What do you do when you feel helpless over another’s choices? What is the result? Are you happy with how you manage this feeling?
Helplessness is a very difficult feeling. It can even feel like life or death to those of us who were left to cry for hours as babies, with no one coming to help us. Because we were so helpless over ourselves as babies and small children, it can trigger feelings of panic. It’s hard to remember, in these moments when fear is triggered, that as adults, we are not helpless over ourselves.
For many of us, the deep fear that got programmed into us as young children can trigger our wounded self’s desire to control, when we feel helpless over another’s choices.
The news stories of sexual addiction lead us to ask “Why?”
One of the sad truths in our society is how empty many people feel, and the devastation their emptiness causes others through their resulting addictive behavior.
We have all heard about the sexual acting-out of Anthony Weiner, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton and John Edwards. We all know about the many famous people who end up in treatment centers for alcohol and drug addiction.
The question is: why? Why would someone who seemingly has everything destroy their own life, and the lives of those they are close to, with their addictions to sex, alcohol or drugs?
It’s true that these high-profile people seem to have everything that our society deems important for happiness and self-esteem – money and all that money can buy, relationships and fame. What is it that creates the desperate need to act out addictively when they have so much? Continue reading The Devastation of Inner Emptiness
“In a new study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers have found that the same brain networks that are activated when you’re burned by hot coffee also light up when you think about a lover who has spurned you.
In other words, the brain doesn’t appear to firmly distinguish between physical pain and intense emotional pain. Heartache and painful breakups are “more than just metaphors,” says Ethan Kross, Ph.D., the lead researcher and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor.”
This is one of the most common complaints I hear in my counseling practice.
We all know that it is generally easy to connect at the beginning of a relationship – before all the protections and defenses come up. But what do you do to reconnect once you feel disconnected from each other?
A member of our website asked this question in our advice section:
I’ve read several of the articles on the site, but have not seen anything mentioned about “chasing” after someone who is pulling away in a relationship. That has to be a form of protection against deeper feelings, though, right? If someone is pulling away and the urge to chase after them comes up, what is the best thing to do in this situation? Thanks!
I know exactly what this woman is going through, as I used to go through the same thing. When a man I felt connected to would withdraw, shut down, or pull away in any way, I would feel a sense of panic. In my panic, I would convince myself that by being a certain way – attractive enough, sexy enough, nice enough, right enough, or convincing enough – I could get him to reconnect with me. Continue reading Do You Chase When Someone Withdraws?
Have you ever said to yourself, “The reason God doesn’t love me is I don’t deserve to be loved?”
Have you ever looked inside to discover why you might not be loving to yourself and answered with, “I’m not worthy of love”?
I hear this all the time from my clients. It is often one of the major false beliefs of the ego wounded self.
What exactly does this mean? When I ask people the question, “Why don’t you deserve love?” they say, “I don’t know. I guess if I deserved love, I would have been loved.” Continue reading “I Don’t Deserve to be Loved”
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