Seven steps to healing the lovesick heart.
We’ve all had them. Those icky, sticky, yucky feelings of love gone wrong. The sense of loss. Of abandonment. Of feeling devalued and discarded. Of being ”˜less than’ the light of love in our lover’s eyes. We’ve all had them and sometimes, those feelings linger for longer than is healthy for us to reclaim our sense of self-worth, of beauty, of joy in our essence of being alive.
EMBRACE yourself. You’ve got all you need to hold onto
is a seven step process that guides you through letting go of the love that was (and will never be again) into loving what is and will always be within you. You. Whole and complete. Living the 3Ms of self-eMPOWERED YOU! Magnificent! Miraculous! Marvelous!
EMBRACE:
Engage your heart. Still your mind.
Mindfully watch your words and actions.
Be honest with yourself.
Reacquaint yourself with you.
Allow yourself forgiveness.
Celebrate yourself.
Explore your world.
1. Engage your heart by stilling your mind. Meditate. Walk. Do something to get out of your thinking telling you your heart is broken. It isn’t. It’s just hurting because your breathing and thinking is tied up in thoughts of what he did to hurt you. It wasn’t about you. It was always about him.
In your meditation whisper:
Like me, he is seeking to be loved and this is the only way he knows how.
Like me, he has experienced pain, sorrow, and sadness and is looking for a way to avoid feeling them again.
Like me, he only knows this way he is choosing to behave.
And if you can say nothing else, repeat a hundred x ten times a day: I forgive him. I release him.
2. Mindfully watch everything you do and say. Become conscious of your choices knowing that they are always a reflection of your thinking and your thinking will always create how you are feeling and your experience in this moment.
Ask yourself — what do I want to feel in this moment? What is my intention for the day? Tell yourself you are capable of having what you want by reminding yourself what you’re capable of”¦
I wish to feel peace.
I want to feel peace.
I can feel peace.
I choose to be at peace in this moment now. In my choosing peace in this moment, I create the path for peace to appear in the next moment and the next and the next. I am the source of my thinking, my feelings, my actions and I choose to be responsible for my choices.
3. Be honest with yourself. Your healing will only progress to the degree that you are willing to be completely honest with yourself.
His actions were never about you. His actions, words, what he did were always about him.
You do not matter to him. He was not ”˜out to get you’. He was out to get what he wanted to make his life have meaning.
It wasn’t personal. He didn’t set out to hurt you. He set out to protect himself. He set out with the belief that ”˜you’ were a way for him to feel good about himself. You couldn’t be his way to feeling good about himself. You are not that powerful. Making him feel good about himself is not your job. Feeling good about yourself is your job. It is your responsibility. You get to choose how you feel about yourself. Be honest — are your choices making you feel better about yourself or worse? Is your thinking giving you what you want or is it taking from you what you need to Love yourself exactly the way you are?
4. Reacquaint yourself with you — remind yourself about who you were before he came into your life. Remember the things you did that said — I am a magnificent human being.
Did you used to volunteer at a hospital? At a homeless shelter? Did you used to do things that created value in your life, that created value in the world around you? Remind yourself of your power to do things that make a difference. If you could do those things then, you can do those things now. Let go of ”˜used to’ and get doing. Remind yourself of those things. You need to get moving. Get doing. Get being who you believe yourself to be. Who you say you are. Do them now. Do them again and again. Get involved and get into action.
5. Allow yourself the gift of forgiveness. Forgive yourself. Forgive him. Forgive anyone and anything who ever hurt you.
Holding onto pockets of unforgiveness limits your experience of your life free of his abuse. Forgive him. Remember, it wasn’t personal. He didn’t set out to destroy you. He was just doing what he does and you happened to be in his path. He has since, ”˜gotten over you’. He is off doing what he does in someone else’s life. What’s in it for you to hold onto his bad behavior after he’s gone? Forgive him. Forgive yourself. You didn’t know this would happen. You didn’t know you would be so hurt. So broken. So sad. And it’s okay. Forgive yourself and breathe into forgiveness all the loving kindness you possess.
6. Celebrate everything about you. Celebrate your magnificence. Your brilliance. Your light — even when the voices inside would tell you you’re not — celebrate yourself for all you’re worth! You are worth living it up for. Take yourself out on a date. Do something fun and whacky. Go to the zoo. Go bungee jumping. Take dance lessons. Learn a new skill. Celebrate everything about you in everything you do.
7. Explore life. Life isn’t about searching for the right answers, or the perfect you. Life is in the experience of living it. It’s about exploring your beliefs, what beliefs you want to hold onto and those you need to let go of because they’re not working for you any more. If believing he hurt you causes you pain, let go of the belief. If thinking of him makes you sad, explore new thoughts.
Life is in discovering where you’re at is exactly where you are meant to be. Explore this place you’re at right now. Explore your perimeters., Explore your life beyond this place where you find yourself caught up in living small, living less than your dreams.
Get up. Get moving. Quit talking about him. Quit explaining to yourself and anyone who will listen why what he did was so wrong. Wrong or right, it is what he did and all the explanations in the world will never make sense of his nonsense — so give it up. Let it go. Engage yourself in your life. Engage yourself in shining so bright upon your path the whole world lights up around you.
EMBRACE what is. And, if the thought it should be some other way interferes, embrace it and love it to death, or at least until it doesn’t hurt you any more to believe it should be some other way. It isn’t. It can’t be. Embrace what is, love yourself as you are and let yourself go to that place where you are free to explore and experience life on your terms. Free to love fearlessly. To live with abandon. To dance in the rain and run naked through wildflower strewn meadows. It is, and always has been, your choice to embrace what is and live it up for all you’re worth!
Are you willing to do it? It is your life. No one else can live it for you.
forgive, eh?
i don’t think so.
if there had been a lack of malice, i would forgive. if there had been an acknowledgement of the deceit, and how it hurt, i would forgive.
of course, there wasn’t and there never will be.
there is a great deal of forgiveness in my heart toward those who ask for forgiveness.
spaths never ask, because they just don’t care.
forgiveness will not make me any more ‘free’ than i already am…the freedom is in the lack of drama and peace that is now my life without him.
i so respect eveyone’s personal journey here. and it is interesting to read all the ways to freedom we have found.
towanda!
Forgiveness is typically defined as the process of concluding resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offense, difference or mistake, and/or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution. …
I guess in that sense, it was fitting and necessary for me in my journey to just relinquish everything anything and all that had to do with him – make him non-existent and to all-encumber that it included doing the above deep within myself to set myself free of from letting myself be haunted by him within.
Yes it is so interesting Lostingrief how some of us chose to do that, or needed to do that and others simply didnt have a need to do that to get on with their life in the healthiest of ways (for them)…
I join you in saying Towanda to everyone who has found their own way to freedom and release from a toxic person/relationship!
Lostingrief,
I could forgive my dad because I needed to do that to move on with my life. I needed to forgive him. But I don’t think it’s a one-size-fits-all thing at all. Nor do I think it’s the only way to be free.
I can’t forgive my sister…it doesn’t feel right. She is an ongoing one person destruction machine. The best I can do is not think about her. As you said, “…the freedom is in the lack of drama and peace that is now in my life…” Yes.
That’s all I can hope for as far as my sister is concerned. I’m not sure why she is different from my dad and the spath ex. Maybe because I have never seen a spark of humanity in her, and that’s harsh…never seen her or known of her to express any remorse at all–for anything she’s done to anyone. If she were to ever ask for some forgiveness I would not believe her.
So forgiving her is not an option. Distance is, not thinking about her is, making sure I never see her again…those are the only ways to find freedom when it comes to her. So I guess it’s kind of selective and individual for me. Different relationships, different people, require different paths to the same end–freedom and peace.
“On healing & forgiveness”
http://narc-attack.blogspot.com/2008/03/healing-and-forgiveness.html
by Kathy Krajco
About FORGIVENESS
In Alice Miller’s book The Drama of the Gifted Child….she says that “forgiveness” is not only not necessary..it can be detrimental.
In other words…you put the blame on yourself by forgiving. At certain stages..its ok to UNDERSTAND that the abuser is a victm themselves..which made THEM an abuser…but to “forgive”…can hurt you.
I see it this way: I totally understand that the men who were abusive and selfish and manipulative…and conning…were really disordered.
It doesn’t matter now..I do NOT want them in my life. I do NOT however hate them…or feel angry at them. They weren’t out to hurt me…they just did…they were out to fill their own NEEDS for attention, love, adoration….It was NOT to purposefully hurt me.
I do believe that both of them “liked” me…and “cared” for me. Only they were so insecure and scared…they always had to have someone else lined up ‘in case’, to fill thier own needs. They think that this is LOVE….but they just can’t commit and be loyal.
I ended both of these relationships…when I felt that they both weren’t capable of “loving” and being honest. My husb was verbally abusive and controlling. My xbf was controlling and sneaky.
So, I don’t forgive them for their unfaithfulness…..and abuse….But, I don’t hate them or feel anger toward them. I feel sorry for them.
I forgive MYSELF for not doing what it takes to become a strong confident woman. I got lazy and didn’t work on myself and my self esteem issues. So, they got me at a low point on my life…vulnerable.
I don’t blame myself…it was what it was at the time. Now that I am alone…I am working on bettering myself …physically and mentally.
Its working…because I totally FOCUS on ME…the gym is my sanctuary…and I have “let go” of the whole experience with my x.
I learned from my “setback” last week when he texted and emailed me…and I realized what a waste of time it is to try to figure out why and go back and think of it all.
It is over….no going back…no more focusing on what happenned and why. I know why….he just can’t have a normal relationship….he’s not normal and healthy psychologically.
I am MOVING FORWARD now…and it feels really good.
Just like Woody said to Buzz Lightyear- that’s not flying, that’s falling with style.
Whatever it takes to go forward with peace in the rearview mirror.
Call it what you will, but strive not to carry the anger forward so that truly, there is healing.
Dear Silver, RIGHT ON!@....... Words, and especially a word like “forgiveness” has SO MANY SHADES of “meaning” to different people. To my egg donor, it means “let’s pretend it never happened.” Of course that is DELUSIONAL! It did happen, and it hurt, and it was intentional, and it will happen again! There not only wasn’t any repentence, there wasn’t even any acknowledgment that it actually happened!
Well, in my dictionary that is NOT FORGIVENESS.
I grew until I could DEFINE “forgiveness” for myself. I could also define other words like “love,” “truth,” “honor” and “obligation.”
Learning to VALIDATE my own opinions, to hold my own throughts, and to stand up and truly aqccept responsibility for my own decisions and my own choices has been an uphill struggle, but I’m getting there.
The egg donor who is so “big” on others forgiving and forgetting everything is the best in the world at holding grudges, in nurturing bitterness and racor in her heart, in laying down her head on a pillow of wrath and angst! I think I will pass on those negative thoughts and feelings, and I will not let the sun go down upon my wrath, but I will firmly embrace anger in the face of injustice!
I think the anger is healthy at the beginning…it gets you moving. But, I HATE to feel anger at anyone or thing. Its so negative and hurts ME.
Its a secondary emotion…underlying is HURT. you cann’t be angry without feeling hurt.
If you continue to be angry..you will ruin your body.They say all cancer is from anger. My mom was so critical, and angry all of the time about something. She died young..of cancer.
I’m not walking around feeling negative emotions anymore..NO anger, fear, sadness, depression, etc..
I want JOY in my life..everyday.
Life is so unpredictable snd too short to stress out.
I’ve read almost all of the posts. It’s wonderful that we have our huge hearts capable of trying to reason the unreasonable and find logic in unimaginable. I once saw an interview with two Bosnian women, who were well educated and well established before the war broke out in Yugoslavia. One said:”This can’t happen to Europe. This happens in underdeveloped countries. Europe lived through WWII and suffered so much from Nazis.” Has it been forgotten?
Now – my question is, has Nazism been forgiven? It was created by evil humans and carried out with evil intent of killing millions.How can anyone say forget and forgive? Thousands of families lost, millions left orphaned.Had we as a human race been less forgetful, wars would cease all together. What P did to my family is unforgivable. My children suffered. I suffered. He is not capable of suffering. Even his high pain tolerance will make it uneasy to bring suffering, even at his death bed. I must say that it is time to move on and try to make sense as much as possible of what had happened, to take responsibility and to continue to help others. But, THIS forgiveness is for God alone. God be the judge.
TOBEHAPPY,
you know you don’t have to feel anger to “not forgive”. Not forgiving is not making it OK – at least, in my book. Not accepting. Does not mean I walk around being angry all the time. I feel hurt and it will take years before I will be able to trust again. And – even then, who knows whom I shall trust (hopefully, not a P who will get under my skin like the last one did). But, when I forgive someone, I do start over with that person. It’s something carried over from childhood, I guess. SO, by definition, my “forgiveness’ would invite the &^%& back into my solitude and this can never be. So, what is forgiveness? Understanding as it seems from this article? but, how can you understand THIS? At least, if we were thrown in a cage with a lion, we’d know that this is a predator, he was designed to kill. One hardly can hold it against an animal. Ps pretend to be human. They must be responsible for their actions as all humans must be. Justice was served to Nazis years after the war. Because some failed to forgive. And – I wish more of them had been brought to justice.