This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
Question from Fiona in Oceanside
From Laura in Del Mar
Laura: I’m in a really great relationship with a man now, and things are going really well. But I keep feeling afraid something will go wrong, and he will end up leaving. I’m concerned that because of that I’ll try to control things and that will actually cause him to leave. Any advice?
Jane: Many people in relationships believe their happiness and well-being depend on having that special person to fulfill their lives. They have this internal image of what he or she will look like and be like. And they have this belief that everything will be alright when they have this person. But this is not where the source of well-being is, and any form of trying to make something outside of yourself the source of anything that really matters to you is eventually doomed to fail.
So let’s look at what it is you really want. Perhaps it is love, emotional nourishment, connection, security… The source of those things is not specific people. If you don’t have those in your life it is because you don’t have the emotional channels open to receive them. Limiting decisions, such as you are not loved, you are not safe, you need a man to take care of you, you are not valuable, and so on, will cause you to have the channels closed to receiving love, a sense of your value, feeling safe in the world, etc.
The universe is filled with resources, but they may not come in the form or direction you expect them to come in or from. When you are receiving what really matters to you, you are receiving it from the universe, through some vehicle, such as a particular person in your life. The source is the universe (or Life, the Divine, or however you conceive of it).
When you try to make it a specific person, you are putting huge weight and pressure on that person, and basically end up trying to control them. This may give you a sense of panic, because the truth is you can’t control that person. And you also can’t control the universe. What you can control is finding out what channels in you are closed that are causing you not to receive what really matters to you, and finding a way to open them up. This means clearing the limiting decisions that are closing the channels. One method for doing that is the NLP TimeLine process.
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
Question from Fiona in Oceanside
Fiona: I’m working on forgiving my husband for being emotionally abusive to me. I’m having difficulty doing that.
Jane: The need for forgiving someone comes from having first felt emotions such as anger, hatred or vengefulness toward him. It’s based on the idea that he has wronged you. Forgiveness implies that even though he has wronged you, you’re going to let go of these negative feelings and be either neutral or loving instead.
In this instance, you are still in the same situation with your husband, so the same feelings keep getting brought up in you toward him, which is why you can’t forgive him.
The painful feelings you are feeling as a result of your husband’s way of relating to you are caused by one or more limiting decisions* in you. The limiting decisions* could be something like you are not valuable, or you don’t deserve to be respected, or men are more powerful or more valuable than women, and so on. It is not your husband who you are angry at. It is what he symbolizes that elicits the intense emotional responses in you. And you are most likely symbolizing for him the intense emotions he is reacting to you out of.
Once you have dealt with the limiting decisions* at the bottom of the emotions he brings up in you, you will find there is nothing to forgive. And your relationship with him will probably either change, or you will find no reason to stay in it, as you will no longer be trying to heal the issues in you by getting him to change.
* Limiting decisions are unconscious decisions made before the age of 6 or 7 that are always some form of life is not meant to work and/or there is something inherently wrong with you.
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
(This was from Fellow Healer in New York who made this comment in the context of his description of an ex-girlfriend’s treatment of him, and also the way he observes people, including new age-type people, acting toward others.)
Fellow Healer: “… ACIM says the only sane response to our brother, even when they act out, is to love him. No holy book says lecture, scold, and runaway. No heart would say that either…. True self needs love too. It’s all one. When we love all in the trinity, then all flows. Now is the time to return to love. Love. Just love. Love is the secret!!!”
Jane: Yes, of course, the answer always comes down to love. It’s certainly an important place to focus our attention, and it would be great if everyone could just decide on love and be there. But getting to love is an evolutionary process (both on a personal, individual level, as well as on a human evolutionary level). The path to love isn’t always obvious or straightforward. Many things people think they do out of love are not really about love.
For instance, in your earlier email about you being “loyal” to the first girlfriend, therefore staying with that relationship (even though you knew it wasn’t right for you), and saying “no” to the second girlfriend (who you really wanted to be with) — it appears you felt you were doing this out of love or kindness to the first girlfriend. But since it was not in truth, it was not in Divine order. And it was not following enlightened self-interest. And enlightened self-interest is an extremely necessary ingredient in order to be moving toward love. (But that’s another whole subject altogether.) So it’s not necessarily that obvious or straightforward. There are a lot of elements potentially involved.
The way to solve human hurt is to move toward clarity about what is really happening in reality. Therefore there’s no getting around the fact that in order to eliminate your emotional pain, your personal transformation is required. There is no short cut that will have a lasting result.
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
This is a question from Molly, from San Diego, CA.
Molly: I have a very good friend. She has a habit of laughing all the time. It gets on my nerves because it is so constant and it is inappropriate many times. If something in my life happens that is very unpleasant, let’s say, she will laugh. Sometimes I simply say, “Suzi, that’s not funny.” Others have told me it is irritating to them, also. Because of this “laughing at inappropriate” times I find I can’t be around her very much which is too bad because we have fun. It’s not that she is unaware of it, because I do call it to her attention when I can’t stand it anymore. Is there anything else I can do other than have less time around her?
Jane: The first thing for you is to take responsibility for the fact that you are feeling emotionally triggered by her laughing — i.e. you’re having a large emotional response that feels outside your control. When people have a triggered emotional response it generally means that some area of pain that they already have, caused by a limiting decision*, has been activated by what has just happened. People then project that pain onto whatever has activated it, as if that person or situation is the source of their pain rather than the limiting decision* (a negative decision about yourself made in early childhood). It is important for you to get to what the limiting decision* is, because as long as you are projecting your pain onto her, you can’t relate objectively to her about this issue. Observe what the feelings are that come up in you when she does this. Maybe you feel not taken seriously, or not listened to, or not respected …. These are limiting decisions*. When people make a limiting decision* the unconscious mind becomes invested in proving that it is true, and so is always looking for excuses that will prove this. It will help if you recognize that those feelings are already in you, and that your response to her is your unconscious mind trying to prove that your limiting decision is true.
Or another approach is to reveal to her how you are responding, with the idea of exploring what is going on emotionally for both of you. That depends on how open both of you are to exploring your emotional issues and how vulnerable you want to be with each other.
Know that her response of laughing at inappropriate times is an emotional defense system (not who she is as a person), which is covering over deeper emotions that she hasn’t been dealing with. It could be she laughs when she feels nervous, as many people do. Or she may laugh when something feels too painful to her. Your emotional response to her may be the catalyst she needs to start addressing this, if the relationship between you is important enough to both of you, to allow this emotional discomfort to push both of you toward your own transformation. The question then becomes, what is most important to you in this relationship — feeling good in the moment with her (which has run up against a snag), or approaching it from the perspective of personal growth, which could lead to a deeper more satisfying relationship.
* For a more in-depth explanation of limiting decisions, click here.
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
This is Fellow Healer’s response to the previous Ask Jane: “Who is Hurting Who?” To read that Ask Jane, click here.
Fellow Healer: Sometimes all this “It’s all in the head of the hurting one” thing is missing something. And that is people can do mean hurtful things, and it’s ok when you’re on the receiving end of this to hurt! It’s human too. Hurt tells us something. It tells an abused spouse, that there is something wrong that needs addressing. We don’t want to teach people not to feel! It’s just feel, accept, and then shift to a higher state when you’re ready…. accept and create, yes? Life is meant to work, and what do people do when it doesn’t, when real stuff is happening, and there is hurt?
Yes pain, beliefs, limiting decisions etc. can skew our perception and attract what we don’t want. On the other hand, God gave us a very good emotional system to discern quickly when someone is treating us poorly, to feel it, and adjust. This is key. For there is only one of us here anyway, so how we treat each other is imperative…. peace, love, and kindness is so healing.
Jane: Yes our feelings do give us very important information, and feeling your pain lets you know something is wrong, and motivates you to do something about it. But how you interpret the meaning of your feelings is vitally important, as it affects what you are motivated to do about it. The framework you are in determines whether you end up making the pain worse; or are just getting relief for the moment; or are removing yourself from the pain in one form, only to find yourself in the same kind of pain in another form; or whether you are actually getting to the root of the problem in order to really solve the issue.
Fellow Healer: If we are to connect, be real, and get along, there needs to be a better way. For No one has to put up with anyone’s BS any more. We need to feel and see when people are BS, and move on. And feel when someone is genuine, wants to engage, and go with that. This is my lesson, and probably due to my limiting decision of not being good enough, I tolerated peoples poor behavior toward me for a long time… my EI awareness has helped me see it now and change. Be the change I want to receive, be the change I want to give.
Jane: If you have tolerated people’s poor behavior toward you because of feeling not good enough, the solution is not about learning how to stand up to them or about judging their behavior; it is addressing your feelings of being not good enough. That is an internal process, not an external process. Their behavior becomes unimportant when you are dealing with what is being triggered in you. But it is everything when you are not dealing with it. When you are not dealing with your own issues, other people are defining your reality, and you are living in reaction to them, rather than from your own center. If you were coming from your own center, of course you wouldn’t be putting yourself in harm’s way. You would automatically be making different choices in your life, you would be relating to people differently, and you would be perceiving people differently. Your world would cease to be defined by your limiting decisions*.
*For a definition of limiting decisions, click here.
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
This is a continuation of a dialog with Fellow Healer in New York, from an email/article he sent that Jane has been responding to as a mini series.
Fellow Healer expounded in a number of different ways about new age thinking and platitudes excusing or justifying unloving behavior. One example was his ex-girlfriend Katie’s response to his reaching out to her: “It was an intense preaching with angry undertones that I had no idea where it was coming from. No matter how you put a nice new age twist on it, or try turning the responsibility on me, her behavior toward me is plain ole strange. No matter how enlightened we get, our behavior can and will hurt others.”
“It’s kind of like having a ‘bad’ boss or a parent who may have hit you in your past. Something inside knows this is wrong. Yet you may have no ideas why the other is acting this way. All the new age platitudes do no good. The best thing that can happen is to feel and then from the feelings decide, ‘I can’t change them, but I will never treat someone the way that person treated me.’”
Jane: You experience Katie as being hurtful to you. But who is hurting who is extremely subjective. It appears Katie was feeling attacked on some level by you, or she wouldn’t have had such an angry response. People basically don’t attack other people unless they are feeling attacked. And people decide whether they are being attacked from within an extremely subjective internal experience. People’s experience of reality is very malleable and subjective, and greatly influenced and distorted by the limiting decisions they made. If you try to make sense of reality by judging the behavior of other people, you’ll find the ground you are standing on to be very shaky and unstable.
The issue here is the question: “What is the source of our pain and fear? Does it come from the external world around us, or our internal world?” I think the gist of what you keep saying, in various forms, is focused on proving that it comes from the external world. It comes from Katie, from invulnerable Katrina response team members, it comes from our unloving parents in our childhood, and so on.
What I am holding in place is that “Life is meant to work” — a fundamental perspective taught in A Course in Miracles, the Abraham-Hicks work, as well as other spiritual practices. I believe it to be the paradigm shift humanity is being pushed toward at this time. From that perspective I think what you’re grappling with has to do with the way you perceive the world. If you’re perceiving the world in a way that’s not working, there has got to be a limiting decision* in there. And it’s permeating your life, including your intimate relationships. It affects the experiences that you focus on in your life, as if this is the way the world is. And so you’re fighting it as if it’s these people or these ideas out there that are forming a dysfunctional world. But your experience originates from inside of you. It’s an unhealed pattern in you. And this perception that the external world is the cause of our pain is shared by, perhaps, most other people in the world, which is what is holding the old paradigm in place.
* For a description of limiting decisions, click here.
Transcript Excerpt of Jane’s Teachings
during Lita’s NLP Timeline Session 9-24-09
(Client’s name is changed to protect her privacy.)
“You’re talking as though your triggered response is a reality response. That’s what people do. But I want to give you some clarity about that. It’s not about your ex-boyfriend being self-centered. It’s not about some outrageous thing occurring. It’s not about you standing up for your rights. It’s probably more about that you give and give and give for a particular purpose to get a certain thing back. And you think it’s going to work. And when it doesn’t work, you’re pissed. So you’re really pissed, not because he’s a horrible person. You’re pissed because there is something you do that is not in your best interest. You do it for a particular result you think you’re going to get back. And you’re pissed because you didn’t get it back. But you shouldn’t have been doing it in the first place. You did it for the wrong reason. And that’s the reason you’re pissed, not because he’s being rude. So let him be rude. It doesn’t matter, if it’s not triggering you. But it is triggering you. So that’s valuable information for you.
If you’re doing something that is not within your own enlightened self-interest, which is what you were doing, then you are out of Divine flow, because you’re not living from truth. You’re living from the control of the alternative self, which gets formed when you make limiting decisions*. That by definition, puts you out of Divine Order, or Divine truth. Then things keep on compounding and going along a path that has nothing to do with truth.
This is just the way the human psyche works. People are manipulating each other all of the time on subtle levels. It’s not on a level that people usually notice or see. So wherever there’s a limiting decision*, there’s a defense system defending the person against feeling the pain of the limiting decision*. This means there are certain kinds of behaviors people do to keep others away from the limiting decision*, which by definition is controlling other people. And people are doing it all over the place.”
* For an explanation of limiting decisions, click here.
(To several participants) “Often what happens when there is some kind of conflicted interaction between people and if you’re triggered, you generally feel as though you’re a small child and there is this big adult that has all of the power attacking you. That’s what usually happens. When a person is triggered like that, they feel, as in your case, justified in responding as strongly as they can to defend themselves. And that’s what you’re doing. So you’re feeling like a child being attacked. You’re wanting to defend yourself because you’re feeling powerless. The only reason someone comes out so strongly is because they’re feeling powerless. And then if the other person is triggered, they also feel like a small child being attacked. And so what we have is back and forth child-parent, child-parent. The person feeling like a child then attacks in order to feel they’re not powerless. So you’re seeing her as the big powerful parent, and you as the small, weak child, which obviously is not really true.”
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
Fellow Healer in New York is questioning Jane’s response to Linda, in which Jane said it appears that Linda gets attracted to men who are unavailable. Fellow Healer’s question is in response to the last “Ask Jane” Q & A about Linda in San Diego’s Question “Why do I Keep Contacting my Ex-boyfriend?”
For the original Ask Jane Q & A from Linda, click here.
Fellow Healer: I know many people who are available in some situations and with some people and not others. Boundaries, likes, dislikes, who knows? Is someone 100% one or the other? I have been told by people in my life that they see me as unavailable and others see me as quite available. Maybe I was unavailable to just that person and for good reason!
Fellow Healer then relayed (in the context of an article he wrote) an experience where a woman (he’s calling Katie) contacted him from a dating service, but he had already started dating another woman (Lea). He went out with Katie just as friends, and felt more drawn to her than with Lea, the woman he was dating. But out of loyalty, he stayed with Lea. The relationship eventually didn’t work out. He kept up his friendship with Katie and when he wanted it to go deeper, and became open, vulnerable and available to her, she dropped out of the relationship.
Jane: The issue of whether you are or you aren’t really available is only significant in the context of whether or not your relationships are working well for you. If they aren’t, this could be a part of what’s not working well. Limiting decisions*, and the patterns resulting from them, can be very particular to the individual person; and what is apparent on the surface, may not ultimately be what the pivotal limiting decision* turns out to be. The limiting decisions* are generally covered over by an emotional defense system, meant to avoid the pain of the limiting decision*. The emotional defense system is the dysfunctional pattern that people get into. The pattern for you could, for instance, be that you are available when the woman is not, and you are not available when they are. And the underlying limiting decision* holding that in place could be something about fear of abandonment, resulting in avoiding relationships in which both of you are actually available for a committed intimate relationship, so that you never have to feel the pain of being left. (This is strictly a guess.) There always is a pattern in there if something isn’t working well, but it’s not always so easy to ferret out what it is.
Fellow Healer: I did consequently try some email exchange with Katie to understand her side. In response, I got an email lecture on my diet and the need to go within to heal. It was an intense preaching with angry undertones that I had no idea where it was coming from. No matter how you put a nice new age twist on it, or try turning the responsibility on me, her behavior toward me is plain ole strange. No matter how enlightened we get, our behavior can and will hurt others.”
Jane: From what you described, Katie is clearly functioning from an emotionally defended place, no matter what terminology it is couched in. But if there wasn’t an unhealed pattern in you in relation to her, and limiting decisions* holding that pattern in place, you would not have been in the pain you ended up being in, and the whole scenario with her wouldn’t have unfolded in the way it did. The pain you are feeling is the pain of the limiting decisions in you. All Katie did was trigger the pain that was already there, that comes to the surface when someone triggers it.
* For a description of “limiting decisions,” click here.
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which you are invited to send questions of concern to you to Jane.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
Dialog with a Fellow Healer in New York
About the Relationship Healing Process
This is in response to the last “Ask Jane” Q & A about Linda in San Diego’s Question “Why do I Keep Contacting my Ex-boyfriend?” Click here for the original Q & A with Linda.
Fellow Healer: I wonder, did Linda give enough information to conclude what you did about her Ex-boyfriend being unavailable? Maybe it’s just her mental map that sees this man as unavailable. We do not really know if it is true that he is or isn’t!
Jane: Either way — whether the man is actually unavailable, or Linda just sees him as unavailable, there is a pattern in there for her, held in place by a limiting decision,* probably something along the lines of that men are not available. Since she is the one who asked the question, she is the one I’m working with. It’s about her perception of reality. We are only dealing with what causes her to get into relationships that don’t work for her, and therefore we are only dealing with what is unhealed in her, not about what might or might not be unhealed in him.
Fellow Healer: Either way, if she is attracting something, rather than a limiting decision, it could be because that is what she truly needs and wants or all she can take in right now!
Jane: A basic principle I hold in place is that life is meant to work. I have discovered by holding that principle in place I am able to be very effective in turning dysfunctional patterns around for people. From the standpoint that life is meant to work, if Linda is attracting something that isn’t working for her, by definition there has to be a limiting decision* holding this pattern in place. And this is probably all she can take in right now, but that is because of the limiting decision, * not the nature of who she is.
Fellow Healer: Is it really not appropriate for her to share her feelings with him? It could be a waste of time and keep her stuck, but it could also be a breakthrough! There is a wonderful passage in Return to love where Marianne works with a broken up couple, and once feelings were truly shared, it healed the relationship!
Jane: The whole point here is there isn’t an emotionally committed relationship here, with two people admitting they care about each other and trying to work things out. Linda is trying to make it be what it isn’t, and even though she knows it, she is having a very hard time stopping herself. She subsequently told me that she is obsessed with getting him to tell her that he loves her. She is in the midst of an addiction. She wants him to admit he hurt her, and tell her he loves her. But he’s already made it clear to her he doesn’t love her. Her obsession with this indicates that not feeling lovable is a limiting decision* in her. She is trying to solve it by getting someone who symbolizes the one who didn’t love her to have a different response. But all she is really doing is reinforcing her limiting decision* by trying to get what she needs from the very kind of person who can’t or won’t give it to her. It has to be solved inside of herself.
*For a definition of Limiting Decisions, click here.
