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You are here: Home / Archives for emotional baggage

Should I Give Him Space or Just Walk Away?

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A woman is upset after her boyfriend became emotionally distant and pulled away.
I love him very much, but I find myself crying all the time.

Our letter today comes from one of our beautiful subscribers, Joann, who's going through a situation she never thought she'd find herself in. After hearing her story, share your thoughts in the comments on what you think she should do.

Here's her story:

My story is a little different.

I had been divorced for 14 years, and during that time never dated or had any kind of relationship as I made my daughter a priority. She graduated last May and decided to move out of the home.

I started dating in October and went on a few dates, but in December I met someone and we both felt that immediate connection. We moved forward and he told me that he loved me in February, I held off on saying it back to him but he was patient.

He would text me all the time to tell me that he loved me, was thinking of me etc. I finally was able to give my heart to him and told him that I loved him back.Continue Reading

Is He Too Good for Me Because of My Baggage?

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fashionable woman with lots of baggage in the middle of the street
I feel guilty bringing all of my baggage to a relationship.

Our letter today comes from one of our beautiful readers who's chosen to go by the name "LoveIs." Like most of us who have ever been attracted to someone because of their potential, LoveIs is reaching out today for some answers on the question of what to do when you're attracted more to someone's potential than what they're actually showing you they're capable of.

Sound familiar? Read on to find out what I have say on this very relevant question.

Dear Jane,

I love all of your content and the time you spend sharing your knowledge to the world really touches people. You're one of a kind. Would you share some of that knowledge with me today?

I tend to overlook men who are actually good for me and am attracted to men who aren't.

I'm talking about the emotionally unavailable, you chase him, mysterious, keeps you guessing, you wanna be the one to change him type. For some reason, this type of man I find comfort in which is in no way logical but alas, here we are.Continue Reading

He's a Great Guy But I Can't Help Putting a Wall Up

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A beautiful woman leans against a wall wondering why she is putting walls up with a great guy in a healthy relationship due to her emotional baggage.Our dear friend, Bri, has, like so many of us, been through plenty of relationships with the wrong kinds of men who wouldn't commit or cheated on her, leaving her with a bit of all-too-familiar (and very understandable) emotional baggage. She's now in a healthy relationship with a great guy, but finds that she's putting her walls up because she's afraid of getting hurt again. Please help her out with any words of encouragement or suggestions you may have.

Her letter:

I should start out by saying I am That Girl. The one who always jumps head first into relationships with men who don't want a commitment. As a result, I have abandonment issues and insecurities.  I've been cheated on in every relationship I've had since I was 18 and have been in a number of emotionally abusive relationships though never a physically abusive one.

Back in August, I met a great man at a friend’s house and we started dating. We hit it off and all my friends say it’s the healthiest relationship they've seen me in. He’s very open, honest and just as affectionate with me as I am with him. We became exclusive in early October and we expressed our love for the first time in mid-December.

The whole relationship has been easy and I have not struggled with ANY of my insecurities with him. We just seem to fit so perfectly, we have the same interests, we are both incredibly social, we are both affectionate and have been on equal ground for how often we want to see each other… this is the first time I've been with someone who feels the same way about me as I do about them.

Then the holidays arrived and he went back home to his home state for two weeks. My abandonment issues crept up on me while he was gone at no fault of his.

He was still the same person I met and we talked every day, but it became apparent to me that the reason I have been so secure and comfortable with him is because I've been receiving confirmation that he was in this for real through his physical presence and our mutual affection and enjoyment of spending time WITH each other.

He got back on the 5th and nothing has changed on his end. He’s still the same person I’ve fallen in love with over the past five months, but I found that during the 2 weeks he was gone, I had started to put a wall up to protect myself and I’m having trouble knocking it back down again. I've somewhat pulled away and have been trying to spend time away from him in an attempt to make it so I won’t miss him like that again, but all that really accomplishes is making me miss him more because I love being around him.

I’m so angry with myself because he has done nothing wrong and has not changed in any way to deserve my reservations… they are purely self-preservation based off fear of past experiences. I don’t want to punish him for my baggage and I do not want to lose him because of what others have done to me and my inability to compartmentalize. I've mentioned a few things here and there as conversation has led to it about previous relationships, but I have not told him anything in depth because I don’t want to dump on him or make him feel like he has to atone for the wrongs of other men... especially since we've only been dating since August.

I’m not used to someone who is good at communication and I find myself bottling things up inside and trying to deal with them on my own because I’m not sure what I can/can’t say at this stage.  I've never been in a healthy relationship before and I really don’t want to end up making this one unhealthy because I may have been ill-equipped to deal with him being gone for 15 days.

What should I do? Do I tell him what exactly I’m going through or continue to try to deal with it on my own…? Any help you could give would be much appreciated.

My Response:

I want to start out by saying that you aren't That Girl.

That may have been your story in the past when you were treated in ways that didn't honor and respect and value the special little girl you were and the beautiful woman you became, but your past doesn't define you.

You are not damaged, and there is nothing wrong with you. The fears you have around abandonment and the feelings of insecurity that are so familiar to you are realities that you've experienced as a result of what has happened so far, but the fact that you can see your triggers, the fact that you understand why you have these feelings and how this has affected who you've found yourself attracted to in the past is huge. Be so proud of yourself for being open (and willing!) to see the reasons behind what you're feeling, but now see the reality that is true right now.

See how far you've come! You've attracted someone into your life who is different than all the others and you're now in the healthiest relationship you been in. The two of you found each other because you were looking for each other. You were ready for each other, and so you did.

But of course, it makes sense, that we also bring ourselves with us to each and every new relationship, which includes all of our past baggage and the resulting emotions and insecurities. You're so not alone here.

And so it makes sense that everything was going smoothly with how you were feeling until this trigger set your old familiar pattern of dealing with this in motion. Suddenly he's not physically there, so even though the reason is different from the past reasons, and even though he's different, you feel it as though it's happening exactly as it happened before.

Those old all-too familiar alarm bells go off as you find yourself falling back on those old familiar feelings that accompanies this trigger; he's going to repeat the pattern of the past and leave you just like the rest. Your worst fears come out, and the very worst fear of all that underlies those fears: The fear that you're not good enough, you're not worth someone like this, you don't deserve someone like this.

But none of these are true, and they only come from that dark place within that hasn't had a chance to come out and see the light yet.

When you acknowledge these feelings behind your fears, Bri, you can see them for what they really are: lies that we've bought into that we're still believing about ourselves on some level. You can bring them into the light so you can call them into question, you can let them go once and for all.

They are not you. They are not about you. They don't define you.

They're simply about a story about a girl, about a woman that used to believe they were true. The reality is they're not true. These fears aren't you. They don't define you. They don't define your worth. They're simply not true. It's a perception issue, not a worthiness issue. You're so much more than these thoughts that have been allowed to create this fear, this insecurity, this feeling in you.

This new man that you're with knows you well enough to know that he wants to be with you. He likes being with you. In fact, he loves being with you. He's even told you this - not just by saying the words, but also by showing you by how he is with you and how he treats you.

Don't be angry with yourself; don't beat yourself up here for how you're feeling. It's natural to feel triggered like this, but what's different this time is that you can choose to refuse to do anything about it. You can refuse to go down that path of retreating into your self-protection mode because of what's happened in the past.

This isn't your past. This is your new reality right now.

Whether or not you choose to share with him what you're experiencing or go into more detail about your past is really up to you and what benefit you feel will come from this.  He knows enough about where you've been that you certainly don't need to share with him anymore of this, but it's ultimately up to you.  Not because you can't or because you shouldn't, but because it's about a different time, in a different place, in a different pattern that isn't about him. It's actually not about you either, not the you that you are now. Because if you've read my post on exactly this, You're Already Her, you just need to remember this for yourself when you're tempted to fall back on the old familiar triggers and patterns.

Know that you're not alone here, Bri. When I first met the man who would become my husband, after he told me he loved me, I felt some of those same old familiar insecurities crop up from my own abandonment issues and I found myself calling my mom on more than one occasion so she could help reassure me by asking me the questions that I already knew the answers to, that would help to restore my confidence in me, in this new person who wasn't anything like the past ones.

It was in that balance of calling into question what I knew to be true of the new reality of this new relationship with this new person, that I was able to see on my own the reality of what is now, not what was in the past.

That's the difference that matters!

I hope this helps with a little outside perspective, Bri. Know that you are so not alone in going through this, and there is so much love and support for you as you create the new story of your beautiful life. This love you've found is exactly what you deserve and nothing less!

Love,

Jane

What do you think Bri should do in this situation? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

We're All Human

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A beautiful brunette woman is pulling her purple sweater close around her neck, looking into the camera and thinking we're all human.I was searching the internet for an electronic version of one of my favorite quotes by Sarah Ban Breathnach.

I clicked on this article from USA Today, and I have to say I was more than a bit surprised.

It was an article about this brilliant author that most of us came to identify with through her best-selling books of the 90’s, Simple Abundance, and my own personal favorite, Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self.

But it was not the story I was expecting - the story of an author who found amazing success writing about her beautiful philosophy of everyday abundance.

No, this was the story of what happened after the success. The story I did not know about. The one where she lost everything and found herself washed up on her sister’s couch with only her old cat and the clothes on her back.

Because, you see, my beautiful friend, although we’re always so quick to assume that everyone else has something that we don’t, that everyone else – and especially a successful author like Breachnach - has something that we lack and thus we can never have what they have, the truth is that there is always so much more to these stories.

And as we read here, this is about so much more than the outward loss.

“The problem wasn't money. It was her emotional baggage about love and pleasing others that she attached to money, dating back to childhood.”

It was the shame.

“The worst was the shame. Here she was, a best-selling self-help expert, swamped by bills she couldn't bring herself to open, much less pay, whose creditors were threatening to call Oprah and expose her.”

Even though she was a hugely successful writer, she still fell prey to the same emotional traps that plague nearly all of us. She still fell into the same pitfalls on the journey to love, the journey to finding  herself, that we all fall into at one time or another.

We're all human.

Do you see a pattern here? It doesn’t matter what you achieve on the outside. It doesn’t matter what kind of name you make for yourself or what level of success you achieve for yourself in the eyes of the world. It doesn’t matter how much money or love you find.

If you don’t believe in yourself, if you don’t give yourself permission to live the life you were meant to live, if you don’t shed that old emotional story of having to please others and believing you have to do something or be something in order to be loved, then nothing is going to change. At least not for long.

Regardless of who you are.

So take them all down off of those pedestals you so easily put them on. Every single one of them, and especially the ones who you especially admire and look up to because they seem to have everything that you don’t.

They don’t.

They don’t deserve to be loved more than you.

They don’t deserve to be happy more than you.

They aren’t anything more than you are.

They don’t have anything you don’t.

They aren’t any “luckier” than you.

They're just like you.

You see, it’s always easier to live with ourselves when we can credit someone else and discredit ourselves. It’s easier because then we don’t have to do anything different. We can stay stuck, we can stay right where we are, believing that there’s nothing we can do to change our lives because we just don’t have what they do. It's something external.

It’s time to change that way of thinking, my beautiful friend.

It’s time to recognize all that you truly are! It’s time to believe in your own potential, in your own possibilities, and give yourself permission to live the life that you were meant to live.

Because living for someone else – or everyone else – is no way to live.

Because trying to please someone – or everyone – is an impossible standard that was never yours to live up to.

Because feeling ashamed – of anything! – is never what any one of us deserve, regardless of what we think we’ve done.

It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’ve been, or what your story is. You, that beautiful woman who has so much to offer, and nothing to prove, have everything you need to be all that you are, to create the life you were made for, to make your dreams come true.

It all starts with believing this, it continues with a plan, it happens when you start somewhere and keep moving. One step, one new way of seeing yourself, one belief in yourself at a time.

Is Your Past Getting in the Way of Your Future?

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We think we need to be perfect, or at least somewhere close. We have so little grace for ourselves, for what we’ve been through, where we’ve come from.  A beautiful woman is looking out from behind a chain link fence, symbolic of her own beliefs that are keeping her from having the relationship she wants.
"Photo Credit: Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos"

I received an email the other day that really got to me. It was from a reader who felt that her past behavior with men had precluded her from having a future with a good man. My heart went out to her. It brought back to me all those times I, too, questioned my own worthiness of a different kind of love with a different kind of man, because of my past less than perfect decisions.

Because it doesn't matter where we've been, what we've been through, on some level so many of us have experienced that feeling, that question in our minds of whether where we've been, where we've come from, has somehow excluded us from having our own happily ever after with a man of character. And the longer it takes, the more we find ourselves repeating the same patterns over and over again, finding ourselves with the same type of men, just a different name, but the same MO, we question it even more. Is this our punishment? Were we that bad? Have we done something that unforgivable?

It says more about our culture than it says about you.

We live in a culture that is all too much about punishment than grace, about blame than compassion, about shame than empathy and understanding. From a young age we learn that bad behavior deserves to be punished, that it doesn't matter why we do something, it’s the outward behavior that counts. And so with a culture that is so unforgiving and judgmental toward each other, it's not surprising that we treat ourselves this same way and expect that others will judge us this way, too.

And that’s the problem.

It isn't our past behaviors that keep us living this way, with this kind of self-punishing attitude toward ourselves. It isn't where we've been and what we've done in our lives that we’re not proud of that keep us stuck in our patterns. It's the way we feel about ourselves. It's this baggage we're carrying around. It’s this kind of judgmental, punitive thinking that keeps us stuck and repeating the same patterns over and over again because we've learned our cultural mantras so well, we have no doubt that we don’t deserve anything better than this.

You did the best with what you knew at the time.

Whatever you did, however you behaved, it was where you were at the time. It was the best you knew how to do. When we are desperate, when there is a need so deep within us that we feel like we would rather die than be alone or left one more time, it isn't just about being alone. It is about a need that runs so deep and so subconscious that it defies all logic and reality. That’s the whole point. It isn’t something that you logically made a decision to do. It seemed to take on a life of its own. You didn’t know any better. These aren’t excuses; they are what your reality was at the time. The triggers that weren’t about an adult woman making a healthy logical decision, but were more of the scared little girl inside making a decision through that filter, based on the needs of a little girl.

We are so hard on ourselves!

We think we need to be perfect, or at least somewhere close. We have so little grace for ourselves, for what we’ve been through, where we’ve come from. We don’t understand that it’s not about exchanging blame for ourselves with blame for the people who raised us or blame for our culture. It's time to stop being so hard on yourself. It’s about getting away from blaming and shaming all together and replacing those negative ingrained practices that serve no one, and certainly not ourselves, with love and compassion and empathy for each and every one of us for being exactly who we are, not what we were supposed to be! It’s about realizing that we don’t want anyone in our lives who would judge us and punish us and hold us to impossible standards based on the reality of who we are and our own very individual stories that no one ever has any right to judge us for, and certainly not if they’ve never walked in our shoes. And it’s about finally getting that a quality man, someone who is truly worthy of us, has figured this out, too. He won’t be expecting perfection. He won’t be judging us like we expect. Someone who is truly right for you will only have love and understanding, and empathy and compassion for you.

You still have so much to offer.

Nothing has changed. No matter what you’ve been through or where you’ve been. The truest purest kind of love is still your birthright. You still have so much to offer. Those thoughts that would tell you differently, that would have you believe this is your punishment, to never have the love of a good man because of something you did that was just so bad, are wrong. They are part of that false belief system so many of us hold and have such a hard time shaking off of us, that we aren't good enough, that we don't deserve better because of something in our past, something so bad that we did that we must pay for over and over again. But these are lies, all of them. Yes, they run deep. But a true love for yourself runs even deeper. And that’s the kind of love that knows without a doubt the real truth; that there is nothing you can ever do that would mean you don't still deserve all that is good and wonderful and beautiful in life and love.

You just need to believe it, too.

Do You Have Too Much Emotional Baggage?

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Unpack your bags - don't let the memory of your ex get in the way of a new healthy relationship
Don't bring too much baggage to your next relationship

Don't let the memory of your ex be the "third wheel" in your new relationship.

This is the seventh post in our series 8 Signs You Aren't Ready for a Relationship.

We all have unpacked emotional baggage from our past relationships, and it's difficult, if not impossible, to completely get rid of it; that's just being human. But if you find yourself still pining for, very angry with, or otherwise consumed with emotion over your ex, you need to get past it before you'll be able to be in a new healthy relationship.

It's totally normal to take time to heal from a major heartbreak, and the greater the love there once was, the longer it takes. Make sure that you are treating yourself right by giving yourself that time.

If you're not sure that you're over your ex, ask yourself the following questions and be completely honest with your answers (after all, you're the only one that will hear them):

Too Much Emotional Baggage

Do you find yourself wanting to call (or actually calling) your ex just to see how he's doing?

When you see your ex out at a social event, do you find yourself drawn towards him and wanting to flirt with him?

When you're out with others, including on a date, do you often find yourself talking about your ex, either in a good or bad way?

Do you find that you are still feeling emotionally fragile from your breakup?

Are you still angry or do you still cry when you think about how you were treated or how you were rejected?

Are you going out of your way to remain "friends" with your ex in order to maintain contact with him?

If you answered yes to any of these, as difficult as it may be, you need to make a clean break from your ex and let your heart heal so that you'll be able to move on to the relationship that you are meant to have.

The Rebound Relationship

I remember it all too well. Even though all of the advice I was reading said the same thing: don’t get into a new relationship until you’re over the last one; avoid the rebound; take your time to get over the one you’re getting over; it didn't matter. I just wanted the pain of the heartbreak to go away, and it seemed like the only thing that could make me feel any better was finding someone else to replace the last one, as quickly as possible.

And so each time it would end, sometimes even before it actually ended (but I could see that the end was coming), I would put all my effort into meeting someone else who could get my mind off of it and make the pain and hurt go away. Then I could tell myself (and maybe even tell my ex if I was really feeling hurt) that it didn't matter because there was already someone else. Somehow I felt like that would validate me, my worth, and show him just how insane he was for letting me go, because, see! Someone else wants me!

Of course the problem was that the replacement guy wasn't really the guy I wanted to be with. The guy I wanted to be with was the guy that broke my heart. So instead of taking my mind off of the sadness and heartbreak of the relationship that had ended, the new guy just made me think about all of the things that I missed about my ex.

When the new guy failed to measure up to what I felt the other one was, it would just confirm to me that I really had missed out and messed up a relationship that, at least in my mind, could have been the one. But of course the truth was that the previous relationship wasn't really all that, and I was just romanticizing the good times (as often happens when we feel something has been taken from us) and only remembering the positives in an idealistic way. (Yes, I'm very guilty of being idealistic, as my husband gently reminds me of even now when I was going on and on about how wonderful my childhood home was. That is, until we recently visited there and I found it was not quite what I remembered!)

Eventually I’d see that the new guy wasn’t what I really wanted either, and that would bring an end to something that really should never have started in the first place.  And then I would be all alone once again, feeling even worse than before, particularly if I had broken the new guy's heart in the process.

Change The Behavior

I finally got it, that this wasn’t working.  This was no way to live.  I wish I could say I figured it out early on, but I didn’t.  So take comfort if you’re still stuck in that place of looking for a rebound relationship to feel better.  It takes a while to learn new healthy behaviors, especially when it’s been a routine temporary bandage to help quell the pain that only another woman with a breaking heart can know.  So don’t beat yourself up, but do your best to change this unhealthy behavior.

So what do you do?

Just know that if you're trying to get your ex out of your head, make a clean break from him. If you can't completely break from him, for example if you work together, then set boundaries so that you are only interacting with him on a level that's as limited as possible. Then focus on your own needs until you feel that you're: a.) Not wanting to get back together with him and b.) You're no longer angry about what happened.

Take a break from any kind of relationship or dating until you get to this point. It usually helps to realize that the fact that the relationship ended means that it was not the right relationship for you to be in, and it means that you saved yourself greater heartache down the road.

Of course if you meet a guy during this time that has real potential, and you find that he not only takes your mind off of your ex but he completely makes you forget about your ex or even makes you happy that the relationship ended, then by all means go for it! Just make sure that you're starting the relationship for the right reasons, and that you're not getting into it to try to forget about your ex, because it just doesn't work that way.

Next post in this series: Stop Trying To Be Something You're Not?

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About Jane Garapick

Hi, I'm Jane Garapick. I'm here to provide inspiration, support and empowerment on the journey to true love. I know what it’s like to have a broken heart, a broken dream, and a broken you. And I know for a fact, that your dreams can still come true! Read more...
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