Soulmate Skills

Women fear men.  It’s puzzling until you understand what is going on beneath the surface.  Jim’s 1989 letter to me helps explain it:  “As long as women feel unassertive and helpless, they will distrust and resist male reasoning and logic.  But there’s another fear of maleness that I think women have–fear of being put down for being emotional and intuitive.  I guess it’s not so much a fear of maleness as fear of having those sensitive parts of themselves made fun of.”  Given that, Jim went on to offer a solution.  “The solution seems to me to be developing crisp, clear boundaries.  ‘Oh, you feel critical and judgmental of my intuitions?  You’ve got some stuff to work on!’”

There’s something for us in last night’s TLC airing of an interview with Prince William and his fiancee, Kate.  The topic: their first impressions of each other.  He said he was interested in her the first time he saw her.  She told her friends, “I met this really nice boy.”  Notice the principles for guiding your soulmate quest here:  1) immediate interest and attraction and 2) wanting to tell your friends about them in complimentary terms.  You’ll be bursting with it, but, like Kate, you’ll be guarded about it.  You still have to check them out further.  Meanwhile, go ahead.  Enjoy those first impressions.  They may be the first step in a fairy tale romance.

How can you recognize your soulmate?  Jim captured it in his 1989 letter to me:  “I am aware more and more that what attracts me to you is the fact that you are my counterpart–and that no one else even comes close to being that.  At the same time, you are someone other than me.  First, you are female, with all the magic and mystery and fascination that that entails for me.  Second, you have a more highly developed spirituality than I, so I am getting constant surprises from you.  Third, that you are Southern.  And fourth, a whole bunch of other things.  So you are my identical twin but not a carbon copy.  Sufficiently identical for us to fall into each other; sufficiently different for us to be constantly surprised by each other.”  There you have it.  You’ll know your soulmate by two things:  how much alike you are and how you are surprised by each other.  As Jim, said, “It’s a nice combination.”

She stayed in a painful relationship.  It was one she admitted was no good for her.  She reasoned, “There are so few good men out there.  If I give up this relationship, I’ll never find another one as good.”  Why do we stay in a relationship with the wrong person?  Dr. James Elliott explains in Disarming Your Inner Critic, “You think you might be able to convert this flawed person (who is perhaps cool and distant) into someone who is not only successful and effective but who really does love you.  On top of this, your Inner Critic will tell you that if you give up pursuing him or her, you’ll never find another one ‘as good.’  Your Inner Critic is just interested in protecting you from the riskiness of giving and receiving genuine love.” (p. 107)  This boils down to that we stay in a dead-end relationship at the hands of our Inner Critic.  The good news is that we can get free.  Our stuckness stems from just one more magnified fear generated by our Inner Critic.  Don’t give that fear the power of belief.  The Inner Critic has no idea what it’s talking about.  There are plenty good men out there.  And there’s one just for you.

Here’s a self-test for you:  Do you like to talk to your partner about what you’re feeling about them? Do you like to talk to your partner about what you’re feeling about your relationship?  If you answered “Yes” to these, you like High-Voltage Relationships.  They are relationships of intense intimacy.  You’ll of course need skills for listening without getting defensive or angry.  We’ve lived this style of relating for 22 years and want to recommend it to you.  In our workshops and counseling practice, people learn to master this kind of intimacy every day.  If this appeals to you, you’ll do best with a partner who likes High-Voltage relating too.  Here’s to closeness!*

See p. 283 of Disarming Your Inner Critic for more on High-Voltage Relationships.  Our book is availabe here on our Products page and at amazon.com

“You need to find a man who has a 9 to 5 job,” they told her.  “You’ll be eating crumbs off the first wife’s table,” they predicted.  Sound familiar?  Have you had to face others’ criticism of your choice of partner or of your relationship?  Did it make you doubt yourself or your partner?  We know about this.  Jim and I had to face criticism over and over before we got married.  Fortunately, my wise Jim knew how to handle it.  “You have to use critical thinking skills,” he said.  That means you question and evaluate what your critics are saying.  You also need to have clear criteria for the life partner you want.  Then you’ll have an internal compass to direct your choice.  And to give you confidence.  You’ll have the strength to stand together.  Against the world, if necessary.  Here’s to your clarity and strength!

Have you felt a twinge of pain when you heard about an event to which you weren’t invited?  Or perhaps just walked into a room and felt like everyone else had a connection with each other and only you were the odd man out?  Want to know what’s leading you to feel as though you don’t belong?  It’s your Inner Critic.  It tells you that because of your supposed defectiveness and inferiority, you are not a full-fledged member of some group (or even of the whole human race).*  Don’t believe it for an instant.  That’s just a negative part of you that got installed in your early experiences.  You just need to take back your rights.  Say to your Inner Critic, “I have the right to be here.  My worth as a person is a given.  Nothing can take that away.” 

*From p. 106, Disarming Your Inner Critic, by James Elliott, Ph.D. with Kathryn Elliott, Ph.D..  Available here on our Products page and at amazon.com.

I attended a wedding yesterday that made me cry.  When the minister asked, “Do you take this woman as your lawfully wedded wife?” the groom answered with a robust, resounding, “Yes!!”  Then he cried.  As the couple walked back down the aisle, the groom held up his newly adorned ring hand for us all to see.  As they danced the wedding dance, he sang to her, looking into her eyes.  This was a man who loved being a groom; who, in fact, reveled in it.  When I came home and told Jim about it, he nodded empathically.  He, too, loved becoming a husband.  Hear his words in a letter written in the months before our wedding, “Oh, Kathy, we’re going to be married.  Husband and wife.  I’m going to be bewifed.  I love writing those words, husband and wife.”  So, add this to your criteria list:  “Loves the idea of being a husband; embraces it; celebrates it.”  You’ll have a man with the right attitude.

Your brain is on a short fuse to make you feel bad!  So explains Rick Hanson, Ph.D., neuropsychologist and author of Buddha’s Brain.  He says that in our attempt to survive, we humans evolved to give preferential treatment to fear and anxiety.  So, even though we no longer have tigers to steer clear of, our brains still are hypervigilant for danger, even when none exists.  He calls it a neurobiological bias toward negativity (http://www.rickhanson.net/your-wise-brain/how-your-brain-makes-you-easily-intimidated).  Given that we’re wired toward feeling bad, what can we do?  Here’s how, in Anthetic Therapy, we defuse it.  Dr. James Elliott found that when his clients gave that negativity a name, they became empowered to see it more clearly.  He (and they) liked the term Inner Critic.  As he worked with his growth groups and therapy clients, he discovered that the Inner Critic functions by imposing shoulds backed by emotional punishment if not obeyed.  Hence, the person suffered from low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and a whole host of other problems.  The good news is he also discovered that a simple set of techniques could set people free from the power of the Inner Critic.  He taught them to make releasing statements that helped them buy out of believing the Inner Critic.  (For more on defusing your Inner Critic’s power, read Disarming Your Inner Critic by James Elliott with Kathryn Elliott.)  So, take heart, your biology is not your destiny.

Do you have trouble taking orders?  Following someone’s instructions?  Can’t stop and ask for directions when you’re lost?  Want to understand yourself?  Difficulty submitting to others or being influenced by others (and that’s what this is about), is because your power and autonomy buffers might collapse.  A buffer is anything that props up our self-esteem.  We get attached to our buffers because they keep the pain of our Inner Critic’s punishments at bay.  You know, those feelings of defectiveness, shame, and inferiority.  As long as we feel powerful or independent, we have a shield up against the pain.  But, as we say in Disarming Your Inner Critic (James Elliott & Kathryn Elliott), there’s a better way to get free from Inner Critic pain.  That’s to take back your rights.  In this case, it’s “I have the right to submit to someone; to take orders, to do exactly what they’re asking.  Submission doesn’t change my worth as a person in the least.”  If this is hard to get your mind around, read our book.  It will empower you to submit!