We want love, good relationships, money, and work that would make us happy... and why don't we have them yet? I visited my parents over the holidays. Every time I go there, on the one hand I am very happy that I will see them again, and on the other hand I have worries. My father is sick, and when I am “at home,” he is very unpleasant with us. He always has a reason to “tell the truth,” as he calls it, but that truth always hurts me deeply. He always has an excuse to find a sharp remark or a reason to criticize someone or something. At first, I fought with him and angrily returned everything to him, as was fitting. Then I started to set boundaries, telling him how I feel, that this is unpleasant to me, and how I find it disrespectful how he behaves toward me, what he should and should not do. Now during the holidays, I felt a great pain in my chest and overwhelming sadness. I really wished my father would hug me and say, “My daughter, I love you.” I could no longer fight with him or tell him how I feel. It hurt. After the holidays, I left and forgot about it.
After some time, I had a meeting with Evka, who looked distressed and without any desire for life. “I cannot focus on anything. My boyfriend left me. We were engaged and we had already renovated our little house.” She fell silent. “He has another one.” Tears were running down her face. She was very upset, and we had to go through several techniques so she could at least focus a little on herself and her feelings. She saw no way out of her situation. Her most common answer was “I don’t know.” “Imagine your happiest life—where would you be and what would you be doing?” I ask Evka. She lay still with closed eyes, her face stiff and frowning. “I am lying in the grass near our house, and I know I belong somewhere. I know that inside I am waiting for my husband and my children.” She did not look happy at all. Her face remained stiff and pensive. Tears began to run down her face, and suddenly she shouted: “I will never experience that because I don’t deserve it. I’m not good enough.” My heart clenched, and I felt the same pain I felt with my father when I was visiting “home.” I did not understand it.
One time, while walking outside, I felt bad. I sat down on a stone and started crying. Images began appearing in my head, and they gradually started to make sense. “I reject my husband, his love, I do not want to let him get close to me, to surrender to him and love him. I am afraid that I will lose him. I do not deserve him, I do not deserve to be happy, I am not good enough.” The image of my father—father rejects us, his children; he is afraid he will lose us. He feels guilty that he is not a good enough father, that he does not deserve to have a happy family. The feeling I wished to experience with my father, I was unconsciously looking for in my husband, but at the same time I did not know what I actually wanted from him, and I felt unbearable pain and sadness from the unfulfilled relationship. After this insight, enormous relief came: the pain disappeared and only sadness remained, which is the echo of how I treated myself and my loved ones.
When we refuse because of fear, so that we do not one day experience pain and lose what we love, life slips through our fingers and prevents us from living life to the fullest. My husband told me all this: “Anything can happen, so let us thank God for every day we spent together and enjoy it.”
The only way we can truly know ourselves is through others. The people around us function as mirrors so that we can learn something about ourselves. How others behave toward us reflects how much we value ourselves. What irritates us most in others is usually our biggest issue, and this is what we also do ourselves.
So let us not complain about why other people do what they do, but rather ask why we have these people in our lives, and why they are doing this to us in particular. No encounters are random. We always have something to learn from them.
Author: Michaela Košalková The author is a coach in the field of personal development, using Kinesiology method "Put together your connections and find the cause of your problem." www.mojesuvislosti.sk https://www.facebook.com/mojesuvislosti/