Rediscover your worth

My last foray into my family past nearly killed me. I wholeheartedly believed that family history played a dominant role in one’s life, yet, at the age of 35 I was still desperate for the basic answers most people take for granted. I knew my mother had worked pretty hard to insulate me from the father’s side of my family, but having lots of things to contest with her own approach to relationships and child-rearing, I decided that I was ready to learn as much truth as I can on my own. Well, the exercise has certainly proven to be exciting, and pretty revealing too, if just a tiny bit tough to get through.

First, I was having to rely on my uncle - an accomplished criminal- to drive me to the place where I could meet the rest of the family (I put up a brave face, but I was sincerely scared for my life, I kid you not - and with good reason. That same uncle later sweetly offered to send me some money if I could only give him my passport info and everything else I had on me and after I, mindful of many stories of him forging loans, deeds etc. using his small-town connections countered with the proposal he simply gave cash next time we met went all indignant and dropped off the radar, along with all notions of charity.) I then met with my paternal grandmother who I always admired for her energy and life-loving spirit and who, even at age 87 and dying from leukemia, still was a formidable force in her own right. Regrettably, down to last year of her life, she stuck to her mistrusting ways and having embraced me on my initial visit she than turned around and cut me off, refusing to have any more contact with no explanation at all.

It is during my first evening at my grandma’s house that I had to face my estranged father and have an all-out with him - I had described the confrontation in the previous chapter. That was followed by the most assaulting conversation I ever had with my other uncle, who had hardly known me at all yet used this opportunity to try and demolish what little trust and wish to reach out I still had left in me.

To recap: after seeing me for the first time in 30+ years, one of my uncles wanted to use my documents for some ungodly scheme, another one seemed to be livid that I even existed, my grandma didn’t trust me for no apparent reason and my father didn’t seem to be aware I was a living, feeling person not a 2D cut-out from his past. The result of it all was that I had collapsed in nervous exhaustion. At some point I was literally lying on the floor, unable to move a limb for a few hours - the grief, shock, and pain had overtaken me completely.

I had to find a place and time to recover. I was blessed to be in the city of my youth, where complete strangers and childhood friends had shown me more kindness than my family did. After about a month of rest, I managed if not to fully recover, then at least become semi-functional again. With one or two family-related adventures, the culmination of which was traveling for more than 2500 miles and meeting my grandpa despite everyone’s best efforts to hide his whereabouts, I had finally managed to leave my country and head back to the US.

Upon returning to New York City I have lost what little resolve I maintained during my travel. Here I was, starting all over again. Broke, bitter, alone, with just a trickle of strength left in me. Once more I had to stay at some uninspired tiny shared rooms in Brooklyn, with annoying, “newly arrived” roommates that only think of making money and taking roots in the place at all costs, same fruitless job interviews, same feeling that I do not belong, that I never belonged that I will never belong to anyone or anything in the whole wide world.

I was sitting on a mattress that served as my bed going through these unhappy thoughts, and I suddenly felt like a big black cloud was swallowing me whole. I have never actually felt anything as visceral, almost physically present before. Even the room around seemed visibly darker. I had an image of my life path show up in my mind, just floating into nothingness and then it slowly changed into a whirl. Yes, I saw it as this never-ending spiral that kept whirling and whirling in the series of meaningless events that continued to take shape and then crumble for no good reason at all.

Despite my best efforts, my life was not only not getting better -it was getting progressively worse. And I just sat there helplessly watching it disintegrate not knowing what else I could do to make it shape-up, not knowing where to get the power, the inner push to face yet another day. I really did not see what difference it would make if I kept pulling my body through the motions for few more hours or few more years. It all was just simply void of meaning.

I wanted to end this charade, but, having tried a couple of times in my youth, I knew that I’d have to come up with some surefire way this time. Then an idea had entered my mind. I suddenly saw a perfect way of going about it. It filled me with such a profound sense of relief, I set there smiling, almost gleeful thinking of how simple it really was after all. I wondered why I had never thought of such a solution before. It was quite easy to do and absolutely fail-proof. I was so pleased and surprised- I finally had found a way out of here!

Then it hit me: I completely forgot that I was in a fully occupied building in the middle of a busy city. I got so engaged with the idea of ending this hopeless tedium, that I failed to factor in that other people might be injured as a result. That thought had me snap out of my previous state in a flash. I could very well want my life ended, but I sure as hell didn’t have a right to get anyone hurt! The very idea that I could fail to see the full picture, even if for a few moments, had me so alarmed I immediately knew I had to ask for help. I called someone I knew and told them everything that was on my mind.

I blurted out the whole thing to him, knowing full well that he might think I am crazy. Maybe he did think that, but nevertheless, he listened closely and then spoken to me for a long while, asking some good questions and taking the time to see me through to a better state.

The sense of acceptance and conscious attention that conversation had been a pleasant surprise - I was so used to having to be rejected or dismissed no matter how hard I was trying to get through and explain myself. Even as we were speaking, I couldn’t help but marvel at this new turn of events: not only the man did not hang up on me or employed some polite and clever way to wiggle out of an admittedly very awkward conversation, but he had actually listened and maybe even cared! The interesting thing was that I barely knew him, though even from our few short interactions I always had a sense that this person was not only strong but also a deep thinker who didn’t shy away from the truth. In that sense, he was just a person I needed to talk to that day.

In the hours following the conversation, I had another, even bigger surprise coming. I was laying quietly in bed, completely exhausted by the hours of crying and trying to make sense of the chaotic mess my life and my heart had become. Suddenly I felt a lighter, more graceful energy descend into a room. I lay there quiet and turned my full attention to what I was perceiving as my mind went completely mute. For a few brief moments, I saw myself and my body very differently. I realized that it was not me, and not even my mother who had ultimately created my physical form and had given me life, and, in essence, I had no business harming it or violently stopping the process that I hadn’t started.

I felt as if I was a steward, a keeper of the body, and that my real job was to do the work that the creative power intended me to as the extension of its own divine will, even if I did not yet completely understand what that work entailed.

All of the sudden my mind’s ruminations seemed minuscule, absurd and completely irrelevant. Moreover, at that moment it was clear to me that I myself was not represented by my ego and its story, that I was actually a living pulsating sea of light, of the same divine energy that permeated everything in the Universe seamlessly and ceaselessly, and in that view harming my own body was just as senseless and absurd an act as I knew harming others to be.

I wish I could say that after those delightful few moments I was uplifted from doom once and for all, and I remembered my purpose and worth ever since. Unfortunately, my mind does not seem to work that way. As with every other serious revelation in my life, the effects of it did not show immediately, but unbeknownst to me something deep inside started to turn around.

I would say the experiences that I had that day had one definite lasting effect - they had changed the way I looked at my body and the life that it held within it. Ever since that day, I did my best to be a lot more gentle and, dare I say, loving to my body than I was at any other point in my life. That, in turn, lead to making better choices for my mental and emotional state.

For the first time in my life, I started questioning the reasons for my having that persistent, instinctive urge within me to constantly forgo my needs for the benefit of others, almost as if I refused to accept my own right to have a place in the world.

Of course, my childhood injuries were one possible explanation. But I also since had the added heft of my fruitless romantic relationships that piled on to firmly secure that same pattern in place. Even if I was fantasizing about finally ending my life a day earlier, for example, I did not dare to call my partner of many years to tell him about it, for the fear of upsetting his sensitive self. Our entire relationship was a long string of my accommodating, minimizing, tip-toeing and flat out denying my feelings and preferences because I thought that is what it meant to be loyal and to be caring. Of course, I only sabotaged my every chance of having a fulfilling partnership as a result.

That kind of behavior wasn’t ultimately good for anyone, including my partner, though neither of us knew better at the time. I can not exactly blame the guy for not knowing how to effectively address some deep-seated pattern in both his psyche and mine since I myself was hardly aware of those at the time. The the fact remains, that relationship, along with all the previous ones, has kept me deeply unhappy, and the more I tried to fix it, the more unbearable it became.

It is only after my complete breakdown that I started observing myself, my thoughts and my actions more closely, and gradually uncovering some pretty clear themes.

This gave me a reason to go back to my examination of codependency, its role in dysfunctional relationships. Here is what I found: codependency is very closely correlated with the person’s lack of worth and therefore lack of respect for their own experiences and feelings. The tricky part is that if the person has never got a healthy sense of self-worth as a child, there is nothing for them to refer back to when they are trying to reconnect with it.

There are endless debates and question surrounding dysfunctional, deeply imbalanced relationship: How did it get this way? Why does the affected person stay despite feeling deeply hurt? Is there anything that can be done to help them?

As someone who has struggled with this unhealthy patterns my entire life, as well as witnessed them many generations of my family, I have to say this: as ingrained as these dynamics can be, there is still a very good chance of breaking through them if the person is willing to do the work on themselves, and completely give up any attempts to control the other person, be it a parent, partner or child.

This is often perceived as a radical concept by someone who is saddled by the codependent mindset. The first things they are going to say upon hearing this is: “How can I feel strong when N is …” and proceed to list all of the ways in which their partner or a family member is making it impossible for them. Still, I will repeat - the only way out of this mess is through reflecting on and then working through our own feelings first, starting with those that are admittedly imperfect significant others are evoking.

In my view, the biggest inaccuracy that keeps every codependent person stuck is that they think the painful feelings are the result of another person’s behavior. At first glance it stands to reason - no one is going to feel great if they are constantly being berated or controlled, for example. However, consider this idea: what if the feelings inside were actually the signals for the US to do something different in that situation? What if we feel this bad because WE are letting ourselves down by not acting on our feelings, not because the other person chooses to disrespect us?

It can seem like a subtle distinction at first, but it can make the world of difference if we truly grasp it. When we are waiting for another person to do something different before we can feel better, we are letting them have complete control over the whole situation. Once we decouple our emotions from their behavior, however, we can take charge of those even as the other person continues engaging in their same old unhelpful patterns. The secret, then, is simply focusing on how we feel and finding the way of getting in our own good-feeling place and staying there.

I was stuck for many years in that pseudo-powerful dynamic where one acts in a demonstrative, pseudo-powerful way in order to elicit the “correct” response from the offending party. Looking back, I can not begin to think how much pain and unhappiness it caused me and how much time and energy I wasted engaging in this folly. I would argue with anyone and everyone about how they should treat me or other aggrieved people differently, insisting that they change their erroneous ways at once. I shouted and I raged, and very often I got some kind of a concession, but at what price?

Why did I ever decide that my own worth or my happiness had to depend on misguided, ignorant or sometimes just plain mean or even ill people? Why did my heart have to suffer another injury just because someone else failed to reach a certain point in their evolution? I can’t help but think that it is the misguided sense of loyalty, of hanging on at all costs and negating myself that I learned in my unhappy childhood that continued to haunt me well into my supposedly adult years.

In the end, I believe that we only begin to sense our true power when we can let go of the need for acceptance and approval, and with it the urge to control the way certain people view us and behave towards us. Only when we can honestly start being content with our own sense of completeness and (!) worth can we begin to let our spirit soar.

For me, one of the first glimpses of this realization came some years prior during yet another unpleasant conversation with my mother (we really didn’t ever have pleasant once, but this one was feeling especially tense.) This time, my mother was lecturing me on how I should better manage my personal relationship. She was not pleased with my choices and therefore was granting me some advice, in spite of my visible resentment of having to receive it. As she was talking, I suddenly realized that during her lifetime the woman had virtually murdered not one, not two, but four(!) of her own marriages and many more intimate relationships, ended up having to raise two kids on her own, proceeded to pretty well screw up the relationship with both children and had never realized anything close to a happy family in her entire life. Apparently, she still somehow counted herself as an expert.

I had felt pretty bitter up to that point. Once the irony had dawned on me though, I couldn’t help but laugh. I told my mother that I didn’t think she would qualify to give advice on the subject given her own record. That had brought the conversation to an abrupt end, but more importantly, it had given me the first glimpse into the practice of separating the emotional impact of someone’s views from the actual value of those.

Just because you once depended on someone’s opinion, does not mean you have to keep doing that if your life and your awareness progressed further. Especially if you can clearly see the inconsistencies between what the person says and what they do, as very often the case in the dysfunctional situation.

When we have been conditioned to take other’s opinions as gospel, we often do not know how to effectively defend ourselves and negotiate in the times of conflict. That, in turn, leads to the entrenched disbalance in the relationship, where one party enjoy a lot more privilege and power than the other.

It is only natural that over time such a situation will result in the buildup or resentment in the party that feels unfairly treated or taken advantage of.

However, that dissatisfaction can truly serve us by supplying the energy and motivation to change, as long as we are able to shift the focus from what the other person should or shouldn’t do to what WE must do in order to get to a better place - with or without them.

A particularly amusing variety of this dynamic can be the people-pleasing and self-worth “earning” we do in our own heads even of the other person is completely oblivious to it! My mother was a master at this kind of a game, where she would nearly force unrequested “favors” on people (often us kids as we couldn’t really get away) and all but give us the bill for the “services” and get mad when we did not want to reciprocate. Needless to say, since we did not ask or want most of those things to begin with, we did not enjoy neither receiving nor having to be grateful for them, yet we were saddled with shame and guilt if we did not accept the “gifts.” We were damned if we did and damned if we didn’t.

Although I have spent most of my life playing up first to my mother’s follies and then attempting to unconsciously recreate a similar bond in my adult relationship, ultimately I have understood that there was no honor in throwing away your own potential in order to “rescue” someone else from facing their issues, real or imagined. We do not know what if the other person perceives it as a problem or what is it going to take for them to change, and we are not doing ourselves or them any favors by misplacing our attempts to “help” even as our own proverbial house is on fire.

As briefly mentioned before, I came to the conclusion that very often the key problem is not that a person forgot or gave away their sense of self-worth but that they never experienced what self-worth really IS in the first place.

Others tell them: “You should love yourself and put yourself first” But for a codependent person this sounds the same way as swimming for a dozen of miles to someone who has never felt the water. They understand that is what other, happy people naturally do, but they do not have the first idea of how to make that transition.

Unable to connect to our core self, we settle for the other, familiar thing: playing out our own unconscious “drama” with the people in our lives. It is really our own inner Selves that need to be helped, appreciated, finally seen, “rescued” and treated with attention and kindness. But, since we have not been taught the way as children and did not internalize the skill, we do the next best thing instead - care for others in the hopes that they or the relationship will somehow help us close the gap within our own hearts.

Still, the only real hope of getting better starts with putting our focus squarely on our OWN personal development, doing the hard work, clearing out the old baggage and pursuing authentic interests, passions and experiences that bring life to our own soul.

All throughout my twenties, I had two main modes of relating to important people in my life- withdrawing my attention as a punishment, or giving it as a means of communicating special significance and favor. At no point did I actually start and ask myself: what is it that I want? What would I do naturally, if I were completely at ease? What do I feel would happen if I started to just act in a way that is natural, without forever calculating, analyzing and screening the situation for possible clues so that I can make them make me feel better? I know it sounds almost comical now, but it took a lot of suffering, time and effort to actually get what was wrong with the picture.

I can wholeheartedly attest to the fact that, when a person feels like their worth solely depends on what another person feels or does, it is nearly impossible to get through to them with phrases like “focus on your worth” or even “self-care first.” They’ll just turn around and proceed if not to cajole and entice, then push and demand the “right” attitude from the person they are attached to and they’ll be completely convinced that this “new” behavior means knowing their worth or caring for themselves.

Abuse always results in alienation from our own core. Our attention is brought out toward the dangerous person and situation, and it is often fixed there permanently. It feels like a threat to our survival to avert that proverbial “stare” and look into our own soul for once. We may find nothing there, we may be completely numb. At least when we engage with our abuser there is some current of feeling that comes through, even if a painful one. But what does it mean if we do not feel anything inside when we look for ourselves? That means we do not really exist, right? That means you do not have a habit of paying attention to your own feelings and needs. Those are unknown, invisible to you. And that makes them a heck of a lot more difficult to fulfill.

At some point, they may discover, as I did, that they have been treating themselves in the same manner their dysfunctional caretakers did back in the day. Such are the bitter fruits of being brought up in a broken household - the hidden effects keep poisoning our lives and minds long after our chronological childhoods are over.

While there is no way to change the past, there is still a beautiful chance to rearrange things in the present moment. We can start with observing the “parent” voice that so often dominates our inner conversation, years and even decades after we have left our childhood homes. The minute we do that, the worst part is over - the offender has now been detected and its messages can be examined in earnest. If it insists on being punitive, overly criticizing and cold, we now can slowly change the message into a caring, soothing and a supportive one. That, in turn, will give the inner child the safe space to venture out and enjoy themselves a bit more.

Once I was fully aware of the harsh manner my inner parent was treated me I have had a long, focused exercise that was part meditation and part inner child work and I have literally had the parental and the child figure in my talk to each other in a way that I felt was beneficial and open. I have done the work until I eventually ’saw” the two aspects of the psyche recede into the background, freeing up space and the power for my adult self to finally shine in full- to be as resourceful, joyful and creative as nature intended it to be.

I am convinced that ultimately, codependency is one dysfunctional way to cover up our sense of anxiety and inadequacy in living world at large while still feeling small and undeveloped to face it. Aside from the important inner work that we have just discussed that helps us show up better in society and arrange our relationships in the balanced, mutually beneficial way, there is even bigger, spiritual practice that can ultimately help us transcend all of our anxieties for good. In fact, it is the best remedy I know for any kind of human suffering. It helps you to connect to the sense of peace and boundless power, to the energy that transmutes and yet encompasses the whole of life. We need to know - not simply intellectually understand, that there is something that has brought us here and this same higher power has the will and the wherewithal to see us through, even as we are taking our time to become the magnificent expression of its glory that we were always meant to be.

Once you truly have that feeling secured inside, you will automatically stop looking to others for all of your sense of fulfillment and belonging. That, in turn, will bring a natural adjustment to some relationships and will bring an end to others.

Before this all-important shift happens, the very thought of having to end an important relationship brings sheer panic in the heart of an affected person. They really feel like they can not survive without this other, even if the whole relationship is built on trauma and abuse. It feels familiar, it feels right, it feels like the only natural way to be. Because their inner “settings” are at the level that makes this relationship comfortable, and they have likely been that way ever since their unhappy childhood had brought them down from being happy and vivacious children to being quiet, scared and withdrawn or - on the other end, overly feisty, confrontational and protective of others.

As someone who had been that way for more year than I care to remember, I want to tell you this: do not search for the ways to meet your needs based on what others or your own conditioned mind say they supposed to be. Find your way to the deeper, more primal connection to life that transcends the constructs of your mind - that is the only true salvation I found. Since it is not an easy concept to understand in the beginning and I do not wish you to () the depth of the crisis I had () to find it, I often point to a communion with nature or an intensely enjoyable athletic or creative pursuit as activities that are capable of putting us into the state very like the one I am talking about, without us even realizing it is happening.

Whether it walking in the forest, swimming, breathing deeply, practicing tai chi or sitting quietly, soaking up the view, we could naturally get ourselves in that state of meditative, open flow that will slowly activate deeper, more resourceful presence within us. That is how the most important transformation of our lives is done. In time, it brings the sense of deep appreciation for the miracle of life, that at once holds the wonder at its beauty, grace, and omniscience, and yet with it a sense of most natural belonging as well.

I am sure that if you really get comfortable with just being quiet, all by yourself, in communion with nature, with life, with the divine that streams ceaselessly through everything that we see and we feel, you will learn the most important truth of our entire existence. However, the important part is to be truly relaxed, unencumbered by any agenda, simply open and happy to be. Do not search, do not think about anything at all and do not even listen or anticipate. Simply sit there, simply be there, let the experience flow through you and you will know EVERYTHING.

Your soul will be filled with the same majestic grace and serenity that nature so effortlessly displays to us every day. You will know you are but a spontaneous expression it, you are really not separate from it at all. The same divine force that permeates every tree, every drop of water and every blade of grass goes through every cell of your body too. The same way your consciousness is simply an aspect of the divine intelligence that understands all, and discovers, or maybe creates, the ever-changing ways to effortlessly and joyously explore its own power.

That is who you really are. Do you honestly think your life in this world should be reduced to serving as someone else’s unwanted ego-prop? Do you think you are serving people by crawling so low they feel like giants in comparison? NO, my friend - it is time to honor the delightful energy that has poured itself through you and has made you into a beautiful being that you are. Shine bright and assume your place for the best reasons of them all - simply because you ARE!

Once I have realized all of this, my life had been transformed. The internal shifts brought about the change in the external trouble that seemed to practically seek me out before. As the inner turmoil that was projected on my daily reality started to fade away, the most troubled situations and relationships ease out first of my conscious attention and eventually out of my reality as well.

Looking back from this new, brighter place, I now see that creating a strong, healthy life is the most natural and most beneficial contribution we can make. Leading a happy life not only makes you a better person, but it also makes your whole community stronger. Not only that, as you hold the energy of satisfaction in place in your own life, the other people can instinctively sense and enjoy it, as well model their own lives after it, if they feel like it.

I realized there isn’t anywhere near as much virtue in seemingly endless pushing through and enduring as I used to think there was. I now find a lot more value in living joyful and going through every day as the divine energy intended for me to be - cheerful and lighthearted. That, in turn, flows the energy into being more effective, generous and free, creating a new, life-giving cycle instead of the one I that had all but consumed me before.