When love and control get confused… what to do

Untangling the energy of love from the fear of control

(webinar info below- February 11, 2015 at 6  pm Mountain)

Have you ever found yourself in a tense situation with a loved one, family or friend that was frustrating or annoying? Did you feel like whatever you said was misinterpreted, ignored or rebuffed? Or has a loved one suggested something to you that set you on edge, leaving you feeling criticized or attacked.

This happened to me a while ago, when my loved one suggested I do something different to improve my sleep patterns. It was a simple suggestion but I found myself feeling annoyed, criticized and rejected. I even had a few imaginary conversations with him to practice what I was going to say -you know, “give him a piece of my mind!” Then Whoa!  I had an aha moment… I realized that he was suggesting this to me because he loves me, not because he was trying to control me. (Any by the way, when you want to give someone a “piece of your mind”, it is invariably connected to shutting off a chunk of your heart!)

The reality is that a person who loves us is always “involved” with us on many levels…. and being invOLVEd contains the letters “IN LOVE”!  So how did I confuse his loving involvement with control? And even more importantly, how could I EVOLve my consciousness of this issue without LOVE? Well, the answer is, I couldn’t. It was time to make a different, clear-hearted choice.

Choose an open heart

A KEY to making the choice to give and receive from a clear heart is learning to untangle the emotion and expression love from a deeply seated fear of being controlled by a loved one. The truth is that love and fear cannot reside in the same space- so in my view, this is the most important relationship issue to heal.

No fear- only love

Here are some signs of an entanglement with love and fear of control:

• Petty arguments that repeat over and over and are not resolved with love
• Getting annoyed when you are asked to do something small for a loved one (such as “Will you please pick up my dry cleaning on the way home?” or “Would you mind mailing this letter for me?”)
• Putting off or avoiding physical intimacy, including no longer holding hands or giving  neck and back rubs or neglecting to just touching your loved one in passing
• Not listening with your full attention when your loved one is talking to you
• Feeling resentment when your loved one makes suggestions about something you could do differently or better
• Saying nasty little things in your head about your loved one
• Faking your actions or reactions in any way at all.

The question is: Why do we do this? Just looking at the list, it seems obvious that these are relationship busters and petty behaviors that we should have grown out of when we grew up!

Image from Sacred Journey of the Heart film

But the problem is, many of us never really grew up understanding that love does not mean control! We experienced a lot of things our parents did to us or for us, as controlling us. For the most part, this is a healthy part of growing up with parents who had reasonable rules and good personal boundaries. But if there were some unhealthy connections between love and control, we most likely have carried these into our significant relationships.  Over time, our behaviors will crop up in insidious ways to undermine the foundation of our primary love relationships as adults.

So what is the solution? It is learning to untangle the reality of love from a fear of being controlled by a loved one.

Here are a few suggestions to begin the process of “untanglement” – this leads to what I call “A Clear Heart”.  Because if your heart is cluttered with fear of being controlled by someone who is simply trying to love you, you are pushing away the very thing that can heal you. (And by the way, I love the topic of quantum entanglement in relationship! The idea is that at all times, we are with exactly the right person to mirror a greater whole that consists of two parts coming together in a “spooky dance”!)

Clear hearts- more light

I have defined 3 categories that are all involved in the process of letting go of entanglement and 4 ways to change the resulting patterns:

Cognitive: these are a series of questions to ask yourself from a Clear Heart space. I will share some examples below. This “Clear Heart” practice involves using your thoughts and emotions, largely based on things that you already know. This process can begin the journey of relationship healing.. but it only gets you so far because most of the entanglement occurs at a subconscious, unconscious AND physiological levels. Emotional love-control entanglement is deeply rooted in learned behaviors and belief systems imposed on you before you were able to make your own decisions. So the next two categories are where the real transformation happens.

Spiritual: In order to untangle love and control issues at a deeper level, I believe that engaging in a spiritual practice is very important. If you realize that you have been impacted by unhealthy beliefs around love and control, spiritual practices such as meditation and prayer are essential to evolve beyond the little self or the ego. I also practice the 5 steps of Radical Forgiveness and live a RF-based lifestyle. Radical Forgiveness is a powerful system developed by Colin Tipping that “busts” your victim stories and provides you with a step-by-step process of empowerment. (see link below for a recorded webinar during which I discuss how RF works.)

Physiological: I use two more powerful modalities that address the two places that our emotions and thoughts about things get entangled: our heart and our brain. Without learning how to consciously manage these two important organs, we get limited results with cognitive and spiritual practices. These two modalities are HeartMath tools and techniques and Brain Tek’s Behavioral Relationship Entrainment Program.  (Both of these are discussed in detail in earlier blog posts.) The good news is that both of these practices are effective, easy and convenient to learn and to use on a regular basis in the privacy of your own home. With the HeartMath practices, you learn how to harness the physiological power of your heart to decrease stress, increase a genuine connection with yourself and others and develop creative heart-based solutions to any situation.

But for me, the real “missing link” has been in the physiological neural wiring in the brain. If your brain is wired through repetition and conditioning to interpret events as dangerous, controlling or fearful, no amount of cognitive processing, spiritual practice or heart coherence activity can over-ride a deep-brain based pattern. What Brain Tek’s program does, is to free up stuck neural patterns and create more effective neural connections so that you CAN consistently and effectively put all the other techniques in to practice.

If you are interested in learning about exactly how this works and hearing about the real results I have experienced with myself and my clients, watch this webinar presentation I offered last month.

Breaking Free Webinar: Radical Forgiveness, HeartMath and Brain Tek

I am offering a 20% discount on the 6 week BRE program for the first 3 people who sign up for the program. It is easy, effective, lasting and life-changing! Contact me at: ronna@modernmastery.com

The Clear Heart Practice: Questions to Untangle love from fear

Before entering into the clear heart practice, I do a short meditation and an innovative heart-connection that I’ve developed over the years. I will be sharing this specific technique in a free webinar in February (See below for details).

Sample questions in the Clear Heart Practice:

• Am I open to receiving love or am I blocking love out of fear?
• Is my loved one really trying to control me or is he/she simply loving me and trying to help?
• What am I afraid will happen if I do what is being asked of me?
• Do I need to be right more than I desire to be loved? – a popularized phrase but very powerful in the context of the Clear Heart practice.
• What is stopping me from reaching out to my loved one?
• Am I willing to let go of fear of rejection and put this into application?
• Am I willing to own my projections and love the part of myself that is afraid of not being worthy of love? (a Key Radical Forgiveness principal).

These questions are just one way to begin to untangle old patterns and open to love from the clear heart. Join me in learning more about the integration of these practices!

Title: Creating from a Clear Heart
Date & Time: Wednesday, February 11th at 6:00pm Mountain

Attend by Phone: (audio only)
Guest pin code: 339751#
Primary dial in number: (425) 440-5100
Secondary dial in number: (619) 471-1669
Full list of dial in Numbers:
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/Local/?eventid=65380800

Event Page: (Audio with Power Point slides!)
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=65380800

Happy Heart Month!