Are you reflecting or projecting in your relationships?
Relationships reflect our internal states and how we relate to ourself, our beliefs and internal battles we fight.
Life is made up of relationships and they can become projection surfaces, potentially distractions to not look at ourselves. But each can serve as a mirror, an opportunity to deepen our knowing and love for ourself.
We can choose how we engage. If we realise the potential to learn and take responsibility or if we externalise and blame. If we keep stabbing the other for the pain we experience that might have its roots much earlier in life and simply finds re-enactment in the present dynamic. Or if we instead choose to hold each others hand to work through some of it.
How can we genuinely be present to the now and not drag the past in?
How can we return to love and appreciation for the other in moments when all we want to do is lash out and see them as the enemy?
To find a healthy balance, not turn into narcissistic or egoistic bypassing, to keep connected and kind while focusing on our piece of the puzzle, actively facing and engaging.
Practice and inquiry create capacity, clarity and space. Forgiving the imperfect, forgiving the unintentional hurt. Forgiving ourselves.
What can I allow myself to love more in myself that I am rejecting or criticising in the other?
Where can I let go the control, expectation or fears and accept?
I have learned so much in relationships, sometimes in the most painful ways.
Most was about not abandoning myself. To find a way back to love, self-love. Letting go of controlling and expecting the other to change and instead really being there for myself. Caring for my inner hurt little girl.
Many times I tried to seek the fault in the other. Wanting to cleverly walk around the darkness within myself, the places that feel really icky. The only way to change is to really look within.
In the last year I’ve been shown how it’s a choice not to add extra pain but return to love and gratitude. Still an ongoing adventure to integrate this in myself.
What have you found reflected in your relationships?