Have The Relationship You Want

Here’s a comment from la la land that brought up how we fight our emotions and actually cause ourselves more pain…and how to get out this endless cycle…

“Rori, i suffered all night because i resisted a feeling. again.
this time it was my oldest friend the jealousy train. i hate feeling that so i resisted as much as i could.
this hurts. [just like resisting pain when giving birth] well i must acknowledge it to go past it, so here it is:
i felt jealous about the ‘action’ he had when i came home: email, telephone calls etc.
before i left he kissed me in such a powerful way [i melted]. on my return he ignored me completely and was exited and overworked about someone else [a lady friend? his ex? his work? he doesn't tell].
i felt like a total loser, i tried to do my own things repeating to myself take your focus off him, focus on yourself. it didnt help.
i lost into not sleeping all night, not knowing how to go past what i felt. i did not let go and sinked, i feared and resisted, and the monster grew and grew. my vibe in my head was so loud my husband said he felt like the alarm clock was ringing but he couldnt turn it off. where did i go wrong?

today he left for few days. i want to feeling message the event to get it over with, any tips?

Here’s my answer:

There’s so much in this comment.

First – about pain. la la land’s metaphor about giving birth, and resisting the pain making it hurt even worse – is SO right on!

There’s a whole field df medicine devoted to pain relief without drugs…I have a book myself…it’s a process of relaxing into the feeling…bit by bit by bit. it takes focus and will and determination. That’s why in childbirth classes there are actually techniques involved that you practice doing.

The Bradley method, when I had my daughter 20 years ago – was all about this.

Most people were doing Lamaze techniques, which focused on breathing and other ways to reduce or tolerate the pain – but the Bradley method was just about sinking INTO it. It was about flowing with the pain, and continually focusing on giving love to the baby working so hard to get out.

Emotions are the same this way…there’s some truth working to get out, and we resist it, because it hurts in the process. If we surrender to the pain of the birth of the emotion…we sink into it…it flows so much faster and more smoothly. (Of course, like everything else, it’s not a perfect analogy –there are always unusual circumstances…but let’s just say as an IDEA, and as an image for you to work with – this works.

What happened for you, la la, was actually monumental, and I want to wrap my arms around you, and encourage you to embrace yourself 24/7.

You NOTICED what was going on. You KNEW you were fighting. You TRIED to not fight.

Now…here’s where my Tools come in handy.

it’s easy for someone like me to say…Don’t fight your feelings. Surrender. Sink in…

But the DOING of it requires going against everything you know, everything you believe, everything you’ve ever done, and everything your own body wants you to do and is frightened of NOT doing.

That’s why my baby-step Tools.

Next time you feel yourself stuck on the Jealousy train, or the obsession train, or in a whirlpool of thought – and you just know you’re resisting a deeper, painful feeling….use Tools.

You can start by – Touching objects.

*Walk around the room.

*Feel textures and surfaces and get into the sensation of things – soft, hard…feel the way your HAND feels touching these things.

*Go outside and stare at a leaf for awhile…trace it’s lines carefully and make it an experience.

*Imagine yourself in a bathtub, and play with the imaginary water.

There are so many ideas you can come up with on your own…and so many tried-and-tested Tools in my programs – starting with the Sensual Meditation from the ebook would be helpful…so you don’t have to sit there and battle it out with yourself.

There are things you can DO – heaven knows we’ve all used the contents of the refrigerator and the ice cream bucket for this in the past…now use Tools that help you.

I know you all will help here…if you have my programs, throw out some Tools that have helped you from them…Like the

*Driving the Car Tool from Commitment Blueprint or the

*Jet Plane from the Toolkit.

Sometimes breathing works great, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes focusing on allowing the feeling to come up works, and sometimes it intensifies the resistance.

This is why the Tools work — they’re completely different.

Your body and mind doesn’t relate a Tool in which you relate to a silk flower or a dust ball on the floor as threatening – and that’s why they work…

Let me know what works for you for sleepless nights and anxiety…and we’ll have a resource page here.

If you know the program you got it from, let us know that, too. I’m working on a “curriculum” of Tools and what they’re for from all the programs…until I put that together…let’s put the help out here any way we can…

Love, Rori

I’m feeling this now, and so I wanted to write it down quick and see if what helps me helps you…

Sometimes you just feel…sad. You feel it deep in your bones.

It can almost be a lovely, poetic feeling. And if you work it in a way that works for you…you can almost feel it shimmer, in and out, with appreciation for just being here at all, and a bit of joy when you notice your surroundings in a clearer, crisper way.

Sadness has a way of making things …crisp.

For me, the trick of being with sad is as much about what I stop doing as what I do. I know, most of all, that if I resist, if I pull back, if I stuff down, if I ‘m busy and need to get on with things and so I push my sad aside to keep going and put a smile on my face I don’t feel, or a quickness in my walk I don’t feel – my sad gains energy and speed and everything gets skewed and distorted and tense.

And that’s how I usually notice my sad…I notice what my resistance to sad looks like. If sad is a sort of general feeling – generalized like anxiety and dread – where it’s just a feeling, and you have to search around in your brain for the source and the trigger..I like to keep it there. Soft and general.

The moment I try to figure out where it’s coming from…it changes. sometimes a good-feeling change, sometimes an intensifying, bad-feeling change. I’ve noticed that if I simply ask myself what I’m sad about …sometimes the answer is…well…I’m missing this…missing that, a little grief, a little sorrow…a little guilt, a little anger…and that can be helpful.

If I move to — he did this and she did that, and why did they do that? – then I lose it. I lose that lovely sense of FEELING something, and I’m in my head, where the marbles are bouncing around and nothing gets rewired correctly or sifted finely, or tuned up.

The first thing is that long ago I made an intellectual decision that my feelings are important. In fact, that my feelings are the crucial part of me, they are my compass, they are the clue to what’s going on with me. I’ve agreed with myself on all levels that my feelings and sensations are the way my body and heart and mind and the world, too – talk to me…and that it’s my best means of communication with everything that’s important.

From there…I can work through things, analyze, figure out, WITHOUT BLOCKING the constant clues my emotions and sensations are giving me.

I’ve decided that my feelings and sensations never lie. That they are the pathway between my waking life and my dream life, between my consciousness and my subconscious, that they are what makes me like everyone else, and what keeps me in touch with everyone and everything else.

I’ve decided that they are holy. Sacred.

And that they are not the FINAL DECIDERS of my ACTIONS…they are simply the bond that holds me together and connects up my spirit to my humanness.

So – I never disparage my feelings. I always go to them. I use my emotions as the check and balance system for my thoughts and actions.

So Here’s how I am with my sad:

1. I feel something slowing me down and fogging my body. It feels like a film over my happiness, like a weight on my heart. Feels like a stone somewhere in my torso. A stone that turns the rest of me to stone, slowly. I can feel the creeping of stone in my body. OR

I feel myself hyper-vigilant. I feel my neck and my throat operating at full speed, like they’re the only parts of my body I’m aware of. The only parts of my body I’m in touch with. The only ones working. They’re taking over for the rest of my body, which I now notice is numb because I don’t want to feel. I’m thinking, hard…and then I notice that my shoulders hurt.

They ache from effort, and then they ache from Sad.

That’s when I know I’m blocking a feeling I don’t want to have. I’m trying to get on with the show in the wrong order. I’m about to be one of those actresses who “indicate” a feeling” instead of feeling it and letting us see and feel it, too. I’m about to be “perky.” “Upbeat.”

2. I stop whatever I’m doing.

If I’m walking the dog, I stop. If I’m typing, I stop. If I’m thinking, I stop. If I’m exercising or stretching or meditating, I stop. If I’m cooking or washing dishes or in the shower and soaping up – I stop.

I stop looking for things, stop figuring things out, stop everything.

3. I listen.

Sometimes I listen to the sounds of life outside my head – the breeze, the leaves, the dogs, the children, the cars, the airplanes, the music from cars, the buzz from machines and the hum from my computer.

Sometimes I listen to my body, inside. Sometimes it’s yelling something that sounds like a plea to me. Sometimes it’s screaming “Watch!” Sometimes it’s screaming “Here!” Sometimes it’s screaming “No!”

Sometimes it’s my head – trying to drown out all the other sounds, trying to get my attention, trying to win something, trying to stop the process I’m sinking into because it has it’s own agenda to “protect” me from growing or changing or feeling.

4. I allow myself to circle and bounce between all the voices, all the sounds. I let it all “fuzz out.” I stop the spinning of my brain and the thinking stuff by not focusing on it…I still let it scream if it wants to.

I don’t fight anything.

I don’t choose a reality. I allow myself to sink into a place of “unreality” – where nothing is certain, nothing is sure, and nothing is right. This helps me stop analyzing and using my brain. Plenty of time for that later…

5. I open my eyes.

I look around. I look down, and up , and around. I feel where I am in space, how I fit with everything around me…and in the process…I start to notice things. I notice how the sounds are connected up to the visuals – the trees actually have shapes. They are actually alive. ..

6. I feel…

I just let it all settle into my body and my heart and let things pop up and out. It’s like a shimmering feeling for me…(please let me know what it feels like for you…)

And now the feelings start to “morph.” When I notice that a tree is alive…I feel something different. The sad morphs to a connected feeling, to a moment of happiness, then back to sad, then…to…and suddenly, sometimes I’ll feel that underneath the sad is something else – like rage, or guilt, or fear…and then pictures come into my head, and then I start to want to explore with my brain, and then I start to analyze…and so I go back through the steps:

I stop, I listen, I open my eyes, I feel…and then….

I start to feel…bored.

Bored with my sad, with my rage, my fear…and I can feel my body get all…well, “antsy.” I start itching to DO something. Something FUN. So..

7. I Channel…

If I’m walking, I’ll start to hop or run.

I’ll go touch a tree and stretch my body on it, talking to it…

I’ll write down an idea, clean a drawer, brush my teeth….

And…I do this all day long if I’m in a place where sad keeps popping up…and in transitional times, when things are changing, even when things are getting BETTER – Sad likes to come up. I like to think of it as a way of saying “Goodbye” to old things. We don’t always even know what those things are, but our bodies and hearts do…and we’re always saying good by to one moment and hello to another.

I like to feel this sense of movement, from one moment into the next – and there’s just no way it can’t be “sad” sometimes. For me, being with my sad is just a part of being with me, and that’s how I get to feel my joy, my bliss, my pleasure, my pink-flushed face from good feelings and knowing that my body’s got a rhythm I can listen to.

That rhythm, that movement, that willingness to feel – is how I stay out of “stuck.”

Let me know how this works for you…

Love, Rori

Here’s my favorite Holiday post….and happy everything to you…

Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, many more traditions both religious and secular – all together, all at once the mere thought of it fills me with feelings of dread.

Is it because I remember that winter in New York and how depressed that year was? Is it because there`s so much family at the holidays – and I feel not only obligated and exhausted, but adolescent again around so much of my history?

My family history is wonderful. I`m one of the very lucky ones. A not so dysfunctional home – perhaps not passion, but at least humor, affection and lots of support and attention for my brother and me. Perhaps it just feels as if all the pain of the world comes into relief around the ever present pictures of joy at this time of year. I know it`s not about me at all.

It`s not personal. Do we all just notice, suddenly, all at the same time, that we`re all in this together? We go to church, go to synagogue, light candles, wrap presents, shop in the same stores, rush around in the dark after work. It feels so unreal. Like going through the motions without any real heart.

And then all at once it hits me. It`s transition time. Something has ended. Something has started. Even more than at birthday time, I`m older. My daughter moves toward her own life. My husband feels time – there are days to Christmas and days to New Year`s. We`ve done this before. Over and over. The ritual of transition.

To those of you who are waiting on the edge of a new relationship showing up or hoping the one you`ve started will turn concrete or hoping the one you’ve been long committed to will take flight into bliss – believe it will. Regardless of how unsettling the holidays can be for so many reasons unique to each of us – there`s magic in the air. Things can happen. We are all teetering at a transition, looking for meaning to drop into our lives. Allow it to tip in. It will.

Part of what is so challenging about the end of the year is that we all feel pressed to do so much. Presents, parties, family, gather that man under your wing before the year ends, tension, anger, old resentments. Instead, try something different. Instead of trying to swim through this, sink into it. Believe the wave of emotion and giddiness and pressure and pain and feeling like a child again will hold you up.

You will not be dropped on your head. You will float across the sea of possibilities into the next part of your life a bit more transparent. A bit wiser, a bit more vulnerable, feeling fragile but relying on the steel within you to let the world see what a beautiful, delicate, intricate, complex and yet totally whole woman you are.

Even when I can`t see it, can`t feel it, can`t trust it, I believe. Sometimes I`m propelled into action to help someone else – and then I feel more human and less fragile. I feel of use. But sometimes I just make myself lie down on the floor and look up at the ceiling. Instead of a solid plaster barrier above my head – if I look really hard – I can see a window, a passage, a worm-hole, time-warp, incomprehensible path to what I can`t see.

And it`s not just my future, it`s my possibilities. I look up into something I can`t see and let myself sink into myself. I thank the floor for holding me up, and then I just fly into whatever there is out there. I believe it`s bliss. I believe that my future and my daughter`s future, and my husband`s future, and the futures of all my dear friends and family and clients, and even the futures of people I can never feel close to or even good when I`m around them, are full of possibilities. Things I could never even imagine.

It`ll take the living of it, moment by moment, transition by transition, feeling by feeling, experience by experience, with the highest hopes I can muster, to discover what they are.

Wishing you bliss, joy, experience, love, faith, hope, adventure, and a glimpse of the beauty of your own soul in a random moment shared with all of us in the place we can`t see that`s full of possibilities…

Love, Rori

Men who are righteously “busy” are a challenge.

You can’t fault them for not spending time with you because they’re saving the world.

Or leading a symphony, or holding down two jobs, or taking care of their small children after wrestling custody of them from their drug-addict ex-wives. (I’ve dated a man in that situation – it’s not as far-fetched as you’d think.)

So, here’s a letter about that, from Anna, who’s looking at this in a way that will not work for her. It’s almost a “doormat” way to look at things…because she’s got one of those righteously busy men, and he seems like such a prize.

Remember, as you read this — it doesn’t matter HOW GREAT he is. If you want a fling with an amazing, difficult, busy man, then do it. But if you want lifelong love and family and attention, affection and great sex…look elsewhere…:

“Rori, I read your articles all the time. Thanks for your insight! I am seeing a medical student 4th year. We have been friends for a while, so I know the demands of his schedule. We tried to take it past the friendship level (not sex), but the pressure was too heavy with school, so we backed up alot. How do I pace myself to maintain interest (for both of us). I know there is something there. He primarily calls me when he can talk (about 3 times a week). Don’t want to make him feel like I want to compete at this time, but show him I care. Anna.”

And here’s my answer:

Anna – Medical students and residents – all graduate students – do so much better married or with steady girlfriends. They feel supported, they can have regular sex, and they don’t have to do anything. Because they’re doctors, they are considered, as you instinctively consider him – to be excused from normal human issues.

And then, when they get out of school – they’re doctors – and it’s different than it used to be. They are no longer gods who can command huge salaries and put out a shingle anywhere. There are more and more doctors and less and less jobs, and the money isn’t that good, and the pressure is humongous…

Used to be (and know this from the women I went to college with) – that a man would lean on his girlfriend through college and medical school (or law school, or business school…) and then graduate and get his certifications and licenses and start making huge money and attract women from everywhere and then DUMP his same girlfriend who stood by him her whole college life.

Now – it’s not the same. Moving out into the work world is harder these days, and the stress of school hangs on. But, still, just as in the old days, a man who makes a successful transition from school to work OFTEN starts out in a new direction personally, too.

Now he wants to see the world. Now he wants every woman who comes onto him. Now he thinks he’s hot stuff.

Your man might not be like this. A man you meet and date in college might not be like this. He may be a true-blue kind of man (Though with this Tiger Woods phenomenon, you wonder if it’s even possible to spot a true-blue man – I mean, who looked more true-blue from “here” than Tiger?)

And yet – the possibility exists that when circumstances CHANGE – everything changes. This is why it’s absolutely CRUCIAL to Circular Date. You should NEVER tie yourself down to one man EXCEPT for your own experience.

If you’re dating a really cool guy, and you’re learning a lot from the relationship, and you want to experiment with what a steady “boyfriend” feels like so you can be better prepared for marriage – then try it. But don’t expect it to last – in fact, I’d be very careful about that.

I would never, ever abandon Circular Dating – no matter how married you are!!! Without making contact, even momentarily, with men everywhere, you put yourself in a box. Your vibration gets smaller and smaller and you forget there’s a big world out there.

You shop at the same market, walk the same streets, exercise at the same place…and everything seems doomed when a relationship doesn’t go as far as you’d like.

Hoping that a relationship will work out forever is NOT a good reason to shut down your options.

So – to answer your question – there IS no way to “pace” this. You DATE him. That’s ALL. You date him, and you date other men, and…may the best man win!!!

Now – for the other part of your letter – Anna.  Him calling you a few times a week is not ANY kind of “relationship.”  It’s strictly a friendship.  It may be a worthwhile friendship – and it may develop into something else later, you never know, but for now – it’s not more than friendship.

That means you are not really even “dating” him right now.  So – please – Circular Date, let him stay in touch with you, and have as much fun as you possibly can without thinking of him for a moment.

If you’re hung up on him…that’s even more of a clue that you need to focus more on YOU, and on what YOU love, what you like, and that you need to Circular Date with tons of men so you can practice the Tools, lift your spirits, your self-esteem and your “vibe,” and have the relationship you want.

Love, Rori