t do.

When we continue to experience frustration with loved ones not living up to our expectations, it spills over into other interpersonal relationships such as with friends or romantic partners because we often unwittingly, although sometimes consciously, try to pursue our unmet needs via these other relationships.

Life is a teacher, something I talked about in episode 87 of the podcast, and so it’s always trying to open up our awareness and perspective so that we can amend the assumptions, judgements, stories and yes, expectations that are holding us back from being in fulfilling relationships that reflect the truest version of us.

We get out of payback mode where we’re expected to be rewarded with something and instead, loving someone means truly knowing and understanding them and wanting the best for their happiness and fulfilment without expecting anything in return.

Love means doing and being because it’s who we are, not because we’re trying to create the right conditions to get what we want from others.

We can’t expect from others what we’re not prepared to do for 1) us and 2) them.

It can come as quite a surprise when we’ve spent a lifetime looking for validation in one form or another from our family, to discover that actually, we have loved them conditionally.

When I’ve fallen into the trap of expecting my mother to grant me my wish that she change into someone else altogether in exchange for my love, I’m not loving her unconditionally, and there’s a level of irony there because part of my old struggle is feeling that I was not loved unconditionally and that when I was less than perfect, this is why I was experiencing unwanted outcomes and why she wasn’t being the type of mother that, well, ‘everyone else’ has (they don’t).

When I do things out of obligation in my head and then carry on as if I’ve made a sacrifice that she or anyone else for that matter, ‘owes’ me for, it’s unfair.

My intention in those times wasn’t shady but my pattern of people pleasing seemed like it was such a noble thing–you know, me sacrificing myself for others, ahem–but my recovery from being a people pleaser has centred on taking responsibility and removing the hidden agenda, whether it’s about reward or me trying to avoid something (conflict, criticism, rejection, disappointment).

I don’t like being made to feel guilty whether it’s by me or by others, so it should come as no great surprise that others aren’t too keen on me doing that to them.

It’s acceptance.

Like when you see your alcoholic father or dysfunctional mother and instead of growing impatient, lecturing, monitoring them, meddling, side-eyeing, eye-rolling, huffing and puffing, feeling helpless due to not being able to control their problems and life, self-blaming, and silently cursing and resenting them and you for them not being different to who they are yet again, you instead hold space for what is and stop carrying on as if it’s your responsibility to fix them. It isn’t.

All we need to do is love them. That’s it. Just love them.

That’s actually what we’re afraid of because if we truly accept and love imperfect people who we’ve previously unwittingly expected to be perfect and/or to spontaneously combust into someone else, it means that it’s what we have to do with us too.

It means that we have to give up suffering.

It means that we have to give up this vocation and accept that even if it was far from pretty and in fact, traumatic in parts, that was our childhood, that was our family.

We’ve got to stop trying to fix them so we can feel as if we’re making things right with us. We can make things right with us and move forward even if our family still do all sorts of feckery. I’ve learned that I’m not disloyal or a ‘bad’ daughter/granddaughter/niece/friend or whatever for not subscribing to someone else’s version of OK– I’m just me.

As I explain in Love, Care, Trust and Respect, “Just so we’re all clear, unconditional love isn’t love without boundaries, which is codependency and self-destruction due to it reflecting our lack of self-love. When we love and like us regardless of what is happening externally, we love others authentically because we have the healthy boundaries to do so. Unconditional love is about choosing love the actions, mentality and attitude through all seasons and conditions, not loving someone no matter what they do to us.”

In this way we learn that unconditional love starts at home.

We stop accepting disrespect from ourselves and choose instead, to love us, especially on those occasions when we err and not just when it’s easy to do so because life is hunky-dory.

We accept us now instead of delaying it until we’ve ‘fixed’ certain things about us or achieved a goal. Less than perfect people live, breathe and achieve things every day, so waiting for some arbitrary moment in the future is not only redundant but it reeks of moving the goalposts.

When we’re genuinely striving to come from a place of self-acceptance (aka respect), we become conscious of where we’re doing things that represent playing a role that essentially amounts to self-rejection (doing things with the aim of trying to get others to fulfil what we feel are their obligations to us, halts self-acceptance).

We can then chill out because we’re not taking responsibility for other people’s feelings and behaviour and personalising what they do (or don’t do) so much that we reject ourselves and our truth.

We don’t reject happiness to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.

We stop self-rejecting due to people and life being less than what we would prefer them and it to be.

We also, when we choose to start accepting us right now and through all seasons and conditions, we won’t remain around those who don’t accept us and who we can’t accept.

Choosing love, incidentally, isn’t just about loving people in the sense that we do our loved ones; choosing love also means acknowledging where we want different things to others and where yes, we don’t like who someone is or what they represent and then choosing to accept them as they are, which is in the highest good for all parties involved because we don’t pretend to be something we’re not and we come from a place of respect.

That might mean acknowledging that we don’t have a deep and abiding love for a parent like some other people do but that what we do know and feel is true and that ultimately, we want the best for them but don’t see us as being responsible for it. We might love them because they’re our family and through all seasons but won’t feel that we have to put up with anything and everything out of love.

Love flourishes where people know the boundaries.

Your thoughts?

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NATALIE

Hi, I’m Natalie! Baggage Reclaim is a guide to learning to live and love with self-esteem by breaking the patterns that stand in your way. Whether it’s figuring out what’s going on in a troubling relationship, understanding you and self-care, or being more assertive, I’m here to help you guide you.

The post About Unconditional Love appeared first on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.

On this week’s episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions, I talk about making work, a business, money, co-workers, romantic partners, friends, something, the boss of us, so much so that it’s a surrogate parent.

I explain:

• Why feelings of inadequacy that had crept up on me around being my own boss, flagged up to me that work and even money had become my surrogate parents
• How we get into a cycle of measuring how well we’re performing with our surrogate parents by whether we like the outcomes, in turn, letting this dictate our happiness and also how adequate we feel, feeding this inadequate parent equals inadequate child mentality
• Why making people and things into surrogate parents where we’re striving to be ‘enough’ or to get ‘more’ represents, ‘I’m not being enough for you to be enough for me‘, and ‘I’m not being enough for you to give me more‘.
• Why what seem like the ‘rigours’ of, for example, a job, business or relationship along with internal and external expectations, can symbolise structure that looks like the past or structure that we never had–we might follow the so-called rules to the letter to be OK and look for people within the structure to affirm this or, we might resist the structure due to its unfamiliarity
• Why a work environment can be particularly triggering because the job, boss and your co-workers can end up replicating a dynamic like parents and siblings or even a school environment
• Why when we keep coming up against issues, we’re being invited to see what we couldn’t see before
• How concerns like, Am I liked?, Am I being mean?, Am I doing it right [to get what I want]?, What will it take for them to give me safety and security?, and How can I control uncertainty and the unexpected?, are flags that we’re giving our power away and taking ourselves out of alignment
• Questions we can ask ourselves including:
  • Which areas of my life bring up panic, grasping, comparison, feelings of resentment, inadequacy, helplessness, powerlessness, and ‘outsider’ feelings?
  • Where am I replicating the familiarity of the home dynamic? If it feels familiar and painful or even discomforting, it’s a call to wake up.
  • Where am I trying to plug a gap?
  • Where am I trying to prove a point or right the wrongs of the past?

Links mentioned:

• Don’t try to get romantic partners to step in as parental replacements; it will only lead to pain
• Episode 87 where I talk about why life keeps serving us up the same lessons
• About unconditional love
• Episode 80 where I talked about recognising feelings of inadequacy after my father passed away
• Episode 2 where I talk about what’s the baggage behind it?

Next stop

If you enjoyed the show, please share the episode – every little helps. Email someone who you think this show is relevant to or use the share buttons at the top and bottom of this episode.

Subscribe and/or leave a review on iTunes (how-to guide here)–it really helps in growing the show! If you’re new to podcasts, find out more about what they are and how to subscribe with this handy guide.

Listener questions can be emailed to podcast AT baggagereclaim DOT com. Got a topic you’d love me to cover? Let me know!

NATALIE

Hi, I’m Natalie! Baggage Reclaim is a guide to learning to live and love with self-esteem by breaking the patterns that stand in your way. Whether it’s figuring out what’s going on in a troubling relationship, understanding you and self-care, or being more assertive, I’m here to help you guide you.

The post Podcast Ep. 88: You’re Not The Boss of Me! appeared first on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.

Our relationships romantic and otherwise, give us a window into understanding who we are and where we need to step up for ourselves. When we find that we’re experiencing the lather, rinse, repeat of the same type of person in a different package and the Groundhog Day of yet another situation that leaves us feeling and thinking a certain way, it’s time to ask:

What am I missing here? What am I overlooking?

When we experience the pain of a person unfolding into who they truly are and it falling short of who we wanted and even expected them to be, it’s hard to think about lessons and examining where we’re in effect repeating ourselves.

There is this fear that if we acknowledge that at times we’ve gravitated to a certain type of situation that this makes it “our fault”, when in actual fact it doesn’t; it just explains how we fit into the dynamic. It explains why we were vulnerable to this person stepping into the ‘opening’ in our life. It explains why they were attractive or activated something in us, and it’s far from being a sign that we have Jedi mind tricking abilities.

These experiences provide insight into where we need to expand our awareness so that we can grow and transcend this particular type of dynamic. It’s how we stop the disappointment cycle.

Wising up means that in adapting our outlook and supporting behaviour, the next time that that type of person or situation comes a knocking, we will make a conscious choice to choose a different path. It may not even come our way because we’re no longer a ‘good fit’ for it.

In the aftermath of things not working out, it’s hard to feel thankful about not being with the person or opting out of the situation because in seeing ourselves as being inextricably linked to why that person acted as they did, or why we were disappointed, or why the situation was what it was, we can’t see the wood for the trees. We’re too busy blaming and shaming ourselves. We’re too busy feeling that we’ve been robbed. We’re feeling rejected and at the same time wanting to reject information that would actually help us feel less rejected by adding some balance to the proceedings.

The weird thing is that sometimes we don’t know that we need to address something until it’s mirrored back to us in the other party’s behaviour. It’s not neccessarily the one-off stuff but the habitual stuff.

I would love it if we were all armed with the self-awareness, self-knowledge and relationship smarts as soon as we rock up into adulthood but it’s only through experience where we discover what we do and don’t know.

I can remember with one particular ex as he launched a volley of putdowns and deflections at me that I thought, “Wow, I really must hate myself to be with him.” It was this scary lightbulb (more like punchbulb punching me in the head) moment.

It’s not that my self-hatred was an invitation for his behaviour and that if I liked me more that he would spontenously combust into boyfriend of the century but when I finally was ready to put ego aside where I had an inclination to make everything about me, ‘little’ realisations like this had been happening over a few years. I knew they were trying to tell me something and in fact, I even heard what these experiences were saying a few times along the way but it was like, What was that you said? I don’t really like myself and this guy is behaving like a tool because that’s who he is? and then my ego would come rushing in and it would be, Ah yeah but what that really means is that I don’t like myself because I’m worthless and good for nothing and that’s why he’s behaving like a tool, and the crucial info would be drowned out and I’d be back to doing the people pleasing and unavailable dance.

In truth, when we like, love, care about, trust and respect us more, we would not be attracted to or continue to be around somebody who doesn’t reflect that outlook.

We won’t be with somebody who does less than what we can already do for ourselves.

We certainly won’t continue to make us the solution to their problems and we most definitely won’t keep trying to make them change in an effort to ease our discomfort about the situation. We’ll take charge of relieving our discomfort instead of giving away our power.

You know what all of my unavailable relationship experiences did? They forced me to grow up. Due to the pain I went through and how it all spiralled out of control and crippled my health, facing me and all of these experiences forced me to finally be a grownup with my parents and extended family instead of three-year old Nat feeling wounded, abandoned, and looking for love in the wrong places. In doing so, I allowed myself to feel, to think, to have needs that I could step up and assert within my relationships and to also just be.

Talking with a friend who has a habit of going out with highly insecure guys who either start getting all ‘Chopper’ on her (cutting her down with comments and manipulative behaviour) and/or who she plays armchair psychologist with, I asked her what’s the draw because that’s what’s being overlooked. It’s not a coincidence that they’re same relationship different package and the truth is, these guys are all over her at the start with their Fast Forwarding selves and she feels on top of the world and then the same ‘ole problems set in and she feels drained.

Being adored by somebody who initially thinks that they’ve struck gold and in essence being put on a pedestal eventually comes at the price of her contentment and the possibility of mutual relationship. A part of her is insecure in the sense that a guy who isn’t veering between awed and threatened isn’t attractive. She realises that she needs to address that part of her that for some reason doesn’t feel “good enough” unless it’s with this kind of guy even though she eventually ends up feeling “not good enough” anyway due to the way that these relationships pan out. The latest guy has been the worst experience of it and she’s seen it in a much shorter period of time and enough is finally enough even though of course it hurts.

I don’t necessarily say, “I’m really thankful for [the shit experiences]” but ever since I stopped feeling and acting as if each of the hurts and disappointments were terrible plot twists that robbed me of happy endings that ‘should’ have happened and that were making me into a doomed person, I can most definitely see that some of these experiences were blessings in disguise providing me with lessons I needed to learn and some of them were just flat out horrible/painful experiences. I can be angry forever more that certain things have happened but that will be dooming me more than any of the experiences ever could.

Long-standing anger and self-recrimination create major problems especially as we use these as the basis for determining our next moves.

If we keep telling ourselves that something that represents loss of self, pain, and an unhealthy dynamic was the “right” thing for us, life will throw more opportunities for that dynamic to come along, either with us going back to a person or taking up with new version of them in a different package. We can’t expect that we will see, appreciate, and ‘get’ somebody or something that represents a different, healthier outlook while on some level insisting that the people, dynamics and things that represent the loss and pain are where we need to be at.

It’s very easy to focus on what another person is doing but use that information to point you to where you can understand and support you better. Take the focus off them and bring it back to you.

Your thoughts?

PS Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers who celebrate! As always, make sure that the only turkey you’re messing with is the one on your plate! Check out the blessings in disguise posts as well as ‘I’m not that woman’.

PPS The People Pleasing Diet is now open for registration.

The post Take the focus off them and bring it back to you appeared first on Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue.

“We have an amazing connection”, said so many people who are struggling to understand why they’re not experiencing deep, committed, loving, progressing, balanced, consistent relationships with the very people that they’re referring to.

“But, we have so much in common!”, said many a confused person who doesn’t share the common ground of the same perception and commitment to the relationship. All the mutual pain, admiration, shared experiences, attraction, hobbies, interests, orgasms etc., in the world, will not make a difference if when it all boils down to it, you don’t share core common values and are not copiloting a mutual relationship together.

Having a “connection” and “so much in common” doesn’t cut it. These are not the same as truly knowing a person or being truly vulnerable and yourself within a relationship that has grown and fostered deep emotional intimacy.

If you are not being authentic, so showing up as you and being emotionally honest in your own inner relationship never mind with your partner, you will have a lot of the hallmarks of an intimate relationship without the intimacy. That means that you could love and care for a person, enjoy sex and other aspects of a relationship but fundamentally be afraid of the consequences of closeness – that fear that if you’re you, vulnerable and essentially emotionally available (willing to feel all of your feelings and be rooted in reality instead of ducking behind a wall and struggling with boundaries and commitment), that you will allow somebody to get close enough to you that it might hurt if they leave, disappoint, criticise, argue/fight with you, or reject you.

It’s that that you being you is going to be “wrong” and that you won’t be able to cope with their response that you’ve predicted or with your own feelings and thoughts. You don’t want to be under scrutiny, to be judged, to put you out there or reopen an old wound.

You may not know what intimacy is, possibly due to not having relationships that you could truly observe and learn from, and you may have assumed that once you felt like you loved and cared for someone and were in a relationship, that you’d either be able to automatically know what each of you wants or that a void you had would be filled up and you’d feel confident and in possession of the skills to forge closeness.

I know I’m not alone in having believed that being in a relationship, talking even if it’s not truly communicating, and being in great turmoil due to the rollercoaster of drama, is intimacy. I’m also not alone in having felt a ‘connection’ to people because of what they ‘activated’ in me that reminded me of one or both of my parents or that tapped into old issues. Hell, I thought that if a person cried on me, told me about how their pet budgie died when they were seven or how much they disliked one or both of their parents, or even wanted to get into my pants faster than the speed of light, that these were ‘intimacy’

Intimacy takes time, experience, and vulnerability.

We can have intimate moments with people, we can share intimate pieces of information, but that doesn’t mean that we’re experiencing the intimacy that many of us actually desire in our relationships. This misunderstanding of intimacy is why many people wake up in relationships where they feel quite attached to somebody and feel as if they have “so much in common” but they’re hungry and either not going in the same direction or feeling an ever-growing void emerging. It’s confusing, disconcerting, and frustrating.

They think that they’re deep in the ocean when they’re actually just beneath the ocean’s surface. 

When we don’t truly understand what intimacy is, an imbalance will exist in the relationship because one person leads and one person takes their cues – the whole driver and passenger issue that permeates every unhealthy and struggling relationship.

We will lack self-awareness and self-knowledge so in not having an intimate relationship with ourselves, we won’t be able to distinguish between emotional and sexual intimacy as well as talking about stuff versus showing up with both feet in and deepening the relationship and how we relate over time. If we have a habit of not knowing where we end and where others begin, we will mistake the boundary issues that result from this as intimacy. We’ll think that letting the other person direct and even feeling excessively emotionally reliant on them to feel worthwhile and purposeful, is intimacy when it isn’t; it’s faux intimacy.

• Connection isn’t the same as intimacy.
• Common ground isn’t the same as intimacy.
• Liking a person because they appear to be the same as you is a connection not intimacy, and it can make for dangerous assumptions.
• Sexual intimacy isn’t the same as emotional  intimacy.
• Talking about certain things but ultimately holding aspects of you back out of fear affects and in fact undermines intimacy.
• Speeding through the early phase of a relationship (Fast Forwarding) isn’t intimacy.
• Talking about things that you don’t have the goods in the form of deeds and actions isn’t intimacy.
• Backing away every time it feels as if you’re overheating in terms of commitment or closeness, isn’t intimacy.
• One of you being the driver and the other being the passive passenger isn’t intimacy.
• A feeling of closeness in the moment doesn’t make you close.

Here’s the truth: A lot of us can talk about and do a lot of things.

Think back to a past relationship with a Mr / Miss Unavailable:

Maybe one of you talked about your problems or ideas more, and even played armchair psychologist. Maybe you were a Florence Nightingale trying to fix/heal/help/change them with an underlying desire and need to fill a void and be validated.

Maybe you also had trouble distinguishing between your respective feelings and behaviour.
Maybe you could talk about work, politics, the environment, your intelligence levels, or text morning, noon and night.
Maybe you were indispensable as a substitute for being vulnerable.

But ultimately,  could you hold down a relationship with this person?

When all was said and done and they were right in front of you, and you had the choice between putting you out there based on the past, or fantasising about the future, or being in the present and true, were you able to just be you with no ifs, buts, maybes or censorship? Were you only putting out as much as you might get back or putting out extra in the hope that it would create a tipping point where they might be more available? Had you taken to pussyfooting around the No Fly Zone topics? Had you initially been able to open up but then subconsciously (or possibly quite consciously), taken a step back and closed up somewhat because of the lack of response you were getting or not wanting to rock the boat?

And you’d be shocked at the amount of people who feel a connection and “so much in common” who recognise on reflection that they may have ‘known’ a person but they didn’t truly know them. They were getting a mask.

These relationships can leave you feeling lonely due to the lack of deep emotional connection as well as feeling adrift from your core self, even though you might now know what that is due to always playing roles.

We need to change the way that we think about intimacy. We need to recognise that some of the things that we’re hung up on that blind us like the “connection” and the stuff we claim to have in common, are not only ways of justifying continuing to invest in something that isn’t going to nourish us, but they can also be ways of avoiding intimacy.

You always know that you’re experiencing truly intimate relationships when you feel nourished by the relationship not malnourished or riding rollercoaster.

We also need to be more emotionally smart and go through the discovery phase of dating and build a relationship over time rather than trying to force ripen an involvement with Fast Forwarding, which in itself is also a means of avoiding intimacy and realness that ultimately ends up leaving you feeling empty due to the lack of substance.

If we do not know the difference between us and another person, if we are in unhealthy relationships, and if we are ultimately basing who we are around possible reactions, we are not experiencing relationships with intimacy. But we can.

Love, trust, care for, and respect you first. Listen to you. Show up for you.

Your thoughts?

The post A ‘connection’ or having ‘so much in common’ isn’t the same as intimacy appeared first on Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue.

It can be incredibly frustrating to desire healthier relationships and to have done some self work, only to get into a relationship and experience a near assault of confusing emotions that leave us struggling to distinguish between our own issues and the existence of concerns. We can become almost paralysed by the task of needing to work out our next move because we’re afraid of ‘getting it wrong’ due to being unable to tell whether it’s our issues plus a concern, or whether we are manufacturing the concern due to our issues. Is it my issues or am I in the wrong relationship?

In reality, the relationship is highlighting where we need to be more vigilant and ground ourselves in the present so that we can grow and transcend a pattern, but it’s also pointing to an area of work in the relationship. Relationships take two and are 100:100, not 50:50. Once we start trying to cut the relationship in half, that’s where things get messy. We must know where we end and they begin. One person’s idea of doing ‘their share’ may be hogging up the whole relationship or doing very little.

We must honour the fact that we are both responsible for the relationship. Once we are willing to own ourselves, it’s that much easier to know our own feelings, opinions, needs, expectations and desires so we can have a far greater sense of whether we’re in a relationship that’s befitting of us. We can look at how we want to feel and behave and also respond from a place of love, care, trust and respect to our partner. In acknowledging the separateness instead of trying to work out what’s in their head or trying to influence and control their feelings and behaviour so that we can get validation or give ourselves permission to feel and act better, we can see what’s ours and what’s theirs. We can have more honest communication.

Due to childhood experiences, in very high stress situations where I feel vulnerable and upset, there’s a period where I’ll feel very wounded, angry, defensive, or withdrawn. That doesn’t mean that because I initially respond this way that I’m responsible for the situation or the other person’s responses but what I am responsible for is how I continue to act including how I express those feelings and whether I exacerbate them with negative self-talk or whether I calm them by getting present and adjusting my perspective. Due to recognising those feelings and even the onset of certain thoughts, it’s much easier to snap out of them and ground me plus those periods have shrunk considerably over time.

We mustn’t assume that because we have issues that we’re wholly responsible for the existence of a relationship issue and resolving it to a positive outcome.  I wouldn’t be helping me if each time something crops up, I dismissed it as abandonment issues or being too sensitive, or I put it on others to adapt their behaviour so that I can feel better, or I owned their responses. Recognising how my past sometimes show itself is my cue to be self-aware, listen, and to take care of me.

To proceed with a relationship and also be able to navigate those inevitable instances when there will be miscommunications or issues to resolve, we must take responsibility for us. If we don’t know what’s ours then at some point, we have become adrift from our core self.

In the early days, weeks and months of a relationship, we can sometimes be so caught up in being swept up or in keeping the relationship, that we stop paying attention to what we truly feel and think. We ignore our needs and sometimes, we ignore concerns. There’s a tendency when we know that we’ve had certain issues and are eager to distance ourselves and not be actively working on them, to then bag and tag anything flagged internally as ‘us’ or play it down. The problem is that by the time our minds, emotions and bodies start giving off warning signals in the form of pain and discomfort, we’ve now established whatever the concerns are as a ‘me problem’ and so we have to retrace our steps and slowly play back the mental tape of the relationship to work out what on earth is going on. We have to attempt to tune in. We have to regain that separateness and this in itself can be painful because we’re  either enmeshed or reeling from reality.

Of course, if we’re feeling stressed and are now almost overwhelmed by it, we might struggle to get grounded to figure out what’s what, as well as struggle with the self-care we need to calm ourselves down. We won’t think big picture or separateness; we’ll just keep reacting more than likely from a place of fear and then feel as if we’re making things worse. Then we’ll react again by saying or doing something else or by trying to have a non response.

If we’re trying to engage in damage limitation but we actually have no sense of what we feel, know or need and are operating from the past instead of the present, we will create more problems for us than we solve, and that’s before we even get to how this so-called damage limitation distorts the relationship.

Relationships are 100:100. When we act as if we’re responsible for the other party’s feelings, problems, moods and behaviour, we operate as if it’s 50:50 and then take on some of their share. In not honouring that separateness, it then becomes, for example 85:15 where they do the exam equivalent of getting 15% for showing up and writing their name. That’s why we feel so confused about what we feel because we don’t know if we’re feeling what we’re feeling or we’re hyper-feeling due to also trying to feel theirs. Exhausting! When problems present themselves or the relationship doesn’t end up working out, because we were already taking on too much, it’s an easy slide to now blaming us for why things didn’t work out.

We all have emotional baggage. We will all have our issues regardless of whether we’re in the “right” or “wrong” relationship. We have to unpack, declutter, repack and reclaim, in order to lighten our loads and evolve. Baggage Reclaim.

The goal isn’t to be issue free; it’s more about breaking the pattern of those issues owning and directing us. It’s about being present and having the ability to think of the past without living in it.

It can be frustrating because we work on ourselves and then we think that we’re good to go and then when those old feelings creep in and we’re paralysed with the stress of it all, it feels as if we’ll never be free. We only truly know where we need to do further work when we’re put into situations that typically activate us and then we respond differently. That’s what each relationship presents us with – an opportunity to know and grow ourselves better. Progress not perfection.

Instead of berating or trying to pretend that a concern doesn’t exist, what we really need to be asking is: What can I learn here? Where am I giving away my rights, responsibilities, or power? Where am I keeping me small? How can I respond differently so that I transcend my pattern? How can I hold my own and be in this relationship? Does this relationship and the other party’s behaviour positively reflect my own values or it is mirroring pain for me?

Do jot down your feelings each day to help you get grounded.

Do write out the problem (Unsent Letters can work very well here) or talk about it with somebody to help you gain clarity and perspective.

Do respond instead of reacting.

If there’s an issue, it doesn’t mean that we have to jump ship unless of course we’re trying to work with code red problems and are essentially just having another go at putting the past on repeat. Even if this relationship doesn’t work out, it can still be a good experience for us if we face down old challenges with a fresh approach in the present. We learn how to navigate conflict, criticism and disappointment rather than being on autopilot. If we’re going to stay in a relationship, it needs to be because we want to, not because of what we don’t want. If we can be vulnerable enough to ourselves that we can let the lessons in that we need to, we’re either going to evolve in this relationship or it will provide a window into understanding who we are and what we need so that we are that much closer to a relationship that’s more befitting of us.

Your thoughts?

The post Is it my issues or am I in the wrong relationship? appeared first on Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue.

One of the challenges that friendship can sometimes pose is this desire, whether its on our part or on the part of our friend(s), that nothing changes or that the friendship is maintained in orderly fashion. There are often roles within friendships, particularly imbalanced ones where one party may be more of a Florence Nightingale type or the one who never has his/her stuff together and juggles various dramas, or the one who is super responsible and never appears to put a foot wrong. There can be recurring ‘go-to’ topics – the ex that got away or family dramas or reminiscing about the good ‘ole days or whatever. There can be underlying predictions about who will settle down first or whose life will be plain sailing and when the running order is messed about with by real life, the person who always thought that they would be doing what we’re doing (or vice versa), can feel very confused, wounded, and yes, even envious and resentful.

When we ask why it bothers us that things have changed or why things had to go in a certain order, what’s revealed underneath these concerns is where we personalise things to too high a degree.

We often don’t want things to change because we are resisting change or are still affected by the past enough that it’s distorting our present and our perception of our future. If things stay the same, if the routine of the friendship doesn’t change, then we can remain in our comfort zone. We feel as if it’s a level playing field. If we accept the change but we judge us unfairly, we see that change as a reflection of our ‘failure’ and/or as rejection. We feel as if we have time to play with. When our friends appear to be changing and evolving, we may put pressure on ourselves. It can trigger an unease that subtly plays its way out in the dynamic. It’s one thing if we don’t want things to change from being healthy to unhealthy but it’s another when we don’t want our friendships to evolve because we don’t want to evolve.

When various friends began settling down, I would never have admitted it back then, but I subtly changed my friendship habits. It was so subtle that I didn’t notice it until I was in a place where I was ready to listen to myself. It was easy for me to do a Bridget and call some of them Smug Marrieds but most weren’t. I subconsciously distanced myself partly because I was living the Fallback Girl life and especially because I felt that seeing a guy with a girlfriend while your friends are settling down didn’t really jive. So I judged me and aligned myself with my single pals or the ones who had relationship woes. I kept it hidden and my inner turmoil as well as the secrecy threw up an invisible barrier. Ironically, these were some of my most understanding friends in the end.

The funny thing is – and I talk about this with so many people – it’s easy for us to go, “Friends shouldn’t judge”, “Friends should always be there”, “Friends should agree with you even when they don’t”, but we judge, we’re not always ‘there’ even if we tell ourselves that we are (or we are but we’re doing that people pleasing thing where we accrue debt with our ‘good deeds’ and then feel resentful about not getting payback), and we don’t always agree with everything that they say and do (and nor do we have to).

One of the things that I’ve gradually lost my attachment to is how I think things ‘should’ go or how I think people ‘should’ behave and it’s for one simple reason – me knowing my own boundaries, standards, and values is great and it teaches me about where I’m in alignment but me painting a picture in my mind of what people in my circle ‘must’ be and do just leads to an Imagination Hangover. It doesn’t mean that I have friendships without expectations; it means that I have friendships without an excessive amount of attachment to expectations and enjoy them for what they are in reality.
All of our friendships are unique.

Granted, there are parallels and clearly there commonalities within groups of friends, but all of our friendships are unique and it’s vital to honour the separateness of both the individual friendships and of each other. I’m not friends with my pals because we’re the same; it’s because we each have various mutual like and affection. The friendships have a basis of love, care, trust, and respect along with common core values and after that, the rest unfolds on a friendship by friendship basis.

Back in the day when my friendships tended to revolve around us living in each other’s pockets, we had some great times, but with my rocky sense of self and turbulent relationships, it was sometimes difficult to discern where I ended and others began, plus I felt excessively emotionally reliant at times because external esteem was my self-esteem. I was very prone to taking things personally or worrying if we weren’t in touch. I wanted things to be a certain way because when they weren’t, I’d feel abandoned.

Losing this attachment to the ‘shoulds’ has stopped me from living in the past, from imposing what I feel is the way that a friendship should play out, and my friendships feel mutual.

Some friends I speak with regularly and others, occasionally. I don’t assume anything bad if we’re not in touch. With most, when we see or speak, it’s as if no time has passed but at the same time, we’re in the now.

As our lives evolve, our friendships do too and that means adjusting to new rhythms which isn’t always easy. I’ve found some of the shifts in my own challenging and saddening at times but with the acceptance, we’ve either reestablished the friendship with the adjusted rhythm, or life in its funny ‘ole way has opened up new friendships once I’ve been more receptive to it.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of benchmarking the routine of one friendship against another but, while this can be useful for gaining clarity about issues, it’s not so useful if it’s to attempt a one size fits all approach. We could have an equally good friendship with a friend we speak with a few times a year as we could with somebody we speak with quite frequently. Trying to make all our friendships the same makes it too much about us. It can cause emotional distancing because trying to control the uncontrollable with friendships, limits vulnerability.

While we can’t keep up our friendships to the same intensity that we might have done when we were free from as many ties, what can make a huge difference is to not vanish each time we’re in a relationship. When we check out, it gets tougher to slot back in, especially if we hope to pick up from where things left off.

We need our friendships, not to ‘fall back’ on when things get rough or as a filler between relationships but as a necessary part of our journey because when we are very romantically focused or we’re too in our own heads, that lack of emotional closeness can evolve into loneliness or being reliant on them for our self-esteem. We may veer between trying to fill voids with romantic partners and then when that doesn’t work, trying to get our friendships to.

We need our friendships to be equitable to truly enjoy them.

They don’t need to be perfect or remain static. We can appreciate friendships for what they’ve been now and in the past. Friendship and life itself, has an ebb and flow. It’s important to note that if an unhealthy friendship has run its course, that’s a good thing. We grow and we evolve and sometimes we don’t take everyone who started with or joined us on the journey, along for the rest of the ride. Maybe they were only supposed to be around for part of the story. Maybe they’ll show up in other chapters. New people can join too.

If you’ve struggled with friendships changing, have some compassion for the you that you think is lost with these friendships and don’t assume the worst about you (or them). Sometimes, when we’ve been through a few things, it’s easy to come up with a story about these changes that fits a negative narrative. You’re still here. Take care of you. Don’t be afraid to branch out. Don’t be afraid to re-establish the friendship from a new spirit of acceptance and mutuality.

Your thoughts?

The post We Have To Allow Our Friendships To Evolve appeared first on Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue.

There’s this falsehood that many people who are in the process of improving their self-esteem, addressing unhealthy or redundant habits, or who are thinking about doing any of these things, subscribe to, and it’s this idea that once we tackle whatever it is that we think has held us back and even “grow up” as such, that we will not be knocked by things anymore. We believe that once we do what we feel that we need to, that we won’t be put to the test. But, how would we know that we have the courage to deal with things and how would we know the length and breadth of what we’ve learned, unless these on-the-job training lessons are put to the test on occasion?

In the almost ten years since I embarked on my own personal journey of learning to like and love me as well as starting Baggage Reclaim, I’ve thought that I’m “finally” a grownup on a number occasions due to coming out of the other side of deeply testing situations. I think on some level, for a time I believed that once I had some experience under my belt of having improved self-esteem, I was never going to be ‘back there’ but if life has taught me anything in recent years, it’s that a lot of what I’ve learned along the way has prepared me for facing adversity such as different major stresses I’ve experienced with both of my parents, grieving the loss of my relationship with my father and his family, and having to face down experiences that had the potential to bring up those fears of rejection, failure, and even success.

Each time I’ve been put in testing situations, I’ve had to figure out through trial and error as well as my existing bank of self-knowledge, how to get back up.

Each testing experience, I’ve come out of it thinking, “OK – yeah, I’ve definitely grown up now”, and then down the line, something else happens and it’s, “Jaysus! Now I’ve grown up”. It reminds me of when after each breakup and disappointment, I’d think (and often say) that I’d “never get over this”.

For the majority of my life, a lot of my story was “I got knocked down” but over the last decade it’s changed to, “I’m still standing” or “I got back up”.

I’m still standing. You’re still standing. We’re still standing.

If I think about one of those experiences and I begin turning over the chain of events and as such, whipping me up, I end up, if not retraumatising me (which is more what I used to do years before), I certainly relive the events and then if I get carried away (which we can when we’re not mindful and are experiencing some form of stress), I end up having to deal with the hurt brought on from going down that road.

Sometimes we forget that we’re still standing or that at the very least, we’re in the process of getting back up.

We may have experienced abandonment, neglect, bullying, bereavements and other losses, knocks, disappointments, unrequited feelings, betrayals and more, but we are still standing. We are still here.

Our parents may not have been who we would have ideally wanted them to be or parented us as adequately as we might have desired but, we are still standing. When I think of all the things that have gone on in my own family never mind in my adult life, I realise that part of what makes me who I am is what I’ve been through, what I’ve had to survive, what I’ve had to navigate, figure out, step away from and more.

Isn’t it time that we stop thinking of ourselves as “weak”?

I hear from so many people who believe that they’re “weak” for having gotten into a situation or being attracted to a person but we must remember, it actually takes a lot of courage to become acquainted with the truth and learn from it. It takes courage to take experiences and use these as a light to open up our awareness about where we need to adapt our behaviour.

Baggage Reclaim would not be Baggage Reclaim if my story was, Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was perfect, her parents were perfect, life was perfect and she went on to experience everything her heart desires. The end.

There’s no frickin way on earth that I would choose the things that I’ve been through for my own daughters and I’m not about to break into a jubilant moonwalk, but no longer wanting to (whether it was consciously or not) live my life under a narrative cloud of negativity due to defining me, my present and my future by virtue of my background, experiences etc, I’ve been able to look at me in another way and live.

There’s still this little girl within me that experienced abandonment and pain. If I think of me as a kid, I see me, sitting in a hospital ward staring out the window knowing that my father would not be coming and feeling utter desolation. Sometimes I see me all dressed up and ready to be picked up….and it not happening. I decided my fate when I was a child and one of the things that I’m thankful for is that I’ve allowed me to grow up so that I can accept a different version of events and love the me that I was then and the me I am now.

My story cannot be, I got knocked down.

I still have the same parents, the same family, the same exes (I must tell the story of that time when a friend tells me about her shiny new semi-boyfriend and it turns out to be one of my ex’s – haha), the same experiences and the same old wounds but ya know what? I’m still standing. I could talk about those experiences and how awful they were but if I were to only focus on that and ignore the recovery, the growth, the insight, it would be the story of when I got knocked down and forgot that I survived.

We are survivors and hell, sometimes, I am in awe of the stories readers share with me, because there are some serious warriors amongst us.

Looking back, I’ve had some damn close calls. I used to shame and terrorise myself over the fact that I had those close calls and as a result, it began to feel as if I was still in the midst of one. What’s the point of that? It would be similar to nearly getting killed by a car and rather than learn from that experience and eventually get to that point of gratitude for still being alive, instead continuing to mentally beat you up for the near miss and deciding that your options are limited as a result. I’ve had some major blows but due to recovery, they’re in the remote distance, not on me like a black cloud. They’re something that happened, not that’s happening. This is good because until ten years, abandonment and being “worthless and good for nothing” was a story I lived every day as if it happened the day before.

Some of us get into the habit of feeling like underdogs, the odd ones out, the ‘unsaleables’ and often it’s because of who we were born to or where we born, or experiences we’ve had or ‘mistakes’ we’ve made along the way. That’s not fair. We can’t keep defining ourselves in this way. That charmed life we sometimes secretly wish for, was never going to grow us and strengthen us. Maybe it’s time for us to use these experiences in a different way because all of these experiences, carry illuminating positive lessons that when we heed them, we will not keep getting burnt by the same pattern over and over again. We will also know the length and breadth of our courage and know that when life puts us to the test again, as inevitably does, we are that much more equipped to not only deal with it but to also gradually bounce back.

I’m still standing. You’re still standing. We’re still standing.

The post I’m still standing. You’re still standing. We’re still standing. appeared first on Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue.

Many Baggage Reclaimers are dealing with people who have an attitude of, “Yeah, I beat you, cussed you down, ignored you, tormented you, abandoned you, abused your parent or siblings, breached your boundaries and all sorts of malarkey, but we’re family. Blood is thicker than water. Why aren’t you carrying on as if we’re best friends / giving me your money / licking my feet / telling everybody how great I am?” And here’s a good one, “Well your friend Bessy’s mother used to beat her and call her names and they’re very close. Why can’t you be like that?” What the what now?

I’m all for forgiveness and moving on but, come on now! It’s not about bearing grudges and holding stuff over people, and I think it’s safe to say that things were very, how shall we put this – “different” back in the day. I was brought up in Ireland plus I have the Afro/Caribbean culture and there was so much turning a blind eye and ‘rules’ about what so-called ‘elders’ (the grown-ups) were allowed to do that hell, everyone might as well have been blind! I’ve often wondered, Erm, when do I get to be a grown-up with rights? When you all kick the bucket? When I’m 99? I don’t feckin think so!

I really feel for the many people I hear from who spent most of their childhoods not having a voice and feeling scared, who are now adults who are still trying to figure out who they are and where they fit into this world. Some of them still don’t have a voice (or don’t believe that they’re allowed to) and are still scared.

These experiences that are dismissed as being part of being in a family deeply impacts people, affecting their interpersonal relationships, their self-image, their assertiveness skills, and their habits of thinking and behaviour. It can have lifelong impacts because the way in which we judge ourselves as children becomes our reasoning habit that we keep using into adulthood until we become more conscious, aware, and present.

The problem with being dismissive of childhood experiences that have left their mark on us, is that we can be left with the wrong associations and actually not be fully aware of how they’re weaving their way into our interactions. We may find ourselves unwittingly gravitating to partners/people who reflect old patterns from our childhood and feeling bewildered as to why we feel so triggered, so scared, so small, and wondering why we find it so hard to say, Um, hold up a frickin second here! Your treatment of me doesn’t feel right. I don’t like it. This is wrong.

Why is this?

Because we’re still mixing up those associations where we were told that certain things were happening because we were loved or that they wouldn’t have been done ‘If only…’. No wonder it’s so easy to blame ourselves or to feel confused in bound loyalty. To acknowledge that certain things that have been happening are wrong or certainly not right for us, causes us to feel in a bind, because to step away from those patterns is to cause us to feel disloyal to the original people connected to those patterns.

I hear from so many people who are in abusive relationships that mirror aspects of their own upbringing whether it was being abused or witnessing abuse. They feel conflicted about exiting from these relationships because they love their parents (and there’s nothing wrong with that incidentally) but to acknowledge that their current relationship is unhealthy is seen as being disloyal to their parents, especially because the whole family is often colluding in whitewashing or even flat out denying the past. They don’t want to acknowledge the pain of what they’ve experienced / witnessed because to do so, is to allow the long buried pain to surface and it means acknowledging the contribution of those experiences to the current perception of their self-worth and how relationships ‘work’. It means acknowledging that there may be aspects of them that are angry. The trouble with remaining loyal to a pattern that isn’t working though, is that it keeps us stuck and that can prove to be dangerous.

To acknowledge the road we’ve travelled in our journey is not about looking to blame our parents (or anyone else for that matter); it’s about recognising the things that influenced who we are and what we’re doing today.

It helps us to understand our motivations for what we’re doing because until we do, we’re doing things for reasons that we’re not aware of while believing that we’re doing them for different motivations, and this is why we end up feeling conflicted and in our own Groundhog Day. We not only try to right the wrongs of the past but we hinder our progression in the present because by lacking awareness and compassion for the original thinking behind these habits, we end up self-sabotaging while trying to spare us from what we think is a bigger future pain. We may be trying to fight one or both of our parents corners and not realising that we’re actually giving up our life in the process. It’s not our battle.

I’ve learned through my own struggles with both sides of my family that you cannot control the uncontrollable nor force people to see or talk about stuff that they don’t want to see or talk about.

No, it’s not fair and it was a bitter flippin’ pill to swallow, but I’m really all the better for having done so because it’s stopped me from unwittingly having excessive expectations plus it’s also stopped me from putting me in a ‘child role’ while making authorities out of these people. I’ve stopped looking for validation and I’ve focused on healing instead, and a lot of that has happened because I stopped withholding self-compassion. I stopped pretending.  It’s forced me to grow up, to figure myself out, and to come up with my own boundaries based on the preferences for how I want to live.

The one thing I won’t tolerate is my experiences being dismissed by me, never mind anyone else. I’m not clutching these experiences like a security blanket, but you know what? These are my experiences and before anybody tells me that I ‘shouldn’t’ have been bothered by certain things that happened, it’s important to remember that if they are that concerned about my perception of them or their part in their story, they either could have acted better or could be endeavouring to evolve the relationship with me now. I spent a significant part of my life being The Good Girl Who Doesn’t Make People Feel Bad By Remembering. Guess where that got me? I lost me and I got badly hurt. There’s chunks of my life that are so hazy because of the deep stress of trying to forget the more painful parts.

Don’t allow anybody to attempt to do a memory wipe on you just because you remembering doesn’t suit their ego. The irony is is that we’d all find it a hell of a lot easier to move on from stuff if the people in question didn’t keep reminding us of the fact that they behaved in these ways by either repeating the same actions or by trying to make us feel guilty so that we will do what they want.

If you’re acting unconsciously and doing stuff that feels like ‘home’, the clues to why lie in your past. To leave it unexamined is to block you from invaluable insights and awareness.

Your goal in allowing you to remember and acknowledge what you’ve been through isn’t to beat you or others up with it; it’s to understand the map you’ve used to get to this point in your journey so that if you want to go somewhere else, you can now choose a different route by healing you with self-awareness, self-compassion and self-care. To dismiss experiences for which you still have an emotional charge is to dismiss parts of you that are crying out to be acknowledged and healed. You dismiss your soul. You are worthy of serious consideration. You matter.

Your thoughts?

The post Dismissing those childhood experiences is akin to dismissing you appeared first on Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue.

At what point do we say, “Enough”? It needs to be at the point where we’re feeling so desperate to keep someone in our life that we’re willing to let go of everything that needs to matter to us – our sense of self, our values, and most certainly, our boundaries and standards. It pains me when readers tell me harrowing stories of how they’re near begging somebody who doesn’t treat them with love, care, trust and respect, to come back or stay. They’d rather have some crumbs rather than no crumbs because the relationship has robbed them of the strength to leave. I’ve often threatened to show up at their homes by coming through their roof in an orange jumpsuit, intervention style. I may make this a reality the way some of you are going!

That’s why I made this video, Set The Standard. We cannot accept substandard treatment, least of all from ourselves. Watch the video, or you can listen to the audio, or read the transcript below.

It’s vital that we set the standard for how we are treated. This doesn’t mean that we take responsibility for other people’s feelings and behaviour but what it does mean is that we have to recognise that if we do not treat and regard ourselves with love, care, trust and respect, we are putting out the wrong message. We are sending out a message to anybody that is around us that, Hey, this is the standard that I have set for myself. It is OK for you to treat me similarly or worse.

When you are able to be there for you; when you are willing to step up and take care of you, to have your own back, to set the standard of how you will to be treated, you will not accept less from anybody else than what you can already do for you. This stops you from being in unhealthy relationships. This allows you to say, “Hey, I don’t accept that. I’m not OK with what you’ve just said/done”, because you know how you want to feel and how you want to continue to feel.

If somebody is mistreating you and they are at best, taking advantage and at worst, abusing you, if you then turn around and say, “I take the blame for your behaviour” or “That’s OK, I’m not going to create any consequences for your behaviour”, or “I love you, I love you, I love you…. Come back to me… I can’t bear to be without you…”, and this is after they have walked all over you and treated you worse than a doormat, that is sending out the wrong message and it’s not one that you want to continue to put out.

What you’re basically saying is, “I don’t love me. I don’t care about me. I don’t trust me. I don’t respect me”. It’s saying, “I know that you don’t either but I’d rather accept some crumbs rather than no crumbs”. It’s saying, “I don’t feel that I have to set any consequences for your actions…. I’m saying that I don’t think that I can do without you… yeah… I don’t feel that I can do without you who actually, isn’t really there for me at all”.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that it’s better for somebody to be there in a crappy capacity rather than to not be there at all. And in the same way: it’s not better for somebody to be there but emotionally absent rather than being gone all together, because all of these things will kill your soul, they will kill your spirit and they will kill the very essence of you.

They will distort your view of you and they will distort your view of what a healthy, loving relationship should look like. You don’t need to be out there seeking perfection but what you do need to seek is to be with people who are like-minded. If your idea of like-minded folk is somebody who treats you less than something they just stepped on, something is very, very wrong.

The answer isn’t to try to change them. The answer isn’t to try to please them even more. The answer isn’t to keep editing and shaving you down in the hopes that one of these things will spark them into being a better person in a better relationship. The answer is to step right back and to invest all of your energy into evaluating and working on why you are accepting less than what you deserve even from yourself – and that is to evaluate why you don’t care about you, why you don’t even like you, why you don’t respect you, why you don’t trust you. What is it that is in your head and in your past that is telling you that THIS – this sh*tty, horrible relationship, that this horrible way of being – is the best that you can do?

Once you are able to look at what it is that you associate with feeling bad about you as well as what is it that you associate with love, you can then work on and heal those things from your past so that you are not making decisions now based on emotional reasons attached to the past that actually bear no real relation to anything that you are looking to do now and going forward.

If you are doing things because you felt abandoned by a parent or caregiver in the past or you felt rejected, or you are carrying all sorts of unhealthy beliefs about you, what you’re doing right now is responding to those emotional reasons that are not necessarily based on fact. Now, of course, we don’t always do things for logical reasons but once we recognise that we are doing things for emotional reasons that are not serving us right now, we can start to address the source of those emotional reasons and step in and be conscious, aware and present, so that we can take care of ourselves in a better way.

We cannot continue to accept less than what we deserve from others and we absolutely cannot continue to set a poor standard for treatment. We can not basically say, “This is the standard that I’m setting for myself and you can do whatever the hell you like”.

NO.

You must set the standard for treatment. You want to be treated with love, care, trust and respect? Treat yourself with love, care, trust and respect, not because you’re thinking, Well if I do this then I can force other people to do that, but because once you start to treat you with love, care, trust and respect, not only will you not accept less than what you can already do for yourself but you will also align you with entirely different people and situations. You will find that you come from a place of love as opposed to coming from a place of crushing you, or of trying to always go around and please and serve others. You will do things from a place of healthy desire as opposed to, Please! This is my need! I want you to be my salvation. That cannot be the way that you live your life.

The way that you feel right now is not going to be the way that you always feel so don’t make how you feel or see things right now into a permanent statement of your future. If it feels as if this person is the sole source of your happiness and at the same time, they’re the source of your misery, you can see where that person has become very skewed in your head and has become the thing that you are dependent on for your sense of self, for your emotions, for any sense of value here on earth, but that doesn’t have to continue.

Yes – it will take time. Yes – it will take work. Yes – it will take some reflection. Yes – it will take a bit of time for you to face up to your part in things. Not a part where you are taking responsibility for other people’s feelings and behaviour but recognising where you are not treating and regarding you in the best way that you can. Love you first. Take care of you. When you do these things, a whole other world is going to open up for you. Believe.

Your thoughts?

The post Set The Standard appeared first on Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue.

I turned thirty-eight last week and while there are many takeaways from what was actually an emotionally tough but very much necessary year—and I’ll be sharing these in another post—one thing that I won’t be doing is stopping short of expressing what I truly feel or think on the basis of “not hurting people’s feelings”.

There are people in this world who could stand to be more conscientious and truly empathise but it’s safe to say that there are some of us who really need to get grounded and own our own and let others own theirs. We can still be conscientious and empathetic but we must not take ownership of other people’s feelings and behaviour and duck out of stepping up and showing up, on the basis that the person in question might not like the way that we’re doing it or might not like our response to their boundary crossing behaviour.

It’s my nature (and my calling) to look underneath the hood of human behaviour and to increase self-knowledge and self-awareness and so I look for the patterns and where I can tweak and adapt, not because I think it will “control the uncontrollable (it won’t) but because I have no desire to be be stuck in my own Groundhog Day.

It is OK for me (and you) to express feelings and opinions that are not all hearts, flowers and My Little Pony vibes. We have a range of emotions to draw on and each one provides clues as to how to take care of us and repeated ones give indications about our inner state.

It is OK for us to not always be able to articulate our feelings and opinions. It matters that we try, try and try again.

It is OK for us to not like being around somebody or what they represent. The sky won’t fall down. Move along. Don’t make it your vocation to try and find a “good point” so that you can be The Good Person or to try to change them. Respect the differences.

“Yes, it is OK for us to consider the feelings of others and to consider the impact of our actions but what isn’t OK is for us to bullshit ourselves about why we’re doing this and to end up doing all manner of self-destructive stuff in an effort to ‘spare’ others from us.

Be conscientious by living your life authentically. If you keep shying away from the business of being you, you are the one who has to live with the consequences and these are far bigger than any short-term discomfort and tension from showing, speaking, or stepping up.

Any person who cannot cope with you coming from a place of love, care, trust, and respect, will shuffle along. It clears the way for people who are in alignment with the way that you conduct yourself.

Remember that you can still be a loving, good, kind, positive person and express feelings and opinions that you’ve typically labelled as negative. It’s called being human and not living so much of your life in fear. You can be direct and conscientious rather than being so achingly conscious of not wanting to be vulnerable and say the “wrong thing” that you don’t really say anything at all. That’s called hinting— a slight or indirect suggestion or indication of something because you don’t want to be explicit in your communication for fear of embarrassment or negative consequences.

I’m never mad at me for being brave. Whenever I’ve been angry about hinting-related stuff, it’s because on some level I’d balked at going “all the way”. I’d known what I truly felt or thought (or I’d had a damn good idea of what the other person was saying or indicating), but struggled to find the courage to address it. Time after time, that’s what many BR stories have an underlying theme of – this sense of frustration that comes from knowing what needs to be said or done but being too scared at the time and feeling regretful.

Thirty-seven was when I learned that I have to go all the way and thirty-eight and beyond will be my continued execution of that.

I hinted at my upset with our ex-landlords, then I hinted at my frustration and disappointment with a professional acquaintance, and then I hinted at hurt and anger with my mother-in-law and mother. It felt as if I was saying a lot in each of these situations (and I was) but I stopped short of laying it down. It’s not because I typically do this but there was a theme of feeling as if I was out of control of my circumstances in a way that I hadn’t felt since I was a child. It was triggering and in the end, rather freeing.

There is a part of you in these situations that thinks, Hold up a feckin’ second here. I’ve laid it out in black and white. Sure, I haven’t gone batsh*t on you but I’ve made it clear that I’m not happy. Why do I have to give you even more? You were there too.

And you know what? It’s normal to feel this way but what it doesn’t acknowledge is that we’re only really making assumptions about how much they understand or empathise plus we’re using hinting as a way of avoiding taking responsibility.

We’re all different. We all need to communicate. We also need to do less trying to anticipate every feeling and thought that a person might have and more be-ing. We must take care of our own side of the street.

It can feel as if we’re stopping short but only “just a little”, like, I won’t say that last bit because I don’t want you to think that I’m being mean, which might not have been the conclusion they would have drawn anyway. At least they’d be able to get a sense of the gravity of the situation because we’re communicating it. They have an opportunity to respond, as do we.

Our perception of what’s ‘short’ may be another person’s ‘ long’ so we might be leaving something off the table that’s vital to truly communicating our position but also to growing us and growing our relationship. We think we’re going to “third base” but we might only be going to “first base”.

It can feel as if we were crystal clear but when we hint at stuff, we take a lot of the substance out of our communication. We apologise for our feelings and opinions or even put words in the other person’s mouth. We list our grievances and forget to state what we’re going to do or what our expectations are. So many people have heard, “This isn’t working” and not realised that the other party is saying but not saying is, “I don’t want to continue dating/working/whatever with you.”

We know we’re going “all the way” when we say what we mean instead of hoping that others will read between the lines.

Our relationships grow stronger when we are owning our own and letting others own theirs. We feel at our best when we speak and act from a place that we know to be true in the sense that we’re trying to do the best that we can by us but also trying to do the best that we can by our relationships because we value them.

What we express represents our understanding at that time. We can evolve. We can gain further understanding by not basing our perceptions of what we’re “allowed” to say or our perceptions of that person’s reactions, on the past because we can inadvertently end up responding as if we’re a kid and they’re an authority.

You cannot know what you feel if you don’t acknowledge it or express it.

We’ve got to stop being so afraid of “hurting feelings”. It’s not about going the total opposite and not giving a stuff about anything or anyone, but guess what? Whichever way we go, there’s going to be feelings out there and even when we think that we’re not saying anything, avoiding conflict, criticism, rejection and disappointment has a hell of a lot of hurt feelings that come with it— ours and yes, sometimes those of the people who we don’t trust to truly engage and communicate with. We end up carrying deep regrets about all of the things that we wished we’d said and done but didn’t.

I’m leaving my prints here on earth and yeah, I’m sure I’ll ruffle some feathers along the way but at least I’ll know that I was here and that I showed up. Please join me.

Your thoughts?

The post Forget this hinting malarkey. I’m going all the way. appeared first on Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue.

As a child, it’s hard to conceive why a parent isn’t around or doesn’t treat you with love, care, trust and respect so we determine that for a grownup to behave in this way, we must have done something “really really bad” or just flat-out been “unlovable”. Once we stop using the same childhood reasoning habits and become more mindful of the destructive coping mechanisms that we originally designed to protect us and to make us “more lovable”, on some level we still struggle to conceive why the abandonment happened. We might get things logically but emotionally a part of us wonders:

But why didn’t/don’t they at least try? Why is it that I’m always the one that has to try? To make allowances? To be super understanding? To put aside the past and my own feelings?

In adult life, we strive for accolades. The author wants the book deal not ‘just’ to be self-published; the singer wants an album on a label not ‘just’ what they’ve created off of their own back; the hard working person wants the acknowledgement, the awards or maybe even just the shift in behaviour of their co-workers so that they feel more appreciated and validated; the one who has achieved a lot wants what they deem as their pinnacle of success— to have their ideal romantic relationship and to feel safe and secure. None of these desires are strange but sometimes we don’t stop for long enough to question why they matter and what we think will happen to us. When we experience our desires, we might enjoy them but sometimes, they don’t take the form that we imagine. We thought it would feel so much better or be that much easier, and yet it isn’t.

Since I started writing Baggage Reclaim ten years ago (yay!), part of my self-exploration has caused me to regularly reflect on why an explanation or that love matters that much. What difference would it make?

The explanation which can often be very light in comparison to the weight that we’ve carried, will only really cover so much, especially because a lot of the pain is self-imposed. Even if we get an explanation, we analyse that too and often try to look for more answers. When they don’t cover it and we’re still holding out for them, we look for other inappropriate substitutes to do it and the self-blame habit continues.

We are never going to be able to ‘fully’ understand abandonment.

We want to take away the pain or cause the periodical grief feelings that often catch us off guard to disappear forever. We think understanding and validation is the solution even though no matter how much we investigate the past, we can’t change it. We can change the narrative about those events and the judgements so that we change our present and future because ultimately, how we judge us for who that person wasn’t is the deciding factor.

The grief feelings won’t ‘vanish’. They show up from time to time no matter how good we feel about us because there are times, whether we had our parent around or not, that our younger parts feel vulnerable or when grief shows up as a result of an experience. Loss reminds us of other losses. This pop-up pain is an opportunity to grieve the loss from a different angle and heal even further, grounding and growing us. It’s too much to expect to be permanently rid of certain feelings, especially because feelings guide and direct us on what we need at that moment.

We can empathise with our parents (once we’ve cut the proverbial cord instead of seeing them as being reflective of our inadequacies) but we’ve gotta stop trying to figure them out because on some level, no matter how small it is, that little kid inside thinks that the key to peace and validation is in their pocket.

Trying to understand others to the nth degree doesn’t bring peace.

As I said in the last podcast, we often understand far more than we give ourselves credit for but we don’t like what we understand, especially if we’re judging us for it, or it means the end of a fantasy or us having to take action. We need to accept all of what we know and stop guilting and berating us for acknowledging our experience or what we know. If we don’t, we’ll just keep repeating variations of the experiences.

If you’ve struggled with abandonment, you likely already know that it turns you into someone who is reflexively guilty and prone to comparison so you have to be very conscious, aware and present.

As a kid, you feel guilty for missing the parent and still loving them in spite of their absence or treatment, especially when your other parent is still there. Or you feel bad because you have a step-parent so surely you ‘should’ be OK. If the remaining parent is angry or miserable, you take the rap for that too and then feel guilty for wanting to be a kid or to express your own feelings. Or you feel bad for no longer caring or for being angry. By blaming you, you wonder if sibling pain is your fault too. Envying your friends and others triggers guilt but then you feel worthless due to comparison. You feel guilty for feeling sad and lost even though you’re not alone or there are “bigger problems in the world”. You might associate the confusion and grief of abandonment with a lack of gratitude for being taken in or kept, so you push down feelings and then wonder why you feel so depressed and lonely. You wonder if there’s something wrong with you for not being more “over it”.

You feel guilty for speaking your mind or giving a voice to those feelings because, well, it seems that a lot of society are very uncomfortable with children no matter how old they get, flagging up their pain or their experience. You feel guilty for not being able to wipe your memory or for not being OK with the lies that everyone else is, or for feeling anger and disappointment about the entourage of people who keep propping up your parent but who never truly empathise with you, often assigning you the responsibility of building bridges.

It’s not your fault. Never was, never will be. There is nothing you could have done to change your parent. Your worth has nothing to do with their actions. You can start to consciously choose the direction of your thoughts and the direction of your life. Whatever answers you seek in them, you are the only one who can give you permission and choices.

Three-quarters of my life was about abandonment and the last decade has been about reclaiming me from that story. I’ve learned that you have to consciously redefine yourself after spending a period of time defining you based on your perception of an experience and/or other people’s behaviour.

I’ve had to consciously question guilt, blame, shame, fear and obligation each time they show up at my door. I’ve learned that we can be very hard on ourselves and our inner critic is sneaky. It goes from busting our chops for not being “good enough” and for still being affected to giving us a hard time for not being “affected enough” and for not being The Good Daughter/Son. That’s when you realise that the inner critic is nonsensical and to stop giving it so much airtime.

I have a scar on my right leg and inner left thigh from a childhood skin graft for a birthmark that I was born with that it was felt had the potential to be cancerous. For a long time, the scars were another indicator of my damaged status and I anticipated the stares, questions and snap judgements. At some point they stopped being a focal point. I stopped judging it. I have to go out of my way to notice the scar. I’ve accepted it and so closed off that area of self-rejection. When I do remember it, it’s because something else I associate it with, brings it to my mind. Remembering, acknowledging it doesn’t mean I’m not OK.

Ten years down the road from that summer that woke me up to myself and what the real meaning of my experiences were, that’s where I’ve gotten to with this whole abandonment thang– I’ve stopped judging the scar of abandonment and hating on it and me. I’ve stopped shaping my life around it. I forgive my younger self for being so tough on me and as a result, feel less shackled to the past and the parent hunger pangs have faded out. My parents are my parents but I am my primary carer. The scar fades bit by bit over time and the proximity of the pain, actual or remembered, recedes further into the distance…. as long as I take care of my thoughts and my actions right now which help me to take care of me.

Take care of you.

Your thoughts?

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The post Forgiving Me For Abandonment appeared first on Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue.