Children need to survive. If we feel that unconditional love is not available we must find a way to get attention to live. Without this attention from our families, whether it is positive or negative, we won’t make it. So we develop compensations to get by. It’s an unconscious attempt to receive love. It works for the most part but it only insures survival not feeling love. It’s a substitute.  All compensations, no matter how successful, represents a stress response to not getting what we really want.  We then superimpose this response on our present relationships.  This prevents us from giving and receiving love. This repatterning invites us to live more authentically.

My overall intention is to have optimal health and well being. This means I must show up honestly and authentically in all my relationships. My compensation is a fear of vulnerability. I survive by substituting friendship in place of intimacy. I also checked for the over assertion compensation. To be loved I feel I must be in control. This is based on my childhood experiences of chaos, inconsistencies and a sense of powerlessness to do anything about my non-coherent family situation.

This was a wonderful follow up to my parental repatterning done previously. My earlier experience in this repatterning went back to age 12 when my parents separated. My belief was that love doesn’t last and it’s painful so why bother. The coherent energy that I needed was around truth: “I am loved and accepted when I tell the truth” and”I open my heart and feel safe letting people in”.

The power of recognizing my compensations is that I can interrupt my patterns before they have a chance to take over. My tendencies are still there, to go back to the familiar compensation, but I recognize it and choose not to go there. How about you? What compensations came up for you? Do you recognize that in your behavior? Were you surprised? Please leave me a note. And again, please join our 26/52 challenge and become a more empowered you in 2015!

Ardis