How to Break the Pattern of Unfulfilling Relationships

So often in relationships we fail to see the patterns that repeat, keeping us feeling frustrated or stuck in the same unfulfilled and unsatisfying relationships over and over again. The faces change and yet we feel like we are with the same people, the same friends, the same romantic interest. We often don't notice this until after the relationship degrades and then we look back and go why do I keep being attracted to the same arshole (I use that term gender neutrally) or alternatively why can't I find a group of friends who are..... Instead of..... You can fill in the blanks. A rather large part of building a life is the company we fill it with; how healthy these relationships are will either create joy or stress in our lives. Some people are a part of our lives regardless, such as family. Family often provide us with the largest challenges and are also the people we can learn and grow from the most. Our current internal landscape was in large part influenced by those we grew up with.

Once we work through the steps of clearing out the old and create a new vision of what we desire, we can find our footing, reclaim our basic boundaries and use discernment in our choices. In this blog we will discuss friends and romantic interests. While most of this blog is applicable to family of origin (F.of.O) (the people we grew up with) there is so much more intricacy to F.of.O that it will be its own individual blog. For example just cutting family out of our lives may not be a possibility and we may not want to sever that bond completely, whereas with a spurned lover or a friend that violated our trust intimately severing those relationships may be the best thing.

The Visioning Process

A big part of the visioning process is visioning the people we wish to have in our lives. The kind of family we want, the kind of community, the kind of friend group that has complete faith and trust in you and your vision moving forward. This also includes the kinds of animals you wish to be around. Animals are often a forgotten piece of this puzzle, they are such a normal part of life that we often forget that they are beings in and of themselves with intelligence and emotional lives. Make sure if they are part of your vision that you fully understand the commitment that is required before making them a part of your life.

•  Take a moment right now and define what a healthy relationships is. Don't necessarily label it only friend relationship or romantic relationship, while there are physical differences in the relationships the basic foundation of human interaction and connection remain the same.

            Trying to figure out what a healthy relationship is can be a very daunting and a tricky process. From our parents to the media, a healthy relationship can be scarce found especially in our current society, and so trying to define something that few have seen is a hard task. There are healthy elements of relationships out there so pick and choose among those you know and the experiences you have had that resonate with you.

Defining Your Current Relationship Landscape

Once you have a general idea what a healthy relationship is we can begin to look at how far your current relationships fall short. Time to take out the paper and pen or the keyboard once more.

• Define your current relationships by summarizing how you feel about them and utilizing a few words to describe them. Are they helpful, joyous and spontaneous or are they one sided, frustrating and isolating? Do they encourage you, or hold you back? Etc.
•  Look back over past relationships with friends, family or romantic interests. What are the patterns? Were there certain emotions that you felt most of the time? Were there certain fights that happen over and over? Which boundaries did they cross and which did you cross that you can see happening over multiple relationships? Were there certain things that happen over and over? Do the endings of relationships ever seem to be the same or run along the same currents and events?
• What are similar red flags that you can see over and over again in the beginnings of relationships? (This means a hint that the person you are beginning the relationship with will eventually fulfill the same unhealthy pattern again. For example say your pattern is emotionally unavailable significant others, some red flags may be their inability to tell you things when they are upset, or never asking anything about you, or on an internal level never feelings safe in the relationship)
• What are unhealthy beliefs that you have about relationships? What are the fairy tales? This last one can be hard because how do we know which of our beliefs are healthy and which are unhealthy. Start with which beliefs limit possibilities and which just don't feel right. Then move onto and question them all, to simply believe something means to stop questioning it and this leads to stagnation and lack of growth.

Figuring our Your Own Internal Landscape

Once you define your patterns and create a clear picture of what your current relationships look like it is time to figure out exactly where you stand. Where you need to do work and where you need to be more discerning. If you have trust issues and this leads you to being over controlling, start fights for no reason or feel like you have to check up on your intimate partner, or even your friends then that is something that you will have to heal. A lot of the crap that happens in our relationships is actually happening unfortunately because we allow it to happen. If you find the people around you abusing your goodwill and being disrespectful it is because you are allowing them to. If you speak up and they still don't change then you need to make the hard choice to not have them in your life in whatever capacity this ends up looking like, if they do change then great. That is the difference between healing and using your discernment. Learning to speak up is something you can do to heal the gap, seeing when someone really is just an arshole and choosing not to have him or her in your life is using your discernment.

• What are some of the patterns that come from you in relationships?
• What are the qualities in others that you admire the most? Can you learn to cultivate them within   yourself?
• Finally in all the patterns that you found from earlier what part did you play? What will you need to heal to stop the pattern and how can create different choices?

Using Your Power and Discernment

            Using your discernment can also come in handy when you need to decide who is safe in your life to open up to and be vulnerable with. If you open up to someone who is emotionally unavailable you will end up hurt, which will unfortunately just reinforce the unhealthy belief that being vulnerable and sharing yourself with anyone is dangerous. It is only dangerous with the wrong people. Take out pen and paper or keyboard and answer the following questions.

• How do you deserve and demand to be treated
• What qualities do you require from friends or from a romantic partner that are non-negotiable (deal breakers)
• I know the fabled make a list of qualities for your dream friend, or dream partner is sometimes scoffed at, but do it anyway. Now that it is complete look it over, how many are expectations that are to high and are setting you up for failure. Alternatively are they not high enough and will continue to let you choose arsholes in your life. How many of the qualities can you check off for yourself? If financial stability is a quality you desire in a partner, are you financially stable? (Get to work ;) )
• What are your own values, hopes and dreams

            Once you finish the questions and get a good sense of what needs to change you can begin to implement what you've learned into your life. It takes time, patience and practice to stand for what you want and to stop repeating patterns that you have had all your life. Like any habit it can be broken and you can have the relationships you desire and deserve. In order to do this you need to know where you are, where you want to move to, what is in the way and how to heal those blocks to let you move from where you are to your new vision.

The Services That Can Help

There are many services that can help support you through this transition including psychotherapy, life coaching, Hypnotherapy and even Homeopathy. If you desire to create new relationships, with valentines day fast approaching and relationships on the forefront of societies mind, then check out this months Equine Workshop -  How To Create Fulfilling Relationships.

Click Here to find out more

Cheers

Charlotte Brammer

My Trip to Sedona Arizona – Finding My Own Key To Success

A Beginning

While I am always somewhat anxious about going on a plane, I was never the less extremely excited to go to Sedona Arizona after the holiday season was over. I was very excited to explore the vortexes and see the haunting beauty of this very unique section of desert. As we drove in from Phoenix after landing you couldn’t’ see much as we happened to arrive in a complete blizzard which whited out the normally red landscape. It was the largest amounts of snow fall in many years and while it obscured our initial view it was still pretty amazing to be experiencing something that only few will see. As you cross through and over the large mountain range that separates Phoenix and Sedona the landscape undergoes drastic transformations. From my seat in the truck you could see small cacti, shrub, trees and an occasionally, I was told, an imported Palm or three. Phoenix itself was clear, the storm had already moved through but as we rose in elevation the storm thickened around us obscuring the landscape all but for a few meters off the road. Eventually the cacti no longer grew, they were replaced by juniper and other stunted trees that littered the landscape along the highways. We came through the other side and began our long downgrade to another valley that led us closer to where we were staying.

An Emerging Vivid Landscape

Even thought the storm blocked everything from view, it didn’t obscure the overwhelming sense of vibrating energy that hit like a soft wall, which to me I felt like my legs were humming from the inside out, as we crossed through a crag and emerged out into the Sedona Valley and finally entered Oak Creek. Oak creek is a small community that lives along a strip of road lined with small businesses. The people are extremely nice and were very welcoming to us. We arrived in the dark and so we didn’t get to see the splendor until the next morning. We woke to see the landscape in such contrast that it was beautiful. The deep, rich reds, covered and blanketed in the stark, unmarred white of the snow, the sky seemed so blue it hurt to look at and the tops of the red rocks were blanketed in a sea of low laying clouds that churned and twirled as they caressed the rock faces and the juniper and pear cacti that grew along their tops. Pear cacti were abundant and seemed to be one of the few cacti that still had a firm foothold in the region. That first day I went on a trail up through the backcountry towards the very famous bell rock where I managed to capture some pretty spectacular and rare photos of a landscape that normally does not know thick snow. I also managed to capture some pretty intense soakers as I slogged back down the highway towards home. We as a family joked that after our brown Christmas we flew on a five-hour flight with a toddler just to see snow in the desert.

The Artists Way

As the trip progressed I was also working through a 12-week course known as ‘The Artists Way’ by Julia Cameron. I could write an entire blog just about that experience but for now it had inspired me to play with photography and to embrace the part of me that loves exploration and adventure through trails and hiking. I tried as best I could to meditate daily I managed to do my morning pages almost every day. Morning pages are one of the tools of The Artists Way course that you do each morning as a way to tune into and listen to ones self. I find them truly effective and illuminating. This trip along with confirming once more my disdain for power tourism also taught me many other things. I could go into great detail about the amazing places I visited and the amazing things I saw, from the Grand Canyon, which takes your breath away and defies your best efforts to comprehend it to driving from Arizona to Nevada and exploring the Las Vegas Strip on a Saturday night, with a brief stop over at the Hoover Damn. I will instead try to stay on topic.

Bell Rock and Twisted Trees

By far one of the few things I loved the most was hiking on the trails that are dappled over the landscape everywhere in Sedona as it is located in the Coconino National Forest. They take you all over the valley and up to and sometimes on the great red rocks. I spent time on their trails and visited a few of the vortexes. One of the things I miss about Sedona was the smell; when I was out on the path to Bell Rock I would notice how clean, how crisp the air was. It was perfumed with Juniper and smelled like fire pit and fired clay. When we returned from our cross-country drive a half-week into our trip the weather had returned more to normal and we were enjoying 18 degree Celsius days. The snow had departed except in areas where the deep shade never left and I was often stunned at just how red the soil was and would watch as it changed shades with the movement of the day. On one of my hikes I climbed half way up bell rock and was again able to take some pretty amazing pictures along the way and of the valley floor below me. The first time I climbed I not only found a waterfall flowing under a cascade of ice but I was amazed at how strong the energies were and I actually had to sit down because it felt like I would begin to fly off the ground. The entire valley had a very different and uplifting energy to it and I have never slept so well in my entire life.

Keys to Clarity

Which brings me finally to some of the things I discovered on my trip. I noticed being back with my family of origin just how true it is that old dynamics, which we associate with our family member, have a hard time remaining when we ourselves are no longer being our old selves. Some of my family members were having a hard time with one another; I on the other hand didn’t notice the interactions degrading when it came to those I personally shared with them. I realized I didn’t notice them being their regular old selves because I had at no time become the old “Charlotte.” While I had known this all along I had never been able to, for 9 days straight, choose not to participate in old dynamics. While I meditated on bell rock among the twisted trees in the very corona of the vortex I also felt how easy it was to completely let go of the weight that I would carry and the barriers I held within myself. At first I attributed this to where I was but then as I continued walking I realized that that had nothing to do with it, the vortex was a catalyst in that my mind viewed it as a tool for transformation but the ability was never outside of myself and never required some special kind of tool or energy. I again saw with such vivid clarity how simple things are and how hard we make things for ourselves. I truly miss Sedona Arizona, from the trail to as I will always know it ‘Old Sedona’ where the shopping district is. During this trip I finally found the key to unlocking my true potential for visioning and creating the life I have been dreaming of and since I’ve been back things have been moving at a remarkable speed. I am excited and grateful. If I could, I would take people there on retreats because it is one of the truly spectacular places that I have ever been.

In Spirit of this check out my new courses Click Here

~ Charlotte Brammer

A Question of Self Worth and Space - Does the Pursuit of Self Worth Undermine Your Success in Life

As I sit in front of my computer screen and write down a flow and progression of words as they filter through my neurons recording what science would dub stream of consciousness I am aware that these thoughts have already been and my fingers are actually recording them long after they no longer even exist. Same with all my other actions, and procrastinations at this very computer, at this very desk as I either determine the flow of success or lack of success in my life by the very tasks that I perform exactly where I am sitting. Taking up, holding, wasting or occupying my space and time with meaningless tasks or hoping that what I am doing is going to lead to a favorable outcome. This measuring of outcomes has been handed to me as a well-defined grail of values based on societal views. I have spent an equally proficient amount of time in front of this screen picking apart and seeing through the absurdities of these values and requirements of society. A society that is wholly occupied with space, the taking of it, having of it, lacking of it and subjugating that of others.

The Scale

There are three sides to every issue, the lack, the surplus and the balance; black, white and grey so to speak. There are those people who have through breeding and teaching born them to lack; they are the quote unquote believers of unworthiness of space. Then there are the entitled ones, who for no abundance of reason believe it is their innate birthright to take up and so forfeit all the space not belonging to them subjugating those that believe they are unworthy of it. Same society two opposing and yet totally interdependent points of view; where is the grey? Both of these states are concerned only with external representation, they find their worth and means through external validation or lack of validation. The Grey is within, it is the indefinable way that you realize you are space, space is you, you are not devoid of it or lack it, and you are not entitled to it as that means it is something to be attained. This can be very confusing especially for those beginning to reclaim and live in their own space, how is it not entitled if I am worthy of my own space. The answer, you never lacked space, you can’t be entitled to something that always is and always will be so long as you exist, you can’t lack or gain, give or take a very principle of reality. There is no more or less.

Flowering

You also neither need to be worthy or unworthy of space for the space that you occupy remains regardless of the feelings you attach to it. It begs the question then of point! What is the point in wasting time trying to feel worthy of something that you already exist in, why not just feel it and be it? Why not just surrender to what is and then walk through life? I have been asking myself the question of what is the value of self worth and I believe it is another trap; it is another way to remain split in duality of white and black, worth and none. What decides worth? Man; take away all preconceived notions that man has created and look at life, simply look at it, the flower does not bother itself about its worthiness of flowering or unworthiness of flowering, it simply flowers and enriches the ecosystem around it with its flowering. So much anxiety is created by these definitions and semantics that it brings tears to my eyes and laughter to my soul, how much we run around in search of such meanings which are the illusions keeping us hungry in the first place. Why do we bother with these words, why do we not just allow existence and flower and enrich the ecosystem with our flowering? These words clog our perspective, clog our vision and our clarity, they concern us with proof and validation; they concern us with action and outcome. Action and outcome is the inevitable effect of existence, they do not need to be forced to happen, every moment creates an effect with our without our participation. How then to navigate other then to exist in our own existence, to create from our being! Imagine the effect from a cause that is cultivated from our very being rather then from the hollow inheritance of measurement and value that were handed down to us.

Shifting Perspectives

We need to let go of feelings of worthiness and unworthiness all together because they are meaningless, they are taking up our perspective so that we can not see what is already there, what is right now, what has always been. It has been threatening in the past to do this because we have created so many definitions, so many ways to define our value as a person, nation, and species. So many ways to make ourselves different, now we have to prove it, we have to prove our value, prove our specialness. Why bother, it changes nothing, all our defining never changes what is. You don’t have to prove something exists when it is tangibly evident and yet we go on completely ignoring it, looking the other way and keep trying to prove or un-prove our definitions of ourselves. It is funny really, the flower is in bloom and we look at the tree and say the flower is not blooming. How blinded I myself was, the pull of the feelings so strong, so real so tangible and yet so completely and perfectly constructed to keep me from seeing through them. When you live on the circumference of the scale, you lack any connection to clarity, to balance. It is only when you return to the center and look both ways, at both sides of the duality that you see through its ridiculousness.

Embracing Freedom

It is in the art of learning how to return to center, to see through duality, to see through the words that we find our true freedom. We find that we just need to exist, that we just need to be. We are regardless anyway. I found my way through Psychotherapy, Equine Facilitated Therapy and a deep and vigilant connection to myself and to truth. We explore this in a new Equine Facilitated Workshop of Self Connection and Allowing Existence. It is a two-day journey through the circumference to the center and to freedom.

Charlotte Brammer

To check out this workshop Click Here and visit LivingClarity.ca