Getting more from life and love...
This story is an extreme example of how we helped a client make significant changes in her life.
Many of our clients are living happy and successful lives but have an area of life that they'd like to improve. In this client's example, her situation had become extreme, so this story represents some of the deeper work that we do.
So in her own words…
“When I first came to see Martin I was really very unhappy, and wishing wholeheartedly that my life were different, but not seeing any way out of my situation. I was confused, upset and very depressed. I used to sit in my car outside my house and think of ways to die rather than have to go inside and deal with my life.
The very first thing that talking through my situation with Martin helped me to realise was that I was leading a life that did not reflect any of my values, ambitions and priorities. I wasn’t being true to myself and that was why I was so unhappy. I also realised that my husband’s damaging and destructive behaviour was never going to change, no matter how much I tried to fix it, which meant that I would never be able to lead the life I wanted with him. Very quickly this translated into a realisation that I needed to get divorced. This meant a wholesale change for me, because as well as ending my relationship, I was left with a mountain of debt that meant I had to declare bankruptcy and my house was repossessed.
It’s very hard to let go of people and things that have defined you and your life, and here I was having to let go of all of it – my husband whom I loved in spite of everything, a step-son I was deeply attached to, a house I’d worked in numerous hateful jobs to acquire and maintain, a business that was just starting to come together after lots of effort, and lots and lots of my lovely things that just had to fall by the wayside as a consequence of all the change. But oddly, with every decision came an increasing realisation that my life could actually change for the better.
Making the decision, of course, is rather different from having to live through the consequences, and I needed a lot of help and support. But Martin was there at every stage to question where I was going and help me decide if I was making these choices from a place of truth. We had to have lots of sessions on letting go - of the money, possessions and relationships – especially the relationships, which was the hardest and most painful part for me. But the first time I could honestly say “my husband’s problems are not my responsibility” I felt I had made an enormous change to a lifelong pattern of trying to fix and rescue other people.
Now to fix and rescue myself (with more than a little help from Re-Balance!) ...
So how had I ended up in such a bad place? It’s a fair estimate to describe myself as a competent, well-educated, highly intelligent woman – how did I make such bad choices? As Martin pointed out, it comes down to something very fundamental – I didn’t love myself. I didn’t love myself so much that I couldn’t even say those words out loud!
And this was the biggest task Martin and I faced together – discovering how I had learned to feel so unloveable, and then using the techniques of Re-Balance to chip away at that negative belief to help me love myself. You can’t talk yourself into it, but Re-Balance uses a lot of inner awareness techniques to help you understand the truth behind your emotions. I had so much shame and guilt that it was like a wall stopping me from seeing what was behind it. Re-Balance helped me get behind the ‘wall’ to see where those emotions came from, and to question whether they were actually truthful or valid. I’ve tried the more traditional ‘talking cure’ before - and I do REALLY love to talk - but this was so much more effective.
I always thought it was rather trite to say that you have to love yourself before someone else can love you, but I’ve learned along the way that that really is true, because what you have on the inside is what you attract on the outside. I’ve also learned that instead of trying to control everything like I used to, I needed to start accepting things as they are, going with the flow instead of always trying to swim up stream, and part of that acceptance means living every moment as though you chose it. Most importantly, I learned that there are only three constants: life, death and change. Everything else is up for grabs, so if you don’t like the game, play a different one!
Martin is a hugely compassionate and caring person, who has held my head above water when I couldn’t, and helped me through some of the hardest experiences of my life. There is no way I would have been able to make such profound changes to my life, and more importantly, my way of thinking, without him to show me the way. But I also get a lot of credit too. Martin was my guide, but I still had to do the work, and there’s no getting away from the fact that some of it was very hard, and sometimes I wasn’t even sure that I was making any progress at all. But without a doubt, every step of that journey has been worth the effort – it isn’t even possible to quantify how much better my life is now compared to where I was less than a year ago.
During my very first session I had described a time when I had been extremely happy with myself and my life – I described myself as being “as high as a kite” and had said my ambition was to get back to that place. When I sat on his sofa and laughed for two hours at the sheer delight of being alive, and being me, we both knew our work was done.
During the time that I came to see Martin I got divorced from a difficult, self-destructive, chronically unemployed husband and then started dating a Sorbonne-educated, software-entrepreneur millionaire, I had to shut down my business, but I gave up the fear I had around pursuing new and different career paths that better reflect my talents, and I lost my house, but I gained my freedom and without the tie I’m off on a year’s travelling around Europe. And as a side benefit, because I stopped comfort eating, I lost 40lbs! Do I need to say that I completely and whole-heartedly recommend Re-Balance? Well, I do!”