Frenemies & Mother Wounds

“My true relationship is with myself — all others are simply mirrors of it.” — Shakti Gawain

“I’m ashamed to admit that I want to be loved.” The thought surfaced as a whisper from the recesses of my psyche. It felt uncomfortable, like the loss of a voice due to disuse—the muscles had atrophied. Yet, as I repeated it over and over, the voice became clearer and stronger. I also noticed that the more I said it, the more my peripheral awareness came online. I struggle with certain sensations, like the feeling of my mother’s wound being heard, but as I repeated the phrase, even that dormant “limb” began to flicker back to life.

The experience itself was profound, but the setting was anything but. I was venting in my journal, as I usually do when I need to get hurt feelings off my chest. The topic of today’s tirade was my high school best friend, who had just aired me out like trashy grocery aisle gossip. Considering how my hero’s journey has manifested, I instantly understood that this was a surface manifestation of an unconscious belief I had yet to address—a background program of lack was running. I knew this because most of the relationships in my life that pre-date my healing journey were essentially trauma bonds. Now that a breakthrough was coming, and my “fan club” (the old patterns) started acting out, I had to take a hard look at the glue that cemented our bond.

A practice that has helped me become more conscious of my unconscious programming is a combination of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and embodying the “observer” mentioned in The Power of Now. After ranting on paper, the epiphany hit. I took a metaphorical seat back in my psyche and ran the tape of our friendship. We became friends during a sensitive, extremely impressionable time in anyone’s life: the transition from child to adolescent. I struggled greatly to adapt to a new, public school, especially since my cousin, a senior, was raining hell on the rest of my high school career. To top it off, I was dirt poor with very little family support, so I felt entirely on my own at a major crossroads in life—a feeling that is extremely isolating. To add insult to injury, I attended a predominantly white high school in a wealthy neighborhood, so to say I didn’t fit in would be an understatement.

I remember having a couple of high school crushes (cringe, I was extremely awkward) and was still navigating new social constructs. As I shared these interests with my friend, I now realize that I started to internalize the narrative she was creating: a story that I was somehow unworthy or unacceptable, basically suggesting I was aiming too high for romantic interest. That same narrative continued throughout our friendship, especially as I battled emotional unavailability due to a tumultuous relationship with my dad. This narrative was buried deep, sealing an internalized belief from my caregiver that it was shameful to admit that I had needs, most of all, love.

As my unconscious remained unconscious, I continued to select friendships that mirrored the emotional makeup of my caregiver and enabled my need for invisibility in relationships. (For the ignorant: this does not mean there’s a good guy or a bad guy—read that twice.) Naturally, this pattern played out in romantic relationships in its own way, but I prioritized my female friendships over romantic connections because, quite frankly, I suffered from a distortion that men were useless. I hadn’t had a consistent, healthy male role model, and that lack of consistency created a belief that I couldn’t rely on men for anything. I had been abandoned in too many difficult situations by male caregivers and the like to feel comfortable (let alone safe) prioritizing a romantic relationship. Naturally, I became the friend who was the romantic cynic, doling out dating advice on the regular. After a while, I created a whole character around that belief system. As life became more difficult and my heart calcified, I had to become stronger, so admitting I had any sort of need, even down to the basics, became a shameful act. If I could not ask for my basic needs to be satisfied, who was I to ask for a higher need like love?