Healing the Ties That Hold You Back

Lonely, lonely, alone and lonely. Do you ever feel like these pictures? Even in the midst of people? I sure did. I remember when holidays would come and my friends would all go away to be with their families. I felt abandoned and without hope of things ever changing. Finally I realized, all of my friends started as clients and colleagues. My relationships were unbalanced and narrowly focused. I wasn’t using my strengths of friendliness and hospitality outside of work, or looking into other interests besides career development and childcare. I thought I had to do these two things before prosperity would come to me, and that prosperity had to happen before I could look to see what else I could be available for. I thought the good life was not for me. I thought I was too burdened because no one would help. Or invite me.

Just like you, if I heard of something that might make things better, I tried it. I tried hard, but didn’t get the results that were promised. Sometimes a new practice worked for a time, but didn’t stick. Something else was both in the way and holding me back - something so difficult that even with all my prodigious willpower, I just couldn’t get out of it to get ahead. 

The things I tried helped a bit though. When I did journaling, or yoga, or Qigong, or something physically exhausting, a memory or a feeling like grief popped out of my tissues into my mind. I could take it out like it was on elastic, and hold it in my hand to look at it. This is how I first started learning my secrets – that I was profoundly unhappy; that I was hiding behind my children; and that I wasn’t as alone and helpless as I thought I was.

It’s amazing how many rules are stored in our bodies and unconscious, and how powerful they are. They replace our consciences. The problem with rules is they stop us from seeing the full picture. They stop us from talking to people to get more of the overall design of our surroundings. They stop us from responding with our feelings.

As we replace rules with seeing – that I’m not alone, that there are people who will help, that I am healthy - we are able to respond to what is happening now and see what help is available if some is needed. This is why we start with Health, so our rules come out of hiding.

The basic rules of NotWithStanding

Relationships from our earliest to our most recent, are formed through sharing feelings and experiences. If our earliest experiences had these rules, we may not be free to see and feel in our relationships now. These rules of NotWithStanding (even Not Standing With ourselves) keep us silent, submissive, not connecting, and definitely not sharing. Maybe not even telling the truth. Many people find these rules are like family, they’re familiar:

-          Don’t see the family

-          Don’t feel, don’t be offensive and make me feel

-          Do what you’re told, don't question, don’t do anything else (Don’t trust, commonly called a "rule," is an outcome of this rule. You can’t trust your perceptions about what people are saying or doing if it contradicts what you were taught was true by someone who held authority over your safety.)

-          Don't see yourself and stop all your feeling

-          Don’t acknowledge what you saw to yourself or anybody else. (Hiding in this rule is the message: You’re deserted and nothing and no one can help you.)

-          Having strongly clear feelings is an illness – a mental illness. (This rule is ungrounding.)

Where the rules come from

Rules generally were responses in a time of dangerous situations, far back in our lives or family’s lives, or even our ancestors’ lives. They are ways of dealing with grief and when and who can experience it. That’s why our bodies are essential to our healing; they are where we carry the rules. (Sometimes shame goes back that far, too, and is woven in with them.) The rules were meant to make us stronger, but instead they cut us off from our strengths.

Rules are in ropes that bind us to past ways of seeing, hearing, feeling and not feeling, not acting and not talking. The ropes are made up of messages, stories, and rules that our Ancestors learned from their ancestors. They were defense mechanisms for dealing with reality in the time when they were founded, i.e., first experienced. Sometimes the rules take the place of consciences. Displacement of conscience is an effect of war - an outcome of WithStanding that things are dangerous, and secrets need to be kept for the family’s safety.  

Rules tend to be vague and unexplained (What will the neighbors think?). Sometimes they are direct. (Don’t talk about sex.) They are intertwined in multiple ways – just like our problems are. The scarier the consequences of breaking the rules, the more they are relieved by WithStanding, though at first it will feel like you are going to die if you do anything to contradict them. This is especially your experience if you don’t know yet which rules you are breaking – if you weren’t able yet to take them out and look at them.

This fear will stand in the way of talking to someone about what you’re trying to change. And so, we take care of our health without worrying yet about what other people will think. We learn to pay attention to our feelings even if we are not going to act on them this time. We are not helpless. We keep reminding ourselves, as long as we are alive, we have a right to feel, speak up, and ask for help.

How we incorporate[1] the rules

We have three ways these rules enter us: Stories, messages, and irreproachable decisions and pronouncements. They enter us through our ears and our Sylvian pathways.

Remember this: Rules that are NotWithStanding are anti-realities.

Rules come from messages; messages come from stories, gestures, tone of voice, and who gets to have people be interested in what the are saying or doing. They come from relationships, not just in families but also other sources of fear-authority, like religious training or consistent experience in a community (like police brutality in protests, the Black community, or Nazi Europe). They tend to be passed down in families, out of loyalty.

Stories

Knowing our family stories is an important way of knowing we belong. Stories often encourage us to live up to the standards of our forebears. But they are also how we learn the rules of NotWithStanding. And we receive encouragement to keep following them, too. Following the rules is about loyalty, which is odd because they are about not being loyal to you, me, or anybody living now. They are silencing, and they prevent you from another way of being, which is together, helping each other.

For example, my Grandma told her life story as one of being alone in the world, working two jobs and taking care of my mother, who was also alone all the time. Like my Grandma, my story has been that I was alone my whole life; that no one helped, except maybe my next sister. In reality, my Grandma and I were both surrounded by six sisters and a brother our whole lives. But we were NotWithStanding (NWSing). My sisters and my way of feeling alone came from the repetition of the story of our Grandma’s and Mother’s saintliness of going it alone, even though the reality in front of our eyes our whole lives differed.

We grew up visiting our Grandma at the house where she raised my mother. Grandma had photo albums from which she told us stories covering her whole life. Almost all of the photos were of family. My mother’s cousins told stories about all of them playing on their front porches. No one told us those houses were a block or two away. We visited our Great Grandmother and four of Grandma’s sisters regularly. We knew them well into our adulthoods. Yet, we couldn’t see that they were living and helping each other as a family. Our stories were, “We are all alone. We don’t ask for help because we’re silent suffering saintly people.” So we didn’t see a lot of times when help was needed, and we didn't offer help, either.

Messages

Messages narrow our options for seeing. They are how we make the rules that encourage us in what to do to stay safe. Messages can be embedded in stories, intimated in expressions, or dictated outright. The healing need is actually for encouragement, but the message that is sent is, “Stay close to what we know; we are already right about what reality is.”  We stay the same.

In healing from NWSing, we are asking for help to see something else, something positive and expansive. I have insights, like the one I just told you, that some of my siblings don’t want to hear yet. I’m breaking the rule of staying saintly - i.e., alone - by talking about our family experiences. I had another message growing up that was told to me directly, “No one is interested in what you are saying. No one wants to hear that from you, Susan.” 

Rules

The rules are what’s directing our activity and non-activity. This is why positive thinking doesn’t work over time for us; it’s not in charge of our seeing. Rules are binding us to past family members who were WithStanding (WSing) when the rules may have been needed. Even thinking about changing our pattern is disloyal and is a cause to expect punishment, especially ostracism or shunning. We may have seen it happen to someone else. The rule is, “Without our way, you do not have standing.”

Not having standing in these cases is unjustifiable. This is a trauma injury and is why you are angry. When you are unconscious of time and don’t feel the place you are in, you are NotWithStanding. You need to take more care of your body.

The good news

Our internal wisdom is dependable. Our insights about reality come from our own sensations, our connection to ourselves. Some of us, as we heal, may have these sensations for the first time in our awareness. It’s a system and may be accessed at any time. We may have thought it was broken, but it’s intact. It’s just our connection to it that was NWSing. That’s what we are healing. Our internal guidance is powering not new sight, but new being. It’s not the opposite of seeing, but being ready to see new things. With more clarity, we see new options for new resources. Behavior - acting on what’s needed - comes after.

What tools can we use quickly?

Talking

We start with taking care of our health as the first of The Five Tasks because this is where the rules are not hiding.  Maybe you can talk to someone about your health, or about how you’re feeling. Maybe you can set an appointment.

Just saying something truthful like, “I’m down today,” may be a big breakthrough for you. Or you might tell someone you’re having trouble understanding the electric bill. Or you don’t like how they are treating you. Or you’re worried about your child. Or ask for help getting your computer fixed. Start small. There’s no hurry. You only need samples for repairing your system; you don’t have to relive your whole life. Find out which topics you can approach with ease (and with which people) and which give you pause. What ideas do you get for changes?

Ladder of Trust

You don’t have to trust everyone right off the bat. Find out who is trustworthy by using the Ladder of Trust. Start slow. It is not your job to trust people. It is your responsibility to assess their trustworthiness one step at a time.

Prayer and Meditation

If your nervous system can be relied upon to stay calm, prayer and/or meditation might be helpful for you. Prayer requests two things: that we be provided with an answer to our request, and suggestions for our part in making it happen. Ask that the message be clear - in English, or a picture. Add to your request how you want to feel when you get the answer or take the action. Maybe it’s calm, or at peace, or pleased. Meditation is for hearing the responses.

Yet, there is something more that needs to be done. We need to realize guidance has been there all along. It is not new (though it may feel new at first when we experience it consciously). It has been available to us, but we had rules that kept us from trusting it. This was the rupture in our relationship to the divine design, which is our legacy as human beings. We need this realization so that we are able to connect, not religiously, but thoroughly with our design intention to be whole human beings.  

If you have a religious wound, or praying is scary or just not for you …

You may have a “God-wound.” You may have been threatened with a vengeful God who dictates everything and severely punishes out of a sense of justice you aren’t able to fathom. Or you may have been warned away from religion. Prayer may not be a reasonable option for you. Yet asking for healing from a power greater than ourselves is necessary. We know this because we already tried everything else we could find by ourselves.

Maybe you can try accessing healing through the healing pathway of Nature. Or, you might find help from the Spirit of the Universe. Rami Shapiro[2] tells us this spiritual being permeates, supports, moves, and changes everything seen and unseen. It is very powerful and it’s only a force for good. This being has become a great comfort and assistance for me.

Please tell me how this post is landing for you. I really want to hear. You can comment below or send me a private message at Sue@TheJobSearchCenter.com. OK?

[1] A few lines from the etymology of this word help our understanding of this process: "to put (something) into the body or substance of,” "of or belonging to the body.” From https://www.etymonline.com/word/incorporate

[2] Rami Shapiro, Recovery – The Sacred Art: The 12 Steps as Spiritual Practice