I used to describe the relationship I had with Carla as “very close”, which sounds so warm and desirable.  But it was not a healthy “close”.   She needed me to be her sounding board, comforter, advisor and rescuer.  I needed her to live her life a certain way so that I would feel fulfilled and happy.  This enmeshment felt as if I carried Carla around in an emotional backpack everywhere I went.  My mood would be determined by her mood.   If her day started out well, I would prefer not to hear from her in case it went downhill.  I wanted to stay at that level of contentment and if she called to say something happened to cause her upset, then my day would take a downturn.   She carried my level of well being around with her.  When I worried about her weight I wished I could get inside Carla’s skin and manage how she ate, exercised, dressed, and took care of herself.  I saw her as a naturally beautiful person with many talents and reasons to be happy.  I felt sure I would be a better caretaker of all those attributes since she didn’t seem to appreciate them.  I tried to live my life through her and it was doing damage to both of us.

When Carla started seeing a counselor changes began in her.  She stopped sharing every thought with me.  She became stronger and started to draw boundaries.  She made some decisions that were hard for me to handle.  I often crossed the line with prying questions or statements that I knew were subtle hints in order to control.  But now Carla responded to these in a way that said, “I will decide for myself”.  I knew that I was obsessed with Carla but I felt helpless to break free from it.  This was when I decided to begin counseling for myself.  What surprised me was that we didn’t spend much time at all talking about Carla.  I learned that I needed to become emotionally healthy myself in order to have a healthy relationship with my daughter.  My marriage came under the spotlight and I started to pay attention to what my relationship was like with my husband. The more I learned about the lacking I felt in my marriage, the more I realized that I had channeled my desire for relational intimacy through Carla, hoping that she would find what I was missing and be happy enough for both of us.  As I continued to grow, I started to see myself as a person who deserved to live in freedom and wholeness all on my own, not depending on someone else for my identity.  Having a better understanding of all these things empowered me to begin making changes in my own life.  I gained a new sense of confidence and clarity and began to value myself as a person.  I started to believe that I deserved a meaningful relationship in my marriage and began making changes in that area.  I started taking pottery lessons, a delightful new experience for me, which has opened up new possibilities and enriched my life. 

Carla and I enjoy a much more fulfilling relationship today.   I still feel empathy for her when she struggles but I know that she is strong and will work them out as they come along.  We are both continually growing in better ways of relating to one another, experiencing both the joys of our successes and learning from our mistakes. This is the new essence of our relationship. Carla is a wonderful encouragement to me as I grow independently from her and find interests that are truly my own.  She inspires me to look for what is true and good in myself.  I am so grateful for what we have learned and that our relationship has become what it is today. 

One of my favorite movies is “Yentl” with Barbara Streisand.  She sings one of my favorite songs at the end of the movie and these words have often come to mind and brought me inspiration:

 “What’s wrong with wanting more? If you can fly then soar! Why settle for just a piece of ground?”

~Debbie Dippel~

On a bridge in Victoria BC

Deep inside me, every second of every day of my life, there dwells a beauty.  A real person, a human being. She is sensitive but determined. She is curious, investigative, and thorough. She is creative, deep, resourceful. She goes through fears, questions, doubts. She finds the answers she wants. She has dreams! She has goals. She has desires that are good. She loves to cook and serve delicious food to her friends. She loves to make music. She loves to sun soak and walk and go crazy on the dance floor. She cares about people and loves to write because she wants her story to help others. She loves, and she is loved. She has stopped off to one side of her path many times but has always gotten back to her feet and followed her heart, a heart that tugs her forward, forward, forward. She loves adventure and having fun. She is passionate to live out her full potential. She is willing to learn. She is generous. She is a valiant truth seeker. She is classy…

This is me. Please substitute your own words for yourself if you would like… Deep inside each of us is one unique expression of what it is to be human.  This expression is complete within every person, whether it is uncovered or not.

First, I needed to know that my hungry heart was okay. I needed to know that what I felt was lacking really was lacking. It was not my imagination. My hungry heart was not selfish or self-centered. It was hungry. Hungry happens for a reason. I needed to know that the circumstances in my childhood that created that hunger were wrong. I needed to know that it was not okay to be emotionally neglected by my Dad. I needed to know that it was good for me to be angry about that (Darlene explores this topic further in her post “Anger at Parents~ A Pathway on the Journey to Freedom“). I needed to know that a person who is hungry will try to satisfy or stop their hunger with lots of different things- accomplishments, boyfriends, addictions, depression, the approval of others. I needed to know that it was okay that I tried to fix my hunger with these things, that it made sense.  I needed to know that I was so much more than my ways of coping. I was not simply possessive, jealous, depressed, needy, angry or insecure. I used these things to try and solve my problem- they just didn’t work.

When I knew all these truths, I became free to know my real self . Underneath all the things I used to cope was the real me, the Carla who I had all my life been so hungry to know and so hungry to share with others. In affirming that she was real and that she was good, I became confident to meet her and embrace her fully as myself. I could stop striving to “manage” or fix all these different parts of her, hiding parts from certain people or embellishing other parts for other people. In knowing that ALL of Carla was okay and that all parts were necessary, I could start on the kind of journey I had dreamed of my whole life, with my whole self on board. All of me is now in one place. I know now that I am worth knowing, worth exploring. With this new belief at my foundations, I can now give myself what was lacking before. I have the freedom and the power to celebrate now what was not fully celebrated in my past. I take up the task of protecting, accepting, nourishing and teaching my whole self to thrive and flourish as I was meant to all along.  All these things are what I needed to know, all parts of one big truth, one big vibrant picture.

A wise friend once told me that our home life does not define our value, but models it. God has already defined my value for me (no one on earth can actually do this) but the purpose of a home, a family, is to treat each other as the valuable people that we are. It’s a valuing that respects the value that already exists. It models respect for my unique abilities, passions, dreams, and obstacles.

My home life was very predictable, very “secure”, very normal. My parents tried to do everything the right way. We went to church, did family devotions, did chores, got allowance, were disciplined for misbehaving. But… something was missing. My whole life I have questioned my value, never felt like my own feelings and thoughts were really good enough, have struggled to even know what my own thoughts and feelings were!

I was not taken advantage of sexually or physically, but I was valued for the wrong things.  The real Carla was not valued or engaged with, not asked “do you like this? Do you not like this? What do you think about this? How did that make you feel?” She was told to be good and was valued for being good. She was applauded for being right more than she was for being herself. So, I was a very good child and decided to continue being very good throughout my life so that I would continue to be treated as valuable. The church loved a good girl, as did the private school I graduated from. I sweat blood and tears to be good and right in order to be valued.

Today it is my quest to be the real Carla, the Carla not boxed in or confined by the labels of “good and right.” Somedays it still feels like a very wobbly path because I get my value mixed up with these old skewed definitions. It sometimes feels foreign and uncertain to know and trust my own real feelings because for so long I have tempered them with what is intellectually “good and right.” But our souls can be nurtured back to life. The seeds that have been dormant for years are still there inside of us. With some loving work and nurturing, they will grow.  It is happening day by day, re-bridging the gap between what is really true and what I deeply know to be true about me.

(Part Two from my post The Guilty Way)

Imagine that as you journey along, a destination, a place you would like to be, flashes like a picture into your mind. You can see it. You can see it so clearly… You have this strong sense deep down of what this place is like. You naturally have this urge of wanting to be there, wanting to reach it, this desire coming from the uniqueness of you.  You picture this place and feel the desire to be there all in one flash, one spontaneous moment. This is an aim of your heart.

You contemplate moving towards your destination but suddenly you also have this doubt… this strong palpable doubt that what you have pictured is really, well, okay. Is really… good enough. You’ve heard other people describe their picture and suddenly yours seems a little dull. Maybe the vision cast in your mind is faulty. You start to feel anxiety and a sad kind of disappointment all at the same time (you really liked your own picture… in that flash of a moment it was really yours, it was a worthy destination…) Or, you start to doubt if you can make real what you see in your head, if you can actually go from here to there. You’ve never bridged that gap before, never spanned the distance. Maybe you should ask everyone else around you how to get there because they definitely would know better than you do. Oh, YIKES- everyone has a different suggestion! Everyone has a different experience to offer you with different advice! You try to take steps towards your picture but you get pulled this way, that way, updside-down, downside up. Maybe without you even asking, the Guilt Guards  say, “But your aim isn’t the right one!! It’s not valiant, virtuous, perfect enough!!” They slam their spears into the ground and block your way.

Voices all cry out at once and the more you listen to them the more they cloud your picture, that picture that at one time was so clear and desirable, just a moment away. Eventually you decide that the mine field between you and your destination is just far too treacherous. The Guilty Way has befuddled your desire to live out what is on the true inside of you (this analogy could relate to many other things besides guilt, but it’s all in the same pot).

Feels like something died.

As I continue to work through my recovery, the difference between that scenario and the next all hinges on the work I’m doing at the foundations of what I know to be true about who I am. Living from these new foundations, my interactions with life (big and small) are growing more and more infused with freedom…

Re-imagine your picture… And this time there’s a clear path straight to it. In sorting through the lies and the truth, you have this growing sense within you, this sense that knows “I have what it takes to live my life. I have that good heart. I can trust it!” You still know you’re not perfect but you accept that as part of the journey and not as a means to discount yourself. So, you see your picture and nothing holds you back anymore. You don’t need to give in to the Guilt Guards to protect you because you now know that the freedom beyond your current borders is a place you can thrive in, and a place you are worthy to thrive in! The Guilt Guards and the Guilty Way just disappear. You bridge the gap and make it to your destination. You feel… alive.  You have manifested what was inside of you, outside. You didn’t deaden yourself with pretensions and conventions.  You acted out of your own unique spontaneity and were relieved from being pulled in all the directions of the other voices and extra-terrestrial rules. You make it to your picture and breathe in the satisfaction of being there… You did it. And you do it again, and again and again, striding forward towards the aims of your true, good heart. You are free to fly, free to learn, free to grow. This transcends the Guilty Way. This is the Freedom Way!

Big encouragement to everyone as we continue on in our journeys.

~Carla

The Guilty Way is one of many ways of coping that starts with the lie that says: the core of who you are is messed up, not good, not reliable, not able.

The lie might at first be spoken directly, verbally, by a parent or a relative, a friend or a preacher or a teacher. It might be communicated indirectly, more subtly, through over-protectiveness or unreasonable discipline.  The lie is different than a benevolent guardian saying, “I want you to benefit from some correction and direction from me because I want you to be able to live your life to the full.” It attacks the heart; it plants deep seeds of doubt about the wholeness of simply being human.

It teaches the follower to doubt everything about themselves. Their feelings, their thoughts are never quite right, never quite good enough. They have little sense of how to navigate through their own life because how can they trust themselves? They are a beating heart that believes they beat the wrong way. The Guilty Way teaches them to survive by either following other people or following idealistic “rules” outside of themselves. It creates a constant ongoing checklist in the mind,  a constant and fearful battle to figure out the next little step. Sometimes those around us who have labored in it longer than we have cheer us on. Many times they do so in jest… or more blatantly with little comments, facial expressions or reactions.

It can tinge in almost any situation. In making choices about what to wear, what to eat, what to say… who to invite, who to call, who to visit… where to buy groceries, how often to clean the house, how to arrange the furniture… what kind of job to have, what kind of friends to have, what kind of wedding to have… where to go on vacation, what kind of bathing suit to wear, what kind of activities to do… what kind of haircut to get, what kind of makeup to wear, what kind of music to listen to, what kind of movies to watch… who to talk to at the party, where to sit in church, how much to charge your customers [if you’re acquainted with this Guilty Way as I am, feel free to add to this list in a comment!... ]

It can become so insidious and accepted that we live our lives turned inside out. We live to exclusively please others or fulfill impossible expectations because we doubt that it’s good enough for us to make choices with our own happiness in mind. We doubt that paying attention to our real desires and thoughts can lead us towards the good life. The Guilty Way wraps around our hearts like a snake, squishing out our life, our spontaneity, the vibrant, good and healthy us.  And it is never quite satisfied.

More on a DIFFERENT way this Friday…

“The most powerful agent of growth and transformation is something much more basic than any technique; a change of heart.” ~John Welwood

In a split second, I took my pen, crossed out “heart” and wrote a different word underneath.

A change of heart… My heart has to change? How?…

It was as if I was a little girl in church again and the pastor was telling me that I needed to change my heart. Feet dangling above the floor… innocent eyes and ears drinking in every detail, every voice inflection, every verse read, every song sung. Change my heart? Make it somehow… better?

Does this mean I have to change how I feel? Yes, I guess it must be that. I have to have better feelings. So some feelings are bad, and some feelings are good. Okay… so how do I change the bad feelings to good feelings?  Because that “good” heart?- that’s what I want. Oh, and having a change of heart means I need to be good on the outside too? Maybe that will help… Okay, give me the list of what’s good and I will work very hard at it. Very hard! If I can work hard enough at this list, then will I get that good heart? Where do I go for the stamp of approval? What signs can I look for to know that my heart really has changed for the better?

I don’t think the writer meant for his words to be taken in quite this way… but that is how they struck me today. Instead of the phrase change of heart, I’ll be looking at the phrase change of understanding for this coming month.

Understanding. After I wrote it, I thought about that word. I pictured something strong standing up on the inside of me, strong legs and strong arms holding up my heart, holding it in place, letting it breath, letting it pump and flow and give and receive and BE alive. Understanding. Knowing that way before it got so confused with other people’s versions of “good”, my heart was good. It was born that way. It’s not my heart that needs to change. The thing that creates the vitality of transformation is a change in the underpinnings of what I believe about myself and a new understanding of where the faulty underpinnings came from in the first place.

~Carla~

My life used to be like this! High expectations of finding some kind of “finally” love to satisfy my hungry heart. The vacuum in me was constantly asking, “Am I loved? Am I okay? Am I loving?” and I believed the warm fuzzies of romantic love would answer those questions once and for all. They did, for the first few weeks with any guy I dated. But the feelings never lasted, and then I was lost again. This was my labor of  un-love, the slippery illusion of salvation-by-warm-fuzzies falling from my hands time after time. Not only was I left empty, I also felt these pangs of despair that my life could have no real purpose if I was single.  

How grateful I am to know that’s not true…  Throughout my depression, having those warm fuzzy feelings were some of the only times I felt truly alive. I believed this was love. The lie entangled me beyond my romantic relationships; I thought loving someone meant I should always have those warm feelings for them and act accordingly (and vice versa). My family believed this too, and so we rarely aired out conflicts in our home. We learned to keep true feelings inside so that no one’s feathers would get ruffled. Some of us labored to get all the details right so that what looked “perfect” on the outside would be proof that we were okay on the inside.

Finding the roots of real love relieves me from this labor. Being whole in my relationships means I am learning to bring my true self to the table when I interact with others. I can see now that trying to please them at the cost of ignoring who I really am only leads to destruction in one way or another- true relationship doesn’t last on that kind of foundation. Learning to love myself means I’m not depending on other people to fix me or fill my “holes”.  I don’t need to take advantage of them, and I don’t need to let them take advantage of me either. Instead, we can exchange our real selves with each other. We share our truth and enrich each other’s lives. Real relationship practices mutual respect and equality. It is honest and knows it doesn’t have to be perfect or get all the details right . It desires to grow, to deepen, to learn, to tell the truth, to discover…  All these things are at the root of true love.

Photo by Vera Kratochvil

The warm fluffy feelings are still fun and I have no intentions of banning them from my life! But, I’m not trying to control them anymore. I’m not demanding anything of them in an effort to heal my hungry heart. They come and go based on how real the love I’m practicing is. Kind of like cooking an amazing meal- the aroma is a by-product of the timely combination of good ingredients- it doesn’t happen right away, and it’s free to come and go.

 This year I get to spend Valentine’s Day with dear friends; I am so excited to celebrate real love in my growing relationships with them.

 ~Carla~

For more information on the photographer of the beautiful photo in this post, visit this link!

When I relate to others from a hungry heart, there is this feeling of intense neediness, of strong reliance on them to keep me “together”.  This is why I’m so passionate about being whole in and of myself, of valuing myself as I am, for who I am. It’s not self-centered.  I want to be whole in relationships too, and that all starts with the sense of my unique and worthy self.

I used to react to others who treated me poorly. There was always things “stringing along” feeling… this anxiety that I had to be just the right way around them in order to be treated well. For the subtlest reasons I would cower inside or adjust my behavior in order to win their favor. Sometimes I would get very quiet. Or other times I would be verbal and defensive, spilling all my emotions and putting myself in a very vulnerable place. For me, the heart of my reactivity was to try to correct their behavior so that they would treat me as valuable. I was trying to correct the “mirrors” to keep telling me I was “okay”. I relied on their treatment of me to define my worthiness. By attempting to correct their treatment of me, I was attempting to keep my small sense of worthiness intact. I gave a lot of my power away and opened myself up to be hurt time and again.

Building on a new foundation of beliefs about who I really am sets me up for a different kind of relating. I don’t need to depend on others to define me anymore. Inside, there is this growing sense of my own value. Just as I am, now. I exist in this moment with all my strengths and weaknesses, my personality, my hopes and quirks, my unique perspectives. I’m not defined by other people; my past reactions and hungry heart behaviours don’t define the real me either.  It’s just a simple unalterable fact that I exist as a valuable part of this world. When I enter interactions with others from this truth, everything changes. I don’t have to hop around inside, adjusting myself to someone else’s requirements. Most importantly, to summarize Eckhart Tolle, I’m not relying on someone else to give to me what only I can give myself.

*Special Note!: My article Contexting Geese (click to visit) was published recently on the multi-author blog, Wisdom a la Carte. I found this blog via facebook, and it’s another great resource for thought-provoking insight! I’ll be writing more on that theme here, in coming weeks!*

In the middle of the song, the little drummer boy decides to present himself exactly as he is. He plays his drum and gives all that he has to offer in that moment. All he has to offer… Whether or not it was a virtuosic performance or a stumbling attempt at rhythm, it was his best at that point in time. Somehow he wisely knew that giving his best in that moment was a better gift than waiting to give something more refined or perfected in the future…

Having developed some strong perfectionist tendencies, I find great encouragement in realizing that what I have to offer (particularly in my relationships) in this moment is all that I have, and it is the best that I have. And it is enough. One of the biggest lies that I lived in was the lie that what I have to give is not enough. Still at times, fear tempts me to look into the past at my mistakes or to peer into the future for some kind of idealized “me”.  But as I go along this journey, I see that it is impossible to move forward with this belief. Taking the next step, and the next and the next, involves a continuous giving of  exactly who I am right now. My best right now, IS enough to give. And it is complete in the point of time it is given.

As the moments pass, my best will change. I will try, and succeed or fail, and keep trying, keep learning, keep stepping, keep giving. And as I do this (put “feet” on giving my best), my best will become more seasoned and rich. But this will be because of my own deep growth- not because I’ve decided to TRY harder. This Christmas, as I interact with friends and family, I will give my best. With the knowledge that it is good enough, I will give it joyfully.

My family life created the vacuum, let the big question “am I okay?” go unanswered. The church that I grew up in contributed to my dis-ease, creating bars that held me back from finding the answer. Church introduced me to self-examination. I fully value being self-aware, but the purpose of this examination was to create guilt and shame.“Examine your heart before doing this or that… Make sure your motives are right… Man looks at the outside, but God looks at the inside [so make sure your insides are good]…” Constant, heavy, suspicious examination. This became one of my biggest slave masters and I became a master at doing it. I was striving desperately for the answer to my question, but if an answer felt “too good to be true” I doubted it. I doubted myself all the time, because how could I know whether my “insides” were good or bad, whether I was on the right track? This self-doubt was the root of my depression and angst.

At age 26 I was so weary. A friend recommended a counsellor to me and I was willing to try whatever it took to find relief. This counsellor was able to help me discover the real truth about myself, for myself. He was a light, already fired up, someone I could spend some time with to get my own light burning again. He was a master not at “fixing me”, but at fanning into flame the truth that was still burning deep down inside myself. The truth he helped me to discover was that my heart is good. Fully and completely good. No questions asked, no proof required, in all its ramifications and outward actions, uniquely beautiful and good intentioned. It was the kind of truth-discovering that’s hard to explain. It just feels really good, like Christmas morning… Deep down, unabashed, grinning ear to ear truth. For someone like me, it was easy to doubt at first, to be suspicious of. But after awhile, my hungry heart couldn’t get enough. For a time, I needed this source outside of myself and outside of the church to tell me this truth, over and over again. Now that my own light is burning brighter, I’m getting the hang of it for myself. I’m rebuilding my foundation, setting myself up for a life of living as my true self, fulfilled and excited to be alive.