Hey to all who are interested in this thread,
Firstly I just want to say in regards to Courtney’s comment on feeling ‘bad’ and self attacking, that someone taught/reinforced to you to feel ‘bad’ so that you took on the issue and blame rather than them taking responsibility for their own feelings.
The problem for those of us who have taken on self punishment and believing the negative messages we were brainwashed with as children, is that as adults we often engage these in an addictive way to avoid feeling feelings we have and/or feeling about the projections from others. It is a way we believe is ‘safer’ but I am noticing it is actually really dangerous and reinforces the nasty behaviour of those who engage it because we are in agreement with it and instead of standing up and saying ‘no this is wrong and you are treating me badly’ and feeling how that feels we ‘agree’ emotionally with the harm being done.
Nicky gave great feedback about this and God’s Truth on the situation which was really helpful! I love the clarity you have Nicky, Thanks!
I found a post you (Courtney) had made were Jesus wrote you a letter that you shared part of it. I thought it might be worth revisiting! It was really helpful and I feel applies to your question on this part of the forum.
link to it below:
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=344
Re: Fear of women's anger
Quote
Post by Courtney » Tue Sep 22, 2015 3:23 am
Thanks for both of your sharing on this thread, David and Nicky. I have a lot of fear of women's anger and issues with placating them also. I've been grateful for the reflection of that in this forum; it started a snowball of perhaps the biggest thing I've been focusing on since then. Mainly for me it is about seeing how it is a sin, as you pointed out Nicky. Jesus generously emailed me recently with the following truth and I thought I'd share it on this thread in case it helps either of you or anyone else on the forum:
"Let yourself examine why you need the approval and acceptance of women who desire power and control over others. This gives them power over your life, and therefore power over your thoughts and actions, and their poor spiritual condition is also imposed upon you, which means that you do the bidding of people who are in a darker condition than yourself, thereby darkening your own condition spiritually.
Remember that besides receiving God's Love, a person who wishes to become at-one with God also needs to learn the lessons of Natural Love, which includes having God's understanding of ethics and morality. Wanting the approval and acceptance of people who desire power and control is not ethical or moral, and is driven by deep fears of attack from others and self-judgement. In your own case it also supports a woman's immoral desire for power over others (including power over yourself), and you are naturally attracted to these kinds of women by your fear and self-judgement.
If you can recognize your fear of attack from women, and what that makes you feel, and also your own tendency towards self-judgement, and who has judged you in the past to make you feel poorly about yourself, then you will go along way towards receiving more of God's Love, along with having a life that does not attract destructive women into your life."
I have always felt being this way is nice and standing up strongly to people is mean and awful, and so educating myself about how I am sinning--and immoral and unethical--when I placate and have fear feels like the very first thing I have to do to move forward. I am only just starting to see the implications and gravity of how destructive it is to SO many parties and the ripple effect of damage it does when I seek approval from women and placate them, even to people who aren't "in the room" when the addictive exchange occurs between me and them. And of course there has to be just a huge iceberg of denied emotion underneath this addiction.
A great quote by Jesus on Confusion from
The Human Soul: Ethics and Morality P1 (&P2) that Jesus gave 13th May 2012
p.11of the self print book (Part 1):
"2.4.1. Confusion is a result of not wanting to understand what is in our souls
... Confusion.. results from fear and a desire to not understand coming from the soul on the actual issue. [00:20:21:29]
Love is logical. Since it is logical, it can never result in confusion without there being some kind of opposition in the soul to love, and so we need to understand that every time we feel an intellectual difficulty in understanding something, that it begins with an emotional difficulty in understanding the same thing... "
Reading your question Courtney felt so similar to fears I have had (still have with particular types of people) in dealing with people who may become potentially violent with me (real or perceived). The self doubt and looking at how what they are doing is loving rather than feeling my own real feelings about it and learning to honour and feel through those in order to find the Truth of the situation.
It felt to me that you are doubting yourself with a tendency to want to believe others on certain issues rather than trust what you feel. I feel you are afraid of upsetting your mum or women with a tendency to attack, by disagreeing with them. I felt your worry about being ‘completely wrong’ is a way to avoid honouring your real feelings and a way to avoid the possibility of real or perceived, conflict.
I feel that Nicky’s feed back about the relationship with your mum was spot on. I feel the facade your mum is presenting, is what you want to believe rather than feeling the Truth and feeling the real feelings from your mum and your own grief (and other feelings) about your mum. I feel it is really important to feel about these things and find out through your own experience what is really going on.
I would look closely at the areas where you have the confusion and feel about them and see if you do actually have some feelings on the issues and you are afraid to be honest with yourself about them, or if you genuinely just have ‘no clue’ what-so-ever. I have found I have often been afraid to admit the real feelings I have, because then I can no longer pretend to myself that what is going on is different to what I want to believe.
You mentioned that you have issues with pleasing women (I have issues in this area also), and I was wondering if you have challenged the issues you have been told about in regards to pleasing women?
Some things I find helpful in dealing with my own issues are as follows (this feels like a note to self post, smile):
- 1. Experimenting with being totally honest about everything in every interaction with everyone. If you have done this, how has this felt and what has happened? (you don’t have to answer here, it is more for self reflection) If you continue to do this, eventually (mostly VERY quickly) the facades and addictions are exposed along with all the feelings we need to feel about these attractions. For me when I was completely honest with my parents their subsequent actions told me exactly how they felt and I couldn’t pretend it was different as it was so blatantly nasty. It didn’t feel great, but it was a relief to see that their actions actually matched my feelings and confirmed them when I was truthful. While I was constantly placating them and blaming myself I often felt confused because what they said and what I felt from them were two totally different things. This has happened with other women in my life also.
2. The lovely thing about beginning to confront my fears of being attacked (in certain situations, more to go on this for me) is that it has opened up new relationships that are the beginnings of real friendships based on Truth and Love and I feel so grateful for the gifts as the contrast is so great between the treatment that it brings up feelings in a more loving way rather than being attacked all the time and I can now trust various people in my life for real.
3. When it comes down to it, what really matters is God’s Truth on any given issue and finding out what we feel about that same issue and bringing it into harmony with God’s Truth and God’s view of Love in all the places that we are out of harmony with Love and Truth. (This is my favourite reminder).
4.You can experiment with what the Truth is on any given subject/issue, and instead of ‘worrying’ about it I suggest trying various things out, observing the Law of Attraction and be humble to feeling all the feelings that come up as this will be the way you work out what is really going on, particularly if I ‘have no clue’. Feeling is key in this process.
5. In my experience the fastest way to get the truth and find out what is really going on is to be totally Honest and Truthful in every interaction ALL of the time and remain open and feeling. Honour principles of God’s Truth all the time and say (and feel) how you feel and what you really feel all of the time, both to yourself and to others (in a loving manner). As Jesus has said to me: ‘It takes one thing - courage’ - A quality totally worth developing I reckon (I am needing to work on this myself).
I have found being Truthful with self and others to be awesome (scary and challenging at times, due to it exposing emotions I have wanted to avoid). It can feel very confronting and in my experience brings up all the error really fast. It also builds faith, as even when things are ‘hard’ or challenging there is a relief in having been truthful and totally transparent and ironically I find I feel heaps better about myself, even if I have been in error and got it totally ‘wrong’ I still honoured myself and found out the truth of where I am at in this moment.
The Truth is always worth knowing, I reckon, even if we don’t like what we find out, because we at least have the opportunity to see ourselves more honestly and then have the opportunity to change. It also creates the space for the truth to be observed in others by the way they react and if both parties desire to be loving and truthful in all interactions it is awesome because it brings you closer and ‘real’ relationships based on Love and Truth can begin to grow.
I feel we need learn to honour and trust our own feelings and feel our own feelings rather than being worried and invested in others (big addiction I have personally). I feel you need to feel how you feel about what is going on with your mum and be honest about it with yourself.
My sincere encouragement to you with unravelling with your mum (and Dad) and honouring your real self!
Eloisa