Meet Safiya Robinson, our fabulous new Goddess Living contributing writer. Safiya jumped into the Goddess Living inquiry conversation by listening to one of our most recent Goddess Talks and creating this sensational synopsis and sharing what she learned for herself.
—--------------------
This month is the month of love, and there are conversations everywhere happening about love, and considering what might be standing in the way of love. In this week’s Goddess Talk, our conversation topic was discussing what stands in the way of love, and asking the question - “how do we push love away?”
Love vs fear
When it comes to relationships, we often have two paths we can take - the path of fear, and the path of love. And the truth is, we often choose a path of fear - even when we WANT to choose a path of love. This happens when we embody protective mechanisms which are survival habits; patterns that we have run for years, sometimes without being aware of them. These survival habits are what author Marilyn Sutherland calls “whopping mistakes” in her book “Why Did You Load the Dishwasher Like That?: 9 Whopping Mistakes that Push Love Away”. As she points out, these mistakes can lead to disconnection with others, and with ourselves.
One of the reasons that protective mechanisms can be difficult to spot is because at some point in our lives, they actually protected us, and in many cases were essential to survival - sometimes physically, and sometimes to our ego - until using them became habitual, and in some cases second nature.
These 9 whopping mistakes or patterns are:
- The smart one - this is judgmental, using passive aggressive or sarcastic communication. It often isn’t the words we say but our tone or edge that is carried with what we say
- The Inner judge - this is a self critical approach when we criticize ourselves, and this is meant to protect us from risk and going outside of our comfort zone.
- The sensitive one - this pattern leads us to take everything personally, and causes us to lose confidence or feel like a victim.
- The insensitive one - this pattern is one of control, where we behave insensitively to others and demean others, in an attempt to control the situation or the person we are speaking to even when we don’t mean to hurt them.
- The disappointed one - we can get disappointed when we have unrealistic expectations of our loved ones, and of ourselves, and we hold onto those expectations. If we get too disappointed all the time, we start to push people and opportunities away.
- The skeptic - this pattern appears when we don’t trust people. This may be because of betrayal from people in our life early on, and this leads to lack of trust, and feeling unsafe. It means that we aren’t vulnerable and we hold back from showing our true selves to others.
- The avoider - this is a pattern of not taking responsibility, and instead deflecting to those around us, staying stuck as a victim.
- The dominator - this pattern is about controlling others.
- The pleaser - this is the “good girl” who does what she is told. Pleasers do things to please people and get love, but we don’t get the love, instead we get resentful. As pleasers we aren’t being authentic, and that prevents connection.
Most of us have one or more of these, and they can change as we go through our lives, but there are two that stood out to me and I could clearly see how I embody these patterns to push people out of my life.
The smart one is a pattern where we use passive aggressive or sarcastic communication. It often isn’t the words we say but our tone or edge that is carried in our voice. This is something that I have definitely done, under the guise of not losing my cool, or not wanting to appear hurt or vulnerable. Instead, I would be passive aggressive, and sarcastic, but it also means that I am hiding my true feelings from those I care about, and pushing them away.
The other pattern I identified with was the skeptic. I definitely have found it hard to trust, and instead of being vulnerable and showing myself to others, I withdraw and this makes it hard for me to connect.
Pulling LOVE in …
If we identify with one or more of these habits, or find that we have a pattern in our life of pushing people away, how can we reverse this and find the love and connection we want?
Here are 3 ways to stop pushing people away, and form deeper connections with those we love.
- Self reflection.
“Without the practices of self observation, inquiry and intuition, our ability to recognize our survival habits, our automatic habits will live our life rather than our inner goddess.”
~ Marilyn Sutherland.
Self observation can be a big part of moving away from our survival habits, off of the path of fear and onto the path of love. Once we have set the intention to change this and we begin to reflect inwardly, we increase the awareness of how we are interacting with others. This means that we can catch ourselves with words coming out of our mouths saying things that are hurtful or sarcastic, or with the tone or edge to our speech. We can notice when we are withdrawing from hard conversations, or trying to shift the blame onto others. We can notice when we become very sensitive or insensitive, or become hardened and skeptical instead of open hearted.
Self awareness is the first big key to breaking these patterns, as we cannot change what we are not aware of.
But what can we do now that we are noticing when we slip into one or more of these patterns?
- Pattern interruptions.
Once we are aware of when we slip into the pattern, the next step is to notice the emotion that goes along with it. Once we have begun to do this, we begin to realize that the emotion comes before or during the action, we can actually feel the energy bubbling up inside of us. We also don’t want to suppress the emotions, as that can come out as resentment. Instead, when this happens, we can take physical steps to interrupt the pattern. This can be done by physically shifting or changing our position. We can uncross our arms, or raise our hands. We can stand up and move around, or sit in a different seat. We can even take three deep breaths, or excuse ourselves and go to the restroom.
This means that we can stop the progression of the protective habit and ultimately break the pattern, and go down the path of love instead of fear. If we are comfortable enough, we can even communicate with our loved ones what we are doing, so that they can support us as we work on changing our reactions. There can be a signal that we establish with a partner or family member telling them that we are trying to pause and connect rather than disconnect.
These pattern interrupters allow us to break out of our protective habits and form new habits that draw us nearer to our loved ones.
- Setting boundaries.
It may sound counterintuitive, but setting boundaries can prevent us from falling back into our protective patterns. If we realize that we are continuing to play out those patterns in particular relationships in our lives, it may be time to set some boundaries with that person. I like to think of boundaries as setting up a future version of myself for success. If we can set boundaries when we are in a calm, self reflective state, then it may also be possible to break the patterns by changing the nature of our relationship with our loved one.
First, it is important to know when we need to set boundaries with folks that we observe these patterns with. If we find that interacting with someone - even someone we love - is highly agitating to either person, then that is a sign that a boundary might be needed, and we then get to decide what type of boundary we are setting. It is also important to accept that sometimes people don’t respect our boundaries, and it may require us to be firm with how we manage this.
Setting a boundary doesn’t automatically mean cutting off a relationship, but it may be a great way to set a framework for the relationship as well as stating our non-negotiables. A boundary may be one where we determine topics that we will or will not discuss with someone, or how often we spend time with them. Alternatively, they can be around how we spend that time. A great way to set up a boundary is to ensure that any time we do spend with someone we love encourages connection. We might make sure that we spend time doing mutually enjoyable activities.
In addition, we might set a boundary to no longer discuss one a topic that we know aggravates a loved one. Instead, get the support of community or friends around that topic or activity.
Whatever we decide to do, boundaries are a great way of starting to define the type of connection and relationships we want in our life.
So what we learned is …
By engaging in regular self reflection, interrupting our survival patterns and setting boundaries, we can improve the quality of the relationships in our life. As we walk down the path of love, instead of pushing people away, we are able to connect with them, and experience more love in our lives all year round.
