my #1 coping mechanism: book a flight
One thing I have been working closely with is learning how to keep my heart even more open despite my abandonment wound...
I journaled my heart’s desires: lasting romantic love; growth in my business; and the desire to feel at home on this island unremittingly, into my journal.
I shed tears as I spoke out my fears and griefs to release all that no longer serves me.
I cleansed my skin with lavender and anointed it with sandalwood oil.
It was the new moon in Leo.
☽
The next morning I woke up with a heartache so great I wondered if something had happened that I did not yet know about.
A strong emotional response transpires sometimes, after a ritual. Things that have been buried rise up to the surface to be processed. My body viscerally reacts while my mind fumbles to make sense of what is happening. An ongoing inner dialogue happens where I have to remind myself to feel what I feel — to feel it the whole way through — without trying to intellectualize it.
Something that comes with the territory of my field of work is that I am the constant case study and testing ground for everything that I teach.
Ever since studying psychology, I have understood how to observe my inner responses to outer stimuli. What I find is that most of the time I (and we) project stories of our fears, wounds, and shame on our present experiences of the world, instead of objectively seeing them for what they are.
Despite I intellectually knowing this, I am human and have very human moments where I am triggered, reactive, and repeat patterns from trauma.
One thing I have been working closely with is learning how to keep my heart even more open despite my abandonment wound. I desire to step into new relationships with self-responsibility for my sabotaging patterns. Experience has shown me that only inner shifts beget outer change.
My coping mechanism when my abandonment wound is triggered is to run. Leave. Escape. Slam a door. Drive away. Book a flight. Disappear.
It was triggered today.
Followed by immediately projecting my heartache onto the trigger.
A friend of mine left me a voice note saying that she needed to talk to me. She went on to say that another friend had been messaging and flirting with the man I am dating. Instantly my nervous system was activated.
I asked for details, including the timeline, to compare whether this man’s words matched his actions. Ultimately the timeline did not cross mine and there was no reason to feel threatened.
But in the hours between those two conversations, I deep-dived into my main coping mechanism: run. I googled flights and arranged a trip away as soon as I could. Just before clicking ‘buy’ on those flights, I caught myself. And laughed.
I can be as self-aware and knowledgable as imaginable, but my humanness will never leave me.
Nowadays, I know how to be deeply kind and compassionate when I catch myself falling into old patterns, and use humour to diffuse the intensity of my emotions.
To do so there’s a process I use when I am triggered.
Acknowledge it.
Know the root cause and own the trigger.
Separate my sense of identity from the root cause experience.
Feel the pain all the way through.
Let it go.
And finally replace the space with beliefs of positive intent, trust, forgiveness and love. To remember the others’ fallible humanness and love them in it.
That’s the thing with all relationships. They are our greatest mirrors and teachers. There’s a risk to it. The peril to open our hearts and allow ourselves to be vulnerable on the chance that the other is willing and wanting to meet us in these intimate places.
Upon further reflection, maybe consider a new perspective/ book a flight🤣🙏💯