I’m at a pretty amazing moment in my healing process and my life in general. I have this little hand mirror that I take with me everywhere, and I keep it by my bed at night. At the end of a long day, I curl up in bed, I pull out my mirror, I gaze into my own eyes, and I speak to myself. Out loud. I create a safe space for any part of me to show up that wants to. Like a family meeting where we’re all cozied up on the living room floor in front of the fire place drinking hot chocolate listening to music, giving each other massages, telling jokes, and just enjoying each other’s company.
Any member of the family can speak at any time and have the full attention of the rest of the family, to say whatever is on their heart or mind. Sometimes someone in my inner family has something pretty vulnerable to say. The rest of us listen and respond lovingly and supportively.
Everyone in my inner family is beginning to feel deeply loved, supported, protected, honored, and cherished.
This is a nightly ritual for me at this point. Even more frequent than that, actually. I often talk to myself out loud throughout the day as well. And I pretty much always have my mirror with me, since it helps for me to be able to look into my own eyes as I do this.
This connection I’m building with myself, with my inner family, this is the kind of loving connection that I have been so desperately seeking between women’s legs my whole life. I’ve also been seeking it in drugs of all kinds. That’s really what addiction is, isn’t it? A feeling of disconnection/alienation from your own self, and a need to create a substitute connection with someone or something else.
There are so many people in the world who don’t even know this kind of connection is possible to have with themselves. And they’re really suffering because of it.
I noticed tonight as I was being tender with myself in the mirror, that there is still this lingering part of me that is really afraid of what this new level of connection with myself means for my life, and he’s trying to shut the whole thing down. Like it’s too good to be true. Like I’m breaking the rules by feeling so close and intimate with myself, like I stole the devil’s playbook or something, like I’m playing with fire.
Like if anyone finds out how amazing it feels for me to gaze into my own eyes while curled up in my bed at night, I’m going to be fucking castrated or something.
I mean, if I’m really THAT satisfying for myself, and I don’t need to look for that kind of connection in romantic relationships, what does that mean for my relationship to women? If I truly am my own ideal partner, how would that change the role of women in my life?
~ the mother theme ~
What am I doing when I gaze into the mirror and talk to myself lovingly on a regular basis? One of the things I’m doing is *mothering* myself. And I’m getting pretty damn good at it.
I believe there is a part of me trying to stop me from being the best mother I ever had, because if I am better at mothering myself than any woman could be, well then all of a sudden, I don’t need a woman as a partner anymore.
(which also means that my unconscious search for the ideal mother in a romantic partner is permanently over)
Why would this be dangerous? Why would some part of me be trying to interfere with such a profoundly liberating process?
I learned at a young age that my mom needed to feel needed by me, and that I’d be punished with some form of abandonment if I was too good at meeting my own needs. Because that would mean I didn’t need her. And she derived a lot of her self-worth from feeling needed. So if I started to not need her very much, that triggered shame for her, and she couldn’t have that.
So in order to avoid feeling abandoned by my mom, I learned to chronically abandon *myself*, and construct a fantasy world to live in, where I would always need a woman to meet my needs, even though I knew I was pretty damn capable of meeting my own needs.
This fantasy world has persisted for 27 years and is only now in the last few weeks/months beginning to fall away, and reveal the beautiful, mind-blowing, painful truth that I am the mother I always needed. No longer are women the gatekeepers of mothering.
This is a seriously life-changing step in my evolution and I expect that eventually, when the time is right, and not a *moment* before, it will attract the proper woman into my life as a long term partner. This may be years from now, and I am 100% okay with that. All the more time for me to fall deeper in love with myself, over and over again. And teach my clients how to do the same.
Up until now, every single woman I have loved romantically has depended for a large chunk of her self-worth on feeling needed by men. I can see it all very clearly now. I needed these women for mothering (mainly via sex), and this filled them with a sense of undeniable worth. As long as I was addicted to her body, as long as I needed something that ONLY SHE could provide, she felt like she was worth something.
That may sound kind of disgusting. But these are the patterns that our parents passed onto us.
Are we going to pass them onto OUR kids?
Nah son. The buck stops here.
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Previously Published on paleyburlintherapyandcounselling.com
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