By the time I got to my first esoteric session I was completely worn out. I had a 2yr old son that I had chosen to do attachment parenting with; I was still breastfeeding, believing that this was the best way to parent. I was married to a man that worked around the clock, leaving me to the child rearing and housework. I worked very hard to be the best housewife ‘by the book’ and took my wifely duties very seriously. I based my self-worth on how my house looked, how good dinner tasted, and how cared for in the temporal sense my family was.
It was a constant cycle of exhaustion and loneliness, one that I was to discover was of my very own making.
I sat in my car one day and could not stop crying: for the first time in my life I was ready to ask for support and not keep trying to do it on my own. I made a phone call to a suggested ‘counsellor’ and made a booking.
I came into my first Esoteric Massage (and there were many with this particular practitioner) feeling very shy and unsure of what to disclose. From the very first session this practitioner showed no judgement, only a holding of love that I had never felt before.
My common theme throughout my many sessions was on my relationship with my husband. For me it was about pointing out all the things I found hard about the relationship – things he was doing that I was finding challenging. The practitioner in her incredible way always brought it back to me and my responsibility in the relationship. Throughout the sessions I was to discover an emptiness that dwelled within which had nothing to do with my husband but everything to do with me and my commitment to true love, life and truth.
She also had an amazing way to gently guide me to where the true issue lies, and from this point helped peel back the many layers that I had placed on top.
Never once with my many complaints about my husband did she suggest I should leave the relationship, she only ever guided me to go deeper in love for myself and take responsibility for the part I played in the relationship. This was done by showing me where true responsibility begins.
There was a definite pattern in my sessions and that was one of building more love for me. My practitioner offered space for me to feel that I could love myself first and from this point I would know my next move.
I would leave the session with much to consider, which opened up a whole new way of viewing life. I started to view life from inside me first, instead of my usual outside first. Seeing that what was happening within was affecting what was happening on the outer, I started to question why I allowed certain actions from others and discovered how much I didn’t honour myself as much as I honoured other people.
Another revelation came that I was living as ‘the perfect martyr,’ making myself busy, caring for others with no time left for me. I was basing my actions on what I perceived others wanted from me instead of allowing my actions to come from me. My very worth was based on what I perceived another thought of me. By choosing to live this way I conveniently had no self-love for me and could avoid the depth of my sadness.
Once this revelation was felt, I began to see that it was I who was putting the pressure on myself to be the perfect martyr, not my husband (which I had blamed him for). I see now how I was using this pressure to make my life seem a lot harder than it was. You could say I always viewed life with the ‘grass being greener on the other side.’ Discovering the game of martyr opened up the possibility that all along it was me who was creating my so-called many issues and that it was me who could walk out of them.
With this new acceptance that it was me who held the key to my own self-created prison, I entered a major turning point in my life. Now I am continuously discovering ways to keep the doors unlocked, and if one is locked, I know the key lies within me.
By Anonymous
Further Reading:
What is a Relationship with Myself?
Dishonouring Choices, Self-Worth and Their Impact on Everyday Life
Relationship Ripples
647 Comments
Love this claiming of responsibility: we can make and walk into our own issues, and we can therefore take the steps to walk out of them and leave them behind forever, knowing that no issue is actually part of who we are.
Unless we build a true relationship with ourselves first, so that we know what is acceptable and loving and what is not, it is impossible to build this with our partners friends and family. I know for myself it can be easy to use blame as a distraction to make sure that I don’t deepen my relationship with myself, by keeping the attention on the person we want to blame.
The esoteric helps us to open the doors we have long kept closed and not wanted to know what was the other side. The esoteric helped me to find the true and whole me. We live in an illusion so strong that we cannot break out of it without support.
‘Discovering the game of martyr opened up the possibility that all along it was me who was creating my so-called many issues and that it was me who could walk out of them.’ This is a huge discovery and a very powerful one!
It’s a slippery slope when we go into martyr energy. For me, all the thoughts come in to justify why I am doing what I am doing because this happened and this person is doing this and so on and so forth. With being a martyr there’s an arrogance of thinking we know better, only seeing the outplay but not venturing deeper to look at what is really going on. Thank you Anonymous for revealing how, with support and love for ourselves, we can let go of the protection and let ourselves be and let others be.
It is so much easier to blame someone else for what is wrong in our lives and it is only when we realise that all of life is a reflection for us, will we take responsibility for making different choices. When we ponder on what our relationships are reflecting back to us about ourselves can we start to let go of our hurts, realise that we don’t actually have any issues, just a lack of communication on our part, and we can let go of the whole martyr role and get on with simply being love in every relationship. We don’t need to rescue or change anyone, they will only change if they feel inspired and it is how we live that inspires others not anything we say.
A beautiful reflection of the responsibility we all have in relationships Anonymous – particularly with ourselves. It is very humbling when things like this are exposed in us, but in that humbleness there is great space for evolution.
It’s a great comment Richard thank you, it seems that humility and responsibility go together.
Loved what you have shared Anonymous, only we have the key to unlock our hearts, and it starts by taking responsibility for all our actions, understanding that the life we have has been by our own choosing, and by making self loving choices we can start to live a life of loving care.
Martyrdom is a sure fire way for leaving things as they are, not making different choices and sitting on a truck load of festering resentment.
It’s a brilliant revelation when we realise that we are responsible for all of our choices, including all of our actions and behaviours no matter how we may try to blame another,
An inspiring blog Anonymous offering a key to live with true responsibility to observe the relationship with oneself to stop blaming others and be honest enough to see our part of various things in daily life.
“With this new acceptance that it was me who held the key to my own self-created prison, I entered a major turning point in my life. Now I am continuously discovering ways to keep the doors unlocked, and if one is locked, I know the key lies within me”.
Coming to the understanding that I alone was the builder of my “own self-created prison,” was a huge, but at the same time very welcome, wake up call. I too had blamed others for the issues and demise of my relationships but the moment I acknowledged I was the common denominator in all the relationships I began to wake up as this realisation was offering me a way to begin to understand what it was that I was bringing into them and what I was needing to heal.
This is such a great honest blog and contains much for us all to deeply consider on how we are living.
The biggest thing that stuck out was it ends the blame game and puts ALL the Responsibility back to us.
The world would benefit from people like you and I hope one day in the future you could write more and publish your name, as we all love it when there is a name and a face to the story.
However, I do understand why we have to remain anonymous on the Internet when writing such truth.
Keep on writing mrs anonymous, you are a natural and your words are heartfelt and deeply appreciated.
This is beautiful Anonymous, I love the absolute honesty here that is full of a growing and gorgeous love you are building for/with yourself. This is absolutely without a doubt the key to all of our relationships and how much we will accept from others, or, be willing to see with ourselves.
Gorgeous. A beautiful reminder that we have the keys within us to reverse every pattern that we hate. Empowerment!
Thank you for the link to acceptance. A subject much broader than we might have otherwise thought.
I love this last line – “Now I am continuously discovering ways to keep the doors unlocked, and if one is locked, I know the key lies within me.” It is beautifully honest to acknowledge that we create our own prisons, and that it is only us who can open the doors up again and step back out into the full light of truth.
That line stood out for me too, Janet. So empowering to realize there isn’t a door we can’t unlock.
Yes, so true. It is a level of responsibility we often shy away from yet it offers the greatest freedom.
These pictures of how things should be from the outside are crippling . ‘I started to view life from inside me first ‘ is a great start to understanding how we create our prison within us, and when we view things in this way, there is an opening for making changes.
Its a beautiful thing when we find we have the key in our own pocket all the time!
This is such an awesome experience to have shared. Thank you for this. So often in relationships, we look outward and blame the other person if things aren’t so smooth, but learning that we create the situations we find ourselves in is an incredibly empowering and liberating realisation to have got to.
There is never anyone but ourselves to blame, so the moment we find ourselves blaming another we should stop and feel what is truly going on, it won’t be what we think.
It’s so true Michelle, because when we believe we’re at the mercy of another then we give our power away and then we are both locked in to way of being that is not true. When we drop blame and take responsibility for the life that we live then we see our true light and others.
‘it was me who was creating my so-called many issues and that it was me who could walk out of them.’ – this is such a powerful sentence – it means we are not victims, but also we do not need to blame, shame or feel guilt for our choices, it just gives ourselves the power to make change.
“Throughout the sessions I was to discover an emptiness that dwelled within which had nothing to do with my husband but everything to do with me and my commitment to true love, life and truth.” Pure gold and the real truth of how the esoteric healing modalities heal our inner hurt and put us firmly back in the driving seat, so we can choose to travel the road of love, respect and integrity once more, cutting the blame and victimization once and for all.
What you have described here Anonymous is so common with many women and what jumped out at me was the fact that often we blame others for the things that are happening in our lives, and often without seeing our part in it.
It is wonderful to arrive at a point where we discover that the blame game ends with self-responsibility if you want to get out of that very destructive cycle and come back in from the cold back to humanity and eventually back to love again.
When we take responsibility for ourselves we have no need to play the blame game which keeps us separate from others and the connection and acceptance that we crave.
“Another revelation came that I was living as ‘the perfect martyr,’ making myself busy, caring for others with no time left for me. I was basing my actions on what I perceived others wanted from me instead of allowing my actions to come from me. My very worth was based on what I perceived another thought of me. By choosing to live this way I conveniently had no self-love for me and could avoid the depth of my sadness.” Well, Anon, you could be talking about me at this point, for I certainly recognise all that; the depth of sadness being where we miss ourselves. Thank you for exposing this.
“Discovering ……. that it was me who was creating my so called many issues and that it was me who could walk out of them.” These words are a game changer for so many who feel stuck in their ways.
Building more love for ourselves is essential. We then find we have more love and understanding for others too.
Very awesome! It’s not easy seeing we create our own prisons but once we accept this we can start to deepen our love for ourselves.
What a revealing and healing blog Anonymous, and also, what a super practitioner you have there too. Yes, when we are prepared to see ourselves in the situation, we see our part, and in this also the direction we are to take coming into sight. What we do with this sight or awareness is all part of one’s personal journey of living through understanding.
When we blame others or the world around us for how things are we just go round and round in circles. When we take responsibility and look at what or how we are being in any situation we stop the merry-go-round and can decide if we want to continue or to get off we have choice.
Dear Anonymous, I love the simplicity of what you share and honesty, We ( I included) often locate the source of relationship problems outside ourselves. Your practitioner guided you to see truth and reflect on your own relationship with self. Your openness to receive their wise counsel seeds our own healing.
“I could love myself first and from this point I would know my next move” – this feels very lovely. Taking back responsibility and acknowledging it as our power/right.
It is too easy to blame others for our woes but if we instead take the responsibility for all our choices life has a magical way of sorting itself out because we are exactly where we are in life because of those choices.
When I feel tension in my body it is for me to deal with it and not to ever blame or try to control another for how I am feeling. That said, what I am discovering is when I express what I am feeling the tension disappears and I am left at ease with myself to further deepen the love to self.
We can be so hard on ourselves but we are only able to do that when we have lost that connection with our inner most. In recovering that we are blessed with the practitioners and the modalities of Universal Medicine that do truly bring the support to reconnect with that inner essence once again. And once we do make that reconnection everything starts to flow in a different direction, a flow of true love and in connection with the all, with God, a way of life we are designed for to live.
Wow, Anonymous, how closely I relate to your story here. I spent so much of my life living just as you have described. After some years of Esoteric Healing sessions after my husband passed over, and gradually coming to live my best to The Way of the Livingness, I eventually came to a similar conclusion. I have since completely let go of that pattern of blaming the other for my position in life and realized just how much I had permitted the situation to evolve, and how much I had supported my own misery. And boy, I really knew how to act the martyr, it is such an awful position to put oneself in.
“Now I am continuously discovering ways to keep the doors unlocked, and if one is locked, I know the key lies within me.” . . . this is a beautiful line Anon, one that we can all take with us.
Taking responsibility for our actions and reactions is very liberating and empowering.
It never works to look at and blame the other. If we react then it is always about us no matter what the other does or not do.
Sometimes we need to admit that we have been married to our to do lists, not our partner. Divorce from this senseless way of measuring our worth and we will find true love and relationship.
When we make more room for loving and caring for ourselves, we make more room for others to join us.
Quite an insight, that seems paradoxical, Liane. By more focus on ourselves by applying self-care, we indeed are able to connect more to people. Not egocentric at all.