Have The Relationship You Want

This is an article by Matthew Walter and Orna Banarie, who have a fantastic story of how they found each other (the wedding is just about to happen…). Matthew is a terrific hypnotherapist, and Orna does life and relationship coaching using hand analysis (I personally had a great reading by her) — and now, the two of them are teaching, in teleclasses and coaching, what they’ve learned from their own amazing experience finding love with each other when they least expected it…(see how relaxed they are with each other…)

Which one of these scenarios best describes your experience in relationships?

1. You always find yourself needing to please your partner. Constantly putting their needs ahead of yours, you find that at times you feel resentful wondering when all of your selfless action will be recognized and reciprocated. You wish your partner would be able to anticipate your needs as well as you anticipate theirs. Ultimately, all of this leads to you constantly twisting into a pretzel to receive love.

2. You feel like you’ve been duped in your relationship. You thought you knew who your partner was until you made that deeper commitment and everything changed. Suddenly your partner has different opinions than you and begins to express them. This person is no longer interested in doing the things that you did during your courtship. In fact it may seem like you’ve married or moved in with a completely different person.

3. You are extremely attracted to people who reject you. It seems that the more you are told that you are not right for that person, the more you want to prove them wrong. You may even begin a process of changing who you are in order to become more like what you think that person wants. When you meet someone who is attracted to you and likes you for who you are, you are not interested in that person. You may even feel that person is not worthy of being with you as it would be too easy to start a relationship with them. You prefer a challenge and like the chase, but lose interest when you get the prize.

These may seem like completely different scenarios, but they all point to a common problem – a lack of self-acceptance. In the first scenario the person lacks an ability to see their needs as valuable. When we seek approval outside of ourselves we find ourselves twisting into pretzels. We often think “What shape can I assume that will make me attractive to you?” This is a game of rejecting who we are and hoping that the new shape we assume will be loveable. When what we really need to do is to learn to accept all of our qualities, both good and bad, and by finding that acceptance then we can be authentic in relationship with others.

In the second scenario the partner in the relationship isn’t purposefully deceiving their partner. Instead, this is caused by someone thinking that it is not okay or safe to be themselves until they get that deeper commitment from you. They finally relax and allow their true self to be revealed to you. This is not usually a conscious choice to deceive you. It happens because that person does not believe that you would love them for who they really are. That person lacks a sense of self-acceptance.

In the last scenario the problem lies with a sense of worthlessness and an inability to receive. This person seeks that rejection because that is what they feel inside. Often times when they are in relationship with the person who does love them for who they are, they will sabotage the relationship to prove that they were not worthy of receiving love and acceptance. The desire to prove themselves worthy to the person who rejects them is really a desire to prove to themselves that they are worthy.

Why is self-acceptance so important in your relationships? Because how you see yourself, how you feel about yourself – self-judgment, self-criticism, etc – effects your ability to be authentic in relationship. The belief is that if you show your true self you will not be loved. The problem is if you don’t ever show your true self, then you can never be loved for who you really are.

Another problem that arises in relationship that comes from a lack of self-acceptance is that we begin to judge our partner’s behavior and become critical of them. If it is true that all judgment is self-judgment, then when we are so annoyed by our partner’s behavior we can ask ourselves “Is this a reflection of a fault within my character?”

Only by knowing what we truly need to be happy, what we truly need in order to nurture ourselves, can we feel comfortable asking our partners to love us in the way we truly can receive love. It is in the search for self-acceptance, that all parts of us are worthy of being loved, that we begin to learn to love ourselves. When we love ourselves it becomes easy to ask for what we want, it becomes easy to enforce our boundaries, and it becomes easy to receive the love we most desire. That love is what “true love” is all about.

Orna and Matthew are doing a continuing series of free teleclasses…and I’ll be interviewing them soon for my monthly Interviews With Relationship Experts CD series. You can read more about what they’re doing (you can find them on facebook, too) right here:
www.CreatingLoveOnPurpose.com

Love, Rori

Justin/Fernando just left a great comment in which he said how men find “Warrior” women sexy. How men actually love being “called” on their “bs” because then they know that what a woman wants is who they really are and not who they might like to pretend to be.

So what exactly is a Warrior woman?

Does it mean that you are always on the warpath? Are you always looking for something to pounce on and correct? Are you out to change the world by changing every little thing you see around you? Are you out to improve everything you see — including your man?

Or are you a warrior for yourself?

And what would that look like?

Let’s say you’re with a man and in this very moment you feel totally torn and totally conflicted. Two sides of you are trying to gain control of your mind and your actions. Something is happening that does not feel good. It could be him asking you to do something or go somewhere that you just don’t feel like doing are going. Or it could be something he does — roll his eyes or dismiss you in words, or comment about another woman’s attractiveness right in front of you. Ick…

Part of you wants to smash him in the face. Wants to grab him by his jacket or his shirt and shake him and toss him until he behaves. Another part of you is terrified that if you even question for a moment what he’s done or asked for… you will be labeled as needy, complaining, insecure, a drama queen, and he will move away from you and maybe even leave you.

This is what I call walking on eggshells.

And you’d be surprised how many of us are caught in this loop. We either blurt out everything we want changed and stick to our guns and air our opinions and requests for change and then feel terrible and frightened and angrier afterward… or we sit on stuff, telling ourselves that we are poised, we are confident, we are together, we don’t have to get all upset about this “thing,” we have a sense of humor, we can talk about this reasonably.

And sometimes that voice is right! Sometimes what you’re all bent out of shape about is hardly worth even a moment of your brainpower.

Sometimes you’re just looking in the wrong place, hearing the wrong thing, focusing on the wrong part of what’s going on around you.

So what’s the Warrior in you to do? What exactly do you champion? How do you champion yourself here, when you don’t know which “yourself” to listen to?

So let’s go through some steps:

If you’re feeling unsettled, disturbed (I love that word and I love the state “disturbed” describes), and conflicted, just

1. Stop whatever you’re doing.

>> Stop
>> take a breath
>> go into the Rori Raye Dance Position
>> put your hand on an object and…
>> stomp on the floor.

You are caught between your emotions. And your emotions are caught between wanting to fight, wanting to flee, and wanting to freeze. And some of it is not under your control right now. Some of it is a reaction that’s coming from old patterns that are deeply ingrained in every cell of your body.

So…

2. Start picking through your emotions.

First, you have to

>> Feel each one.

Start with the one that comes up first. If it’s an urge to hit and strike out and “fight” — go into that feeling. Really experience it — in your arms, in your hands. Experience if you feel your hands clenching into a fist, if you feel like reaching out to push and hurt, to DO something destructive. Really let yourself get into that. If you have to leave the room for a minute to do it — do it. EXPLORE each feeling as it passes through you..

If the next feeling feels like fear, or guilt, feel that. You can tell what it is you’re feeling most easily by going straight to your body for clues.

Look at your hands. Do they feel like going out to push something? That would be anger and an urge to fight. Or do they feel like pulling something towards you? Does it feel like they want to protect you? Protect your heart, protect your breasts, protect your breath?

Do your hands and arms feel like they want to block something? Does the rest of your body feel like it’s moving backwards — like it wants to go away, wants to run?

Notice if your shoulders are all crunched up near your ears. Does that feel more to you like fear, or anger, or love, or shame, or guilt?

Let your shoulders go, let your arms go and see if you can find the feeling now in your belly. See if it’s jumping or if it feels hard.

Start getting familiar with what your feelings feel like. You’ll start to notice a pattern — a physical pattern — that will help you clue into what it is you’re feeling. And as you experiment with feeling these different feelings that have different physical components, you’ll start to get more COMFORTABLE feeling these feelings.

3. Now – put on your Warrior clothes.

Make it up. Are you an angel with wings? A Greek Goddess in gown, or pants and boots with bows and arrows, or a superwoman superhero with space-age weapons? How do you wish to aim — very subtly and accurately, or do you wish to have the power to blow away whole universes with the press of a button on your gear?

4. Now… and here is the hardest part… what are you fighting for? Who are you fighting for? And on behalf of which emotion that you felt are you fighting for?

The easiest way to do this is to –

>> Pick a Value that is dear to your heart. Pick the first one that comes to your mind (if you don’t already have a Values List sit down and make one now)

Let’s just pick one for now — how about Peace? Or Authenticity? How about Honor? You could honor your “little girl self” — you could honor your Vulnerability — you could simply honor your own ability to feel.

***Important note: you are not to use the word “defend.” This is not about protection or defense. This is not about being a warrior who “goes to war.” A warrior who writes wrongs. A warrior who sets the record straight. These images are all MASCULINE images. These are fine for many things in your life when you’re going “Out the Window” and want to be an action Warrior for the world. (We’re all really good at this, and I’ll talk about it more in another post…)

A WOMAN as Warrior simply says NO. Being a FEMININE Warrior is all about being about No.

5. Get a big perspective on the situation you’re in at this very moment. (There are more Tools for “Zooming Out” and “Flying Up” in my Toxic Men and Modern Siren programs…)

This could look like: There are people standing around in this room. My man, or that man who just came up to talk to me just said or did something and now I’m feeling uneasy and disturbed, and I have many wonderful emotions around all this.

6. Now… you’re going to follow the procedure for any Rori Raye “speech.” It goes basically — I feel, I don’t want. If you want to actually negotiate something, it can go — I feel, I don’t want, what do you think.

7. So let’s put it all together.

>> Imagine yourself in your warrior clothes, armed with your NO, standing up for a value like Vulnerability, seeing everything that’s around you and being present with it all.

>> Put together your first sentence of “I feel” with the feeling you’re feeling right now (that you’ve already felt and gotten comfortable with feeling) and speak it simply.

>> Now put together your NO in the form of “I don’t want….”

This could look like: I feel icky, I don’t like this.

8. If he doesn’t snap-to and ask you what’s going on, take the time to start from step one again. All the same feelings are going to start flooding in on you. The first few times you try this is going to feel just like the first time — and then you get so used to it that it will get easy, I know it will. Be sure to keep your warrior clothes on.

Being a warrior for yourself is not about attacking. It’s not about doing damage. It’s not about blowing people and things in the universe away with your power.

It’s about owning your power. It’s about owning your warrior clothes and your warrior heart and your warrior weapons and knowing you can use them, and trusting yourself to use them wisely.

Being a warrior for yourself is holding the line. It’s standing your ground. Its boundaries with a big capital B. It just means you won’t be pushed backwards from that line. It just means you won’t be pushed over. It just means you won’t lay down on the ground at his feet and do what ever it takes to keep him.

It doesn’t even mean fighting or attacking the other voices in your own head that are confusing you and disturbing you. It’s owning all the other voices no matter how nasty they sound. It’s about being a warrior of yourself that’s in CHARGE of all of these voices. It’s knowing that all of these voices and everything about you is ONE. That you are all-of-a-piece. That you are one whole person. That you have facets just like a magnificent crystal and that the crystal of you is whole.

So being a warrior for yourself has nothing to do with what emotion you’re feeling! It is not an action arising out of any particular emotion.

You don’t need to go to war! Being a warrior for love or a warrior for peace will help you know, deep down, that everything you do and say in service to yourself, following these steps, will make you feel more complete, more interesting, more multifaceted, more whole.  Stronger. I know that you are one gorgeous warrior woman. Rock on.

I’d love to see some drawings of what you as Warrior looks like — what you’re wearing and what you’re packing (these don’t have to be aggressive weapons — we can have fun and get creative here) — and I’ll try to figure out a way that you can post your pictures. For now though, would you describe yourself as Warrior to us?

Love, Rori

So here I am, standing on a stage in a small theater, with 20 people and the teacher in light in front of me and the lovely man in the chair opposite me playing the man in the scene for me (even though I’m doing a monologue, he is joining me on the stage to give me someone to work off of).

I’m doing a monologue from the film Minnie and Moskowitz (playing Minnie), and my sole goal up here is to be fearless.

All I want is to allow whatever emotions come up to come up. And I want everyone in front of me to be able to see them. I wanted to be completely exposed.  For them to see all of me, especially the darkest parts of me that show up.

And as I focus on the actor in front of me (though I’m the only one talking), and I feel myself speaking these words in the middle of the “preparation” I did for the monologue (making choices about what she’s really trying to accomplish here, what she’s trying to tell him, what she’s sharing about herself, what she wants…), and the fear and hopefulness and weirdness I feel up here — all of a sudden without even trying, I feel myself over taken by emotion.

Now, you have to understand this is not normal for me. My first response to an upwelling of the motion is always to clamp down on it. That’s why I’ve created all the Tools in Modern Siren about allowing your feelings to come up — Tools like “Fall To Your Knees” — that help you practice getting “into” your emotions without ever pushing them out in the old ways that don’t work.

So I’m here practicing expressing myself in Minnie’s words, aiming for expressing what Minnie wants while still feeling what I’m feeling. And this acting thing is very, very personal. The teacher is stressing how personal all this is. How unless we make it very, very personal, it’s not going to be as powerful.

And all of a sudden I feel myself gasping for breath. I see myself about to completely fall apart.  The words I’m saying are triggering me. I focus on breathing, on staying still, on saying the words, feeling the words, and letting it happen all by itself.  I focus on NOT STOPPING the process. And believe it or not, the lights and the people in front of me and the theater make all this EASIER!

How can this be? you ask. How can having people around you actually make it easier for you to let your feelings out? It’s because an acting class is a safe place to do this.
(Of course you have to have a good teacher, and I’m lucky enough to have found a supurb one -  her name is Judith Weston and we’re in Culver City).

In an acting class, everyone is there to support you doing this. Everyone wants to learn to be fearless. Everyone wants to get into their feelings and express them. Everyone knows that this is the highest calling of an actor. Everyone is trying to get past their emotional obstacles. Everyone wants to loosen up. Everyone wants to be in touch with themselves, and everyone wants to share everything about themselves with everyone else in this room. And we are all equally challenged.

Some of us have more access to our emotions than others. With all the work that I’ve been doing with Somatic Trauma Resolution, EFT, and every Tool I have developed and discovered and shared with you, I have, when I am in a safe place, a huge desire and some ability to be fearless. And it’s all about practicing, because I put myself in situations to trigger this practice for being fearless.

So how can you take this experience from an acting class into your regular life and work with it? Well I know that after only two classes I am much much much more expressive with my husband. I am much, much, much more fearless. So, you could take an acting class. You could take an improvisation class. And if none of that is available you can practice in the bathroom. You can create your own safe space in your bedroom.

So try this:

Write yourself a speech. Write yourself a monologue. Write it about a woman who wants something. And write about what it feels like to want that thing. Now memorize that speech. Now find yourself a safe place where you’re all alone. Imagine that there are people standing in front of you and lights shining on you, and that everyone is rooting for you. And now let the speech out. Share the speech and while you share the words of the speech, see how you’re feeling.

See if you’re going numb. See if you’re weaving around the room and leaning from side to side and moving your arms around. See if you can make yourself be very, very still. See if you can breathe while you’re saying the speech. Now let’s try some other things — and Judith is going to help us through me.

Write down some reasons why you’re saying the speech (and of course imagine someone in particular that you’re saying the speech to). Write down what it is you really, truly want to say — even if the words themselves aren’t saying those things.

And try some extreme ideas: try begging and pleading. Try trying to punish the person you’re talking to. See how the words come out differently without you trying to do anything when your objective is to beg and plead for something as opposed to trying to punish someone for something.

What this exercise can do for you is to help you see that the way you use words is completely flexible. You can even say I hate you too man without trying to punish him, or attack him, or plead for him to do something. You can say I hate you while what you really are trying to tell him is that I love you.

As you experiment with this you will see that the old ways of saying things and doing things aren’t necessary anymore.

Try this in your bathroom or your bedroom, and let me know that works for you and I’ll keep giving you some new tools as we go along, courtesy of Judith. (Oh if you live in Los Angeles and are interested in taking Judith’s classes let me know.)

Love, Rori

Here’s a letter from J – and I had very strong feelings when I read it, because I know J’s history with this man. And also – most truthfully – because this is exactly the way I was, this is exactly the kind of question I would have asked of Rori Raye long ago, and I do NOT want you to have to go to this awful place.

“Hi Rori,

A guy who essentially disappeared from dating me…due to family issues, etc. had recently been contacting me, mostly via text. It’s brought up some feelings for me (i.e., hurt, anger, sadness, and frustration). It is good to hear from him, since i did care about him and we loved each other, however I feel he is truly clueless to the effect of his actions, since he contacts me in a very casual manner…as if he’s being friendly. I’ve texted back that if it’s his intention to contact me that I would prefer to speak with him.

He’s been texting, trying to figure out a time we could chat., which may be tonight, if I’m not busy doing other things.

My question: Even though I took your advice about this guy and acknowledged his lack of contact, etc by telling him I realize your feelings are not there anymore and this is over, but to let me know if there was something that pushed him away, for the next time. He didn’t respond to that….we planned to meet to discuss but that never panned out.

So here is my question: What if he calls to simply chat about how I am, etc…I feel this is a good opportunity to express my anger and frustration that he’s caused me. I don’t know how to bring it up, because I honestly think he will not bring anything up. Thank you. J.”

And here’s my answer:

J – This is where you ask yourself some hard questions – And the first question is “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!???? Why are you letting this guy come in and rake you over the coals again???!!!” (You can see I got excited, with all the heavy punctuation.)

I’m just going to say this straight out, because we’ve talked before and I know I can be tough with you — DUMP HIM.

Stop talking to him. You don’t need another friend, especially not a MALE friend, and that’s all he wants. Make that crystal clear — “Hi, it feels great to be in contact again, and yet I know that I still have feelings, so if what you’re looking for here is friendship, I just don’t wish to pursue friendships with men right now, so I wish you well and will not be staying in contact.”

If you were ready to ask him a question that would be helpful to you…you wouldn’t be feeling all this anger, hurt, etc. Do NOT give in and spew it on him. It will make you feel humiliated. Stay away from him if you feel all these things.

Now – let’s take this out into all our experience. This is about being so attached to any one man that you cut off the possibilities of other great men finding you. It’s like putting a fence around yourself that’s marked with the man-you’re- zeroed-in-on’s name. It’s like he’s peed on you, and marked you as his territory, and you’re showing his urine stain to the world.

I know that was a really harsh metaphor – but I want to really drive this home. Even just THINKING about a man is letting him “mark” you – and I don’t want you to do that!

I hear you making up all kinds of reasons for staying in contact with this man, like –

1. It seems harmless.
2. Perhaps you can get information from him about what happened (and I know I suggested this long ago – but that was long ago, when you were hurting anyway and it wouldn’t have hurt you more, or it might work if you were TRULY OVER HIM, but you’re clearly not.)

If you’re hurt over a man, you’re not over him. I don’t care how long ago it was. And talking to him again will only re-open the wound.

Let it heal. Forget him, or let him be your “muse,” or carry him with you on your horse into the rest of your life – but don’t let him have any control over you…

How you “use” him and the memory of him to HELP you and get you what you want is YOUR choice, and you should feel totally okay and happy and good about how you do that.

Letting him worm his way back into your waking life puts HIM in YOUR driver’s seat. And if you try hard to turn that around, you’ll just dig yourself in deeper.

Move AWAY from him – not back into his energy field.

Let me know how this works for you, and please share all your experiences with this kind of thing…

Love, Rori