How devoted are you to taking responsibility for your feelings? Or do you indulge in substance and process addictions to avoid and get rid of your feelings, and if you do, how loved and lovable do you feel?
How devoted are you to taking responsibility for your feelings? Or do you indulge in substance and process addictions to avoid and get rid of your feelings, and if you do, how loved and lovable do you feel?
Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here. Welcome to the Inner Bonding Podcast. As many of you know, I’ve been working with individuals, couples, families, and businesses for 56 years, and over and over, even with people who know the six steps of Inner Bonding, they skip over learning from their painful feelings and just want to avoid or get rid of their painful feelings.
Did you ever see your parents or caregivers take responsibility for their feelings by learning what their feelings were telling them and exploring their false beliefs that may have been causing their pain?
What was your role modeling for avoiding your feelings and trying to get rid of them? Did your parents or caregivers use substances such as food, alcohol, drugs, and smoking? Did they use processes such as TV, the Internet, pornography, work, phone? Did they use anger, blame, physical abuse, sexual abuse, caretaking, giving themselves up, people-pleasing, withdrawal, resistance?
What do you do to get rid of your feelings? Think about what you do when you are in emotional pain. Does it occur to you open to your pain with an intention to learn about what it’s telling you about how you are treating yourself, or about what’s happening externally that needs your loving adult to take a loving action? Or do you automatically and habitually turn to your various addictions to get rid of your painful feelings?
Yes, it takes practice to remember that your feelings are your inner guidance system, and that all your feelings have vital information for you, and to open to learning from them. It takes a lot of practice to be able to consciously choose your intent to learn from your feelings rather than automatically act from your controlling wounded self. Like anything worth learning, it takes a lot of conscious practice. But without this practice, you will continue to abandon yourself by avoiding your feelings with your various addictions. And you will continue to experience the pain that comes from self-abandonment – the anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, aloneness, emptiness, anger, jealousy, envy, resentment, and so on. These feelings are the natural consequence of trying to get rid of your feelings rather than learn from them and take responsibility for how you might be causing them or take responsibility for managing the existential painful feelings of life that come from others’ unloving behavior or from painful life situations.
This all comes down to your intention – to get rid of your painful feelings with your addictive, controlling behavior. or to learn from them in order to becoming more loving to yourself and to others. This choice of intention governs everything you feel and do. In Inner Bonding, we make it easier for you because there are only these two intentions to choose from – to try to control your feelings, others, and outcomes, or to learn about loving yourself and others. Inner Bonding is the only modality that teaches that there are only these two intentions to choose from, and as you learn and practice the Six Steps of Inner Bonding, you create new neural pathways in your higher brain for the intention to learn, which is how you create your loving adult. It’s such a powerful process for truly shifting everything in your life.
It all starts with choosing Step One of Inner Bonding – being willing to take responsibility for your feelings.
Step One of Inner Bonding states: Choose the willingness to feel pain and take responsibility for your feelings.
In step one, you move into the present moment and focus within, tuning into your feelings - the physical sensations within the body. You choose to be mindful of and pay attention to all distressing feelings rather than protect against them with addictive, self-abandoning behavior. You make a conscious decision to take responsibility for your feelings by learning from them rather than avoiding them or trying to get rid of them in any way.
Many people feel their feelings, and then stay stuck with them, wallowing in them, or blaming someone else for them. In relationships with others, many people believe that their feelings are coming from someone else's behavior, and I often hear them say things like:
"Of course I'm angry! I have a right to be angry. She ran up our credit card bill, again!"
"I'm hurt and angry because he forgot our anniversary."
"When she gets angry, she calls me names and threatens me. This makes me feel very anxious, hurt, and alone."
"He infuriates me when he puts me down!"
"I'm not happy in this relationship because he won't communicate with me."
"I feel turned off to him because he doesn't spend enough time with me."
"I'm angry because she won't take responsibility for her end of our problems."
"I feel disrespected because he is always late."
While it is easy to think that all your emotions are coming from another's behavior, this often isn’t the case. There are times when fear is directly tied to real and present danger, and times when other core existential painful feelings of life - such as loneliness, heartbreak, grief, helplessness over others, and outrage over injustice - are responses to others’ unloving behavior or painful life events. However, the feelings that we call the wounded feelings that I’ve mentioned – feelings of anxiety, depression, blaming, anger, hurt, guilt, shame, aloneness, jealousy, and so on are usually coming from how you are responding, such as what you are telling yourself and how you are treating yourself.
Be honest with yourself - do you really want responsibility for your feelings? Do you really want to learn from them rather than avoid them? In order to do Inner Bonding, you need to really want responsibility for your feelings, because Step One is about noticing your feelings and wanting to take responsibility for them.
If you do not want to take responsibility for your feelings, then you may automatically come from your wounded self and be a victim, blaming someone else for your feelings. Even if you think you are open to learning in Step Two of Inner Bonding, if you have not consciously decided that you want responsibility for your feelings, you will not actually be open to learning about how you are causing your wounded feelings.
Step One is about saying to yourself, "I'm feeling badly (or angry, hurt, anxious, and so on) and I want to take responsibility for causing or lovingly managing these feelings." When you really want that responsibility, then you will be able to move through the Six Steps of Inner Bonding. But if you really believe that someone else is causing your wounded emotions, then the only way you will be able to utilize the Six Steps is by exploring your false belief that others are causing your wounded feelings.
Step one of Inner Bonding is an all-day practice. This means staying present in your body so that you are always aware of your feelings, and the moment there is a painful feeling - or anything less than peace inside - immediately saying to yourself, "I want responsibility for causing this wounded feeling or for lovingly managing this painful existential feeling." Once you say this, then you can move to Step Two, consciously choosing the intent to learn and inviting the compassionate presence of spirit into your heart, so that you are a loving adult when you move through the other steps.
If you do not want responsibility for your feelings, or if you continue to choose to believe that someone else is causing your wounded feelings, then the rest of the steps will not work for you. The steps work only when you want responsibility for yourself – for learning from your painful feelings, for learning about your false beliefs, for your health and wellbeing, for your sense of security, and for your inner peace and joy.
It is only when you truly want to take responsibility for your emotions that your inner child will feel loved, valued, and worthwhile.
Some people, upon learning that they can learn to take responsibility for their feelings, that they can open to learning about their false beliefs and about the truth and about the loving actions, and that they are allowed to take loving actions on their own behalf, are so happy to hear this and become diligent about developing their loving adult.
Others do not hear this as good news and go into resistance to learning to be a loving adult.
The wounded self doesn’t want you to learn to learn from your feelings and take responsibility for them, and doesn’t want you to develop your loving adult, because this is the opposite of the controlling, protecting, and avoiding intention of the wounded self. So the wounded self has numerous ways of discouraging you from learning to love yourself.
One common false belief that creates resistance is "I don't deserve to be loved." Of course, telling yourself that you don’t deserve to be loved gets you off the hook from having to take responsibility for your feelings, which is what the wounded self wants.
Have you ever said to yourself, "The reason God doesn't love me is I don't deserve to be loved," or "The reason my partner isn't loving to me is that I don't deserve to be loved"?
Have you ever looked inside to discover why you might not be loving to yourself and answered with, "I'm not worthy of love"?
I hear this all the time from my clients. It is often one of the major false beliefs of the ego wounded self.
What exactly does this mean? When I ask people the question, "Why don't you deserve love?" they say, "I don't know. I guess if I deserved love, I would have been loved."
So the conclusion they came to is that they must not be worthy of love because they weren't loved - a huge false conclusion.
"Is there any baby born on the planet that isn't worthy of love?" I ask them. "Do deformed or handicapped babies deserve love?"
"Of course," they always answer.
"Do dogs and cats deserve love?"
"Of course."
"If a puppy has been abandoned and is in a shelter, does he or she deserve love?"
"Well, yes."
"Then why don't you?" I ask them.
When they see that it makes no sense that they don't deserve love, then they have to grapple with the real issue, which is that even though they are worthy of love, they weren't loved.
"So were you not loved because you didn't deserve love, or because your parents or caregivers didn't know how to love you?"
This, of course, is the real issue. It's easier to tell ourselves that we don't deserve love - which then makes it our fault and gives us a feeling of control over not being loved - than to open to the loneliness, helplessness, and heartbreak of not being loved by our parents or caregivers.
"Think about that little baby you were who never felt loved. Does that baby deserve to be loved by you now? Is there anything about the baby in you that isn't worthy of love?"
"No, of course not," they answer.
"Are you willing to learn to give that baby the love you never had and still need?"
"Yes. Yes, I am."
"And, when you start to love that baby in you, and then learn to love the toddler and then learn to love your wounded self, do you know what will happen?"
"What?"
"You will know that you deserve to be loved! And you will begin to feel the passion and aliveness that comes from taking responsibility for your feelings and learning to love yourself."
This is the conundrum for many people: You can't heal from the core shame belief that you don't deserve to be loved until you decide to love yourself by taking responsibility for your feelings, but you might not decide to love yourself as long as you believe you are unworthy of love. Many of my clients are more able to start to learn to love themselves when they think of loving the tiny baby in them, rather than the 5-year-old or an adolescent. So starting with the baby might be a very good place to start.
"But I don't know how," is often the next thing I hear. If they have children and have tried to be a loving parent, they can't get away with this false belief!
"You don't have to know how," I tell them. "You just need to be willing to learn. When I had my first child, I didn't know how. I was an only child, and I was rarely around babies. But I wanted to be a loving mother, so I learned how. I read books. I talked with other mothers. And I listen to and trusted my heart."
At that time I didn't know how to consciously connect with my guidance, but now I tell those who have learned to connect with their guidance, "Open to learning with your guidance. When you really want to be loving to the baby, your guidance will show you how."
What are your beliefs that are stopping you from wanting responsibility for your feelings?
It is true that your wounded self is not capable of this responsibility. But when you are a loving adult connected with your spiritual guidance, you are more than capable, and it’s the consistent practice of Inner Bonding that develops your spiritually connected loving adult self.
While another's love feels great, it is always temporary, since no one will be with you 24/7. And others always have their own issues - they get angry, withdraw, blame, judge, resist and so on. Only the love you learn to bring in from your higher self is always present and unconditional. And when you do learn to bring this to yourself, you will discover that it feels way better and more fulfilling than getting love and is what enables you to share love!
The reality is that the time and energy it takes to AVOID responsibility is far greater than the time it takes to take responsibility!
The reality is that no one else wants this job! If you didn’t receive the love you needed as a young child, then it is too late for someone else to do it. And even if someone did try to do it, as long as you are abandoning yourself, you will never feel lovable and worthy. No one can take away the pain of your own self-abandonment.
If you had a hungry baby, would it be easier to go around the neighborhood trying to get someone else to feed the baby, or to just feed the baby yourself? The answer is obvious, and it’s no different with loving yourself and taking responsibility for your feelings. You have no idea how much energy is freed up when you learn to take responsibility for your own feelings and all the energy you spend avoiding them, trying to get rid of them, and trying to get someone else to take responsibility for them.
My clients Tamara and Douglas had been married for six years when they sought my help for their marriage problems.
"I cannot remember a single day since we've been married that we haven't fought," stated Tamara in our first session. "I know that both of us are getting tired of it, yet we can't seem to stop."
As we explored the problems in their marriage, it became apparent that neither Tamara nor Douglas knew anything about taking responsibility for their own feelings. Both were volatile people whose priority was to control their feelings and each other, and not be controlled. Both were highly critical of themselves and each other, and both responded to the other's criticism with anger. They were both operating from the intent to control and get rid of their feelings by blaming each other.
In separate, individual sessions, both had stated to me, "I feel like I'm always the bad guy. I don't want to be the bad guy. I was the bad guy when I was growing up and I just don't want to be seen as the bad guy anymore."
Yet both believed that they were basically and essentially bad, flawed, unlovable, and inadequate. Because they each believed this about themselves, they were constantly judging themselves and then projecting their judgments onto each other. As a result, the slightest criticism would trigger their false beliefs about being unlovable, bad, and inadequate, and they would each attack and defend in their efforts to not be seen by the other as bad, wrong, and unlovable.
The basis of the wounded self in all of us is the core shame belief that we are basically and essentially bad, flawed, unlovable, or somehow inadequate. From this core shame belief springs all of our protections against what we perceive as rejection. As long as we believe we are bad or unlovable, we will take others’ behavior personally – consciously or unconsciously believing that it is our fault that we are being rejected.
To heal core shame so that you know you are worth loving, it is essential that you differentiate between who you are as your false self - your wounded self - and who you really are as your true soul self, which you can learn to see and value through the eyes of your spiritual guidance, when you learn to do that through your Inner Bonding practice.
You likely won’t move beyond your need to control your feelings and try to control others until you learn to fully love and embrace your essential goodness and lovability.
Tamara and Douglas could not stop fighting as long as they both thought they were bad and unlovable. Fortunately, they were not resistant to developing their loving adult and learning to take responsibility for their own feelings. As they each practiced Inner Bonding - developing their spiritually connected loving adult who is capable of seeing beyond their wounded self into their essence - their fighting gradually diminished. As they learned to love and value their own true selves, they were also able to love and value the essence of each other.
I’ve seen this countless times when people are willing to shift their intention from controlling and getting rid of their feelings, to learning to love themselves and each other by learn from their feelings and taking responsibility for them. But if you feel unworthy of love, then why would you be motivated to be a loving adult who learns from and takes responsibility for your feelings?
Are you aware of what you believe makes you feel worthy and lovable? Please take a moment to think about this.
I have worked with clients who have achieved all of these things that they believed would finally make them feel worthy and lovable, only to discover that it did not work.
Why not?
WANTING to take responsibility for your own feelings is essential for your inner child to feel loved, lovable, and worthy. When you don't WANT this responsibility and instead make others responsible and take responsibility for others' feelings, the message to your inner child is that he or she is not worthy of your care.
Even if you do loving things for yourself - such as take vacations, get massages, eat well, and exercise - if you don't consciously WANT responsibility for staying present and attentive to all your feelings - for nurturing your existential painful feelings of life, and for noticing and changing your thoughts and beliefs that cause your wounded feelings, which of course is Step 1 of Inner Bonding, your inner child will feel abandoned, unlovable, and unworthy – no matter how much validation you receive externally, or how many things you are able to accumulate.
Wanting responsibility for your own feelings and learning how take this responsibility, moment by moment, is the essential ingredient in feeling lovable and worthy.
What makes you feel lovable and worthy is staying in Step 1 of Inner Bonding - staying tuned in to your feelings and wanting responsibility for whatever you are thinking or doing that is causing your pain. What makes your inner child feel lovable and worthy is your devotion to the practice of Inner Bonding!
I invite you to join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership.
And, I invite you to join me for my 30-Day home study Course that teaches Inner Bonding: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."
And you can learn so much about loving yourself, creating loving relationships, and healing from my newest book, “Lonely No More: The Astonishing Power of Inner Bonding” and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.
I’m sending you my love and my blessings.