Forgiveness: A Call to Sacrifice

All of the people and things around us serve as mirrors for ourselves.  Nothing can cause us to feel something we are unwilling to feel.  The feeling we feel towards someone must originate within ourselves.  No one, outside of ourselves, can control our thoughts or feelings.  We are the source of our feelings, we are the source of our fears, we are the source of our hurts and we are the source of our forgiveness. 

Within relationship to another is found the projection of our own internal, unsettled conflicts.  It is through the forgiveness of that other, that we resolve our own internal discords.  Others serve as a mirror to our own soul.

The exercise of forgiving others is an exercise in forgiving ourselves.  Forgiveness unchains the unyielding heart for the freedom to live and love again. 

The nature of forgiveness regenerates life.  Forgiveness is not found in judgment, it is found in acceptance.  Through acceptance, the workings of struggle are released.  That which is unnecessary is released.  That which is wisdom is incorporated. 

Forgiveness allows change, for after forgiveness, nothing remains as it was but is moved forward towards wisdom.  For wisdom is knowledge without bitterness.

Forgiveness is a call to sacrifice.  We sacrifice that which we wish could have been for seeing the sacredness of what is now.  In sacrifice, we are called into the realm of the sacred.  We have the opportunity to acknowledge the sacredness of our relationship with another.  Life calls us to take an extra step into deeper understanding of who we are through our relationship with another.  These are the experiences that add value and depth to our lives. 

As with all true sacrifice, it comes from a place of selflessness, carrying a gift in the form of connectedness to life.  In those moments of connectedness, we feel our connection to God, the Universe and Life.  That connectedness is the only currency of value that exists. 

Recognizing this value brings its own reward:  a deeper understanding of ourselves adding to our sense of aliveness.  The sacrifice of forgiveness allows us to experience our connectedness to that love.  There is love in everything, but our connection to it is a choice. 

For more information on Dr. Jim and free affirmations and downloads, log onto his website at www.LAtherapist.com.  You may also log onto his award-winning self-help audio site at www.TheDrWaltonSeries.com

You Can Move On From The Hurt of A Break Up…. Here’s How

When we experience a relationship break up, it can be extraordinarily painful, especially if we were the one who was left.  We may be tempted to blame the one who left us for all of our heartache and pain.  We say that they “made” us feel pain by leaving us.  Then, we emotionally beat ourselves up even more.

In reality, we are the only ones who control our thoughts, feelings and emotions.  Whenever we give our power away by allowing others to determine how we feel about ourselves, we increase the pain of our heartache.  When you stop judging yourself, or second guessing what you should have done, your feelings of rejection and self-recrimination will soften.  You can view your ex as having said no to the relationship, but not to you as a person.

All relationships have a beginning, middle and end.  With every hello, there is an implied good bye.  Most relationships are meant to end.  Holding onto them beyond their life span can be very destructive to our own lives and cause us to miss other opportunities that would be more rewarding and possibly more satisfying than the relationship that just ended. 

Don’t follow, spy on, or call the other person.  This only keeps you attached in a very unhealthy way and makes it much more difficult to let go of your hurt and angry feelings.  Resist the urge to try and make your ex understand your hurt feelings or try to get them to see your point of view.  This will only lead to more frustration and feelings of betrayal.  Of course, do not harm yourself in a bid to get them to come back.  Doing so never gets them to come back. 

It helps to throw yourself into an activity or project that you love doing.  While you are doing that activity you love you are processing your painful feelings and this can contribute greatly to the healing of those feelings. 

Keep in mind that relationships are more about personal and emotional growth; happiness is only a byproduct of the experience.   Our conscious minds seek having a good time through a relationship; our unconscious mind is seeking to grow through a relationship.

We ourselves are responsible for our own happiness.  It is our thoughts, and how we choose to interpret them, that affect our feelings about our world and ourselves.  What we think affects how we feel. 

Focusing on negative thoughts or obsessively blaming your ex will keep you mentally and emotionally trapped in the relationship. 

This kind of behavior will only increase the odds of you repeating the same situation with another individual.  Realize that you willingly participated in that relationship with all of its deceptions and mistruths.  Now, you’re participating in the pain of the break up.  You can’t bring your ex back, but you can change the relationship you are now having with the pain.

There are no victims in a consensual relationship, only volunteers.  Blaming yourself or your ex is useless in healing from the pain of a breakup.  There were choices made by both of you that led to the resulting breakup.  You also both made decisions that you thought were best at the time.  

Those choices are now in the past.  Nothing can change that.  However, you may have learned some lessons from your experience and now is the time to look back over those lessons and learn from the mistakes that were made.  Realizing that you have learned something will give meaning to the experience you are going through.  Release yourself and your ex from any blame, and then give yourself permission to move on.

For more free information on handling your thoughts and feelings, log onto www.DrJamesWalton.com  For self-help downloads, log onto www.TheDrWaltonSeries.com

6 Essential Stages for Healing from A Break Up: You Can Heal!

The person, who has decided to end the relationship, has probably already passed through the stages of heartache before they announced their decision.  Generally, it seems easier for the one who is doing the leaving, although this may not always be the case.  Frequently, the one doing the leaving has had to wrestle with a combination of grief and guilt.  The decision to call off a relationship is never easy and if there has been a true connection, it is quite painful for the one doing the leaving as well.

If you are the one who was left, this is an agonizing position to be in.  For many people, it is worse than a death, because with death, it’s final and there’s no hope of negotiating a return. 

When we’re left, we have to deal with the pain of rejection along with the pain of loss.

There are several stages you can expect yourself to go through in processing your feelings from a broken heart. 

They more or less go in this general order:

Shock

Pleading

Anger

Sadness        

Acceptance

Forgiveness

The first is Shock.  When we first hear the news that the relationship is over, we are usually in complete shock.  We become vulnerable to our feelings.  In shock, we feel as if our world has been turned on its head.  We are not capable of making clear decisions.  We feel a sense of being vulnerable and lost.  It may even be very difficult for us to even make sense of what is happening.  We break down, we cry.  Men tend to explode outward in their reaction to shock.  Women tend to implode, go internal and blame themselves. 

We then proceed to the next stage, which is pleading.  In pleading, it’s our attempt to restore order to our world by attempting to restore the relationship.  In pleading, we may beg the other to return so that our world can return to normal.  We may make offers to change ourselves or throw out grand gestures of compromise that here-to-for had been withheld, in order to call the other back into the relationship and ease our aching heart.  If you come back, I’ll change.  In reality, these overtures rarely last if they are even made at all. 

In most cases, the pleading makes us look desperate and weak in the eyes of the other person and does the exact opposite of the desired effect and pushes them away ever farther.  We are left feeling empty, hollow and in agony.

We then proceed to the next stage, which is anger.  It is a natural and healthy progression, but the anger is really a defense against the depression and helplessness we feel from the disconnect with our ex.  In our anger, we feel like striking out.  This is the time when many people will go into some kind of destructive action that ultimately does not serve them.  They will tear up photos; destroy the ex’s property, or spread vicious rumors around about them. 

The anger comes from a place of helplessness from our loss.  We feel that we are a victim of our ex and we use anger as a way of trying to recapture some of the power that we feel they’ve taken from us through ending the relationship.  It’s a way of desperately trying to balance out our sense of powerlessness.  The anger gives us something new to believe in when the belief in the relationship has been taken away.  It gives us new strength and new structure at a time when we feel weak and loss of structure.  This is especially true if we derived our sense of identity from our ex.  The break up has now taken that identity away so the anger temporarily rushes in to give us a new identity.

We may need to remain in our anger for a while.  Anger over the breakup can be helpful in neutralizing any loving feelings that you once felt toward your ex.  You may want to get in touch with the anger you feel towards this person.  It’s OK to hold onto those feelings for a while, as long as; you don’t act those feelings out with hostility towards the other person or yourself.  Anger can be a part of the letting go process.  Again, you are the one who is in control of your anger.  You create your anger and you are the one who can let it go.  No one else is responsible for your anger but yourself. 

It’s OK to have fantasies of “acting out” against our ex as long as we don’t actually act it out in real life.  Over time, anger helps to break the love feelings we felt towards our ex. 

Do not seek revenge.  It’s OK to fantasize about it, but it is not OK to act it out.  Angry behavior such as hitting things, yelling or screaming only leads to amping up the drive for more angry behavior.  Don’t do it. 

Underneath our anger resides sadness and it comes next in the stages of healing heartache.  Remember, anger is often an attempt to not feel the sadness of the disconnect with your ex.  The experience of sadness moves us into the present and allows us to experience what is.  The sadness is a time of reflection and slowing down.  It is the slowing down process of sadness that allows us to adapt to the new reality of our life.  The sadness cooks and reshapes us from within. 

Experiencing the sadness is an important part of recovering from a breakup.  It causes us to stop and re-examine our lives.  We slow down and process.  The sadness brings a gift.  It allows us to view the world from a different perspective giving us a wider and wiser view of life.  It also gives us some perspective on how deeply we loved and are capable of loving. 

Acceptance occurs when we’re finally able to release the sadness.  We stop fighting what is and allow it to be.  It does not mean that we like the new order of things, but we stop fighting it.  We accept the change.  Things will never be the same and we revise ourselves and our future.  It is a time when we are able to have a vision of the future with our ex no longer in it.  It is the time when we withdraw our energy and expectations from the relationship we had with our ex and are ready to begin opening ourselves up to new relationships and connections with others.  We find ourselves opening back up to life and beginning to live again. 

Part of the healing process is learning something from the experience you just went through.  We come to acceptance more easily when we realize that along with our loss, we have also gained something, we have gained experience, wisdom and a better understanding of our wants and needs. 

To do this, ask yourself:

·      How are you different now from the way you were before you met you ex? 

·      What have you learned from your experience with them? 

·      What lessons have you learned for living the rest of your life? 

·      Have you changed what it is you want out of a relationship?

·      If you’re your best friend just had this experience, what advice would you give them?

Search yourself to find out how you’re different now from having known your ex. 

When you’re able to see that you have received some gifts from the relationship, it makes it easier to let go of the past moving you significantly closer to a true and authentic experience of forgiveness of yourself and the other.  

For more information on Dr. Jim, log onto his website at LAtherapist.com

Considering Divorce? There Is An Easier Way

Separation anxiety frequently holds marriages together.  Not all marriages should be saved.  The couple may want to separate, but they are afraid of it.  The fear is "If I leave the relationship, then I'm never going to get the love I have wanted."  This fear is based in emotional irrationality and only serves to perpetuate the couple's unhappiness by defining themselves as victims of the relationship rather than active participants. 

Victimhood leads to resentment and resentment leads to anger.  Anger eventually kills the love that we feel for the other person, but it can also immobilize us from taking right action.  We can organize our thoughts in such a way through our anger at the other person that we are unable to see that we do have choices.  We then become trapped in our anger and as a result feel trapped in our relationship. 

Instead of taking the action that we need to liberate ourselves, we blame the other person and remain stuck in an unsatisfying relationship.  Our anxiety about establishing a new life for ourselves becomes bound up in the anger we experience with our partner. Yes, this is a way of avoiding the unpleasant feeling of anxiety for beginning a new life. However, we remain stuck in a very uncomfortable old position in a relationship that no longer functions a way we would like.

To begin getting out of victimhood, you have to take responsibility for your half of the problems in your relationship.  Only by letting go of the conflict will you begin to heal and see your way more clearly in creating separate lives.  You will also need to learn how to negotiate with your erstwhile partner without allowing emotions to override clear communication.  A divorcing couple needs to transform their relationship into a business relationship.

In a nutshell:

Forgive yourself

Take responsibility for your half of it

Let go of the conflict so you can begin to heal

Learn to negotiate with your ex

If you chose to divorce, you need to know how to separate while significantly reducing the damage, both emotionally and financially, that comes from a divorce.  If possible, mediation is a good way to go.  It is a more cooperative and less adversarial way of separating hearts, finances and lives. 

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Why Do Couples Divorce and What Are The Predictors?

Threats of divorce are often attempts to fix the relationship.  Many times we want the pain within the relationship to die, but not the relationship.   Often times, when divorce is mentioned, each of the individuals in the relationship were young and never achieved individuation from their own families of origin before they were married.  In this case, their identities became shaped by the demands, actions and needs of their partner.  Divorce becomes a highly frightening thought because they have never been on their own and have no idea who they really are as individuals. 

The highest rate of divorce typically happens during the first two years of marriage when couples are in the process of trying out the marriage.  There are many reasons for the endings of these marriages.  Frequently, they are based in the impulsiveness of getting married to feel the rush and not thinking through its commitments and expectations.  Once the romance wears off, so does the desire to remain married.

Marital problems also begin to arise at the seventh year of marriage, after the first child arrives and when the first child turns 14 years old.  Children are a major stressor to marriages.  Often, people will chose to have children to “save” a marriage.  Then, it turns out that the addition of children actually put more stress on the relationship.  This may be one of the reasons that childless couples past the seven-year mark have lower rates of divorce that couples with children.

Two other trouble points are when the marriage is at the 20-year mark and the 40-year mark.  At 20 years, couples are facing the children leaving the nest.  Now, the couple has to re-establish a relationship with each other without the daily interaction and distraction of the children.  They are faced with more intimate interaction with each other, and may have the urge to fulfill desires that were suppressed during the time of raising children.  Conflict can arise if those desires are seen as a threat to the relationship. 

If they had used the children in the past as a way of regulating intimacy or creating distance, they will now have to face each other without that regulating force.  If the couple does not have clear roads of communication, or if they cannot express their feelings, this spells disaster for the relationship.

At the 40-year mark, couples are looking for companionship as they move into old age.  Surprisingly, there are a high number of divorces at this point.  Couples can arrive at this point and discover that they don’t feel companionship with each other.  One may have been at the service of the other the entire time.  They raised the children, they indulged the desires of the other, and they kept things together and basically kept the relationship together through their own sacrifice.  Now, they are tired of sacrificing themselves.  As they approach the sunset years, they want to live in peace or create a space for themselves that they never experienced earlier in their life.  If their spouse is not willing or able to accommodate them on this request, there is a good chance that they will look towards divorce as a way of attaining the space they need. 

Another point where divorce all too frequently, and unfortunately, occurs is when the wife of a couple falls ill. This is especially true for wives with a terminal illness such as cancer.  Men show a higher occurrence of divorcing their stricken wives than women divorcing a stricken husband.  One need look no further than senator John McCain or senator John Edwards to make the case in point.  Both of these high profile men left their wives after the discovery of their illnesses. 

Interestingly enough, an affair does not necessarily spell the end of a marriage in divorce.  In many cases, an affair draws attention to discord and trouble in a marriage and with the right assistance and intervention they may go onto a closer more solid relationship.

There are several predictors for a divorce.  In good relationships, there are approximately seven positive exchanges for every negative exchange.  Relationships that are in trouble have only one positive exchange for every negative exchange.  How a couple speaks to each other is another predictor.  Do you regularly speak harshly with each other?  If so, that can be another indicator.  Criticism, contempt, defensiveness and the silent treatment are all indicators of a troubled relationship.  All of these occurring together are a sure sign of trouble.

For more information on Dr. Jim's self-help audios with free samples, log onto www.TheDrWaltonSeries.com.  For more information on Dr. Jim, and to obtain free audio affirmations, log onto his website at LAtherapist.com.  You can check out his page on Facebook at Healing a Broken Heart. 

Recovering from a Break Up

Men pride themselves on feeling powerful, competent and effective in their world. They receive a sense of fulfillment in feeling successful and doing well. Men take great pride in being independent and self-sufficient.

Then, they fall in love. They allow themselves to be vulnerable to another, they get close and sometimes they end up getting hurt and their hearts get broken.

Surprisingly, men generally are the first to fall in love and the last to fall out of it. Men have more difficulty handling their emotions than women. Simply because men have been trained to be more independent so they have developed fewer skills at handling their emotions. They become emotionally overwhelmed more easily and demonstrate it by shutting off emotionally and withdrawing, going into denial or becoming workaholics. All of this is a bid to cut themselves off from those overwhelming feelings of hurt and pain.

In the process, those feelings lie dormant and are actually never healed. When we don’t heal those feelings, we don’t allow ourselves to fall in love again and we miss out on one of the most rewarding, healing and satisfying experiences in our lives that of falling in love again.

The secret that women use for handling their feelings, that men generally don’t, is that women are able to think and feel at the same time. Men, on the other hand, are either in thinking mode or feeling mode. When men are in pain from a break up, they go right into feeling mode and become overwhelmed by those feelings resulting in shut down, paralysis, withdraw or angry bitterness. Men cannot make good decisions for themselves or anyone else under those conditions.

That we fall in love we will inevitably experience having our hearts broken. However, the pain we experience from the loss of a love can have meaning for us and actually enrich our experience in life. Out of the pain of loss, we can observe the true depth of our ability to love another. Without loss, we may never really know the depth of our ability to love.

Suffering is communication from the depths of our soul. Without it, our soul is dead; for suffering deepens and expands our experience in life and we are changed as we give meaning to the experience.

If you have recently gone through a break up, acknowledge that you are going through a crisis and become more compassionate and gentle with yourself. Remove any blame you may be putting on yourself for anything you may or may not have done or for trusting another or having been vulnerable. It’s important to know that we are able to trust and experience vulnerability. Those are important parts of being in a relationship.

Talk about your hurt with people who are willing to listen. You might even want to seek out a licensed therapist to help you through this time.

It’s important to let yourself know that you can and will make it through this time.

Stick to your daily routines. Continue to eat, sleep and exercise at the same times you always have. Meditation can be an excellent way to relax the mind and heal the heart.  If you don’t exercise, now could be a good time to start. Always consult with your doctor first before starting any exercise routine. Exercise causes our bodies to release endorphins that serve to help us feel better.

Don’t seek revenge. It’s OK to fantasize about it, but it’s not OK to act it out. Angry behavior only leads to amping up the drive to act out more angry behavior. Don’t do it.

Don’t follow, spy on, or call the other person. This can keep you attached in a very unhealthy way and makes it much more difficult to let go of your hurt and angry feelings. Resist the urge to try to make them understand your hurt feelings or try to get them to see your point of view. This will only lead to more frustration and feelings of betrayal. Of course, don’t harm yourself. Doing so never gets them to come back.

Throw yourself into an activity or project that you love doing. As men, we’re doers. While we’re doing the activity we love we’re also processing our painful feelings and this can contribute greatly to our healing of those feelings.

Keep in mind that relationships are about growth, they’re not about happiness.

We, ourselves, are responsible for our own happiness. It’s our thoughts and how we choose to interpret them that affect how we feel about ourselves and the world around us. What we think affects how we feel.

When our heart’s broken by someone, we may feel that we’ll never love again. We may feel we were foolish in having trusted that individual. We may have felt that they were the “right” one for us and there will never be another. None of those thoughts is true. There’s not just one person out there for us; there are many right people out there for us. If someone is ultimately not with us, then they were definitely not the right person.

The only thing true about that relationship experience is that you probably learned something about yourself. Search yourself to find out how you’re different now from having known the other person. Have you changed what you want out of a relationship?

It’s our thoughts that determine our happiness, not the person we are with. When we experience a break up, we have a tendency to let go of the bad times and hold onto the good memories. This doesn’t serve us, especially when our heart’s broken and we’re in pain over the loss of the relationship. It may be a good idea to remember the bad times. Keep in mind the difficulties of this relationship and how your needs weren’t met.

For more information on healing from a break up, and to listen to free samples of Dr. Walton’s latest album, log onto “After Breaking Up: Healing the Heart and Finding Happiness.” For more information on Dr. Walton, log onto LAtherapist.com. Watch the Video on "Healing from A Break Up."