Release Your Need for the Love That Others Have No Power to Give You

“Forgive those who take from you, or walk all over you. They are your biggest teachers. Take your power back from them and lovingly set them free. Let them go by releasing your neediness for their love. Love yourself instead!”
David Elliott, Healing

Forgiveness is difficult for many people because we fail to understand ourselves, let alone the persons we believe have harmed us. And so through building resentments, we hold tight to our inner-pain while daily giving away our emotional power to those who have hurt us.

It’s much easier to forgive when we understand why we are holding on to the hurt. We think it‘s all about the other person’s behavior. Truth is, that’s only a small part of what’s holding us hostage. The larger part of the problem is all about us. As David Elliott says in his book Healing, we need to release our neediness for the love of those we are at odds with; we need to stop demanding that they give us something that they don’t have to give-- or that isn’t ours to demand from them at all.

Too often we are unable to forgive someone because subconsciously we are still wanting something from that person that they cannot possibly give us. For example, we may start dating, or even eventually marry, someone who subconsciously reminds us of our father or mother. Because the attraction is subconscious, we are not even aware of our true attraction to this person, and often the attraction boils down to this: Mom or dad was emotionally unavailable to us, and so we never really felt loved by them. We want to rectify this and make things right. So we subconsciously choose someone who is just as emotionally unavailable as mom or dad, and begin the process of trying to rectify our parent/child relationship through a stand-in. In reality, we are once again demanding from someone a love that they don‘t have to give. This new object of our twisted subconscious mind has no more ability to give us the love and affection we need than our parents did.

So, who are we really having a problem with here? The problem isn’t with mom, or dad or their designated substitute. It’s with us. We are still wanting and demanding what we cannot get, and, as a result, we are blaming others for not having the ability to meet our demands. We are blaming them for simply being the way they are. We cannot change an emotionally unavailable person into the ideal mom or dad, or spouse. And as long as we are subconsciously demanding that they change to suit us, we will be disappointed, hurt and unable to forgive them.

The solution to this problem is simple, but no necessarily easy. We have to examine ourselves. Let’s think about the people in our lives that are on the losing side of our grudges. Were we wanting from them something that they couldn’t possibly give us? Were our demands unfair? Are they-- like us-- the victims of our subconscious mind? If so, we need to let go and surrender our powerlessness over these people to God. We need to ask God to help us to take our power back from these people by helping us to stop wanting the love or attention that they have no power to give us. We will then receive the graces we need to release and to forgive them for not being the people we wanted them to be; for not being the perfect mom or dad or spouse; son or daughter or friend. Lastly, we need to forgive ourselves for being out of touch with our own subconscious needs. In doing so, we will allow ourselves to heal and allow our souls to shine!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No One Can Calm Your Codependent Crazies, But You

Image
Ah, the codependent crazies. Those needy, needy feelings. I remember well the deep emotional pain in the pit of my stomach: The throbbing sting of shame, fear, loneliness and anxious desperation. Those feelings that are like fingernails on the blackboard of your soul. They eat you alive from within as they dig deeper and deeper into the black hole of your inner-emptiness. Yes, I remember them well. And I remember evenings of mental and emotional insanity-- squirming with a magazine, pacing back and forth, indulging in chocolate, chasing up and down the stairs hoping the doorbell would ring, and staring endlessly at the telephone for a sign of hope. All I needed was a call from my false higher power; a call that would help me to know that I was OK, that I was needed, that I was worth thinking about in some good way. I was dying to be emotionally caressed on the head like a poodle desperate for the attention of his master. And certainly I had made that other person into my mas...
Read more

Happiness is Something We Cultivate and Share

Who makes you happy? In reality, no one can make you happy. People in your life can enhance your happiness through sharing your interests. Or they can add to your frustrations by pushing your buttons. But no one can be responsible for your happiness or your misery—aside from you. One of the biggest problems for codependents is that we too often enter relationships looking for everlasting happiness. We expect that the person we choose to attach our dreams to should be responsible for making us happy. In our minds, we fantasize that he/she will be focused solely on us, will spend every waking hour with us and will do everything in his/her power to insure that we are as happy as we can possibly be. In other words, we assume this person will meet all of our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual needs in the same way that we plan to meet all of his/her needs. In our little dream world we will smother each other with attention and we will both drip with the honey of happiness. R...
Read more

Where There Is Kindness, There Is Goodness

Image
Author’s Note: The next few meditations will be from a retreat I directed recently called The Good News According to Disney . If you aren’t familiar with the films that are referenced, I’d suggest to take time to see them and to look for the deeper meaning within them. Many people today still live by the biblical adage “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” They actually believe that they will be at peace if they achieve revenge or restitution for any mishap that has befallen them at the hands of another. They believe they will reclaim their personal power once they have achieved their revenge, but this is impossible. Disney’s Cinderella (2015) reveals the true secret to owning one’s personal power and to retaining it no matter what we experience in life: “Have courage and be kind.” On the surface this motto looks a bit simple and wimpy. But in reality, it holds great power. That power comes from the heart of a person, or in this case Ella, who sees the world not a...
Read more

Become the Person You Want to Spend Your Life With Everyday

Image
I really don’t have to say much about the above quote. It says it all and it’s so true. We are too often taught faulty ways of thinking as children. So many of us get the wrong message at very young ages: Love is about finding the right person to love you. Looking back I realize I wasted many years trying to find that “right” person— the one who could love me into loving myself— instead of trying to BE that “right” person myself. It never occurred to me that I needed to love myself, nurture myself and accept myself enough to become the right person— the person I really needed most in my life. After all, what is my life without me? Now I know that I’m what’s been missing from my own life for years. My life is empty without me and without my spiritual Higher Power. This is true for all of us.  Once We find ourselves, become the “right” person God intended us to be, and become the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with, then we attract others into our lives who ca...
Read more