Maneuvering an Emotional Chokehold

As a Love and Relationship Psychic and Coach, I have the pleasure of connecting with people about their love lives and relationships.  Recently, I felt inspired by a client’s session and received Divine Guidance (and her permission) to share this with you. 

She is a beautiful, vibrant woman. Highly intelligent, successful, and quite kind.  She is the type of person many of us would see and think, “Her life is perfect. She has it all figured out.”

The reality is that she has been in an emotionally abusive romantic relationship for three years too long. 

She has told herself that she can fix it—that if she could just “be better” and “work harder,” then her partner would be happy—and that maybe the relationship would one day be what she has always wanted it to be.

In this relationship, she often experiences feeling devalued, dismissed, wrong, and anxious. She is not treated with love and respect. Many times, she has wanted to leave but has chosen to stay. She is losing confidence.

Does anything about her story feel familiar to you?   As someone who loves to identify and dismantle illusions that separate us from Love, which I call the Illusions of Relationship™—I am excited to shed light on this common situation with a Love Renegade’s perspective, starting with mistaken thinking.

My client’s mistaken thinking was such that she believed that “being better” was going to going to lead to new enjoyable experiences in her relationship. Her motivation for “being better” was with the expectation that her [former] partner would like her more or treat her better. Although completely understandable, this approach is not only manipulative but also a form of self-deception.

The mistaken thinking at play here aligns fully with the Illusions of Relationship™, but not with Love. If continued, actions made from such thinking would result in more opportunities to deceive and be deceived, more reasons to stay stuck, and more dissatisfaction in relationships—causing a lot of pain and frustration!

Now back to my client—-in addition to being gorgeous and successful—she is a martial artist. In her coaching session, her Guides and I directed her to apply martial arts to this common relationship dynamic.  From this exercise, she uncovered that her [former] partner’s “signature move” against her was a chokehold-—which made perfect sense for her!

See, the throat is the energy center of communication, authenticity, and self-expression.  When we have blocks on our throat chakra, we are experiencing difficulty in speaking or living our truth.  Nothing about this relationship really supported her in shining as her authentic self!

As we continued the session, I watched her throat chakra heal as she connected with her inner Love Renegade. As she saw the enlightened truth before her, she embraced a new perspective that will support her in breaking free of an emotional chokehold and the Illusions of Relationship™.   

Of course, without being consciously aware of it, many of us unknowingly allow ourselves to be put into emotional chokeholds. For your own healing and illumination, I encourage you to spend some time with the following questions: 
 

  • What would I do or say if I felt more trusting and confident? 
  • Is there anywhere in my relationship or life where I am deceiving myself?
  • What part of me wants to shine? 

It’s ok to be unpopular

I want to speak about popularity and how it impacts our relationships.  As a love and relationship psychic and coach, I get to connect with a wide variety of people about heartbreak, healing, and frustrating experiences they’ve had in their relationships.

From my experience, I notice that there are some of us who would rather be popular and liked, rather than be in an authentic, happy relationship. As someone who takes pleasure in identifying and spotting illusions that separate us from love and cause disruption in our relationships, our dating experience, with our significant others, etc—which I have come to name the Illusions of Relationship™— I got curious about this.

I have seen that for some of us, the thought of fully claiming what we want and daring to be our authentic selves, is an absolutely terrifying endeavor. Bringing this to a person’s attention has, more often than not, led me to be highly unpopular, which I take responsibility for.

I see that many of us are [unconsciously] fond of our Illusions and when questioned, cling on more and more tightly. Even though it is empowering and deeply healing to know when we are in Illusion, it can lead to a lot of fear for someone who is not ready to see themselves and others with eyes of love and truth.

What I feel guided to share with you is that I am willing to be unpopular. Yes, if I am fortunate enough to have you on my mailing list and if I am blessed for you to be a client, then no matter what I will identify misalignments to Truth and I will support you (as best as I can) in having a life and relationships without sacrificing, “selling out,” or settling.

If you have been following me for a while, you will see that I talk about the sacrifice aspect frequently. More recently in my last email about the Illusion of Satisfaction, I touched upon the settling aspect.  Now, it’s time to discuss “selling out.”

Whenever we try to be who someone wants us to be, we are selling out.  It puts us out of alignment with our personal truth and with universal truth.  When we pretend that we are ok for settling for less than what we actually want, when we fail to communicate our needs, we are acting out of fear.  We are, in a way, telling the Universe, “no. no thanks. I may say I want a great relationship, but my actions show you that I am fine with getting crumbs.”  This leads to resentment and it keeps you further from what you actually want.

What I have come to see is that shedding light on Illusion can frustrate and upset people, and you know what? I understand.

It can be very scary to step up and ask for what you want. It can be really intimidating to live life as your true self. For most of us, it is unknown. It is uncertain. We are taught to believe that the unknown is scary and should be avoided at all costs.

This is the journey of a Love Renegade. As courage is the vehicle of love, the Love Renegade chooses to see, heal, and work through Illusions. Love Renegades choose to create their own future based on love and truth, instead of selling out and being who everyone wants them to be.

So today, I send you blessings of courage as you embrace your unique path and dare to create relationships that reflect and support YOU. 

satisfying outcomes

This picture marks a time in my life when I was very much engaged with the Illusion of Satisfaction and surrounded by the Illusion of Perfection.  It began a time of going deeper and daring to create authentically and addressing all of the fear along the way too. More on that another time.  🙂 For now, let’s deep dive into the ins and outs on the Illusion of Satisfaction…

As a relationship psychic, I am gifted with the opportunity to connect with a variety of people about their relationships. This can happen casually at a social event or within the sacred space of a coaching conversation. As we go deeper, I am often delighted by the “new level of self” I hear expressed to me within the conversation.

The other day something interesting happened…

This person in my coaching space did not have a problem.  Her relationships were great. Her career was booming.  She was pleased with her health and family life. This is unusual in that most people who seek me out to have this kind of a conversation have something that they want to heal, change, or transform.

Also—I could tell that she was not lying to me or trying to “prove” how great things were going for her.  I say this as I notice that some of us may overcompensate by talking about how well we are doing in order to bypass how we are really feeling or to “cover up” the bits of our lives that we judge or make wrong in some way.

I digress…

As she and I went deeper, I saw that she was likely under the Illusion of Satisfaction, the Illusion of Relationship™ that separates us from love by covertly (a.k.a. often unconsciously) keeping us from our next adventure.

To go into a little more detail, the Illusion of Satisfaction often impacts people who are very well-accomplished.  These people have often overcome huge struggles and setbacks or they beat the odds in some way.  These are people who are successful and who many seek out for advice or mentorship.

How the Illusion of Satisfaction operates is sneaky in that it “hides” the next new experience. This can look like a lack of, or a low-key reluctance to start, something new—such as a relationship, new level of relationship, or a different creative endeavor.  The reluctance is there because a part of that person fears the unknown; they have memories of how hard things were before and/or they are afraid of their lives being disrupted.

To really get a feel for the  Illusion of Satisfaction, watch this short (under four minute) video here. 

If you would like to have a deeper understanding of this Illusion, consider the following coaching questions:

  • As you feel into your own inner knowing, what is your next level of satisfaction?
  • What have you been thinking about doing for a while now and haven’t started?
  • What changes does a part of you fear?