The people we love the most, can sometimes be the people who annoy or hurt us the most. Simply because they are so close to us and we value them and their opinion so much. At least that is what we have been told for such a long time. I find it is a very simple, too simple, way of explaining why they can hurt or annoy us so much.
For instance, it can hurt so much when someone we love and trust tells us that they don’t trust us or does something that breaks our trust in some way, shape or form. The question many people ask themselves when experiencing something like this is “Why is this happening to me?”, did you ever asked yourself this question? This question is truly brilliant! Because whatever happens in our external world is happening for a reason. And it is not happening to us but for us, as cliché as this might sound.
We get the chance to experience the worst things with the people closest to us because they make a wonderful mirror. A mirror of our internal world.
Melissa Kiss
A mirror of our deepest, often forgotten trauma, wounds, flaws and lessons to be learned in this lifetime. They bring these topics back to the surface and help us to address and heal them. They will come up over and over again until we resolved the issue at hand. So if you find yourself reliving the same experience with different partners or friends over and over again, there is a lesson you haven’t yet learned or a wound that hasn’t yet been healed. And trust me, this won’t stop coming back up unless you do. Plus, the experiences get more and more intense. Not to punish us but to wake us up. Imagine it like your alarm in the morning. If you are deeply asleep you won’t hear it when it is just a subtle tone, so it will get louder and louder until you finally respond to it and switch it off. Same with every suppressed emotion, experience, (childhood) trauma and anything else that needs healing or closure in some way.
Think of all the people that are close to you. Your family, partner, friends but even business partners, colleagues, bosses or even clients. The people you spend a lot of time with and that you have an important relationship with, personally or professionally. Is there a certain topic that seems to come up again and again? A little different but it comes down to the same thing. Maybe trust, vulnerability, honesty, letting go, safety, surrendering, money, sex, emotions, fear, power, (self-)worth…? Those are some of the most common amongst us at this time in the world.
Let’s say people aren’t taking you seriously and don’t see you for who you truly are and aren’t valuing you and your skills. What if you would ask yourself “Am I valuing me and my skills? Am I taking me seriously and am I showing the world who I truly am? Do I trust and love myself?”?
When you aren’t attracting a partner that loves you unconditionally, what if you would ask yourself “Am I loving myself, every aspect of myself unconditionally?”?
We so often focus on how other people are treating us that we get so caught up in finding out what is wrong with them and blaming them for treating us poorly, that we don’t see that they are simply treating us the way we are treating ourselves.
Melissa Kiss
Sometimes we are also the ones putting our problems onto others. We don’t love ourselves, so we give other people the feeling that we don’t love them or accuse them that they don’t love us, while we are just acting out of our own lack of loving ourselves. There are always to sides. But the other person inevitably needs gets mirrored something. Maybe they have been at the same point as you are, they did not love themselves. They revisit this experience by meeting you, just to know how far they have come in their life. And they can give you an insight into this process.
Whatever the case, in order to create healthy, open relationships with others, we need to create a healthy and open relationship with ourselves. The relationships we have along the way help us to do that because they will inevitably bring up the topics that need to be addressed, especially if we don’t see them ourselves.
What happens in the relationship with others, is a mirror of the relationship we have with ourselves. So, imagine you love yourself unconditionally, you trust yourself, you step into your power and know that you are able to overcome any- and everything. Imagine, you are radically transparent with yourself and others, communicate openly, clearly and are honest with everything that is going on. You will get this mirrored back in the relationship with the people around you. Personally and professionally, you have people that love themselves and you. People who stepped into their power and love and honor you for the person you are. People that trust you and that you can trust.
Sound too simple to be true? Too good to be true? For what it is worth, I tried it many times and it is that simple and true! That being said, that doesn’t mean that it is easy or that the process is fast. Building self-love can take some time and practice. It means letting go of old beliefs and thought patterns, that we learned in childhood by our parents and society. They are deeply programmed into our mind and it takes some discipline to reprogram them. But honestly, I couldn’t think of anything more worth it! Because it brought me to a point where I have the deepest, most open, transparent and loving relationships I have ever had in my life. Amazingly strong business partnerships, that I couldn’t even have dreamed of before. Friendships on a level I wasn’t aware existed. It influenced and changed not just the relationship with my family but it changed everyone in my family. Simply by me changing, acting differently (but more myself) with them.
I invite you to go through the next few days and observe the relationships in your life. What themes are coming up for you? What are common points of disagreement or challenges in the relationship? And then come back to asking yourself, where in yourself you can see these topics.
I wish you that it transforms your life in the beautiful and empowering way it did for me and my friends, family and clients.