“Your imaginative and prescient will develop into clear solely while you look into your coronary heart … Who seems to be exterior goals; who seems to be inside awakens.” ~Carl Jung

There’s nothing fairly like an undesirable breakup to tear your coronary heart open and convey you head to head along with your deepest shadows.

At the least, that’s the way it was for me.

Almost six years in the past, on a usually heat and sunny Saturday October afternoon in Los Angeles, I used to be mendacity on the ground of my house, wallowing to my then-boyfriend on the telephone about how every little thing in my life appeared to only be hitting partitions: My profession was hitting a ceiling, our relationship felt stagnant, the path of my life itself was hazy and obscure.

It wasn’t the primary time we’d had a dialog like this, however this time was totally different. On at the present time, for causes I can solely ascribe to the best mysteries of life, the middle bearing the load of all of it started to unravel on the seams—with an extended, deep sigh after no less than an hour of getting nowhere, he spoke, “I feel we must always break up.”

My thoughts couldn’t have fathomed listening to these phrases. Our relationship, regardless of how dangerous it was, didn’t have an finish in my thoughts. We had been linked, we had discovered one thing inside each other—one thing particular and distinctive—and he had rekindled a sense of aliveness in me that I didn’t need to let go of. It was merely unthinkable to me that what I had discovered with him would ever come to an finish.

However—as will ultimately occur to us all at one level in life or one other, whether or not or not it’s a breakup, lack of a cherished one, or one thing else—the unthinkable occurred.

I want I may say that a part of me discovered aid within the second; that the a part of me that knew issues weren’t completely proper got here to floor to inform me, sure, it is a good factor.

As a substitute, I entered full denial.

I listened to his phrases, and after grappling my approach via the rest of that dialog, I hung up, went to mattress, and cried myself to sleep.

In my head, as a result of I used to be nonetheless so enraptured by a fantasy of “this may’t presumably ever finish,” this was only a hurdle. It was part of our path that will see us separating for a second, however in the end coming again collectively once more.

My thoughts merely didn’t need to let go.

In actual fact, it couldn’t, as a result of that’s what occurs when the unthinkable happens. A thoughts connected to a selected final result can’t comprehend every other final result, as something aside from what it has imagined seems like a risk to your survival.

That relationship, regardless of what number of pink flags persevered all through our two and a half years collectively—by no means having stated “I really like you” to 1 one other, all the time feeling like I used to be simply attempting to show myself, persistently being advised “can’t you simply be extra of this or much less of that,” to call only a few—was a matter of survival for me. With out it, my thoughts thought I might actually die.

On reflection, I can clearly see I used to be a girl connected.

The connection had been a lifeline for me once we first met. Contemporary on the heels of shedding my dad, that man got here into my life and made me really feel one thing when life had all however misplaced feeling. With out him, I believed I might lose all of it (the irony being, after all, {that a} relationship born in attachment will lose all of it anyway).

Our relationship had been constructed on a shaky basis of codependency and fleeting bodily chemistry, and having by no means skilled a really wholesome relationship earlier than, I couldn’t make sense of how a connection that had as soon as felt so alive couldn’t be someway fastened or saved. Breaking apart was merely not a situation that existed in my worldview.

Past the Unthinkable

I want to say that you don’t, in truth, die when the unthinkable occurs. However the reality is, you type of do.

That’s, no less than part of you does.

Maybe extra precisely said, a model of who you’ve recognized your self to be up till that time begins to wither and asks to be let go.

It’s the a part of you that thinks that you must keep in a relationship that isn’t empowering you, or the a part of you that thinks that you must keep in a dead-end job that’s out of alignment along with your coronary heart’s wishes, or it could even be the a part of you that thinks you can’t say no to pals who in the end don’t convey out your finest.

No matter situation is most related to your present state of affairs, the attachment to staying someplace that’s not empowering on your coronary heart and soul is in the end a mirrored image of the way you as soon as discovered issues wanted to be so as so that you can survive.

It’s no coincidence or shock, then, that when the factor you might be connected to is ripped away, what’s left is a gaping gap into the depth of your shadow. If you happen to’ve by no means confronted your shadow earlier than, it will possibly really feel terrifying to take action. That’s the reason, as was my expertise, we regularly discover ourselves in a state of denial about what has occurred.

Denial permits us to hold on to what was as an alternative of going through what is. And what is, is that this—a doorway into your very personal path of soul initiation; a second through which you might be given a option to both keep the way you’ve been or face what has been swept into darkness as a way to start to be free.

The Threshold of a Soul Encounter

For me, that doorway got here one week later once I awakened the next Saturday morning and located myself going through a tough reality I had not but seen or recognized: By myself for the primary time, I really had no thought what to do with myself or the best way to spend my time.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. There, standing within the toilet that morning and gazing myself within the mirror, I reached the brink of all nice soul encounters: I spotted I merely couldn’t preserve residing this fashion any longer.

I may now not bear the load; the middle had formally damaged.

Not figuring out what else to do, I grabbed my journal, sat on my sofa, and commenced to put in writing in regards to the expertise of the breakup and all of the ideas and emotions I had encountered over the previous week.

And that’s when it occurred.

It got here like a flash of lightning. As I used to be recounting a scene from a couple of days prior once I’d run into my newly ex-boyfriend and felt my temper drop from feeling considerably okay to feeling excruciating ache and despair, I observed that my response to seeing him was to retreat inward. I spotted in that second one thing that I had by no means been in a position to see earlier than: Once you retreat, you possibly can’t really feel the ache anymore.

The feeling of retreating to in the end being withdrawn was one thing I’d felt many instances in my life earlier than, but it surely wasn’t till that second that I spotted the withdrawal was a type of self-protection: To be able to cease feeling any ache that part of me thought I wouldn’t have the ability to survive, I merely eliminated myself from it.

As I continued to journal, I started to see how for a lot of my grownup life, I had made decisions to keep away from feeling ache. Like staying in a relationship that wasn’t good for my coronary heart for a lot too lengthy, I typically opted for the perceived security of what was acquainted as an alternative of being true to myself by making decisions that honored my coronary heart.

After I actually acquired to the underside of it, I spotted that the ache I had skilled that I had so diligently been avoiding over time stemmed from believing that there was one thing exterior of myself that would deem me worthy of affection and acceptance.

I had lengthy been residing as a girl afraid of being rejected and unloved to the purpose the place I’d actually die, and it confirmed.

Finally, it was in these pages that I started connecting the dots of my life and the way I’d come to be somebody who stayed in a relationship out of worry quite than actual love.

Maybe extra straight put, I used to be assembly my shadow.

The Encounter is Simply the Starting

The insights I gained that day didn’t, sadly, make every little thing in my life instantly fall into place and really feel higher once more. What they did do, nevertheless, was soar begin my journey into actual therapeutic and inside progress on a degree I had by no means been in a position to entry earlier than. That day, on my lounge couch, standing in entrance of life’s metaphorical large open plain, I used to be given the reward of assembly my soul.

The trail hasn’t been simple, however going through your shadows and getting acquainted along with your soul isn’t meant to be. It’s meant to shake you to your core, to make you face the components of your self you’ve been too afraid to have a look at and be taught to befriend them as a way to uncover the energy, knowledge, and coronary heart you didn’t even know you had.

Following the decision of my soul to honor my coronary heart took time, persistence, gentleness, assist, curiosity, and a complete lot of observe and religion to see myself via the darkness, however the rewards have been candy: Now not robotically shutting down on the first signal of ache, I now know that the love I had been so afraid of not getting was inside me the entire time, simply ready to be recognized.

It’s been simply over six years for the reason that breakup, and I can say with the utmost confidence, it’s been price each phrase journaled, each tear shed, and each painful second encountered on the way in which down and again.

Ultimately, chances are you’ll not willingly select the laborious issues that occur in your life (I actually wouldn’t have chosen to be damaged up with on the time), however while you discover the material of your actuality beginning to rip on the seams, and you might be standing on the precipice of the very depths of your soul, you might be being given one among life’s best items: to satisfy your self as you might be and, in the end, to know your self as you got here right here to be.