Life Patterns (repost)

If we observe the people who walk into our lives – whether they are there to stay, or are only briefly touching our existence with their presence – we will see that they often resemble one another in character. It is not uncommon to hear people say: “I’ve married my mother” or “I’ve married my father”.


This fact struck me several years ago, when I met a girl who was involved into a very abusive relationship. She told me she was planning on leaving her spouse, and starting a new life. I talked about it with my own husband and we agreed that it would be okay for her to stay with us for a while, at least until she got on her feet. During the few months she lived with us, she opened up a little and told us that this was the fourth abusive relationship she had been into. I was dumbstruck. The odds of running into one abusive relationship are probably fifty-fifty, but running into four of them by the age of thirty-one could not be coincidental. It was almost as if this girl had a label pasted on her forehead, advertising that she was looking for yet another violent man. Then, one night she told me that her father was abusive to her mother and to her. He had beaten both of them physically and verbally, until the mother decided to get out of the marriage and jump into yet another abusive relationship. That, suddenly, explained it all.


As children, we absorb whatever is being fed to us, whether it is praise or judgment, respect or abuse. After taking it all in, the child has no clue what to do with it. The baggage of emotional charge connected to the events long pushed away is not discharged but safely tucked into a secret chest in the attic of the mind. Once put away and dulled by the passing of time, the child pretends it is not there, and attempts to create a life different than the one he or she dreamt of escaping.


Although the new life appears full of promise, the unreleased pain is still screaming to be taken out of its hideout and be sorted out; since the owner of the chest is not willing to take the heavy old thing out of the attic, afraid of reliving the emotional charge connected to the events tucked away, the pain trickles out of the aging, rotten wood, and sneaks out uninvited, haunting the chambers of the subconscious mind and triggering behaviors which promote unhealthy lifestyles. The wounded child is still alive and well, and needs to understand whether he or she is to blame for what happened so long ago.


Youth therapists draw painful occurrences from the well of children’s subconscious minds through role play. It is amazing what will come up from those sessions; the children reenact the very same things that have caused a trauma in their young life, over and over. As adults we do the same; we recreate in our new life the same situations we tried to escape as children, simply to understand the role we played in the unfolding of those past events. We are attracted to and attract people who will support our role play, and the pattern will continue until we have identified the matrix, and dealt with the emotional charge we put away so long ago.


Observing our life patterns will not solve all our problems, but will provide us with a valuable hint to get started in our search. All we need to do is look around ourselves and, for once, not be afraid of the monsters in the attic.

Three Simple Words

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi


A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend about the problems she had with her mother in the past. Knowing the mother, I could completely understand where she was coming from, yet one thing was as clear as spring water – even if her feelings were justified, my friend was not happy.

The discontent began when Sharon – the name is fictitious to protect her identity - was a small child; likely, it probably goes back even further, but her memories of times past only regress to a certain point, right around the time when she was about five years old.

Her mother was a victim of her own choices. After marrying young to escape abusive parents of her own, she had become pregnant with Sharon when she was only nineteen, and had almost immediately found herself trapped; with a much older and controlling husband, and a daughter to care for, the poor woman was stuck in a role she despised. She had dreams when she was young, and many times, when she finally laid her head down at night, she could shut out the world and live the life she wished she could have.

Her disappointment toward life turned into anger first and in control over her daughter’s life. Sharon had no choices; her mother made them all for her. That kind of smothering control triggered the opposite approach to parenting in Sharon. Terrified of growing into her mother, she had chosen to be a friend only and couldn’t bring herself to discipline her own daughter. As her daughter quickly began descending a vicious spiral of occasional drug use and bad company at sixteen years of age, her maternal instinct nudged her to take control of the situation, but her past experiences blocked her from taking charge. Indirectly, her mother was still controlling her. Sharon knew it was time to make some changes.

She felt like she hated her mother even more now, and she held her responsible for her own daughter’s poor choices. She ranted over the older woman’s mistakes almost two and a half decades earlier, and the first words out of her mouth were in regard of the fact that her mother had ruined her life first and she was now working on her granddaughter. That’s where I had to stop her – her mother, wrapped into her own anger, might have been abusive in the beginning, but now she was the one picking up where her mother had left off. It was time to let go of past resentments and focus on present problems.

Letting go was hard, as by letting go of the chokehold her mother had her in she felt she was condoning her actions. It never occurred to her that by forgiving her mother she was not letting the old lady off the hook, but she was allowing herself to finally be free from the influences of the past.

She finally did. About a week ago, she went to visit her mother and told her about the feelings she had fostered all these years. In return, her mother explained her own feelings toward her and asked to be forgiven. Sharon could not utter words of forgiveness, until her mother broke down and said: “Don’t make the same mistakes I made. I can’t change what happened when you were a little girl, but you can change what will happen to your daughter.”

Sharon went home and thought about the events of late. Her mother was right – no amount of anger, of resentment or justification could change the past, but maybe there was hope for the future. She picked up the phone and called her mother. “I forgive you,” she said, nothing else; then she hung up. Those three words suddenly lifted the weight she had carried on her back all her life, and removed the blinders from her own eyes. When her daughter got home that evening, she called her into the living room and they had a long talk. The daughter half-way listened and then got up to prepare to go out with her friends, but Sharon stopped her before she could walk out of the room. “Not tonight,” she said, “tonight you’re staying home.”

Sharon was free. Forgiving her mother didn’t make her accept her mother’s ways, but it gave her an edge to stop those behaviors from affecting her present life and her parental skills. Unknowingly, she had found the key to come into herself.

The Sweetest Revenge

“The best revenge is massive success.” ~ Frank Sinatra


Throughout the years, I’ve met many people; many of them have survived some kind of abuse. Interestingly enough, after they were no longer abused by others, they picked up where others left off, and violated themselves even worse than any of their oppressors ever did.

It is not uncommon for victims of abuse – physical, verbal or mental – to self-sabotage. Going into the trigger mechanisms of such a response would indeed require a much longer discussion than what can be afforded in a blog post, as would the analysis of each unique type of response, but we can safely assess that most individuals who have suffered an emotional trauma as a consequence of abuse tend to indulge in behaviors which validate the actions of the abusers rather than dispelling them.

Let’s assume, for example, that someone was repeatedly told they could not amount to anything in life, and they were led to believe that their actions were a ticket straight to hell. In many cases, they had probably felt incapable and smothered at every corner. Let’s say, now, that this individual is finally free – at least physically – from the person who abused them. The first thing they would probably do, the moment they are able to control their own lives, is to indulge in the very same behaviors their abuser used as ammunition to gain control over them.

By continuing the abuse that others had begun, we only validate the faulty perception they have of us. No matter what happened, we don’t need to let the abuse go any further, especially if we are now the ones in the driver’s seat. If someone never believed we could amount to anything, and we turn their vision into reality, we choose to give them more power than they were ever entitled to have. If, instead, we focus on cracking their assumption, and we direct our energies to shifting the sail toward a positive current, we have instantly broken the drama and won the battle.

Nobody ever said that revenge must walk a rocky trail. Skipping over the rocks that were placed on our path to make us fall is the best way to show the world that we are finally free from the chains of the past.

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain.” ~ Carl Jung


Very few things are simultaneously as loving and painful as a kneading cat. Believe me, I would know; my cat, Wizard, is a twenty-pound bag of melted sugar and he regularly dispenses his love through the rhythmic action of his lion-sized paws.

Yesterday morning I was in for another dose of loving – Wizard jumped up on my chest while I was laying down on the couch still wearing pajamas and began walking over me in circles, lovingly kneading his way to sleep. Being summer time, I was wearing thin satin pajamas, and his claws were pushing right through the material as easily as a knife slicing through butter.

He was too cute for me to push him away – his eyes were dreamy and he was purring madly – so I just held my breath whenever I felt pain. Thankfully, the slippery material caused him to slide down a couple of inches, and his paws came to rest where the shirt overlapped the pajama bottoms – instant relief! The double layer of material stopped his claws from reaching the skin. After a few moments of kneading pleasure, Wizard went to sleep. I laid there and rubbed his head, listening to him while he still purred in pure bliss. I was glad I didn’t interrupt his happy dance, as his loving actions provided a priceless portion of food for thought.

All along, Wizard never meant to hurt me – his intent was constantly motivated by love, regardless of the spot he was kneading. What made all the difference was not a change in his kneading pattern, but my own shield of protection provided by an extra layer of material.

Similarly, when we are hurt by someone’s words or actions, the pain we feel may not necessarily be caused by the words or actions themselves, but by our heightened sensitivity triggered in that particular situation. Salt poured over healthy skin is merely irritating, but it is downright excruciating when sprinkled over an open wound.

Taking notice of what upsets us allows us the opportunity to see the parts of ourselves that are in need of healing. I believe that certain people and situations are placed in our lives to help us grow and heal; when someone or something causes us to feel pain, we gain insight over a “sore spot” within ourselves that needs to be addressed.

Once the weak point is identified, steps can be taken to raise a better shield – it is impossible to heal something until we know what it is, the same way that we can’t fix something until we know what part of it is broken.

People speak and act out of their own sorrows and joys, rarely even knowing how deeply their actions and words will affect us, and by causing strife they show us our strengths and weaknesses. Once the weaknesses are dealt with, those words and actions will simply slide off like a cat on satin pajamas.