Watch The Ride of My Life Blog/Podcast – S2 – Episode 5

Welcome to The Ride of My Life Podcast – Season 2 – Episode 5!

I’m Caroline Rena, The Travelling Transformational Coach, Writer and Podcaster! I share with you my experiences as I work through the emotions and challenges on my healing journey through the mind, body and spirit. As I develop my awareness and connect with my truth, I hope to connect with you on this journey as well.

As I prepare again to leave West Palm Beach and head towards my next adventure in North Carolina, I would be remiss not to talk about Valentine’s Day and what it now means to me.

As a little girl, I loved Valentine’s Day. Handing out the little Valentine’s Day cards to my friends, making cut outs of hearts with drawings, it was one of my favorite holidays. Hallmark made a name for itself with all the cards, later in my life, that I purchased for those that I loved.

This year I did not have a significant other in my life to lavish gifts upon, but I did learn a great deal about love… Self-Love, why it was missing in my life and what I am doing to regain it.

The origin of Valentine’s Day is vague but there is a legend I will share from indianexpress.com. I don’t know how truthful any truth is of history as it conveys the beliefs and perceptions of the individual that is sharing it and those, in and of themselves can be many. Any story is that way, so here goes.

The story of Valentine’s Day is starts with information on Saint Valentine secretly defying emperor’s order to marry couples sparing husbands from going to war, resulting in being beheaded by that emperor to celebrating marking the death anniversary of Saint Valentine in mid-February, 270 A.D. There has been information that it was traced back to “Lupercalia,” a Roman festival for fertility and also there was a belief that the day was celebrated as an attempt by the church to give it a religious twist.

During the festival, men and women were paired based on a lottery and most ended up in marriage. At the end of the fifth century, it was decided that this would be the date to celebrate Saint Valentine. There were a few other legends and Valentine’s Day was also mentioned in a poem by medieval author Geoffrey Chaucer in 1381, where some consider this to be the origin of the modern celebration of love by historians. But wait…

What’s love got to do with it?

Yesterday, February 14th, 2022 was Valentine’s Day but for me, the discovery of love turned out to be much different between yesterday and today. Why?

I am discovering Self-Love, Self-Worth and Self-Esteem, maybe more fully for the first time in my life. And how did this happen?

Like I said, there was no significant other to celebrate Valentine’s Day with but yesterday turned out to be the beginning of the best awareness ever.

After a full day of work, I sat down and made one of those Valentine’s cards I used to make as a child and gave it to my former partner’s daughter. I am grateful to have had another opportunity to spend time with them.

This time it turned out to be a powerful visit.

I took the opportunity to work through some things with EMDR again regarding a motorcycle accident I had been involved in, in 2006. I have mentioned that trauma is held in the body and the sub-conscious. All trauma works this way, whether it is a physical trauma like an accident, surgery or birth, or an emotional trauma, like from neglect. The body records the event, and we don’t even know it.

On the last blog and podcast, I talked about the ride through the location of where the motorcycle accident occurred. I worked through a lot of the emotions but until last night did not realize what else was in there, under the surface.

What did I learn?

I relearned about codependency, narcissism, de-valuing myself. I knew I was always putting others needs before my own to the point where my system, both nervous and emotions were running my life.

I discovered an “inherently serious flaw” about myself that was the belief system fuel on how I did life. This flaw consistently led me into toxic shame and had me believing I had no value. I was diminished to nothing or almost nothing, always putting myself last.

Belief- “I don’t matter.”

When did it begin?

Probably when I was born. Of course I have no mental recollection of what happened, but remember, the body holds all traumas, even pre-verbal ones. I have mentioned that story that was in the court paperwork of my mother leaving me in the hospital room to take care of the other patients at the hospital she volunteered at with Red Cross.

What did that do?

It triggered how I felt about myself and how I was in my relationships, every relationship I ever had.

I was so desperate to matter to my mother, that every person in my life became her.

As well as me.

She put others first, I put others first. I did not count in this life and everything about my life became about that.

I became codependent, desperately wanting to make sure others were ok so I would feel safe and loved. I attracted narcissists because I felt I didn’t matter to anyone; yes you heard that right… anyone. Even the few people in my life who did think I mattered; I couldn’t even see it because I was so used to not being seen. I consistently waited for the other shoe to drop with them.

The other in a relationship with a narcissist does matter to them but only for the narcissist, not the partner. The codependent who got into the relationship with the narcissist sees that they are hurt or broken and immediately understands their pain because, they too have been through something, knows what it feels like and wants to help them. Doing this to the detriment of themselves, they give up all rights to themselves. It becomes a downhill, slippery slope from the first encounter with a narcissist and only gets worse on each subsequent relationship with a narcissist.

When I already felt like I didn’t matter, I had to look for ways to be loved. I found them and immediately began taking care of them and totally ignored myself. The worse it got as the years went on, the more I found that not only did I not matter to them, but I also didn’t matter to myself anymore.

The price of healing from codependency is guilt. Oh boy, just what I need; more guilt. Guilt for not taking care of them more, for them to tell me I was selfish, to guilt for not taking care of myself, to the guilt for recognizing that I was being codependent with them so I could reorganize the thoughts and beliefs of codependency.

It’s a vicious circle.

So, as I let go of putting others first, I feel guilty about that.

I was parentified by my mother who, even as a four-year-old, I was meant to put her first and make sure I told her I loved her and ask her about her health. The guilt has lived inside of me of doing it right for her and never for me and it showed up in all of my relationships. What a wakeup call.

I want to add in here that generally anyone who blames you for behaving a certain way is behaving in the same manner and they consciously recognize that in themselves or sub-consciously they know that about themselves but aren’t able to admit it or take 100% responsibility for it. We all do this in that we think that someone will behave the same way we do in both a positive manner and a negative manner. We can get lost until we recognize this if we don’t realize it. When we realize it, we can take responsibility for it.

Now, here is where Self-Compassion comes in.

Self-compassion encompasses Self-Love, Self-Worth and Self-Esteem, which I mentioned above. I had no idea what any of that was because my concern was always about getting my needs met that I never received as a child. I was so busy trying to get the narcissist to take care of that, when they couldn’t even do it for themselves, that I turned everything on its head to make sure I was the one who could do it for them. Not a good idea.

I lost everything I knew about myself and to top it off, as I also mentioned, I lost myself.

So herein lies the challenge. For years I was told by narcissists that I was selfish, that I only did for myself and that I was only looking out for myself. My discovery was that was a coping mechanism I used to for self-protection because of the codependency that I had no idea what to do with or for that matter realized fully what was going on.

Then, the tables began to turn. I saw what I was doing and why. My reactions of desperately finding a way to take care of myself after I had already established that it was ok for me to be codependent also turned on me. When someone is already used to a behavior that we offer, they don’t like it when we begin to see what is happening and change it. That happened in every relationship.

So now, guess what. I also see that how we are told in our society to take care of everyone else and be there for everyone else, to the detriment of our selves and our souls is not the answer. It wears us down and puts us into all kinds of coping strategies, and in some cases creates a situation where one feels the only way out is suicide because of situations similar to this.

I am finding out that I am the only person I need to care about that matters to me. It’s nice to matter to others and that is a bonus, but when I can fully find that self-love and how much I matter to myself, the self-worth and self-esteem comes automatically in that territory.

And here it is… the big answer is that I GET to be selfish. I get to put the mask on first on this plane ride before I take care of others. (Also, there is a line drawn with caring for others who can’t care for themselves and caring for others who don’t want to care for themselves and want others to do it for them. Know the difference.)

For my whole life, I have been afraid of outcomes of loss so I molded myself into Gumby to prevent the loss or whatever the outcome might be of having to fix something I don’t believe I can handle. Well, I can… oddly every time something comes up in my life, I have handled it. I just get to believe that about myself now, that I am capable of doing it.

Now, here is what I get to do. I get to forgive myself for all of the things I did imperfectly. I get to treat myself with the same kindness I would give to any stranger on the street. In every way I behaved, I did it because I didn’t know any better and it was a really mucked up way of keeping myself safe. But now I do know better and now I get to work on shifting the old behavior into who I really am.

I had to be in every relationship (to include my parents), so I could learn these things, be hurt by them and see for myself how I get to stand up for me. I count. I matter. I’ve got this. And so do you.

This has turned out to be quite a powerful month of riding inside on The Ride of My Life.

 

Come join me in a healing partnership…

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