Conscious Uncoupling Part 3 | Reclaiming Your Power & Life
Identifying Your Role: Step 2A
Step 2 of Conscious Uncoupling, is a two-part process designed to help you reclaim your power and life. To do that, we must first focus on identifying your role in co-creating the dynamic that led you here (2A). “But it wasn’t my fault,” you say passionately. Keep reading! Secondly, we focus on how to make amends with ourselves and put that into action (2B). The second step (2B) is covered in Part 4 of this blog series.
It’s good to let go of being a wounded victim of love, shifting your perspective away from finger pointing, blaming and shaming yourself and others, instead shifting towards taking personal responsibility for your part in what happened. By doing so, you will start to see how you have been the source of your own suffering in a way that liberates you from repeating this dynamic again, empowering you to evolve beyond your disappointing patterns in love.
Living inside of being the victim of the other person’s bad behavior limits our perspective of what is possible moving forward. We might be tempted to believe all men/women are cheaters, or question if I should never take another lover, or be a recluse for the rest of my life. A common conclusion when one lives inside the story of victimization is that we should contract our lives away from love and never trust our hearts to another person again.
I relate to the temptation to believe these thoughts. At the same time, when we allow ourselves to stay in victim mode and not see clearly how we are the source of this experience, we can’t get to a place to trust ourselves to do it differently going forward. This leaves us stuck with the decision to contract and never love again. Instead, Step 2 teaches us to push back against this reactive self-protection so we can graduate from these patterns and beliefs and learn to love even more beautifully!
First, please STOP judging and shaming yourself! Begin by learning to talk to yourself with more compassion and in a way that empowers you to grow and get to a place where you are curious about the part of you that might be wanting to destabilize relationships and push people away.
I teach my clients to reflect on self in a way that doesn’t make one wrong and bad, but in a way that fosters growth. What I am asking you to do here is get ruthlessly honest about all the unconscious ways you have been giving your power away, turning away from truth, making yourself small or less than to fit in and/or self-sabotaging. Maybe you didn’t speak up, or you were over giving, or tolerating less than you deserve and ignoring the red flags. Here are a few good questions to consider:
Where in this relationship did I give my power away?
What motivated me to do that?
Where would I need to grow to make sure I never do this again?
What are the new ways of relating I need to begin learning so I make sure I don’t allow this to happen again?
You may be frustrated by these questions. That’s ok. Exploring the answers will provide you emotional gold that will be worth the effort. This kind of responsible self-reflection is how we get our personal power back! Click here to learn more about my own Conscious Uncoupling experience and what I discovered about my role in my previous breakups.
“Out with the old, in with the true.” – Jeff Brown
Click here to learn about the second half of this two-step process: Making Amends.
This blog is written by Noelle Davis, a certified love and relationship coach. The third in a 7-part series, this blog is based off the New York Times bestselling book Conscious Uncoupling by author Katherine Woodward Thomas. Each blog provides a brief overview to the larger work you will experience in my Conscious Uncoupling groups and one-on-one sessions. Please visit BraveNewLoveCoaching.com to read the full blog series and learn more about Conscious Uncoupling.