This morning I had to go get some blood work done, and I despise having my blood drawn. Makes me want to run away in every sense of the word. You would think that a mum of seven would not have this challenge, but I do! — LOL

The other day my guy had his annual wellness exam and had his blood drawn too, he asked me why I had such a fear. As I thought about it, I had a memory pop up from my childhood where my mother had taken me to the doctor to get an annual health check-up and they wanted to draw blood. I was going into 3rd grade and needed this check-up. So there little eight-year-old me sat in the cold room of the doctor’s office. I had on one of those examination cloaks, naked underneath, my mom by my side when a nurse walks in carrying a tray with some needles on it.

She turned to me with one in her hand and said that it would not hurt. It was just a prick.

Yes! she wanted to take my blood and give me a vaccine.

And I was a heck no to this. So little eight-year-old me, jumped off the table and bolted out the office door and down the hallway to the exit door. Nurse and mom yelling at me and running after me.

They caught up to me and brought me back to the room. I fought. They scolded. I cried and bit at them. They got madder. In came two other nurses to hold me still while they took my blood and gave me the vaccines.

And here is where my lifelong fear of needles was created.

Childhood trauma.
Little girl me, did not understand. And isn’t this story something that many of us have lived through and can relate too? Many of us can most likely tell tales of this nature about ourselves or our own children even. Sure, many may not have actually run out the door, like I did, but you may have wanted too.

Traumas origin is Greek — meaning wound.
We hear a ton today about trauma and triggers. Some people say they have neither while other’s hold on to theirs like a badge of honor — demanding the world and people around them to not trigger them.

While waiting on my blood draw this morning I listened to a podcast from Joe Polish and Dr. Gabor Maté (I will link it HERE) . The discussion was fascinating, revealing and confirming to me. My BIG take away was that so much of what we humans are dealing with in our modern toxic world is based on yes, these childhood wounds, but more so on our inability to be compassionate with ourselves and others.

Compassion, which is love, something that we want for, that we crave to receive, and give is also trained out of us from our earliest years forward. As Dr. Gabor Maté shared with his personal story of childhood trauma, a wound that was created from love and protection by his mother created a belief that he was not worthy of love — that he had to earn it. That he had to behave, prove and be something in order to not feel the fear of abandonment. I can relate to this belief and fear myself, as I am sure many of my readers can.

One of the most challenging things we experience in our intimate relationships, is a co-dependency based on a fear of abandonment and belief that we are not worthy of love. This belief of not being good enough or worthy of love plague’s our modern world. Creating anxiety, depression, addictions and actual physical dis-ease. Even in my amazing relationship with Craig, we are challenged with our childhood traumas and triggers around this very belief.

It’s extremely painful and scary when a wound is touched, triggering that inner child to want to run or fight. Then typically we move into fawning or a state of freezing, out of not knowing how to move forward. We retract from our loved one, we go into avoidance,
(another sign of anxiety BTW) or we become extremely clingy.

Our intimate world is our educator and awakener to self-love and compassion. Over 99% of people engage in a relationship and are not healed! What this means is that we come together to heal — we do this through triggering each other — and if emotionally mature enough we learn to not run and get irritated or hurt by our partners, but instead get excited about the opportunity to heal that the poking of this wound does for us.

Our intimate relationship are designed to teach us how to love purely and allow ourselves to be loved. However, this takes courage and commitment. Commitment to self-healing and awareness first, then commitment to handcuff ourselves to our partner in faith that they do love us and have our best interest at hand most likely, so we do not run out the door at any critical moment of being triggered and feeling lost and scared, but instead choose to stand with our mate and work through the pain to discover the love that is being offered.

Sadly, in our unhealed states and lack of education on these important truths, so many of us do all the wrong things. We threaten divorce, we get defensive and take everything personal, we do not give enough credit to our emotions and what messages they are wanting us to know, we play the blame game where we focus on being right and making our partner wrong at all cost instead of communicating and looking at what the true issue is, and we get caught up in contempt, thinking we are somehow better than our partners. None of this breeds trust for either side, it does the direct opposite. Without trust and communication, self-responsibility and compassion for self and partner in these moments of challenges and trigger, we create walls that are a lot harder to take down then to put up.

This armoring of our hearts separates us, disconnects us and has us operating from our ego instead of heart.

Just think about this…

When you fight with your partner and say all the cruel things, do you leave that moment feeling better and full of life or do you leave it feeling depleted, lost and numb?

Chances are it’s the latter, right?
That’s because you have closed of your heart to your partner and created disconnect. You are not loving yourself or them in this moment. You are not listening to your truth — you cannot even hear your truth in moment like this.

We humans are not designed to live in such fear and separateness. We are designed to live in deep connection and surrender of our hearts to our partner.
Only, in this state of surrender and love can we actually heal, be seen, truly witness our partner and hear them AND PROBLEM SOLVE!

Alas, we are all that eight-year-old running out of the doctor’s room in fear however.

Never recognizing the reality of what our hearts and beings are needing — connection.

And we are doomed to repeat this cycle with our next partner, and the next, and next if we choose to disregard that we are wounded and needing love.

Good news! We are worthy of love and connection.
My favorite biblical quote is, “God does not make unworthy things.” I hold this near and dear to my soul and heart always and I hope you will too!

But it will take courage and commitment.
Are you ready?
I am.

As Always Loving you from here.
Stop Existing & Start Living
– Rene (KW)