Have you ever asked yourself why you end up in the same situation feeling the same pain AGAIN? It might be feeling unnoticed by your boyfriend. Maybe he seems to prioritise everyone and everything else but you. In response, you feel not enough, unnoticed. You feel that same pain you felt at school when you felt unnoticed by your friends and unimportant. Why is this happening AGAIN?
Running from the pain won’t stop the pattern from repeating itself. Your subconscious is trying desperately to heal; it presents to you situation after situation until you pause and get curious. Not in a self-punishing way, but in a compassionate, curious way. Whenever the same quality of pain comes up in me, I get curious. “Ah, there it is again, that feeling of being unnoticed and unimportant.” I pause to meet that pain and connect with the origin of the pain. What unhealed wound is it seeping from?
The healing is in learning how to meet the pain. It might have been impossible to meet the original pain when we were 5 or 14 or even 20, but now we can step closer. As we start to heal, we can learn to hold the pain, tenderly and gently, like a newborn child. We can learn to hold it in our arms and tend to it; we can integrate it and no longer need to create these situations in our lives.
As we become the parent we always needed, we are permanently changed.
