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.
I think “forgive them for they know not what they do” is what it means .
In other words…Forgive their actions…but don’t let them back in again…forever.
Ahhh, 🙂 but, all psychologists agree: Psychopaths KNOW exactly what they are doing. They know they are doing wrong, going against the rules of society and the rules of humanity. Psychopaths, unlike someone with OCD or Schizophrenia DO have a choice. And instead, – they scuff about it. It’s one more rule broken without any retribution and it’s one more stupid human fooled. There are no rules against buying shoes. I must have 100 pairs. I don’t even know what all I have. I find a pair. Try it on. If it does not fit, I throw it back into the closet. Here is the thing: if society told me to limit my shoe fetish to 3 pairs, I would. I only need three. Truth is, some are too old or too warn and must go into the bin. But, I would truly limit it to 3. A psychopath will not limit his life to three relationships, to three children, to three jobs, to anything. Life is an opportunity and a game to them. Mine used to tell me that he “could not help it, he is an optimist” LOL – yeap, that sums it up.
Dear Gettingit,
Forgiveness does NOT equal “pretending it didn’t happen.” The first thing that set me on the road to healingn and to forgiving was a book called “Man’s Search for Meaning” written by Dr. Viktor Frankl who spent 4 years in a Nazi prison camp and lost every living relative and his wife during those years and suffered so much, yet, he LET GO OF THE BITTERNESS in order to heal, to live and to grow. By golly, if he can do it, who am I, who has not lost 1% of what this man did to feel “bitter”? He did not in any way negate what the Nazis did or how horrible or inhumane they were, but he chose to live life and FIND MEANING in life, rather than spend the rest of his life bitter and filled with hate!
We can choose to spend our lives bitter, feel sorry for ourselves because we were injured by such uncaring people, or we can chose to let it go, let the bitterness evaporate and the peace, joy and love fill the spot. No two items can occupy the same space….if you are filled with wrath and bitterness, you don’t have room for peace, love and joy.
Anger is a necessary reaction to injury, but it shouldn’/t be a life style! Peace! ((((Hugs))))
OK, I hear you. Can I let it go and NOT forgive? 🙂
(of course, in my particular case there are only two ways I can really let it go: when my son turns 18 or when my ex hits the “6 Feet under”, whichever happens first)
Oxy, I am being childish and stubborn. I am probably not at that sacred place yet. When I was a teen, my best girlfriend was busted French-kissing my boyfriend under the guise of bringing us back together. I fell very ill, this was my first bout of depression. I did not expect her to behave this way, she knew I loved the guy. One day, two months later or so, I had a dream. In my dream, I got up from my bed, took a gun (never held one, never had one) and went to her house. In my dream, I put her to her knees and shot her execution style. Interestingly, my depressive symptoms were gone after that. I never saw her again in real life (or did not want to notice) and was able to really not agonize over what she had done. Of course, he was a part of this too, but at that moment, he and I broke up and so, he was an Ex, while she knew I wanted to make peace with him and offered to help.
So, point I am attempting to make here? I wish I had a dream where I could shoot the P execution style and never think of it again. Sometimes I wish for this dream, but I never get it. I think I am a bit more human and humane than when I was 15. Too bad. Btw, forgiveness has nothing to do with this. I was able to move on because in my mind, if only in my mind, justice had been served. (well, also – he dumped her a week later, he was trying to prove to me that he could get any girl he wanted to, it turns out; sound familiar, anyone?)
Getting it-
Stray thpught because your posts are thought provoking-
If you LET GO- does forgiveness or not really matter?
I guess its all about the rear view mirror? And with a child under 18, the bad one won’t disappear and I think there is a context there that says even if you let go, you must still be watchful for yourself and the child.
At some point, letting go means it isn’t something you have feelings about-my thought at the moment..
I’m thinking about a balloon floating off into the sky. Once you let it go, it disappears from sight and from thought – its let go.
But the same thing doesn’t quite apply- we’re talking about relationships-betrayals and lies.
Somehow we have to move on without letting go what we have learned but without carrying forward the negativity which can affect all that we seek to protect by engaging in the process of healing from these relationships.
I don’t have answers- only more and more questions. As if I have never seen the world before and it is a different place. I don’t know what the call is on this one.
As long as life goes forward with less lies, less distress and the problems are the kind which can be either solved or let go. I guess that’s what there is.
And as I awake to it, I am curious to know what all, what else there is. Because a world, a quiet life, without the deception, is a new and unfamiliar place and the things that made so much of it before, just don’t fit anymore.
Kind of like shoes in the closet. ten years later you clean it all out and you see a pair buried in the back that used to be a favorite and you think eew! What was I thinking?
But at the time, they made perfect sense and in a way that I wore them were a way of defining myself- my style.
Now it is what it is. What it will be? I won’t notice the change as dramatically. It will grow on me. And over time I will have released more and more balloons each disappearing into the clouds. And I won’t think about them much after that……
Silvermoon,
This is really poetic. Something I can “hold on to” – the thought of balloons disappearing in the sky. you wrote it so well, that I immediately had the vision and was able to connect with your thoughts. Perhaps, I will try “sending off thoughts of the P” as balloons – to disappear into the thin air.
Yes, I am one of those unfortunate souls, dealing with child “sharing” and the ugliness that my child brings each time he visits his P father. I am procrastinating about getting help. Perhaps, I don’t want to go “back there” again, perhaps, I am in denial… Flight or fight has another response – freeze. I freeze when in fear. (Least helpful instinctual response. Just look at the dead opossums on the road.)
Thank you for taking the time to read my posts and thank you wholeheartedly for your response and advise.
Oh OX!
If you didn’t say IT ALL here, I don’t know when or where the words will be spoken!
Learning to VALIDATE my own opinions, to hold my own thoughts, and to stand up and truly accept responsibility for my own decisions and my own choices has been an uphill struggle, but I’m getting there.
AMEN
Gettingit,
🙂 Sometimes, I find that when approached with wonder – like the feeling we get when we watch the balloon float away the world is a much less fearful place.
There is a way of chilling that allows us to suspend the speed of events without freezing. We don’t have to go as fst as anyone else. Finding a comfortable speed of time – of that makes any sense- give you the time to choose what to do and form your thoughts. And its ok. Every minute of your life, is your time.
Perhaps a challenge for an opossum to understand. But, I think you may be much more of a balloonist than a marsupial…
Enjoy the bright colors…
(tee hee)
Gettingit;
“in my particular case there are only two ways I can really let it go: when my son turns 18 or when my ex hits the “6 Feet under”, whichever happens first”
I sooooo relate! 🙂
The first part will happen on Thursday and the next few months will be very telling in my journey of healing.
I feel different every day!!!