One of the gifts we have in our lives is when we can step back and
look at our lives and relationships and be willing to play the role of
Witness. The ability to bring this very neutral part of our
(rational…and this unemotional) minds to the fore can represent a
sea-change in awareness of who we are as people….good bad, beautiful,
and ugly. Getting honest has always led to big breakthroughs in my
healing work. It requires you to set aside bias and the arguments that
trap a person in justifications.
I was involved in a dysfunctional relationship in a marriage with children. It was a codependent relationship that involved a lack of emotional responsibility for being able to be happy and able to not depend on others for one’s own sense of joy and fulfilment. Yes, we are social creatures who thrive on connection….but we can suffer when we make others responsible for our happiness.
My relationship was doomed to fail because as I awoke, I began to see the list of behaviors that I and my spouse engaged in was unhealthy. This was a gradual unveiling that took some months to a year to fully see. I knew I had reached the point of no return when my spouse no longer looked the same. Something in me was pulling away those glossy veils that we unknowingly surround ourselves. I was, in the words of a counselor and friend, releasing the layers of karma that had served to blind me.
All of this meant I was no longer playing the old games…..at least not to the degree that I had done before. I was not as affected by the old behaviors and was not as controllable by my then-spouse.
We decided to divorce not long after that, and what ensued was a campaign of alienation that involved my children as emotional pawns when my ex did not get what she felt she was entitled to during the divorce.These were things for which there are legal protections against a spouse seeking to seize during a divorce, so it wasn’t as though what I was doing was unfair. It was enough for her to go to war, using my children as a wedge in the process.
This behavior is known as Parental Alienation Syndrome, and while it is most often perpetrated by women, both genders have been known to engage in it. At the core of this is a need on the part of the alienating parent to discuss openly with children, the details of divorce…sometimes the parent simply says damaging things about the other parent in an effort at what is called mobbing behavior. From a legal standpoint, this would be called slander. Children are not always emotionally prepared to question these assertions made by the parent who is actively engaged in trying to alienate the children and the other spouse.
This is a form of brainwashing, and when it happens over a long period of time, the framework from the alienating parent becomes a part of the child’s belief system. Children are in this way alienated from the other parent, sometimes for the rest of their lives. I can tell you just how difficult going through such an experience is. The level of grief one feels knowing that a child is caught in a belief system that has been put there by another parent and is unable or unwilling to break out of this state. As a parent, your instinct is to protect your children. This kind of behavior turns your life on its head. The level of acceptance that must be reached in order to forgive this kind of betrayal is, to say the least, a challenge. It has demanded a complete level of being honest with myself about who was doing what, and why. And the answer? My child had always exhibited a desire to align with his mother. It was part of who he was. It made him feel important. But I was in there in this soup of very dysfunctional behavior and situation and was being drawn into this very difficult and even crazy delusional behavior. I was activated by this behavior, and while it was negative, I was nonetheless there.
In relationships like this, there are no victims, even though nearly everyone tries at some point to identify someone as being responsible. This is the source of relationships like this. I went into this relationship thinking I could make a person’s life better. There were deficits in my spouse-to-be, yes, but I largely ignored these because I knew I could make this person’s life better. I was always a person who had a glass who was half full. But the truth is that without an individual desire to improve, to know joy and inner happiness, seeking to find it from others is like a house of cards that is bound to fall. This is what I have learned. It was gained at great cost. I have in later years met another person who wound up having very similar traits. I sought to work through these issues, which were mine, through another person later. That was a big mistake. Again, even though I knew that healing must come from within, I still tried to work through this with another person who was attracted to me in just the same way as my previous life had drawn my wife and I together through the law of attraction. I had to change what was in me in order to have a different life. While we can work through some things through a catalytic action that effects others, this effect is limited. Ultimately, we must change ourselves in order to have any hope of changing our world.
By working through these issues, I have learned from a counselor that behavior exhibited by these people is best described as Bordeline Personality Disorder. While a few of the symptoms was not present in my marriage, most were. These people feel empty without having relationships to support them. Because of how deep this emptiness is, they go from relationship to relationship. But so too did I do something similar, deepening some of the issues that I have been trying to heal. And I have been drawn to it, so I have my own issues to work through. Deep within the root chakra lies a fundamental uncertainty about survival that goes back to my early childhood, and in truth, moves through many lives, all of which can be healed in all-time by what I can now do with the stirring actions that Awakening has afforded me.
This is itself a hopeful time, an opportunity to wipe the slate clean….and let the chips fall where they may. Will I be able to reunite with my alienate child? Perhaps. But it is possible that it may not simply because there is something in him that is simply not interested or focused in the story that is my life. My hopes are constantly that we will reunite. At this time, the finger-pointing will have stopped and we will have come much closer to seeing things as they are instead of HOW we are (to quote Anais Nin).
This is the great opportunity for working through such difficult and thorny issues in life, issues that often, by way of normal therapy, has not been able to touch. With as many emotional blocks that have been released over the last 8 years, I remain hopeful, because nothing else has been as powerful or potent as what I have been afforded. And this is a cautionary tale for anyone else who is going through this, because doing this work will result in the kind of life your soul is drawing you to, even if it does result in some snags here and there.
Peace.
I was involved in a dysfunctional relationship in a marriage with children. It was a codependent relationship that involved a lack of emotional responsibility for being able to be happy and able to not depend on others for one’s own sense of joy and fulfilment. Yes, we are social creatures who thrive on connection….but we can suffer when we make others responsible for our happiness.
My relationship was doomed to fail because as I awoke, I began to see the list of behaviors that I and my spouse engaged in was unhealthy. This was a gradual unveiling that took some months to a year to fully see. I knew I had reached the point of no return when my spouse no longer looked the same. Something in me was pulling away those glossy veils that we unknowingly surround ourselves. I was, in the words of a counselor and friend, releasing the layers of karma that had served to blind me.
All of this meant I was no longer playing the old games…..at least not to the degree that I had done before. I was not as affected by the old behaviors and was not as controllable by my then-spouse.
We decided to divorce not long after that, and what ensued was a campaign of alienation that involved my children as emotional pawns when my ex did not get what she felt she was entitled to during the divorce.These were things for which there are legal protections against a spouse seeking to seize during a divorce, so it wasn’t as though what I was doing was unfair. It was enough for her to go to war, using my children as a wedge in the process.
This behavior is known as Parental Alienation Syndrome, and while it is most often perpetrated by women, both genders have been known to engage in it. At the core of this is a need on the part of the alienating parent to discuss openly with children, the details of divorce…sometimes the parent simply says damaging things about the other parent in an effort at what is called mobbing behavior. From a legal standpoint, this would be called slander. Children are not always emotionally prepared to question these assertions made by the parent who is actively engaged in trying to alienate the children and the other spouse.
This is a form of brainwashing, and when it happens over a long period of time, the framework from the alienating parent becomes a part of the child’s belief system. Children are in this way alienated from the other parent, sometimes for the rest of their lives. I can tell you just how difficult going through such an experience is. The level of grief one feels knowing that a child is caught in a belief system that has been put there by another parent and is unable or unwilling to break out of this state. As a parent, your instinct is to protect your children. This kind of behavior turns your life on its head. The level of acceptance that must be reached in order to forgive this kind of betrayal is, to say the least, a challenge. It has demanded a complete level of being honest with myself about who was doing what, and why. And the answer? My child had always exhibited a desire to align with his mother. It was part of who he was. It made him feel important. But I was in there in this soup of very dysfunctional behavior and situation and was being drawn into this very difficult and even crazy delusional behavior. I was activated by this behavior, and while it was negative, I was nonetheless there.
In relationships like this, there are no victims, even though nearly everyone tries at some point to identify someone as being responsible. This is the source of relationships like this. I went into this relationship thinking I could make a person’s life better. There were deficits in my spouse-to-be, yes, but I largely ignored these because I knew I could make this person’s life better. I was always a person who had a glass who was half full. But the truth is that without an individual desire to improve, to know joy and inner happiness, seeking to find it from others is like a house of cards that is bound to fall. This is what I have learned. It was gained at great cost. I have in later years met another person who wound up having very similar traits. I sought to work through these issues, which were mine, through another person later. That was a big mistake. Again, even though I knew that healing must come from within, I still tried to work through this with another person who was attracted to me in just the same way as my previous life had drawn my wife and I together through the law of attraction. I had to change what was in me in order to have a different life. While we can work through some things through a catalytic action that effects others, this effect is limited. Ultimately, we must change ourselves in order to have any hope of changing our world.
By working through these issues, I have learned from a counselor that behavior exhibited by these people is best described as Bordeline Personality Disorder. While a few of the symptoms was not present in my marriage, most were. These people feel empty without having relationships to support them. Because of how deep this emptiness is, they go from relationship to relationship. But so too did I do something similar, deepening some of the issues that I have been trying to heal. And I have been drawn to it, so I have my own issues to work through. Deep within the root chakra lies a fundamental uncertainty about survival that goes back to my early childhood, and in truth, moves through many lives, all of which can be healed in all-time by what I can now do with the stirring actions that Awakening has afforded me.
This is itself a hopeful time, an opportunity to wipe the slate clean….and let the chips fall where they may. Will I be able to reunite with my alienate child? Perhaps. But it is possible that it may not simply because there is something in him that is simply not interested or focused in the story that is my life. My hopes are constantly that we will reunite. At this time, the finger-pointing will have stopped and we will have come much closer to seeing things as they are instead of HOW we are (to quote Anais Nin).
This is the great opportunity for working through such difficult and thorny issues in life, issues that often, by way of normal therapy, has not been able to touch. With as many emotional blocks that have been released over the last 8 years, I remain hopeful, because nothing else has been as powerful or potent as what I have been afforded. And this is a cautionary tale for anyone else who is going through this, because doing this work will result in the kind of life your soul is drawing you to, even if it does result in some snags here and there.
Peace.
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