S2 EP264 – The Heart of Integrity: Balancing Honesty with Compassion

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Dr. Erika Chopich and I were discussing the topic of integrity, and she said that there are two kinds of integrity, intellectual and emotional. Intellectual integrity, she said, has to do with your value system, such as giving back the money when you are overcharged at the grocery store. Emotional integrity is about having empathy and compassion for yourself and for others. It’s the opposite of not giving to another until they give to you first. Many people may look like they are giving to others when they really aren’t because they are not actually feeling empathy and compassion. They are withheld, dissociated, shut down, but have learned to look open and giving. If you are tuned into your feelings, you can feel the difference between someone who is actually empathic and compassionate, and someone who is acting empathic and compassionate but not actually feeling these feelings.

A major aspect of emotional integrity is having the courage to know your own truth and tell your own truth. Do you dare to know and confront the truth your wounded self wants you to avoid?

I clearly remember thinking, as a young child, “I’m not going to be like my mother or father. I’m not going to be a screamer. I’m not going to be mean. I’m not going to ignore my children. I’m not going to try to mold them and control them.”

Yet, over and over, as I’ve done my inner work, I’ve had to face those aspects of myself that are exactly like my mother or father. It’s not fun to face those wounded aspects of ourselves that we judge and work so hard to hide, but it’s essential if we are going to heal them and become the loving caring, honest, and empathic people we really want to be.

Do you have the courage to face your deepest guilt and shame, your deepest secrets – the things you most want to hide from others?

Do you have the courage to compassionately embrace the wounded aspects of yourself that you inevitably developed as you were growing up? Do you have the courage to face and heal the parts of yourself that are modeled after what you disliked in your parents or other caregivers and keep you from living in integrity?

A few years ago, when I worked with one of my clients, Marcus, he uncovered memories of extensive sexual abuse at the hands of his father. He worked through this with me and then moved on in his life. Occasionally, he consulted with me regarding his relationship issues.

Marcus came back to work with me again at a point when he was terrified of losing his massage license, and thus his livelihood. As a massage therapist, it was Marcus’s responsibility to create a safe environment where his clients could relax and let go. Just as a client is emotionally “naked” with a psychotherapist, and the therapist must have solid boundaries in order for clients to safely explore their issues, so clients who are physically naked with a massage therapist need to feel safe and depend on the therapist’s professional boundaries.

Marcus had touched two of his women clients inappropriately, and he was now being called to the carpet.

His first reaction was to blame the clients. “They wanted to be touched. They had sexual energy with me. They have some responsibility here,” he defensively told me.

Then he blamed Samantha, the owner of the center where he worked. “She should have stood up for me,” he said. “She’s known me for a long time. I should be allowed to make a mistake and be treated with compassion rather than with judgment. I’m taking responsibility for my actions, which I know were wrong. I’m not denying it, but she’s not taking responsibility for her lack of compassion for me. She’s making me into a bad guy and throwing me away.”

“Marcus,” I said gently, “are you being honest with yourself, and do you have compassion for yourself – for the little boy in you who is hurting right now?”

“Sure I do. I have a lot of compassion for myself, and I know what I did was wrong. I’m being very honest with myself.”

I knew from his defensive tone that this wasn’t true. From our work together, I knew that Marcus had a very hard time being compassionate toward himself and had a hard time taking responsibility for his feelings. I knew that he was projecting onto Samantha his own lack of self-honesty and self-compassion, and that he was out of integrity with himself. I also knew that this level of blame and projection was covering up a deeper issue that Marcus had never come to terms with.

Due to what his father had done to him, the last thing Marcus wanted to know was that he was anything like his father. He had spent his life trying to be as different from him father as any son could be.

Finally, we reached a place in our work together where I felt that Marcus was ready to face his deepest demons.

“Marcus, how are you like your father?” I asked.

“I’m nothing like him,” he growled.

“When you were touching your clients, what was your intent?”

“I told you – I get my sense of aliveness from sexual energy.” Marcus had struggled for a long time with sexual addiction.

“What do you think your father’s intent was when he abused you?”

Shock and a dawning awareness appeared on his face. “Oh my God!” He covered his face with his hands and sobbed.

Marcus had spent years avoiding the fact that a part of him was empty and needy – like his father had been, remaining in denial about his own unconscious desire to use women sexually for his aliveness – like his father had used him. Because he was a kind and caring man who would never deliberately hurt anyone, he didn’t want to know that his sexual behavior was hurtful to others. And, because he never wanted to know this, he shied away from taking loving responsibility for himself – always afraid of knowing this part of him, which of course led to his abusive lack of integrity.

As Marcus learned to compassionately embrace the very wounded little boy inside, and to forgive himself for being like his father, he was able to start giving himself the loving care that he needed to feel truly alive in healthy ways. His secret was out, and he was free. Regardless of what happened with his massage license, Marcus could finally live with himself with a sense of integrity.

It’s easy to fool ourselves regarding our truth. My clients often ask questions such as, “How do I know the difference between the lies coming from my wounded self and the truth coming from my guidance? How do I know, when I think I am receiving information from spirit, that I’m not just making it up?”

These are important questions.

Knowing the difference between the truth that comes from your higher self and the lies of your wounded self is a learning process, a process of discernment. But it’s actually easier than you think. It has to do with your feelings and your heart.

As I hope you know by now if you’ve been listening to my podcasts or reading my books and articles and practicing Inner Bonding, our feelings come from two different places. There are wounded feelings and there are the existential feelings of life. We feel our wounded feelings when we are operating from false beliefs. Our feelings of fear, anxiety, stress, depression, hurt, anger, irritation, annoyance, guilt, shame, emptiness, aloneness, resentment, and jealousy are the result of believing the lies of our wounded self. We can feel these feelings in many parts of our body – our stomach, heart, throat, head, arms, or legs. These painful feelings tell us that we are not in integrity with ourselves because we operating from the lies of our wounded self.

The deeper existential feelings of life are totally different than wounded feelings. These feelings are expansive rather than contracting. Whether we are feeling the painful feelings that come from difficult life circumstances, such as sadness, sorrow, heartbreak, loneliness, grief, helplessness over others and outcomes, or from fear of real and present danger, or the wonderful feelings that come from being in truth, such as happiness, peace, love, joy, bliss, delight, rapture, lightness of being, our heart feels soft, full, open, and expansive as opposed to empty, heavy, tight, and constricted. 

Our heart is a good indicator of whether we are operating in integrity from truth or operating without integrity from the lies of our wounded self.

Discernment comes when we are present to our feelings. If your heart or stomach is heavy, tight, and constricted and you are unaware of it, you will not get the message that your heart or stomach is trying to give you. Truth opens the heart. Lies close it.

This is why Step One of Inner Bonding is “Being mindful of your feelings.” Our feelings are here to guide us, to let us know when we are operating from truth and integrity, and when we are stuck in lies, dishonesty, and a lack of integrity. Our feelings are a very accurate guide.

When we are operating from truth – the truth that comes through us from our higher, wiser self – the heart feels full of love, gratitude, and inner peace. We feel a deep sense of fullness and wellbeing. We laugh easily. Love overflows and we want to share it with others. We feel like our life is good. We are with the flow, and we feel a sense of oneness with all of life. There is a generosity of spirit that flows from us, and all is right with the world.

Even when we are dealing with life’s challenges, when we are connected with the truth from our higher wise self, our heart is open and full of love and compassion for the core pain of loneliness, heartbreak, grief, and helplessness over others and outcomes. 

What you need to learn to do to live in truth and integrity, is to learn to listen to your feelings, especially the feelings in your heart.

When you are aware of feeling tightness in your heart, along with a feeling of aloneness and emptiness in your heart, you know that you are in your wounded self. The heart closes when you are in your ego wounded self, operating from the lies of your wounded self. If you are not aware of your feelings, you don’t know that you are receiving a message from your inner and higher guidance through your heart and other feelings in your body. A tight, closed, empty heart is your inner guidance’s way of letting you know that what you are thinking, doing, and believing is not coming from truth, and that how you are thinking and behaving is not in your highest good. An open, full, loving heart is your inner and higher guidance’s way of letting you know that what you are thinking and how you are behaving is loving, true, and in your highest good.

When you tune your feelings out with your various addictions, you have no way of knowing the difference between lies and truth, between the beliefs that come from your own limited mind and the truth that comes directly from your guidance. When you immediately go to food, drugs, alcohol, busyness, TV, anger, withdrawal, compliance, resistance, or any other addictive process, you effectively close your heart and cut off your feelings, which cuts off your discernment of lies and truth, leading to a lack of emotional integrity.

So the answer to the questions, “How do I know the difference between the lies coming from my wounded self and the truth coming from spirit? How do I know, when I think I am receiving information from spirit, that I’m not just making it up?” is to tune into your heart, tune into your feelings, and you will know!

However, in order to stay tuned into both your wounded feelings, which let you know that your wounded self is in charge, and your painful existential feelings that come from challenging life situations, you need to have developed enough of a loving adult that you know how to compassionately manage your painful feelings of life.

Many people spend their lives avoiding their authentic pain because of their false beliefs about it. We all grew up with some false beliefs about pain.

At an Inner Bonding Weekend Workshop, a lady shared that she tragically lost her beloved son in a horrible accident a few years before the workshop.

“I didn’t think I could survive the pain until I read that love never leaves, and that I need to keep my heart open so that I can continue to feel his love for me and share my love for him. Doing this has made his loss manageable for me, and, in fact, I’m doing great! I have new passions in my life and am fully enjoying my life while continuing to love my son. I feel him right here, in my heart, all the time, and that gives me peace.” 

Because we all had existential pain as children- loneliness, heartbreak, grief, and helplessness over ourselves and others, and we had no way of managing these extremely painful feelings, we grew up with some false beliefs about the pain of life, such as

• If I lose someone I love, or if I open to the depth of past pain, I will die or go crazy.
• If I open to the depth of my pain, it will be unending.
• If I open to my pain, I will not be able to function.

While these beliefs may have been true when we were children, they are not true now when we learn to manage our pain as loving adults.

The loss of a beloved child is one of the most painful experiences in life. Yet this woman is doing well, living her life with joy and inner peace. I was so pleased that she shared this with the group, as it is a wonderful testament to the power of love and the power of our spiritual connection. 

There is only one way that core pain is manageable, and that is with love, empathy, and compassion.

Love does not go away just because someone dies. Love is the essence of who we all are, and while it is very painful to no longer be able to physically see them and hug them, their love is not gone, and our ability to express our love for them is not gone.

Because of the false beliefs about existential pain, most people spend their lives finding endless ways of avoiding it. Unfortunately, the things we do to try to avoid our authentic pain actually cause our wounded pain. Ignoring your feelings by staying in your mind rather than in your body, using substance and process addictions, handing to others responsibility for your feelings and for defining your worth, and judging yourself – all these are forms of self-abandonment and all lead to the wounded pain of anxiety, depression, anger, emptiness, aloneness, guilt, and shame. You are not living in truth and integrity when you abandon yourself rather than tap into the love and compassion that is always here for you.

The wounded pain goes away only when you embrace your authentic pain with love and compassion. Your everyday existential pain – the heartache of others’ unloving and controlling behavior, the sorrow of seeing the tragedies of life, the grief of various kinds of losses – CAN be managed, with love and compassion.

Love is God and God is love.

When we open to learning with our spiritual guidance about loving ourselves, we are automatically inviting the presence of love into our hearts. It is love that heals, love that enables us to manage our deeper pain, love that enables us to move on with life when tragedy strikes. Without love, we can go crazy, or not be able to function, and the pain may be unending. Without love, life seems too hard, so we turn to our various addictions. Avoiding loving ourselves is avoiding the truth of who we are, for we are sparks of the Divine which is love. When we avoid love and compassion because we are afraid of our painful feelings, there is no way of living in emotional integrity.

Love is everywhere. We live in a sea of love. Love is who and what we are as a soul. We just need to open to learning with our guidance about loving ourselves to feel the love that is always here for us and within us.

Love is what allows us to move through our deeper pain and into the joy of life. Love is what allows us to let go of addictions and our many ways of controlling, moving into truth and living in emotional integrity with ourselves and with others.

Love is what this life journey is all about. This can be most challenging in relationships.

A challenge for many people in a relationship is to be in emotional integrity by having the courage to speak your truth to your partner. If you are withholding your truth from your partner, you might believe you are withholding your truth to spare your partner pain, but is your real intent to protect yourself from the response you fear? 

Mark sought my help because he was thinking of leaving his wife, Linda. He had not been feeling in love with her for a long time, but they had two children, and he really didn’t want to break up the family.

“Mark,” I asked, “Were you ever in love with Linda?”

“Yes, at the beginning of our relationship,” he said.

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“Linda seemed to get really insecure once I started my new business and had long workdays. Even though I think I gave her a lot of attention on the weekends, she started getting angry pretty much every day. Then after our son was born, she seemed even more unhappy and irritable. She gets mean when she’s angry and I just don’t find that appealing. I don’t feel close to her anymore,” he told me.

“Have you said anything to her about this?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “She already seems so unhappy. I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”

“So how do you handle it?” I asked.

“I guess I just sort of shut down and pretend that everything is okay. But I’m spending more and more time at work because I don’t like being at home, and recently I met another woman who I’m attracted to. I realize I’ve got to do something about this,” he said.

“Do you really think that leaving her will cause less hurt than telling her your truth?” I asked.

“Well, if I just leave then I don’t have to deal with her hurt,” he answered.

It was time for Mark to find the courage to be honest. What he was doing was coming from fear and a complete lack of integrity.

“Mark,” I told him, “that’s a lack of courage and integrity. And you have two children to think about. You once loved Linda and it’s possible that you could again, but only if you are willing to be honest. You need to give Linda a chance to deal with this. She has no idea what’s going on. She might decide to deal with her anger, or she might not, but at least give her a chance to make that decision. And relationship problems are never one-sided. Perhaps she has things to say to you too.”

Mark decided to tell Linda the truth, even though he was really scared. He told her that her anger was pushing him away, and that he didn’t like being home anymore because he felt so blamed and controlled by her. He told her that he was attracted to another woman who was treating him with kindness and caring, and that he wanted this from Linda. He told her he had been thinking of leaving and had sought my help and that I told him to tell the truth. He asked her if she would join him in counseling.

Linda was shocked. She had no idea all this was going on with Mark. She thought she was the only one feeling so unloved in the relationship. At first, she reacted exactly as Mark feared, with anger, hurt, and blame. But he told her the truth about this too – that he had been afraid to be truthful with her because of this reaction, and that if she wanted the truth, she needed to be open to it rather than closed and angry. Finally Linda heard him, and they were able to talk honestly for the first time in years. Linda was actually relieved at hearing the truth, once she got over the initial shock and they were able to talk. She agreed to counseling. 

It turned out that both of them were scared to speak their truth.

In counseling, Mark discovered that Linda also had been afraid to be honest with him, fearing that he would withdraw even more. She was just as afraid of his withdrawal as he was of her anger. They discovered that both of them had been protecting against their fears rather than being open to learning with each other. As they both devoted themselves to practicing Inner Bonding and opened to learning with themselves and each other, the love gradually came back into their relationship.

People often believe that they are withholding their truth to spare their partner pain, but their real intent is to protect themselves from the response they fear. Protecting against pain – with anger, withdrawal, and blame – will always bring about the very pain we fear, while opening to learning and speaking our truth can open the door to love, and to living in honesty, empathy, compassion and integrity.

I hope you find the courage to live in integrity with honesty and compassion for yourself and others. Living in emotional integrity leads to respecting yourself, respecting others, and being respected by others.

I invite you to join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership. 

I invite you to heal your relationships with my 30-Day online video relationship course: Wildly, Deeply, Joyously in Love.

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from all of our books and courses and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.