I look abusers in the eye
I tell them what’s what. With love.
Because they’re not inherently evil.
We’re going to take a peek into little Randy’s house. Randy is four years old. His three-year-old sister just got a gift from a doting aunt. It was a sweet-faced doll. Aunt Lila said, “I couldn’t resist. I saw this doll and thought immediately of Beth.”
Well, that is very nice. Lovely. But what about Randy? We can see the dark cloud hovering over his head. There’s a part of him that is thinking – unconsciously – “What’s wrong with ME? Why didn’t I get that doll?” See, he’s not particular about the nature of the gift. He just didn’t want to be overlooked. Of course, he’s too young to be aware of these thoughts. They are more like inarticulate feelings. Suddenly, he goes and kicks his sister in the shins.
The family is aghast. How mean he is! And they tell him so. They are SURE to tell that to him because that IS mean behavior. He storms off to his room and starts ripping things up in there. He is so angry. Of course, he couldn’t tell you why if you wanted to know, and frankly, even if he could explain it, he doesn’t trust you anymore because you did not understand him. At all. You decided he WAS mean. Not that he acted improperly, but was mean.
Randy is not allowed to cry. He is in so much pain. He now doesn’t like his aunt or his sister. He also hates himself. After all, look what he did! He thought he was a good person, but he clearly isn’t. If he were to cry, someone would tell him his tears are misplaced, that he should be crying for his poor sister who was hurt so badly, her leg is now sore. From his four-year-old kick.
Randy has to do something with these awful feelings. He doesn’t know what to do. He starts kicking at his toys, this is a great distraction. Nothing gets better.
Fast forward a few years. Randy “knows” deep down inside that he is rotten to the core. He’s been receiving this message for a long time. He’s a big boy of 10 now. He starts smoking weed. It is funny! He can laugh. Wow. That’s a new one. He has found something.
Fast forward again. The adult Randy also can get a “kick” out of a relationship. He knows he can be cool and cute. Someone will like him. And they do. He marries someone. She reminds him of his sister. She cries easily. He does not – under any circumstances – want her to see his pain. But he could be in pain. It wouldn’t take much. After all, there’s the idea of the straw that broke the camel’s back: He’s had a long accumulation of pain.
So is Randy evil? Of course not. He’s an unloved child who then grew up with no tools.
That certainly doesn’t mean he can go on behaving as he has been. He has a lot of unlearning to do. But the beautiful part is that he can do a bunch of learning and learn that his feelings are valuable; he can learn that it can be safe to communicate them; he can learn that those feelings are the key to getting his needs met. There’s lots he can learn.
And my program will gently, lovingly, and without judgment, teach him. It’s a 9-week intensive group and private therapy/coaching hybrid called Love Yourself. Here are the Pillars of it, what you come out with at the end:
*Inner Authority. This is the foundation on which everything else is built: Knowing who you are. Knowing your feelings, your wants, your needs, and what causes those feelings to change. It’s knowing yourself.
*Emotional Agility. One of the things you need to know in order to heal is what triggers you. We all get disturbed by certain things. We can hide it, even from ourselves – but it is doomed to come out somehow anyway. So this part of the program is to get clear on it. And to take the next step – conquer it. We can’t go through life having hurt feelings or exploding, or being depressed because something triggered all that. We need to have tools to make those feelings sweetly dissipate. Without sweeping the dust under the rug.
*Intentional Self-Adoration. We suffer from limiting beliefs. We know who we are but don’t like who we are. That’s got to change. The road to change is intentional. We learn to disarm harmful messages buried within ourselves. We intentionally replace those with the self-love and even adoration that is rightfully ours. Developing this self-compassion readies us for the next step.
*Compassionate Honesty. The strong framework of the above three pillars of the program gets us past resentment and bitterness. We now can clearly, honestly, and openly communicate in an assertive way what we think, want, need, feel, and offer. But it is filtered through a heart of compassion. This is key for a relationship and it deepens the connection between you. This is how you get the marriage you want out of first developing Self Love.
How do you do all that? With daily written, verbal, and thinking exercises, as well as exercises to change your body’s state (for Emotional Agility). By the time you get to Compassionate Honesty, you’ve laid the foundation to have a good conversation, one of depth and kindness – and truth. Those three together: depth, kindness, and truth, are the foundation of intimacy. And we make sure you do all the work, too, with the Accountability System that I have in place!
So, yeah, I can help Randy be whole: to heal from a lifetime of being given wrong and horrible messages, and have a good life now – and a good marriage. It’s a pleasure to do all that.
When you book a call with me, you will learn what no one else has told you about yourself: the real causes of the breakdown in your marriage. Then we will map out a strategy for correcting it. Simple? It’s a free call: https://drdeb.com .
When you’ve booked, be sure to fill out the application that is on another page you will be taken to. That info will help us in our meeting and it probably saves 20 min of talk time.