Rule Rebellion: “I have to be in control.”

My dad never drove anywhere without a beer between his legs. I grew up in the back woods of Pennsylvania, where most roads were windy, hilly, and full of pot holes from the coal trucks. Often, the edge of the roads on the top of the hills would give way to the woods below and guardrails were sparse.  I remember feeling so grateful when we would come upon a rail that lasted a good stretch because I could finally breathe.

To a 5 year old, who was holding her breath, it seemed like we were driving along a coast of cliffs and at any moment we could drive right off the edge.

I remember feeling like I was going die every time I got in the car with my dad. Sure enough, whoever called shotgun would have to sit kind of sideways so their leg didn’t get too cold from the six pack.

It went…

1. Dad takes his eyes off the road, fumble around next to your legs to find the beer.
2. Wrangle it off the plastic ring, kush=-ka, pull back the tab.
3. Dad tilts head towards the roof of the car and downs the beer. Taking his eyes off the road for at least 2 minutes at a time.
4. Crushes can and asks you to roll down your window.
5. Whips beer past your head, into the woods.
6. Repeat step 1 five more times.
7. Stops at The Brass Rail drive through for another 6 pack.

Panic isn’t the right work. Terrified is better.

I was desperate to make it stop. Keep us safe. Make sure we didn’t die that day.

Someone needed to come to the rescue.

I never called shotgun. I always sat right behind my dad, directly lined up with his left ear. That’s the best view I had of the road from my pretend driver’s seat.

I made sure nothing was on the floor in front of me, preventing me from using my imaginary brake and gas pedals.

To others, it looked like I was playing. But I knew the truth. I knew I actually controlled the car with my magic powers.

Sometimes my steering wheel got stuck. When I would turn it to the right to miss the other cars, it wouldn’t go right away. But it always did.

And sometimes the brakes went out. But they always magically fixed themselves just in a Knick of time.

I got a lot of satisfaction out of believing I was controlling that car. In my mind, I saved the day, every day.

Naturally, I assumed I controlled the universe.

So, I got busy trying other ways to control my dad’s drinking.

Sometimes, I’d gather up all the beer cans and pile them up in a very tall pyramid at the bottom of the steps. I imagined my dad would come down the stairs in the morning and be mortified by the reality of how much he drank the night before.

Or, sometimes, I would find his liquor. He liked to hide it in the toilet tank. I’d pull it out, dump it out in the bathroom sink and put the empty bottle back where I found it. I thought he would see it had been emptied, know someone was onto him and be shamed into quitting.

Some days, it seemed to work and he would drink less. Some days, it didn’t. And those were the days I though he loved alcohol more than he loved me.

Those are the days I tried harder.

Controlling things took away all the anxiety I had from not knowing what was happening one minute to the next. It’s like I had a crystal ball and I could predict the future chaos I wanted to help us all avoid.

I believed I knew the best way to handle things.  So, I’d offer advice to others in the family about how they should be thinking, feeling, and behaving around my dad’s addiction.

Then, I’d get resentful when they didn’t take my advice.

There was a price though.

I alienated people. No one wants to be told what to do, how to thing, feel or behave.

It caused resentment, in me and in others. I got so angry when they didn’t take my advice.

It caused more anxiety.  Life gets complicated when you’re trying to control your life and everyone else’s.

It caused exhaustion. I was freaking tired.

Something had to change. I had spent a lifetime perfecting The Controller Personality Pattern (it’s one of the 8 I teach inside my program LYFE School which is a systematic approach to healing all of this behavior).

At the root of control is fear.

What was I afraid of?

Underneath all of it, I was afraid I couldn’t trust anyone or anything outside of myself.

And the path to learning how to rebuild and develop trust was a long one.

 

I found several keys to unlocking the door to trust.

Of course, if you want to resolve this relationship issue (that’s what I help people do) send me a private message over at www.LoveCochHeidi.Com

But for now, let me give you 1 life changing Key..

You need to get your of your head and into your body.

While it’s true that you have a built in bullshit detector and amazing intuition, it has been polluted by the scrutiny and cynicism swirling in your head.

I call it the Psycho-logical Shredder. So, you may think you have been listening to your gut. But I promise you, it’s your head. So, find a way to get into your body.

For me, that was conscious dance. There are several modalities. I started with 5 Rhythms. Then I explored Chakra Dance and Journey Dance.

The first time I walked into a conscious dance class, I thought surely I was in the wrong place! I had a million thoughts running through my mind. I didn’t want to look like an idiot!

I had no idea what the Hell I was doing!

“Am I doing this right?”

“Are they looking at me?”

Total loss of control.

The only thing to do in conscious dance is to LET GO.

You learn to trust your body and listen to it. You learn to get out of your head and into your heart space.

Yes. All the things that we wanted to avoid so long ago.

RELEASE.. LET GO. BE.

You actually start by learning how to trust the ground to hold you up. Eventually you learn to listen to your higher Self.

I’ve been taking and teaching this modality for years now, and each time I dance, I evolve into another version of me, listening more to my inner self and uploading the divine wisdom Within.

For me, I believe there is a path that incorporates practical, tangible things we can DO that will get us closer to where we want to be in our lives.

If you join us at one of our Within retreats, you will learn these other keys.

Maybe for you, dance seems too much of a stretch. You’re not a dancer or you feel too self conscious.

I get it! I did too. That’s why I kept going back.

But let me give you another Key. Have you ever had someone micromanage you? How did you feel about that?

I know the people you want to control come from a place of love. You want what’s absolutely best for the people in your life. But here’s the truth…

Figuring it out and doing it for others isn’t the most loving thing you can do for them.

The most loving thing you can do for someone is to give them the chance to build their own self esteem and resiliency by allowing them to figure it out.

The next time you’re tempted to tell someone what to do, how to think, or how to feel, stop yourself. The next time someone asks you what they should do, say, “I don’t know.” Even though YOU might!

Then and ask the person, “What do YOU think you should do?”

Then just listen. Wait patiently. It may take time for the answers to arise, especially if they’re used to you figuring it all out.

And now I ask you, out of these Keys, what do YOU think YOU should do?

What’s going to challenge you the most and tale you outside of your comfort zone?

To your growth!

Know your Self

So you can BE Your Self

So you can Love Your Self.

Heidi

 

 

Shelly was thrilled. She bounded into my office and threw herself into the overstuffed leather chair and exclaimed, “Well, I’ve either met the love of my life or the one who’s going to propel me into the abyss.”

“You’ve met someone! Tell me about him!”

“He’s perfect. He’s a single dad who raised his 2 daughters. He’s built an amazing real estate business and he likes me. A lot.” Shelly starts wringing her hands and biting her lip.

“But..” I offer.

“Well, obviously he’s either a psycho, waiting to unveil his flavor of crazy or he’s going to decide he hates me.”

“And these are the only two choices?” I furrow,

“Obviously.” She emphatically retorts.

Shelly is like most of the clients I help. And there are two things going on here. The first is her black and white, all or nothing thinking.

And the second is today’s rule In our Rebellion: The other shoe will drop.

Shelly wants to protect herself from the bad thing that’s invariably going to happen.

And this isn’t new to her.

Shelley’s an expert at being let down.

“One time”, she shared in a coaching session, “I was about 20 years old. I was sitting on the patio with my brother smoking a cigarette and drinking iced tea. It was a beautiful summer day and the breeze was just right. The house was clean, and my dad was cutting the grass. My brother looked over at me and said, “Wow. This is almost kind of normal. I mean, Dad’s doing dad things. We have everything we need.” He took a drag of his Marlboro.

“I know. It’s almost kind of eerie.” I cringed.

“Don’t worry he said, “He’ll likely cut his foot off after a bit.”

It’s not that our dad wasn’t responsible in some ways. He was. It’s just that, after 5 PM he was usually getting drunk.

So every happy memory was usually tainted after the 8pm.

Shelly is an ACOA an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

And that experience has gifted her with some amazing personality traits such as resilience. But it also left her with some other unconscious behavior patterns I refer to as the Rules.

The rule shelly is following here is, “Don’t get too comfortable, don’t get too excited. stay alert, the other shoe will drop.”

And the thing is, she’s not wrong.

In life, the tide goes in and the tide goes out.

We also experience the same rhythms as the seasons.

And we may be living in a summer when things are “hot and wonderful” but in our mind, we’re preparing for the winter. Or worse, we’re living in a winter.

In today’s video, we explore how to be in the season you’re in and lessen your anxiety.

For more help, schedule a complimentary consultation.

In the meantime..

Know Your Self

So you can BE Your self

So you can Love Your Self.

Heidi

When You Can’t Show Weakness.

I think I was born highly sensitive. I had an in exorbitant amount of shame for things I didn’t even do.

Someone could look at me with a disapproving look and it would travel through my blood stream into my heart then make its way up to become a lump in my throat waiting to burst out into tears.

I cried a lot and I cried all of the time.

Many of my clients talk about feeling like this once upon a time. And many of them had reason to cry.

I work with many people who come from difficult backgrounds and today I’m going to share a story that will meld many stories together.

Today, we’re going to create a fictional client named “Beth”.

Beth had a parent who was annoyed, irritated and overwhelmed by her crying. She got the sense of this because she was told over and over in one way or another that she was too sensitive.

Her mom would scream at her “I didn’t hurt you!” Stop crying.”

At her worst, her mom would say, “Stop being a pussy.”

Eventually, she learned to cry in her bedroom, alone, where the tears became a mixture of rage and sadness. She would contemplate how evil her mother was and how unjustly she had been treated.

That anger would always transform into shame when she’d realize her mom was right.  She was the problem. She was too sensitive. She was a pussy.

Can you imagine being told not to cry by the one who’s inflicting the pain? She was confused.

Until one day, she got clarity.

She was about 11 or 12 years old and lying across the bed while being beaten.

It was then that something snapped.

Through coaching, she remembered making a decision that day that no matter what, she wasn’t going to cry.

She equated crying with cracking. And she wasn’t going to crack no matter what.

Her mom noticed, pointed it out and beat her harder. But she never cried.

Those were the worst welts she ever had. Yet at the same time, she told me how proud she was.

Beth said, “ I could really take a beating.”

FUCK HER! She thought. And anyone else who thought they could win by getting an ounce of her sorrow or pain.”

A coping mechanism was born. And it was a brilliant strategy! As a child, it helped her survive. She was able to resist being impacted by her mother’s words or actions.

However, it was a terrible strategy to go on and live the rest of her life.

She didn’t know it then, but that decision was kryptonite to her superpower. Her ability to FEEL was her strength. Her sensitivity was her superpower.

But Beth came to believe it was a weakness. And so she spent many years trying to anesthetize her feelings.

The unconscious dysfunctional family RULE Beth was following was: Don’t show weakness.

When she began coaching, here’s a partial list of things she didn’t know how to say:

• You hurt me
• I don’t want that
• This is too much for me
• I’m overwhelmed
• That makes me feel (fill in the black)
• I don’t like that
• I don’t want you to (fill in the blank)
• It bothers me when (fill in the blank)
• I feel hopeless
• I can’t do this
• I don’t want to do this
• I’m stuck
• This is too much
• I need help

And so many more!

Don’t get me wrong, it also had its rewards or else she wouldn’t have done it for so long.

People came to see her as The Rock. She was the one everyone else came to with their problems.

No one saw her as struggling or needing anything or anyone. She looked like she had life on lock.

But she didn’t.

And it’s not that she wasn’t still feeling, it’s that when she felt, she drank, or took an Ativan or ate an Oreo, or bought a purse.

And sometimes, she plotted her revenge and became passive aggressive. Expecting people to mind read that they hurt her and finding ways to let them know without directly telling them.

She’s simply disappear, go ghost and expect them to wonder what happened to her. Best case scenario, they’d hunt her down to prove they cared.

The price of that pretending became too much when she felt like an island, alone. She was so tired of pretending to be fine and struggling behind the scenes.

When she had lost her True Self and realized it was time to remember who she was.  Through coaching, she realized, as she put it, she was a Pussy. And that was a very good thing!

Do you know what a pussy really is? Holy Hell she’s powerful. Of course that’s a talk for another time. But she’s the pleasure center, the creative hub of all creation.  

She needed to learn the secret to breaking the rule she’d been following for so long.

And finding her way back to her sensitivity has been a spiritual practice. Not only did she have to learn how to feel her feelings without thinking they were going to kill her, but she had to actually IDENTIFY what she was feeling.

That’s the secret to breaking the rule: learning to identify and feel your feelings.

It’s not brilliant or an earth shattering revelation, but it’s one of the most difficult things you’ll do.

It’s a radical commitment to Self discovery, like getting to know you all over again.

Many of my clients tell me that they feel seen for the first time in my presence. I believe that. Because of my journey to witness myself, I can see all of us.

For this week, commit to witnessing yourself. Keep a feelings journal.

Ask yourself: “what am I feeling?”

Notice how many times you answer with, “I THINK I feel.”

The awareness you cultivate into how much you THINK versus FEEL with be a good start.

Here’s a tip as you practice this week. Notice where you’re feeling comes from. If you notice what you ask “How am I feeling?” a sensation comes from your head, that is not you deepest place of feeling.

Feeling comes from the neck down.  

Later in the rules we will learn about trusting your intuition which is actually what I’m speaking of.

But for now, just see if you can locate and identify some feelings in your body and notice how much you think versus feel. Please leave me a comment and tell me what you discover.

Until the next rule,

Know Your Self

So you can Be Your Self

So you can Love Your Self.

Heidi

 

 

 

What’s the real answer to the question, “Why don’t you have what you really want?”

If you’re sleeping, you’ll place all the blame on others. It’s their entire fault. They didn’t give you what you needed, they don’t support you, they’re so negative, they don’t believe in you. They mistreated you. You can’t get past it. They’re responsible.

If you’re waking up, you’ll solely blame yourself. Everyone else did the best they could. It wasn’t that bad. It could have been worse. The past bears no impact. You’ll assume all the responsibility. You’ll blame your excuses for your current situation; you’ll beat yourself up and promise to do better.

If you’re awakened, you’ll do neither and both. You’ll find the Middle Way; see things as they are and deal within the reality, assigning accountability. It’s true that you did not always crate your difficult path. It’s true that the past has a significant impact on your current situation. Yet, you assume 100% responsibility for your healing.

And that’s where we are. Now, we begin the journey to enlightenment through radical insight into yourself and others.

• Why do you do what you do even though you know better?
• Why do you self-sabotage?
• Why do you get into hurtful, one sided relationships?
• Why do you constantly feel unsupported?
• Why do you feel abandoned or rejected by the people who were supposed to love you?
• Why do good things happen to everyone else, while a grey cloud seems to follow you around?
• When is it finally your turn to have others care for and love you they way you love them?

When you decide it’s not up to others.

You realize that your healing, success and happiness are independent of others behaviors, choices, thoughts and feelings.

Likely, you’ve believed you needed them to heal or change, to “see you” or to “get it” for you to be better.

But that’s a lie. It’s an old Unwritten RULE you’ve been following.

If you’ve come from a difficult background, or a dysfunctional, addicted, narcissistic, absent, rejecting or abandoning “family” dynamic, you likely follow A LOT of unwritten Rules that have been keeping you stuck, struggling, sad or sinking.

My intention is to awaken you to these unconscious rules.

One rule at a time, shedding light through perspective, insight and understanding, you’ll rebel against them. Choosing instead NEW Rules, which I call The Vows, enabling and equipping you to have the life you truly desire and deserve.

Rule #1.

Be lovable.

When I was little, I couldn’t figure out how to make people love me the way I wanted to be loved.

I wanted to be loved all the time. Not sometimes.

I ping ponged between feeling loved and hated. When I was loved, I was hugged, kissed, cuddled.

When I was hated, I was beaten and berated. My spirit crushed and annihilated.

I was constantly confused. So, I decided that to get people to love me more consistently, you have to be who they need or want you to be. A chameleon is born.

In short, you need to BE LOVABE.

Heidi, what’s wrong with being lovable?

Nothing’s wrong with the BEING, it’s in the DOING.

If I need to BE lovable, in this sense, then you need to act in ways that warrant one to love you.

There’s a problem with this.

You can try and BE lovable, and they still won’t love you.

So, maybe you decide to try harder. You try and are perfect, never make a mistake. Never do or say anything to turn anyone off or give them a reason to dislike you.

Human love is conditional. That’s the truth, whether we want to admit it or not.

And either we’re holding someone hostage to our conditions of feeling loved or we’re hustling to meet theirs.

You cannot scramble enough to make a hateful person love you.

You cannot hustle enough to make a withholding person give to you.

You cannot BE enough to make someone love themselves enough to love you the way you deserve to be loved.

The way people love themselves is a mirror to the way they’re able to love you.

And the way you love yourself is a direct reflection of how much you need others to love you.

And here’s the thing. If you need to BE lovable, the presupposition is you’re NOT.

You’re beginning the conversation of love with a deficit.

When you decide to love you, you don’t need them to love you. You allow others to be incapable of loving you without making it about you.

Their inability to love you has nothing to do with you.

Think about Jesus for a minute. I’m definitely not religious. But Jesus is a case study in human love.

Why was Jesus was so able to love everyone the way he did?

I think it’s because he was so full of himSelf. Not in the egocentric way. But in the capital S Self way. His True Self.

He knew WHO he was. He didn’t need anyone else to believe. Whether they did or not was on them. He didn’t take it personally. He remained who he knew he was and moved along.

Hard to do when you believe you NEED the person who is rejecting or abandoning you to love you.

But hear me. Just the way that an unbeliever cannot receive the miracle, so can that person not see or receive your gifts.

And you are a GIFT to this world.

How do we begin to release the desire for approval and love from those who cannot give it to us?

We begin to learn how to love ourselves.

And not in the way you’re most accustomed to. I’m not talking about self care here.

The truth is, there aren’t enough bath bombs in the world to make up for a deep seeded feeling of inadequacy.

I’m talking about a proven, step by step Self Love System and that’s exactly what I offer in LYFE School.

LYFE stands for Love Yourself First Empowerment. Think of it like everything you wished had been taught and instilled in you as a child.

I believe this is the solution to all of your relationship and self sabotage issues.

I know because I was my first student before I took hundred more through the process.

If you’d like to learn more about LYFE School, visit my site at www.LoveCoachHeidi.com

Until the next Rule,

Know YourSelf. Be YourSelf. Love YourSelf.

Heidi