When you’re doing the work but you keep getting hurt (or are hurting others)
It's maddening, isn't it?
It can feel extremely frustrating, demoralizing, and borderline despairing when you’ve been actively doing your healing work—sometimes for years!—but you continue to find yourself in situations and relationships where you’re experiencing hurt.
Or, even with your best intentions, you continue causing hurt to others.
I know this place well.
Two summers ago I returned to the online dating scene after intentionally being single and “working on myself” for two years.
I thought: finally, this is the time where I’ll feel solid enough in myself that intimate relationships won’t feel so triggering and hurtful.
What I actually experienced, however, was more of the same—same pain, different person sitting across from me.
Here’s some of what I mean when I say “same pain”:
This person could openly express their desire for me sexually but rarely named other qualities they appreciated about me
When I shared about my emotional experience, they were often dismissive or invalidating
Early in our dating, I had to make a request for them to ask me questions about myself
I wanted to be monogamous while we developed a secure foundation together, and they agreed with hesitation, only after they realized that disagreeing would mean the end of our dating
Every time I asked for more closeness (e.g., more contact in between dates), their initial response was almost always fear-based or distancing (“I’m afraid you need more than I can give you)
I’m sharing some of the specifics because I used to carry a lot of shame about the fact that I didn’t know what an emotionally available, reciprocal, nourishing relationship looked like.
How could I possibly put up with behavior like this?
I’m sharing some of the specifics because I want you to know, if any of these sound familiar, that you deserve more and you deserve better.
But *you* need to believe that too.
I was extremely aware at the time that these things were hurtful—I could feel them in my body and name them—but I didn’t know what to do about it.
I had been in therapy for so many years and had a deep understanding of why I was attracted to emotionally unavailable folks.
I had read an unbelievable amount of books about attachment style and communication and all types of relationship configurations.
I consumed so many podcast episodes on the same topics.
And yet: here was the same pattern. Again.
The reality was that there was still a hurt part of me that I wasn’t listening to. That I wasn’t turning towards. That I wasn’t fully attuning to.
And that part was in the driver’s seat, continuing to choose my romantic partners, housemates, and friendships.
In last month’s newsletter, I noted the two essential ingredients for repair: attunement and presence.
Friends, this recipe for repair doesn’t just work in our relationships with others.
It’s the same exact process we need to repair the hurt within as well.
It’s true that relationships can be healing, but there are qualities that need to be present for that to be the case.
What is most certainly *not* healing is continuing to replay the relational harm we’ve experienced in relationships; this erodes our sense of internal trust and safety and prevents us from healing.
Why would our hurt parts trust us if we continue to put them in harm’s way?
[Unsure if the relationship you’re in is harmful, hurtful, or healing? Ask yourself these three questions.]
If you’re doing the work but still find yourself in familiar relationships and dynamics, there’s a hurt part of you that still needs your attention and loving presence.
Repairing and healing the hurt internally—regardless of whether you stay in said relationships—will begin to drastically change the quality and depth of your connections.
Here’s some of what will change:
You’ll be able to spot emotional immaturity and unavailability much sooner, which means that you’ll stop putting your inner children through the same exhausting and hurtful cycles. This means you’ll be able to heal instead of reactivating the same wound.
You’ll have the confidence to say “no, thank you” and walk away without drama.
You’ll have increased self-trust, which leads to a greater sense of integration and wholeness
Become the caregiver and protector your hurt parts need and have always needed.
They deserve it. And you deserve to have relationships that your adult self chooses.
Period.
When you know that you deserve more and better, even if you don’t know exactly what that looks like…
When some part of you knows that deeper connection and greater intimacy is out there, ready for you…
When you’re ready to say: this way isn’t working for me anymore…
My work is for you.
Believing that you deserve more and better until you’re ready to,
Grey
In case you missed these recent conversations:
What true repair looks (and feels) like; + a couple of exciting announcements
A practice for when you feel like not enough; It’s simple, and it works.
Why awareness isn’t enough (to keep you from repeating the same relational patterns); Stop wondering how it happened AGAIN.