Soulmate Skills

Quibbling over little details:  “No, it was 6:30, not 6:00.”  Arguing scrupulously over minute points:  “You wore your blue shirt, not your grey one.”  That’s how you can tell if you’re being contentious.   If you’re witnessing it, it’s tedious.  If you’re the target of it, you’ll feel weary.  If you step back and take a look at what it’s doing to your relationship, you’ll see that it’s killing closeness.  Somewhere along the years of our relationship, I found that I was being contentious.  I was driven by my Inner Critic to set the record straight; to care more about getting it right than about communicating with Jim.  If you want to stop this pattern, monitor your pull to be argumentative.  Then tell yourself, “I’m not gonna go there.”  For even more freedom, you can add, “I have the right not to set the record straight.”  You’ll choose closeness.  Like me, you’ll find that it’s infinitely more satisfying.

“The turmoil you feel is a good sign.  It means that some old patterns are dying and are fighting to stay alive.  And that new ones are being born.  Whatever happened to open you up, to deepen you, to expand you will call you to a new destiny.”  Jim wrote this to me in 1989 as I went through cataclysmic changes.  At that time I was getting free from old patterns of disempowering myself in order to please others.  Perhaps you are going through a similar process.  We know it can feel scary, even lonely.  If so, be encouraged.  You are our fellow strugglers.  As Jim said to me, “Yours is the natural struggle of a person in an exciting and painful growth process.”  We want our website, our writings, our story, our books to empower you.  We cheer you on.

Thinking of doing something different?  New hairstyle?  Going back to school?  New relationship?  Then have you felt keenly aware, “What will other people think?”  That thought comes from your Inner Critic–doing its best to make you conform so as not to trigger other people’s criticism.  When you pretzelize yourself  to please other people, you give away your power to do what you want.  Here are two challenges to your Inner Critic to help you reduce your concern about what other people think:  “I have the right to do what I want; not pretzelize myself to please other people” and “I no longer choose to give my power away to other people.”  Now you’re set to have a soul-fulfilling day.*

*For more help, see page 155 of our book, Disarming Your Inner Critic.

“Failure of male authorities.   Daddy. Boyfriends.  Pastors.  Yes, sweet Kathy–all painful failures of external supports, and so necessary so that you could find your own voice.”  When Jim wrote this to me in 1989, I was trying to come to terms with my history:  longing for men in my life to be reliable, connecting, supporting and all of them coming up short.  Jim helped me have a new perspective.  Yes, men had failed me, but because they had, I had found my own strength; my own voice.  Perhaps men in your life have failed you too.  Painful as that is, look for the gifts:  You developed your own selfhood and strength.

Our little dog Libby got skunked this weekend.  It’s her fourth time this year.  She just can’t help herself.  She feels compelled to chase a skunk.  It’s very exciting for her.  However, when it’s all over, she comes home with tears in her eyes and smelling horrible.  Maybe you’ve felt compelled to pursue a certain kind of partner who isn’t good for you.  You know those partners who leave you in tears and with the stench of a painful relationship to add to your history.  In Anthetic Psychology, we call such a compulsion a replay.  This is a pattern of choosing in adulthood a partner who repeats the pain of an earlier, usually childhood, relationship.  Fortunately, we have an advantage over Libby.  We can analyze our destructive patterns and learn from them.  We have executive self functioning from which to draw strength to break free from our replays.  Once we get free from our patterns, we no longer chase skunky relationships.  In fact, we clear the path for our soulmate.  We wish such freedom for you today.

Want to improve your sexual relationship?  We’re not going to suggest mechanical changes.  We’re not even going to recommend adjusting the atmosphere in which you have sex.  What we have to tell you is internal:  You need to tap your Inner Figures.  Let us explain.  You have parts of yourself that hold a lot of untapped sexual energy.  For example, an Awakening to Sex figure who can discover the pleasure of sex for the first time; an Emotionally Connecting figure who can talk to your partner about feelings; an Adoring figure who can sink into your partner’s amazing qualities, and many, many others.  So, if you will each reach inside to a part of yourself that can bring a fresh connection to your lovemaking, together you will create not just an improved sex life but instead a deep sexual communion.

“Okay, silence.  Yes, I was silenced.  Be a good little boy, and shut up.  And then those bastards would ask, ‘What’s the matter?  Cat got your tongue?’”  Jim shared this experience in a letter to me in 1989.  Many people we see in our therapy practice had this experience too.  The net result of this kind of treatment is that you develop a block to speaking your voice in relationships.   We want to encourage you about this.  Here’s what Jim did:  “I said to myself, ‘If they can do it, I can learn it.  Even though I didn’t know how.’”  And he did.  You can learn it too.  It will mean taking a risk with others to let yourself put into words what your mind is thinking.  Like Jim, you will find your voice.  And with your partner, you will create closeness.

“You’ve touched my very soul.”  It’s a line from a song I heard on the radio yesterday.  It got me thinking.  A high-voltage soulmate love is more than physical attraction; more than intellectual compatibility.  It’s a spiritual bond.  When you’re falling into a pattern of ho-humness about your relationship, or more painful, when you’re in a pattern of fighting with each other, think of this:  We have to make a values choice.  Do we want to see each other as adversaries or as spiritual beings on a soulmate journey with each other?

Ever feel like you’re on an emotional roller coaster?  One moment you’re feeling great; the next someone says or does something and you’ve crashed into misery.  We want to tell you the secret to understanding such painful mood swings:  They happen because your Inner Critic makes you dependent on buffers in order to feel good.  A buffer is anything that props up your self-esteem.  You feel as though you need these props because the Inner Critic is always at you, telling you you’re defective, guilty, shameful, and inferior.  To keep these negative feelings at bay, you compensate by amassing buffers.  For example, you think, “I may not be pretty, but I have a good job.”  Or you feel one-down to your sibling, so you console yourself with, “I have a boyfriend, and she doesn’t.”  However, when you lose your job or your boyfriend, you’re emotionally devastated, because you’ve lost your buffer against your Inner Critic’s condemnation of you.  As you continually gain and lose external props to your self-esteem, your moods swing wildly.  How do you get off this roller coaster?  Get free from your Inner Critic.  In our book, Disarming Your Inner Critic, we offer you dozens of ways to challenge your Inner Critic.  They’re all designed with one goal in mind:  To empower you to stop believing your Inner Critic’s messages.  You can begin today with this challenge:  “My worth as a person is a given.  Nothing I could do would take that away.”

“How to Stop the Blame Game–Cold!” It’s the topic we’re presenting on today at Louisiana Counseling Association.  Wish you could join us, but here’s a gem for you on the subject:  Blaming others for not getting what you want is:  A Power Giveaway!  It puts your happiness in the hands of other people.  We know it seems as though others have done it to you.  But we want to let you in on the secret behind power giveaways:  If you’re blaming others for not getting what you want or being who you want to be, the underlying reason is you have given away your power by believing a command from your Inner Critic.  Let us translate a blaming statement for you as an example of what we’re talking about:  “You won’t let me have my feelings!”  Translation:  “I shouldn’t feel what I’m feeling.”  How to stop the blame game cold?  Get free from the inner critic command couched in that blaming statement.  In this case, it’s “I have the right to feel whatever I’m feeling.”  Just like that, you’re free!