“Your imaginative and prescient will develop into clear solely whenever you look into your coronary heart … Who appears exterior goals; who appears inside awakens.” ~Carl Jung

There may be nothing fairly like an undesirable breakup to tear your coronary heart open and produce you head to head together with your deepest shadows.

No less than, that’s the way it was for me.

Practically six years in the past, on a usually heat and sunny Saturday October afternoon in Los Angeles, I used to be mendacity on the ground of my condominium, wallowing to my then-boyfriend on the cellphone about how every little thing in my life appeared to only be hitting partitions: My profession was hitting a ceiling, our relationship felt stagnant, the route of my life itself was hazy and obscure.

It wasn’t the primary time we’d had a dialog like this, however this time was totally different. On today, for causes I can solely ascribe to the best mysteries of life, the middle bearing the burden of all of it started to unravel on the seams—with an extended, deep sigh after at the least an hour of getting nowhere, he spoke, “I believe we must always break up.”

My thoughts couldn’t have fathomed listening to these phrases. Our relationship, regardless of how unhealthy it was, didn’t have an finish in my thoughts. We had been related, we had discovered one thing inside each other—one thing particular and distinctive—and he had rekindled a sense of aliveness in me that I didn’t need to let go of. It was merely unthinkable to me that what I had discovered with him would ever come to an finish.

However—as will ultimately occur to us all at one level in life or one other, whether or not or not it’s a breakup, lack of a cherished one, or one thing else—the unthinkable occurred.

I want I might say that a part of me discovered aid within the second; that the a part of me that knew issues weren’t completely proper got here to floor to inform me, sure, it is a good factor.

As an alternative, I entered full denial.

I listened to his phrases, and after grappling my method by means of the rest of that dialog, I hung up, went to mattress, and cried myself to sleep.

In my head, as a result of I used to be nonetheless so enraptured by a fantasy of “this could’t presumably ever finish,” this was only a hurdle. It was part of our path that might see us separating for a second, however finally coming again collectively once more.

My thoughts merely didn’t need to let go.

In reality, it couldn’t, as a result of that’s what occurs when the unthinkable happens. A thoughts hooked up to a particular consequence can’t comprehend every other consequence, as something aside from what it has imagined appears like a risk to your survival.

That relationship, regardless of what number of pink flags continued all through our two and a half years collectively—by no means having mentioned “I really like you” to at least one one other, at all times feeling like I used to be simply making an attempt to show myself, persistently being instructed “can’t you simply be extra of this or much less of that,” to call only a few—was a matter of survival for me. With out it, my thoughts thought I’d actually die.

Looking back, I can clearly see I used to be a lady hooked up.

The connection had been a lifeline for me once we first met. Contemporary on the heels of dropping my dad, that man got here into my life and made me really feel one thing when life had all however misplaced feeling. With out him, I assumed I’d lose all of it (the irony being, after all, {that a} relationship born in attachment will lose all of it anyway).

Our relationship had been constructed on a shaky basis of codependency and fleeting bodily chemistry, and having by no means skilled a really wholesome relationship earlier than, I couldn’t make sense of how a connection that had as soon as felt so alive couldn’t be by some means fastened or saved. Breaking apart was merely not a situation that existed in my worldview.

Past the Unthinkable

I wish to say that you don’t, in truth, die when the unthinkable occurs. However the reality is, you sort of do.

That’s, at the least part of you does.

Maybe extra precisely acknowledged, a model of who you’ve identified your self to be up till that time begins to wither and asks to be let go.

It’s the a part of you that thinks it is advisable to keep in a relationship that isn’t empowering you, or the a part of you that thinks it is advisable to keep in a dead-end job that’s out of alignment together with your coronary heart’s needs, or it might even be the a part of you that thinks you can not say no to mates who finally don’t deliver out your greatest.

No matter situation is most related to your present scenario, the attachment to staying someplace that’s not empowering in your coronary heart and soul is finally a mirrored image of the way you as soon as discovered issues wanted to be so as so that you can survive.

It’s no coincidence or shock, then, that when the factor you’re hooked up to is ripped away, what’s left is a gaping gap into the depth of your shadow. When you’ve by no means confronted your shadow earlier than, it might really feel terrifying to take action. That’s the reason, as was my expertise, we frequently discover ourselves in a state of denial about what has occurred.

Denial permits us to hold on to what was as an alternative of dealing with what is. And what is, is that this—a doorway into your very personal path of soul initiation; a second wherein you’re given a option to both keep the way you’ve been or face what has been swept into darkness as a way to start to be free.

The Threshold of a Soul Encounter

For me, that doorway got here one week later once I awakened the next Saturday morning and located myself dealing with a tough reality I had not but seen or identified: Alone for the primary time, I truly had no thought what to do with myself or the right way to spend my time.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. There, standing within the rest room that morning and looking at myself within the mirror, I reached the brink of all nice soul encounters: I noticed I merely couldn’t preserve dwelling this manner any longer.

I might now not bear the burden; the middle had formally damaged.

Not understanding what else to do, I grabbed my journal, sat on my sofa, and commenced to put in writing concerning the expertise of the breakup and all of the ideas and emotions I had encountered over the previous week.

And that’s when it occurred.

It got here like a flash of lightning. As I used to be recounting a scene from a number of days prior once I’d run into my newly ex-boyfriend and felt my temper drop from feeling considerably okay to feeling excruciating ache and despair, I observed that my response to seeing him was to retreat inward. I noticed in that second one thing that I had by no means been in a position to see earlier than: Whenever you retreat, you possibly can’t really feel the ache anymore.

The feeling of retreating to finally being withdrawn was one thing I’d felt many occasions in my life earlier than, however it wasn’t till that second that I noticed the withdrawal was a type of self-protection: In an effort to cease feeling any ache that part of me thought I wouldn’t have the ability to survive, I merely eliminated myself from it.

As I continued to journal, I started to see how for a lot of my grownup life, I had made decisions to keep away from feeling ache. Like staying in a relationship that wasn’t good for my coronary heart for much too lengthy, I usually opted for the perceived security of what was acquainted as an alternative of being true to myself by making decisions that honored my coronary heart.

Once I actually bought to the underside of it, I noticed that the ache I had skilled that I had so diligently been avoiding through the years stemmed from believing that there was one thing exterior of myself that might deem me worthy of affection and acceptance.

I had lengthy been dwelling as a lady fearful of being rejected and unloved to the purpose the place I’d actually die, and it confirmed.

In the end, it was in these pages that I started connecting the dots of my life and the way I’d come to be somebody who stayed in a relationship out of worry quite than actual love.

Maybe extra straight put, I used to be assembly my shadow.

The Encounter is Simply the Starting

The insights I gained that day didn’t, sadly, make every little thing in my life instantly fall into place and really feel higher once more. What they did do, nevertheless, was bounce begin my journey into actual therapeutic and interior progress on a degree I had by no means been in a position to entry earlier than. That day, on my front room couch, standing in entrance of life’s metaphorical large open plain, I used to be given the present of assembly my soul.

The trail hasn’t been straightforward, however dealing with your shadows and getting acquainted together with your soul isn’t meant to be. It’s meant to shake you to your core, to make you face the elements of your self you’ve been too afraid to take a look at and study to befriend them as a way to uncover the power, knowledge, and coronary heart you didn’t even know you had.

Following the decision of my soul to honor my coronary heart took time, persistence, gentleness, help, curiosity, and an entire lot of apply and religion to see myself by means of the darkness, however the rewards have been candy: Now not mechanically shutting down on the first signal of ache, I now know that the love I had been so afraid of not getting was inside me the entire time, simply ready to be identified.

It’s been simply over six years because the breakup, and I can say with the utmost confidence, it’s been value each phrase journaled, each tear shed, and each painful second encountered on the best way down and again.

Ultimately, it’s possible you’ll not willingly select the laborious issues that occur in your life (I definitely wouldn’t have chosen to be damaged up with on the time), however whenever you discover the material of your actuality beginning to rip on the seams, and you’re standing on the precipice of the very depths of your soul, you’re being given certainly one of life’s biggest presents: to satisfy your self as you’re and, finally, to know your self as you got here right here to be.