What the popular girl said: “I love to flirt.” (What you heard: “I’ve got it and you don’t.”)
What was said: “It’s not my fault that guys are so easy’. (What you heard: “I’ve got it and you don’t stand a snowman’s chance in hell of ever having it.”)
What was said: “It’s just the way I am.” ( What you heard: “I am made different than you. There’s something wrong with you.”)
Chances are that back in the day, you were the insecure and not popular girl. At some level a physical memory of feeling hopeless and disconnected from the popular group acts like a fuse. This fuse stands always ready to carry a spark to the heart of that very memory. A song from back then can bring back a stab of pain.
When you were 13 through 15 and your friends were mean to you, your brain was flooded with stress chemicals— “This feels terrible…let’s make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Like an early warning system, you will feel this feeling everytime you try to trust again unless you do something to undo the fear/anxiety cycle set into place in your teenage years.
It is the natural chemistry of your body that creates the “Oh no, there is something wrong here” feeling. It is your natural defense system warning you about pain. When someone hurts your feelings it stops you dead in your tracks, doesn’t it? This is supposed to happen. You have to decide if that inner circle person should stay or go. The earlier you make that call, the easier it is to walk it out.
But, you don’t want to evict someone from your inner circle too quickly. At some point in your past, someone really hurt you and that experience left a neuro-chemical bookmark designed to help you avoid that feeling. Ironically, no matter how hard you try, life deals a string of similar hurts along the road to right now.
These people in the past who have hurt your feelings have trained your brain to “RUN!” before you get hurt. If you are ready to change your brain, you keep the inner circle person around. It is the perfect lab for your new chemistry experiments!
When you address the hurt-feelings feeling physically by using your brain chemistry to reverse itself, you close the book on the past experiences for good.
Breakups of any kind are always accompanied by a hurricane of stress chemicals. The brain is on auto-pilot when it comes to shock and personal betrayal ranks high in neuro-chemical responses.
Adolescent crushes are dramatic and traumatic. Imagine one of your adult breakups. Now multiply it by a thousand. I sure wouldn’t want to go back to that time! There are very good reasons our memories fade. We just need to make sure the chemical lights are out before we slam the door!
Through my divorce healing, I am learning how to let go of those memories that are still plugged in and receiving stress chemicals from my very efficient inner chemical factory. I am amazed to discover that I am actually experiencing feelings without thought for the first time ever.
I have a hurt-feelings feeling, an ache in my upper chest and throat, that is at the bottom of any disappointment, no matter what the category of life is pushing my buttons at the moment. I am still getting to know that feeling. On a scale of 1 to 10 I can get to 10 easily when recalling a past relationship breakup.
When your neuro-chemicals are raging through your body screaming for your attention, they are also over-riding your rational thinking, intuitive guidance and immune system. You are blinded, by your own biology, to optimistic, hopeful and solution oriented thinking.
EFT, breathing, music, eating, going outside, feeding treats to the cats, taking walks and drinking water all turn off my hot faucet and tap into the brain soothing chemicals that bring relief. Once the hurt-feelings feeling is gone, then I look at the life issue and ask these three questions: What is working here? What is not working? What do I want instead?
xoxo
Contact Catherine for a free phone consult to discuss if you have an old teenage memory that is keeping you single.
