Freedom from Attachment

You think you’re afraid of losing a relationship, job, friendship, money… losing something. But what if I told you your fear isn’t what you think it is? That actually, it’s not about the actual loss. It’s your feelings around the loss you’re afraid of. It’s not your fear of being alone. It’s how you’re going to feel about being alone and what that says about you; how you might be judged. So instead of facing that fear, you stay in an attached relationship. You avoid the feelings around what you fear, but end up creating the circumstances to support it.

Your fear is about the future. It’s about what you THINK will happen and the feelings associated with that. But that fear keeps you stuck. It can be paralyzing and the only way out of the trap is to step into the fear. Put yourself in that scenario and ride it all the way to the end, then connect with those feelings. If you end up alone with 12 cats, feel what that would be like. If you fear being judged by others, feel the anticipated ridicule. You’ll likely find that what you fear is actually something you can handle. And once you can accept whatever outcome may happen, you set yourself free.

The best way to change anything in your life is through surrender, whether that be a relationship, job, house, etc. Doing things the same way you’ve always done them doesn’t lead to different results. If you’re arguing with the circumstances around you, you’re not open to receiving what you want. You’re not open to what the road looks like. It’s going to be different than you imagined. Keeping everything the same and waiting for the universe, God or your fairy godmother to deliver what you want isn’t how change works.

Let’s say you want a relationship, but everything you’re doing feels like drudgery. Been there, done that! With your focus on what might be wrong with a potential suitor, everyone you encounter online becomes a loser. You complain on the one hand, wondering why you are attracting them, yet hope something will magically shift and you’ll meet the perfect person while continuing to do the same things. This keeps you in a state of struggle with yourself and everyone else. Surrender means to let go of struggle; to stop pushing, fighting and complaining. Surrender is knowing where you want to go, taking steps with self-awareness, but not knowing how you’ll get there. This doesn’t mean you’ve given up; quite the contrary. When you surrender, you’re actually participating in the change you want to happen. It’s time to be curious instead of judgmental.

Surrender is counterintuitive for people who believe they need to put more effort into it mentally, instead of allowing and opening up emotionally. Does more effort ever lead to emotional fulfillment of what you want? If you’re not getting results, isn’t time for an easier way? Surrender doesn’t mean you’ve left it all up to chance… you have to be clear on what you want. The universe is always a reflection of what is within you so if you’re clear, committed and willing to let go of what will lead you there, change will happen.

In this episode of “Surviving to Thriving: Overcoming My Darkest Moment,” I talk with Holistic Life coach Elli Richter who helps people feel, heal and deal so they can live a fulfilled, healthy and successful life.

In her mid-30s, Elli thought life’s hurdles were behind her: an eating disorder, self-sabotage and overall self-destruction. But when her husband of 12 years told her he had been unfaithful for 10 of those years, her world collapsed. Married at 23, he was her everything. Elli had to learn not only how to be on her own, but how to be an emotionally supportive friend to herself. She discovered the importance of a holistic support system with coaching plus reiki, acupuncture, sound baths and other physiological means to calm the nervous system.

Now Elli coaches her clients in person, or via phone, and also offers yoga classes, groups, mini retreats, moon rituals, sound bath meditations and movement classes to support people in the manifestation of their dreams. She holds two college degrees in Physiotherapy, and Health Education, is Ayurveda and Reiki certified, and uses a holistic and proactive approach to help her clients live a downstream life by design. She lives in beautiful downtown Charleston, and spends part of the year in her home country of Germany. Learn more about Elli at www.ellirichter.com.

When in an attached relationship, do you feel like you’re owed something? Maybe you rescue or fix, but don’t get back what you feel you’re entitled to… so you get pissed off. You may not even know where that anger comes from until you start digging a little deeper. Then perhaps you discover it came from childhood when you felt helpless for everything you couldn’t control. You looked to your parents, the authority figures in your life, as having all the answers, and of course they set the rules. Perhaps they never saw you as you really were, and you did what you could to gain approval. You may have worked hard to get it and underneath it been hurt and angry that you were not feeling love just for being you. Now your anger is directed at your partner for what validation they don’t give you. Once you realize this anger actually makes you a victim, because you are hanging in the balance waiting for something from someone else, you can instead take responsibility for your choices and become your own rescuer.

Look at everything you complain about; do you think everyone else is selfish? If so, you need to turn the mirror on yourself. What are your expectations that keep you in this place? That anger runs deep and it causes a lot of discontent, especially in relationships. It can surface in the present when really it is built up from the past. If you always felt like the “lesser” sibling as a kid, then as an adult if that same sibling does something to upset you, you may fly off the handle because of how you’ve always felt. Or maybe you become a martyr, trying to win back some of that affection you didn’t get as a kid, which just leads to resentment. Either way, it’s old anger.

Blame and anger go together so the longer you hold onto it, the worse you’re going to feel. Even if you think they “deserve” it, you’re still the one who suffers. Letting go of the anger means taking responsibility for your choices. If you feel owed, what actions did you take to put yourself in that position? If you were giving without an expectation of something in return, you wouldn’t be keeping score. Speak your truth about your choices and the actions that resulted: assuming, people pleasing, rescuing, etc. Self-responsibility is the path to releasing your anger and having more content, connected relationships.

t’s amazing how many people seek respect from others, yet don’t know how to respect themselves. This happens in relationships or all sorts: romantic, friends, parents, kids, colleagues, etc. In these cases, a fear of loss is at play. When you’re afraid of losing the relationship, you might walk on eggshells, stay quietly angry (then explode into a rage) or become a doormat. In each case you feel powerless because that fear of loss supersedes everything else.

If your mother always talked to you in a demeaning manner, like there was something wrong with you, you might feel the only way to get respect from her is to lash out from time to time. Most of the time you swallow your feelings and take the punches, but every now and then you feel the need to “stand up to her” and say she’s a horrible mother. As long as you keep focusing on her behavior and trying to get her to change, you’ll continue in this pattern of hurt and blame. The only way to get respect from others is to respect yourself first.

In an interesting twist, people disrespect themselves because they’re afraid of losing the relationship, but end up losing the relationship BECAUSE they’ve disrespected themselves. They end up creating what they fear. When you start valuing yourself, you’ll attract people who value and respect you. When you catch yourself seeking respect from someone, ask what you want for yourself. Where are you not taking care of you? Respect isn’t something you can force on another person, either through bullying or subservience. It always starts with you.

In attached relationships where you seek attention, you may actually be creating tension. Tension is a dramatic feeling—looking for what’s wrong, being pulled in a particular direction, intense chemistry, etc. Tension is fleeting, meaning if you use it to get attention, it won’t last. Genuine attention is given without pulling on it; without an attachment to the outcome. You don’t have to do anything to get it; simply being yourself and breathing is enough. Doesn’t that sound a lot easier and less dramatic? In a healthy relationship you don’t have to jump through hoops to get someone to pay attention to you.

This sort of tension happens all the time in attached relationships. Let’s say you’re living with someone. You cook dinner and clean up after, yet your partner doesn’t acknowledge the work you’ve done. You’re tense and anxious because you have an expectation: attention in the form of appreciation. When it doesn’t come you feel angry and depleted. Or if someone does something nice for you and you don’t feel you deserve it, you’ll create tension by arguing, distancing, playing games, etc. You can’t accept genuine attention so you create tension to make sure you’ve worked hard to earn it.

What underlies this need to create tension is a feeling of undeserving. You don’t believe you’re lovable, worthy, good enough, etc. so it’s uncomfortable to accept any form of attention without creating obstacles to climb over. If you’re in a relationship where you feel you need to prove something, ask why you deserve to suffer. What is so horrible about you that you can’t just be? Each time you perform for attention you feed your lack of value. To break the cycle and actually BUILD your value, stop any action you’re doing to create tension. Stop the performing. Stop the drama. Take care of your own needs and sit with the discomfort of receiving attention simply for being you.

You want to be who you are, but you’ve learned that conforming is safer. Perhaps you felt shame as a kid for being “different” or doing something “wrong” so you brought that into adulthood where you did everything you could to avoid that feeling. You’re smart when you’re with your smart friends, and cool when you’re with the cool ones, blending in to whatever the group dynamic is. This can happen with counter-culture as well, thinking you’re being weirdly yourself. Then you accidentally say something “normal” and your weird friends think you’re… well… not weird enough. This need for conformity doesn’t originate in society—it comes from inside and your fear of rejection. At some point in your life being YOU felt risky.

It is certainly fine to be around other people with similar interests. Nothing wrong with that. It’s when you feel the need to hide parts of yourself in order to belong that it becomes inauthentic. Your tribe needs to be created from within, even if it’s a party of one. And guess what? It won’t be a party of one forever because you’ll start attracting other people who accept themselves as they are, even if they are totally different from you. Being you creates the space for opportunities. When you deny who you are to gain acceptance from others, you build prison walls around yourself.

For the people who listen to my podcast, I don’t want them to be like me. I want them to be like THEM. My greatest wish is for everyone to be who they are and let their freak flag fly. There is no joy or freedom in hiding parts of yourself. If you enjoy peanut butter and pickle sandwiches, eat them out in the open! If you love jazzercise, rock those leg warmers! If you tell bad jokes, be known as the person who tells bad jokes… it’s ok. When you are authentically yourself, you allow other people to be authentically themselves. Isn’t that a tribe you’d rather belong to?

Do you think you can control how someone feels about you by what you do or say? Say the right thing and you’re golden; say something wrong and he/she might leave. This leads you to judge and second-guess EVERYTHING, wondering when you’ll say something to drive them away. You walk on eggshells, which is no kind of fun. Thinking you can affect how someone else feels about you by your words or actions gives you a false sense of control, and it’s a breeding ground for anxiety. This is classic behavior for an insecurely attached Anxious type.

Think back to a time when you were on a date or with your partner and things were going well until you said something that caused him/her to give you a funny look. How did you react? Did you continue with the conversation, totally unfazed, or did you try to recover by saying something witty and charming? If you went with the latter, you probably felt a sudden loss of power so you started scrambling to gain the upper hand. The flaw in this strategy (and yes, it’s a mental strategy) is you cannot control how someone else feels about you. Period. You can perform like a circus seal until you’re blue in the face and that still won’t make someone feel a certain way.

If you’re afraid of rejection and trying to guard against that, ask yourself why you think you deserve to be rejected. Do you believe you’re meant to be alone? Your time and energy are much better spent digging into those questions and negative beliefs than trying to protect yourself from rejection externally. The strategies you employ with other people are manipulative (even if there isn’t malintent), and they simply don’t work. The next time you catch yourself going into super charm mode because you think you said something wrong, stop yourself and sit with the fear and discomfort of not knowing what will happen. An emotionally available person isn’t going to run away because of something you said. Anyone who does isn’t someone you want to invest in anyway.

Have you ever had a conversation that went perfectly in your mind, but emotionally you held back in some way so you ended up with a stomach ache or unable to sleep? Your conscious mind gave you the thumbs up, but your subconscious knows you didn’t honor yourself emotionally, so your body reacted negatively. This happens when your head and your gut are out of alignment, and it can manifest in different ways: insomnia, back pain, loss of appetite, stomach ache, etc. It’s a sign you’re going against yourself.

When someone flakes on plans and you tell them it’s no big deal (but really you’re hurt or disappointed), you might get a tightening in your body. Perhaps it doesn’t happen right away, but later you find yourself stiff or not wanting to eat. Pay attention—your body is saying you’re not at peace with things. There’s a conflict going on. Listening to your head while ignoring your body will leave you stuck in a repetitive cycle of discomfort. Whenever you try to mentally manage situations without checking in with your feelings, you’re causing yourself more trauma. Instead, look at what you’re trying to control and do a body check. Pay attention to any tightness or pain, then connect with your feelings. Can you allow them to surface? Shoving them down will prolong your suffering. And next time, speak your truth, even if it means telling someone you’re hurt. Honoring your feelings will keep your head and body in alignment so you feel mentally, physically and emotionally better.

In this episode of “Surviving to Thriving: Overcoming My Darkest Moment,” I talk with Transformational Health and Wellbeing Coach Sarah Phipp. As a child, psychological and emotional problems led to ill health and a strong desire to control everything. It wasn’t until her early years of motherhood that repressed memories of sexual abuse surfaced. Listen in as Sarah takes us through these moments, and what she learned about healing coming from a different level of consciousness.

Now in the best health of her life, Sarah runs a busy practice sharing her years of knowledge gained from extensive training in health and nutrition, and the psychology of health and wellbeing. Her particular interest has always been focused on the mind: body connection, recognizing the importance of how we create our experience from our state of mind and how this affects the body’s physiology. This groundbreaking approach teaches a new paradigm in psychology that helps clients de-clutter and quieten their minds to tap into their own powerful intuition. Learn more about Sarah at www.sarahphipp.com.