Most people are ruining their relationships without knowing it. 

They are recreating their past and projecting it onto their most precious relationships. They do this even if the past was painful. 

We recreate how we experienced growing up in the family we were raised in. 

Were you abandoned? Guess what type of partners you'll attract. 

Were you overwhelmed? Dismissed? Guess what type of partners you'll attract. 

This is huge. If fitting into your family meant you could do so by not being yourself, then you will be attracted to people, circumstances, jobs, etc. that recreate the feeling of not being able to be yourself. 

This isn't logical. We do this because of our attachment to shame and fear. Why? Because shame and fear are the energetic signatures that remind us of home. 

The human ego likes familiarity and predictability. It prefers to feel in control and will recreate past events in the present moment, even if the past experience was deeply painful. The ego prefers to have you feel out of control in order to feel in control. It's a paradox.

This means that you are creating the loneliness you feel.

The purpose of this is to understand that, right now, in some aspect of your life, a part of you is playing games with you to get its emotional needs met. 

Creating self-awareness will serve you so that you can not only participate in this little game you play with yourself but also stand as a compassionate witness to all the ways in which your inner child tries to get attention.

In gaining this understanding, we have the ability to overcome what no longer serves us. 

And, to witness how we damage our closest relationships. 

Are you blaming, judging, or criticizing others because you think, "If only they would be different, I'd be happy?" If so, you're not seeing your part in the drama.

Here's an example: 

When I was in elementary school, my older sister and my dad pulled a prank on me by pulling off my pants and taking a photo of my half-naked body. 

I stood next to my sister, and when my dad counted to three, she pulled my pants down, and my dad took the photo. I had no idea what had just happened but I felt a deep contraction that caused me to recoil. The next thing I knew, both my dad and sister were laughing hysterically. 

The laughter didn't stop there. This photo became the laughing point for the family. When others came to visit, my dad would show them the photo. I would then try to take the photo from his hands, and it became almost like a game. Laughter served as my cover-up to hide the profoundly shaming experience underneath. 

Subconsciously this led to the belief that feeling shame was how a part of me belonged to the family. 

Fast-forward three decades, and I'm now in my 30s, spending the holidays with my wife and in-laws for Christmas. My mother-in-law makes a comment at the dinner table in response to something I said, and the same feeling of humiliation appears in my experience. I immediately judged her and began to withdraw from the conversation. 

In truth, it wasn't what she said but rather how I perceived it. Several days later, I reflected on that experience and realized that I was recreating the same feeling from my childhood. 

Not only that, but I was then blaming my in-laws for how I was feeling as a way to deflect the fact that it was coming from the meaning I was attaching to it! 

Shame inevitably creates what I refer to as a Shame Wall. When we experience shame, the connection we once felt becomes fragmented. This fragmentation can occur between ourselves and others or within our own psyche, causing the psyche to fragment into different parts. 

When fragmentation occurs, a shame wall is erected.

A shame wall is a reflective barrier. It doesn't just prevent you from being part of the group—it literally separates you from yourself. 

This makes belonging to "the group" painful because belonging to the group means you can't be yourself. So, an internal divide occurs in your internal world, which is reflected as isolation and separation in the external world.

When you are surrounded by a shame wall, you see only the reflection of the aspect of you you are identified with in that situation. 

This causes you to become self-conscious. A shame wall also reflects what you are trying to hide from others. 

It also prevents you from connecting with others because the shame wall literally keeps you from connecting with yourself in their presence. If you can't connect with yourself authentically, you can't connect with others authentically. 

The shame wall causes you to focus on yourself and prevents you from realizing the attachment overs have to you. And because you can't see that attachment, you inevitably neglect the relationship. 

This causes you to live out a self-fulfilling prophecy, which strengthens the shame wall. 

Being stuck inside the prison of a shame wall will eventually lead you toward loneliness. 

To overcome shame you must first own it. In a real sense, the way out of shame is—through it. 

Here's how to release shame and, in turn, a shame wall.

The beauty of gaining a clear perception of the patterns that operate within us is that it's the first step to overcoming them and becoming more than we are by realizing, first and foremost—what we are not. 

I am not the pattern that I developed in elementary school, which still operates in me and creates a disconnection between me and others and between parts of me. 

And neither are you. When we gain awareness of the parts of us, we have the opportunity to no longer be in the grip of it. 

Here's a meditation that can support you in this process: https://youtu.be/9m-xyPhhvXA?si=V1mOnVSHErEBNsYU


Love and Power, 
Alex