Wondering what inauthenticity (fear) looks like in a relationship? I was going to tell you, but my birthday blues delivered a great example of how this plays out in a relationship and I’m sharing my process so you can learn exactly what you can do about it.
In episode 24 of The Authentic Wife Show, you’ll learn how I process feeling unlovable or unlikeable, feelings that came out as blame for my husband’s faults on my birthday but ended up having started long before I met him.
You can also watch today’s show on my YouTube channel!
(This is the largely unedited auto-transcription.)
Welcome back to the show. I’m so happy to have you here today. My topic for today [00:01:00] is what does fear or inauthenticity look like in a relationship? And when I was planning that topic, there were probably all kinds of things that I thought of to talk about, but as I’ve seen in my life, I continually get to repeat things, so that they’re fresh in my mind so that I can share them with you and hopefully they help you.
My Husband Played The Villain In My Story
And today is one of those days, it is my 40th birthday, which I really haven’t thought much about until today, this very day. Like I knew it was coming, but it wasn’t really a big deal. I wasn’t really worried about it. In fact, I’m sure that my husband asked me, I know he did a few times up before this day, you know, What did I wanna do? Did I wanna go somewhere? He showed me some restaurant to eat at, he asked me what I wanted and to all of it, I said, [00:02:00] Nothing. I don’t need anything. I’m good. I don’t want anything. Well, but then I woke up today. I was like — all of a sudden I was telling myself this massive fiction, massive story.
I had this, almost like an energy. It was more like the energy came and then I needed a story to go with it. And he became the victim of my story. He became the victim of my story, but in my story, he was the villain. He got to play the role of the villain. And maybe you can relate to this, like, I don’t know if you’ve ever had the birthday blues.
The Birthday Blues
I remember like I have felt this way on my birthday before. But it’s been a while since I felt like this a long time actually, which is why I was so surprised when I started to be [00:03:00] upset and weird today. Cuz I haven’t had issues like this in a long time, but I remember maybe turning like somewhere between 13 and 16 and my mom trying to take me somewhere and I did not wanna be there and I didn’t feel loved. And you know, I was upset about my parents’ divorce and missing my dad. And then I guess more recently I have had, you know, issues because I remember my parents visiting or something.
And it was always like this idea that nobody really knows who I am. Nobody really appreciates me until my birthday. Then suddenly, like people seemed to care and where are they the rest of the year? And so I’ve done a lot of healing work on that. I’ve done healing work on that idea that nobody cares.
I’ve done healing work on the way my parents [00:04:00] didn’t treat me with love and respect every other day, and suddenly were kind and generous on my birthday, and I think a lot of people can relate to that. I’ve done healing work on asking for what I want and showing up and doing the thing I want. In fact, I just did that this weekend with my mom when she was here.
Listening For The Full Body Yes
She wanted to know where I wanted go for lunch, and I told her and then it sounded like she didn’t really wanna go there or I started to think that she wouldn’t wanna go there. And that was changing my mind. And then I just kind of excused myself, went upstairs and I sat with it like, Where’s my full body yes? What do I actually really wanna do? And so then I was brave enough to go say, This is what I wanna do. And to remember that not everybody has to be happy. I don’t have to make people happy. If it’s truly my day and you wanna take me out for something that I enjoy, here’s the thing that’s going to light me up.
I’ve [00:05:00] sat with it. This is what I want. I’m excited for this thing, which happened to be Red Lobster of all places, which I don’t think I’ve been there in like two years, but it just sounded good. Those biscuits, ugh, they get you with the biscuits. So I was, I’ve been firm on that. I’ve been good at asking for what I want.
Normally I’m really good with my husband. Like when I told him I didn’t want anything that was pretty, that was genuine. There wasn’t really anything I wanted. So it’s funny because when I first journaled this morning and I was just venting away, it almost felt like somebody else was writing the story.
It really was like, I don’t know where this is coming from because technically these are not issues for me. Like what is my problem? And what I’m realizing as I go through all my processes for today, the story that I kept telling myself, you know, I’ve got my, I’ve got my journal here. If you’re watching me on YouTube, [00:06:00] I’ve got my self coaching worksheet and had to whip that out.
And the story became, Because I think it was a combination of things that, like, people don’t like me, that I’m not lovable, that I’m not worth the effort. That people just don’t like me. Like they, that they don’t wanna follow me. That I’m not a likable person. People don’t wanna spend time with me so much.
My Process
So as I was digging into this, I realized that it’s related to inner child stuff. Sorry for going deep with you today. I’m just gonna share some of my process with you and, and help you know that one, you’re not alone. And two, this is how you work through these things. And I’m good. I’m okay, but I think it’s important for you to hear what happened to me so that you can take this work into your life and know you’re not alone. Because I know that I’m not alone. In fact, [00:07:00] when I got on the phone with one of my friends, she was journaling the exact same stuff yesterday and today. So I know I’m not alone.
Exploring My Trigger: The Inner Infant
So this particular point in my life, what I came to when I started to explore my trigger here, the thing that I have to heal from is actually my earliest, earliest years when we look at this in terms of chakra development or child development, this is related to the root chakra or basically in utero to about 12 months old. I’ve done a lot of inner child healing work. It is never focused on infancy, and I know just from what I’ve heard, I came in the world, came into the world in a time of sadness because my mom’s dog had to be put to sleep like the day I was born.
And anybody who knows, my mom knows that [00:08:00] she is tight with her dogs. She’s always had dogs, Great Danes. She loves them. She’s extremely close to him, them. So I came into a bunch of sadness, and I don’t think it was just related to the dog, but I know that that was happening. And then I came with a lot of, according to them, like I just cried all the time.
I don’t know if I was colicky or what, but I could not be — In fact, my mom told me once, and this broke my heart to even hear it — She couldn’t get me to stop crying, so she like threw water in my face to try to get me to stop crying. Apparently, nothing they would do would get me to stop crying. So they would put me in like this hand crank swing and I spent all my time in there.
So I don’t think that I was held a whole lot and when I was, I can imagine that all my caregivers were dysregulated because, you know, crying baby is so upsetting and they didn’t know what to do. [00:09:00] And so I got all these things that I know happened and who knows what happened with sleep. Like who knows? Did they really respond to me when I cried, if they tried to sleep, train me?
I’m certain there was no co-sleeping. I’m certain I was in some kind of crib, so I was far away. So who knows what happened? And I have a two-year-old older brother so I know he was incredibly close to my mom and she was really worried about, you know, hurting him or breaking his heart.
So I know that there was probably some drama there where she was picking and choosing and trying to keep him happy and maybe, you know, putting me off to somebody else like my dad, or I think my uncle was visiting at the time. And on top of the things that I do know about that period, when I have done past life regression hypnosis on this where, where you [00:10:00] go back and one of the ways that they first take you back is through your own birth, right?
And then you go even further back to previous lives. And I’m not saying that whatever I saw is true because I don’t know. You know, how could you know? But every single time, what I experience when I go back is this immense sadness. Like I literally came to the world sad. Not only did I come into sadness, but I came here sad and that other lifetimes before this one were not good, like bad things happened to me. I see where I was just like beaten. I don’t know. This is the visual I get like these, these very old times where people are just wearing robes and I was the one being made an example of, and people are beating me with stones.
I don’t really know what’s happening. And of course, it could all be my [00:11:00] imagination, I don’t know. But I get the sense, possibly, that my previous lifetimes were not great, and when I came here I was sad. The sense I get is almost that I had to leave behind a child or a family to come into this world.
And it probably would be helpful for you to know that I believe in reincarnation and that we come back multiple lifetimes. Even if you don’t believe any of that, the point is that I believe that I had some more healing work to do around this time period around in utero to about 12 months old.
Healing
So after I journaled, after I got it all out, and then after I did my self-coaching process, which by the way, I resisted. I could feel as I was doing it that I wanted to move away from it. I wanted to distract myself. I was like, write down an [00:12:00] answer and then pick up the phone, then write down an answer, and then pick up the phone.
There was something I didn’t want to see and I got a lot of spiritual wisdom, which I could share with you from that. That’s the way this process works. It forces you to get out of the story and go back to the truth. And that was helpful after I did that. Then I did some inner child healing work, specifically with littlest me, and I found a picture of me when I was quite young, I’d say probably two to three months old, and I talked to that infant me, and first of all, when I even opened my mouth to say out loud anything to her, tears came, tears and tears. And even looking at her the first time, it was like I couldn’t even accept her. I couldn’t even see my own worth, even though I’ve done so much work, just looking at a baby picture of me. I [00:13:00] couldn’t see it for a minute. And then of course, I moved into the adult self, which is how we reparent.
Reparenting
And I told her the story as much as I know, of course of how she came. This is what empathy is. I’m processing with her what happened, what it was like to come into a family with sadness because the dog passed away, what it was like to not be held, what it was like to have an upset tummy. That one really got me.
So I think maybe I was in a lot of pain when I was a baby. And then you go into the, You always were worthy. You came here, worthy, you came here. Perfect. You’re this beautiful divine little being, and you deserve to be held. And for people to investigate your needs and to meet those needs and to. Be here for you and to support you and, and to not leave you in your crib to figure it [00:14:00] out yourself, to not leave you there, to just give up on somebody coming to meet your needs.
What that did was create this kind of leaving personality in me that said, Nobody’s gonna show up, nobody’s gonna meet my needs. Might as well be self-sufficient, self-reliant, independent, people are unreliable and are going to hurt you. So just do everything on your own. Which is why I became that in my life, the person who did everything, who needed nothing, who over gave to other people, who pushed people away, who kept people at a distance, and who knew that the only person I could rely on would be myself.
So it’s all related. So I did the inner child healing with her and I included my body because this root chakra stuff really involves the body and getting into your body. And so for this, I was reaching because [00:15:00] one of the things that babies do when they need their mothers is they reach for them.
They reach for them and nobody’s there to get them. So I reached and I held myself and supported myself and talked to myself the way I would’ve talked to my own daughter or my own son now. And I visualized holding this infant me and just holding her so tightly and rocking her. And even just with that I could feel this tight spot that was in the lower part of my back, just kind of melt away. This work is so powerful and you can do it with a coach, you can do it with a therapist, but you can do it on your own too, and it makes a difference. It changes your life.
My Husband Was Playing a Role In My Healing Journey
My husband wasn’t doing anything wrong this morning when he didn’t have a card or didn’t have the kids like ready with presents.[00:16:00]
He was playing a role. In this healing journey of my life that I set him up to play. By the way, absolutely set him up to play, and it brought me back to a place that needed to be healed.
Had I instead stayed in that fiction and that story, and didn’t have these tools, and didn’t have this awareness, he would be the bad guy all day.
I would’ve been so upset with him today, tomorrow, the next day, the next month. I might have divorced him. It was funny because when I was doing the journaling, I knew that like, this isn’t even me writing this. Who’s this person that’s complaining? These are not things that I say.
I just don’t say these things about him. Or anybody. “No one wants to do anything with or [00:17:00] for me. No one likes me. My husband doesn’t give a single bleep about my birthday. He didn’t help the kids do a single thing for me. I just feel unlovable, invisible, like I’m not worthy of anyone’s attention.
Like people actually avoid liking me. I’m not a cool kid. No one wants to hang out with me or be my friend. No one wants to listen to me. I feel sad that I’m not worth the effort. He got me a card that was all about how I make him happy. And I was like, Well, that’s not even about me, what the hell?”
We Create A Story To Match The Pain We Feel
So I just went on and on and threw myself like this pity party and that fear, whether it’s coming from your inner child or it’s coming from something you picked up from elsewhere or it’s coming even– I’m in pain today. I know this is a TMI. I’m sorry, my period started today. It’s full moon. I’m in physical pain.
Emotions are heightened cuz that’s the way full moons work. Other people are in pain. There are other fears going on about [00:18:00] survival and those kinds of things. I’m either picking it up from there or we start down this path of the story and we go into victim mode. And clearly the villain had to be my husband, but it was not true.
I was telling a friend earlier, like I was looking at him through like this little tiny peephole and not looking at the whole big picture of things that he has done or does for me. Overall, he asked me multiple times what I wanted for my birthday. I told him nothing. He used to get me really nice, luxurious gifts, and I yelled at him so much about spending the money that he stopped doing that, and I never came back to him and said, Oh, by the way, you can do that now.
He actually did spend a ton of money on me on this pan that I decided we needed. That’s like a. [00:19:00] I can’t even say it. , it’s a Staub pan. It’s a French cast iron pan, but it was like almost $300 for one pan. He got me a really nice gift. My kids give me cards, do stuff for me all the time. I celebrate life every day. There’s nothing different about this day that people need to come and make a big deal about me or need to show me that I’m special because I feel worthy every single day. I have lots of friends, lots of people to talk to, lots of people who follow me, lots of people who hopefully hear my show and find some value.
But I was ignoring all of that and telling myself this story, and like I said, if I didn’t have the tools and the awareness, it would’ve become a fight and it would’ve been impossible for him to win because my mind was made up that he was the bad guy and I was in [00:20:00] a pity party that I, I wouldn’t have looked at it any other way.
The only thing he could have done and what he would have done had I met him with this, he doesn’t even know that, that I was feeling any of this today. He doesn’t even know, cuz I knew that I was still working through it and I knew that I was gonna say something that wasn’t really true because I was still in the middle of this fiction and so I was just quiet and I knew I needed to process it on my own.
But had I brought it to him, He’s very good at empathy and he wouldn’t have gotten hooked by my fear and he wouldn’t have gotten defensive. He would’ve been like, What? Oh, what’s going on? Why do you feel that way? And because I’ve done the work, I would’ve told him what’s going on and like all the stories going through my head and he wouldn’t have bought into it. He’s really good at not getting hooked by my fear most of the time.
We Tell Ourselves Fiction All The Time
But I have so many beautiful clients and either the wife or the husband often is telling [00:21:00] themselves these fictions all day long that are usually related to something that happened in their childhood, some belief system, some way a parent was negligent or did not meet their needs in the way they needed them to.
And we bring it into these adult relationships. And then when the mood strikes or when it’s our birthday, when something triggers a memory of what happened, whether it’s our literal birth or maybe a phrase that somebody said, that’s our opportunity to go in and heal from it instead of projecting that pain out onto the other person, that’s our opportunity to go, “Whew. Okay. I am writing some stories today. Cancel all my appointments. I need to dive into this.” I need to do the the steps that I teach you in my [00:22:00] program, step number one is to explore your triggers. Know why you are upset, know where it’s coming from. Step number two is to heal from those and do that loving adult self reparenting work that’s necessary, or forgiveness or burning these belief systems, these contracts that we signed before we even were old enough to sign a contract, right? I had to go through all that and we do it on our own timeline. Usually I can do this work, at least those two steps, in less than 30 minutes, usually.
It’s So Much Easier To Blame Others
Today, my conscious part of me wanted to do it and something else in me wanted to hang on to that story. It was slow in the exploration. It was slow in getting to the truth of the situation. It [00:23:00] even delayed the inner child healing. There was some part of me that has benefited from this not being healed. It’s so much easier to just blame another person. It feels so much better to go, “Whew. Must be you. Must be you sucks!”Llike, “Why are you in my life? If I just get rid of you, then I’ll feel better. I’ll be happy again. It’s clearly you.”
But if we actually dig in, we actually explored the trigger and we heal, then we realize it was never about him.
It was always something inside of us, and even if our parents played a role in it, you know, we can’t hold that against them. There’s nothing we can do about that. All we can do is tend to that little girl or boy that’s inside of us and heal from that experience knowing that our parents were doing the best they could at the time.[00:24:00]
Hopefully they were truly doing the best they could at the time, and based on their histories and all the things that happened to them, there’s huge amounts of variation of what their best could have been, but, there’s no point to the blame because blame keeps us a victim. It keeps us in these situations where we fight and blame and feel defensive.
It keeps us in a place of fear.
Humans Just Kind of Suck Sometimes
Now, the third step in my program after the healing is energetic coherence. Now that I’ve used all this, now that I have grown, and up-leveled, it’s time to shift up into a place of love, but I wanna share with you real quick. The second half of of my process, like I said earlier, takes you to the truth of the matter.
And when I do this, I literally write ‘the truth is,’ and then I’m able to just listen for what I [00:25:00] hear and write it down. I don’t think about it. It’s not something I’m coming up with. It’s coming through me, and I really think that that’s true for almost everybody I’ve ever worked with. If you can shut off that inner editor, and shut off that like human kind of part of you and just listen for what you hear or even listen for your body. Like lean into your body, ask your body what the question is. You will usually get so much wisdom.Aand we do a little prep work before we go to that place. But I got some amazing stuff that I never would’ve thought was in any way related to this when I was writing down everything about being unlovable and being unworthy and how I pushed people away. And, you know, one of the key things, I guess I won’t read it all to you, but one of the key takeaways was that humans, because we all have these rich histories [00:26:00] and backgrounds… You know, like it makes me think about those old pots that some people use speaking in pots and pans. You know how like in different cultures and stuff, there’s like a pot that gets used over and over and over again and it’s like seasoned for that particular meal?
And the pot itself, because it’s held so many of these meals, it changes the taste of the food that’s being made in it, right? Like we have these seasoned selves with these rich, complex layered depths to ourselves and we bring that to the table and because we bring that to the table and because we have animal instincts and human fears, survival skills, because we’re made of matter and because we do have to survive, we bring all this stuff, and we really just aren’t the best people to live with, right?!
Like we’re really kind of just hard, relationships are [00:27:00] really just kind of hard because you want the other person to always be where I’m at on a good day, right? Like, healed, it isn’t triggered, isn’t in a place of fear but has healed and is in in a place of love. It’s completely regulated, no nervous system issues. Has positive intentions with unconditional positive regard for you. Is really skilled at holding space and empathy and can really see you and help you understand yourself and is a skilled communicator who can help you like logically think through what you are experiencing.
That’s what we want from people. We want people to be that for us. We want our parents to be these amazing people whose cups are always full and are all the things that I just mentioned. But what I got was that we are just human because that is the point of our existence, to [00:28:00] use each other to trigger these different things so that we can heal from them and we can get closer to love because what we are, — what our baseline energy is supposed to be is love and we have to see the illusion of the birthday blues to get closer to the reality of who we are, which is love.
But Source Energy Doesn’t
And we have to remember that the only being, thing that’s really going to be that consistent thing for us is whatever you call God, is source, is the place that we all came from, whatever it is that we are when we are not inside these bodies.
And if you can remember that through other people, [00:29:00] you can be served by that hand of God, then you can find peace.
When you can know that the person, the human in front of you is not always going to reflect your light, not always going to understand who you are, not always going to show you your worth, because the fact is they’re probably trying to figure out their own worth right now.
They probably don’t even know their own light right now. They’ve got stuff to heal from. But if you can remember to rely on Source, Universe, God, to show itself and to support you through people and places and experiences, then it will be there for you, but you have to look for it, and sometimes you will be the one that brings it out in the other person.
Because when you leave the fear behind [00:30:00] and you align to love, that’s when you can hear God through other people. That’s when you can connect to God through other people. And only authenticity does that, because we are not that authentic real self until we are aligned to love, until we fully know our worth, until we fully know that we are so much more than the body or the bank account, or the things we do or the things we have, we have to get aligned to who we authentically are.
If you depend on every human in your life to be there, you’re gonna be let down because we’re all working on it. And the fastest way to get the humans that you love, the ones that you love in your life to be that for you, is to shift up into that love [00:31:00] and connect to that God, that Source, that who we really are through the other person.
You bring it out of them, you attract them. You pull the light out of them by shining your own, and you can’t do that if you’re living in the dark and telling yourself stories about how they let you down and how you made a mistake, and how it must be that nobody likes you. It must be that there’s something wrong with you and you’re not likable.
This fiction, this fear is something that we have to rise above from a conscious place, from a loving place. And then you could have a beautiful birthday and remember that every day is the day to celebrate, and I’m so glad that I chose my family and have the experience I did because it put me right here [00:32:00] in this seat with you today, and I am eternally grateful that you are here listening and that we get to connect on this level.
That’s all for today. Thank you so much for joining me, and I’ll see you next week.
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