How to deal with baggage in a relationship
Did you know our core wounds are influencing the way we love, consciously or unconsciously? We all carry baggage with us into relationships. It’s there in the background, always.
As a way of protecting our deepest wounds, we all develop coping strategies. However, these strategies no longer serve us and are actually ruining our love lives.
The core wounds can be classified into five main categories:
- Worthiness
- Belonging
- Prioritization
- Trust
- Safety
These labels are not necessarily a direct reflection of your life theme, but they do influence your words, thoughts, desires, and actions.
You may realize that your relationship is blocked because of unresolved issues from previous relationships, or even your childhood.
How to Recover from Baggage In a Relationship
In my private or group sessions with clients, I spend a lot of time uncovering the patterns and behaviors that recur. This is where the behaviours first started.
Why? These core wounds affect your thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
- They fuel conflict in your relationships.
- They prevent you from setting healthy boundaries and enforcing them.
- These actions are self-destructive.
- These partners are emotionally unavailable and therefore attract them.
- They stop you from facing challenges and accepting emotional connections.
These patterns are developed to cope with the early experiences in life that are closely related to your core wounds. These wounds are a result of childhood programming that was influenced by the things you heard, saw, felt and experienced.
These patterns and behaviors, which may have been helpful to you in your early years, now work against you. They are likely to keep you from getting what you want out of love.
Pillar 1: Love Blueprint, the Confident in Love Program, explores these core wounds.
Worthiness wounds are often caused by feeling abandoned as a child. You may have felt emotionally or physically abandoned by your parents. You may have internalized their actions and taken them personally. You may have developed feelings that you are not worthy of love and attention.
Worthiness wounds can also be caused by parents’ abusive statements or verbal abuse. You believe statements like “you are of no worth, you will never achieve anything, or you were a mess.”
There are parts of adults who feel they don’t deserve love, attention or affection. They may also lack appreciation and acceptance.
It’s not true. You know that. But it’s deeply ingrained in your mind.
In our early home environments, we learn if we matter, if we are deserving, or if we are worthy.
Insecurities in relationships can manifest themselves in different ways.
To make a relationship work, you may find yourself giving too much or trying to please others.
You don’t like to let people get too close.
You are guarded, and you don’t want to be vulnerable.
It is difficult to get a partner’s attention, acknowledgement or help.
You seldom share your feelings and thoughts
In our love lives, we can see the core wounds in many different ways.
This worthiness wound can be healed by self-reflection, identifying what caused the wound, creating an environment where your nervous system can heal, and realizing how it still affects your life today.
Two questions to ask yourself:
- “I am unworthy of _______.”
- If I thought I was deserving, I would ________.
Your thoughts on the topic would be greatly appreciated.
It has been a journey for me to recognize where my core hurts are showing up in my romantic life and how I have created different adaptive behaviors. It took me many years to realize that I am worthy of the love and affection I deserve. In the past, in an attempt to feel worthy, I played small and tolerated unacceptable behavior from others. I believed that I was responsible for everything and took it all personally. This led to me over-functioning in my relationships.
Consider joining the Confident In Love coaching program if you are interested in exploring your core wounds, and not bringing this baggage into a relationship. Schedule a call with me to see if the program is for you.
Check out my other posts on the blog: Self-Acceptance Affirmations, Dealing with overwhelming emotions while dating,and Are you holding yourself back in dating?