HEIDI SHANER

"You are not the victim. You need to change the victim vs. perpetrator dynamic or you'll continue to be disempowered."

This is what my therapist told me after I told her all the terrible things my ex husband did to me. What the actual f*uck?? Was it not me who was locked in the bathroom with my husband at the time banging on the door and cussing me? Was it not me who got her fingers jammed when he wrangled my phone out of them and smashed the phone in the driveway? Was it not me who was threatened to be charged with abandonment and foreclosed on if I left? Was it not me who was dependent on him to feed, clothe, and shelter my children?

How was I NOT the victim? Over the years, I've had many clients say the same thing to me. I get it. Women get together and vent about how their men mistreat them. They bond in their commiseration. They give each other advice. They don't follow it. Rinse, lather, repeat.....

So what gives? What I've come to think over the years is this: sometimes, you...

Don't you think that if we could master the cat and mouse game, we'd master relationships? Aren't relationships simply combinations of time together and time apart? Do you know ANYONE who doesn't have issues regarding being intimate and being alone, navigating the whole push/pull dynamic. Yeh, me neither....

What if you could get super close to someone and experience complete trust, unconditional love, and a feeling of security and safety AND not take their boundaries personally and be able to communicate directly and openly about your needs, and encourage the ones you love to take care of themselves too and realize their goals? What an idea!

That, my friends, is called "secure attachment". I don't know anyone who has all of that. Some of it, yes, but not all. Want to know why? We're going to have to dive deep to answer that. 

You've heard of attachment patterns but what you might not realize is that these patterns are established very early on so they run deep and might...

Did you know that your energy matters more than anything else? Do you know how powerful energy is? Have you heard of people getting sick based on their fears alone? Have you heard of people healing based on their faith alone?

Why do we let other people's energy toxify our own? First of all, we might not recognize that other people are merely projecting their fears onto us and that we're internalizing it. We might recognize it, but we're still not able to NOT take it personally. I have a true solution for you.

When your energy gets polluted, you know the feeling. Something is said or done, you make an association, your nervous system gets triggered, and you're off to the races or down the rabbit hole or off the rails, etc. Now what?

Usually, we scramble at this point. We want back on the rails and out of the rabbit hole but we physiologically cannot get ourselves "clean" again or solid or grounded. So we try to wish the bad feeling away. We apply logic. We talk to ourselves. We...

If you're feeling on top of the world and able to identify triggers and projection and not internalize other people's shit, don't read this. If you sometimes feel like you're standing on the edge of an abyss and you're not sure if you're being rational or crazy and your demons and fear are calling to you and you're about to fall into the pit, read this.

Believe me, I try my best to learn as I go, to correct my mistakes, to evolve, to be self aware, to be courageous with my own shit, but try as hard as I can, I find myself in the same patterns. Clearly, the universe is teaching me a lesson. If only it were a little clearer. I'll deal with it, I'll do the work if I just knew what it was that needed getting done.

So let me give you some specifics of my latest teetering on the edge of the abyss. I recognize when someone I'm with gets triggered. By getting triggered, I mean when someone reacts to me in a way that is extreme relative to the reality of the situation. For example, let's say...

I could've easily titled this blog togetherness and space, anxiety and avoidance, close and far, fire and ice, certainty and variety, light and dark, yin and yang, safety and adventure...you get the idea. We want both ends of the spectrum deeply and yet somehow in relationships, we have to reconcile this paradox. We have to hold both in balance.

And who really knows how to manage that balance? I believe that this imbalance is the cause of all the heartbreak. Let's start with when we were growing up. We wanted a safe, predictable, nurturing home life. We needed unconditional love and acceptance. We also wanted to explore, be independent, and feel free. Parents are the first ones who have the deep responsibility to find this balance for their children.

You already know what happens when we're neglected or abused emotionally or physically at home. We learn to link pain with intimacy. We learn that we can't trust people who "love" us. We learn that we have to protect ourselves and not...