S2 EP252 – Intention Uncovered: Are You Being Honest with Yourself?

Hi everyone! Dr. Margaret Paul here, and welcome to the Inner Bonding podcast. As many of you know, Dr. Erika Chopich and I, with the help of our spiritual guidance, created the Inner Bonding process 40 years ago. The foundation of Inner Bonding is our intention, and I don’t know if you know this, but Inner Bonding is the only therapeutic modality that centers on the concept of two core intents in any given moment: the intent to control and the intent to learn about love. The essence of our free will is our ability to choose our intent. 

However, in order to be able to choose your intent, you need to be conscious of your intent in the moment, and this is where you might be getting stuck, because if your intention is consistently to try to have control over getting love, attention, or approval, and avoid the pain of disapproval and rejection, or the pain of the existential feelings of life, such as loneliness, grief, heartbreak, and helplessness over others and outcomes, rather than to learn to be loving to yourself and others, and you are not aware of this, you will make no real progress regarding healing your false beliefs that result in getting stuck in your life and stuck in emotional pain.

The challenge is to know when you are open to learning about loving yourself and others, and when you are protecting, avoiding, and controlling.

For example, many people spend much time thinking about things over which they have no control, such as the past, or how to “get” someone to react a certain way. Ruminating about these things is a form of control. The wounded self believes that if we think about something enough, or judge ourselves enough, we can have control over others and the outcome of things.

The wounded self often has a major false belief that says, “My feelings of anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, emptiness, aloneness, jealousy, and so on are coming from a person or situation, not from what I’m telling myself or how I’m treating myself from my wounded self.” But these are the wounded feelings that come from self-abandonment, as opposed to the painful existential feelings of life, such as the loneliness, grief, heartbreak, sorrow, helplessness over others and events, and fear of real and present danger,  

Let’s unravel this to get a deeper understanding regarding why the wounded feelings, when we are adults, are not being externally caused. They can certainly be externally caused as a child, but then we all absorb how we are treated as children and as adults, we mostly do it to ourselves.

These feeling are generally caused by some form of self-abandonment. For example:

• You might be judging yourself, pressuring yourself to do things ‘right’ and not do them wrong or make mistakes, and certainly not ever fail. If that is what you are doing, who’s voice does that sound like? Mom, Dad, grandparent, sibling, teacher, religious leader? Remember, we absorbed the voices and beliefs of the adults and peers around us, and they are part of our wounded self. You might be judging yourself as not good enough, not attractive enough, not smart enough, or some other hurtful judgment. What are the feelings your self-judgment is causing – anxiety, depression, shame, stress, anger, aloneness, emptiness, jealousy? Tune in right now and notice the feelings caused by self-judgment. Are you aware of your intent when you are judging yourself? Are you being honest with yourself about your intent?

Self-judgment is always a form of control. Your wounded self believes that by judging yourself, you can get yourself to do things “right,” and doing things right, whatever that means to you, is one way the wounded self believes you can control others and get their approval. Yet what self-judgment really does is cause anxiety and other wounded feelings, and these feelings are letting you know that you are abandoning yourself. Self-judgment is certainly not kind and loving!

• Here is another example. You might need to make a presentation, and your inner child is worried that you won’t show up for it as a loving adult, or you need to have a difficult conversation with someone and you’re putting your young or adolescent wounded self in charge rather than your loving adult. If this is the case, you will likely feel very anxious. Your anxiety isn’t about the presentation or the conversation – it’s about your inner child fearful that you will abandon yourself in the presentation or conversation.
• You might be making a partner responsible for whether you feel worthy or safe, handing your wellbeing over to another person. If you are doing this, you might feel empty, angry, and alone.
• You might be ignoring your feelings, and your inner child, your inner guidance system, is anxious because he or she has important information for you, and you are ignoring your gut feelings by staying focused in your mind or numbing out with various addictions. Your inner child might be feeling anxious, alone, empty, or angry for being left so alone.

These are some of the ways you might be abandoning yourself that might be causing anxiety, depression, emptiness, aloneness, or any other of the wounded feelings. Your inner child might be angry at you for the ways you abandon yourself, and if you believe that your anger is because of something someone else is doing or not doing, then you are stuck blaming with no intention to learn about how you are treating yourself. Are you aware of your intention when you are doing any of these things?  

Many of the people I work with are suffering from anxiety and depression. They generally believe that their anxiety and depression are coming from outside influences – such as money issues or relationship issues. What they are not aware of is that their anxiety and depression and other wounded feelings are coming from their self-judgment, and from ignoring the painful feelings that result from their self-judgment. Their intention is to control with their self-judgment and avoidance behavior, and their anxiety and depression is the result of their intention to control.

You might also be causing your anxiety and depression but eating sugar and processed junk foods, which create toxins in your gut that go up into your brain and might be a cause of your anxiety and depression. Using sugar and junk foods are also a form of self-abandonment.

When your intention is to be loving to yourself and to support your highest good, you care about what you put into your body, and you are kind and compassionate toward yourself, even toward your judgmental, controlling wounded self. Rather than ignoring your pain with substance and process addictions, you move into Inner Bonding, discovering how you are causing your own pain with your self-judgments and other avoidance behaviors

If you are suffering from anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, resentment, bitterness, or any other wounded feelings, it’s likely because your intent is to control rather than to learn about loving yourself. These painful feelings are clearly letting you know what your intent is. If you then avoid taking responsibility for causing these feelings, you further entrench yourself in your painful wounded feelings. The reason so many people are on prescription medications for anxiety and depression is because their intent is to control and avoid rather than to learn about what they are doing to cause their pain and learn about what would be loving to themselves.

We all have the capacity to choose our intention – it is the essence of our free will. We also have the free will to avoid consciously choosing our intention. If you are not consciously choosing the intent to learn about loving yourself and others, moment-by-moment, then you are likely unconsciously choosing the intent to protect, control, and avoid. A major aspect of the practice of Inner Bonding is about practicing consciously choosing your intention.

When you choose to consistently be conscious of your intent and practice Inner Bonding, you will gradually move out of anxiety, depression and other wounded feelings and into inner peace and joy.

What if you feel stuck believing that you are not important enough to even want to learn to love yourself?

When you were growing up, did you feel important to your parents? Did they attend to you in loving ways to show you how important you were to them? Or did you often feel like a bother or a burden to them?

Did either of your parents or caregivers role-model loving themselves? Did your caregivers think they were important enough to truly value themselves and take loving care of themselves?

If you didn’t experience your caregivers valuing themselves or valuing you, then you might think you are not important enough to take loving care of yourself.

This is the situation Stacey is in, and she asked me this question at one of my events.

“I am having difficulty finding a reason to get out of bed and out of my depression,” she told me. “I think intellectually I have a need to reconnect to myself yet am unable to make this more important than my need to have someone else show me how to do this. I don’t seem to believe I can do it on my own. How is it possible to use this collapse to move forward? I don’t seem to be able to give myself the importance required, which is what I really need isn’t it?”

It is likely that Stacey is not going to be able to do this by herself. I read a true story recently about a man who was brought up by very cold and unloving parents. This man became part of a study that followed him through from college to his death in his 80s, researching happiness and success. Early in the study, the researchers stated that this man was so unhappy and depressed, that it was unlikely he would ever lead a fulfilling life. Then, in his mid-30s, after attending medical school but still being extremely unhappy and disconnected, he got TB and was in a sanitarium for over a year.

While in the sanitarium, he received much loving kindness from the hospital staff. It was the first loving kindness he had ever experienced, and he emerged from his hospital experience a completely changed man. He went on to get married, have children, create a loving family, have a successful medical practice, and feel much joy in his life.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that Stacey go into a sanitarium, but I am suggesting that her belief that she can’t do it on her own may be accurate.

It is unlikely that Stacey will find the motivation to learn to take loving care of herself until someone helps her to feel that she is important. Stacey needs enough caring from someone to begin to want to give her inner child the love and caring she needs.

Because she does not feel she is important, Stacey is not likely to find a relationship with someone who wants to give this to her, which means that she is going to need to seek it out with a loving therapist or facilitator.

This is one of the things that a good Inner Bonding facilitator can do. He or she can help people like Stacey to discover their beautiful essence, their incredible inner child – who they really are as a spark of the Divine – so that they feel motivated to take loving care of themselves. For Stacey to move out of her depression and into wanting to get out of bed in the morning, she needs love.

Ultimately, she needs to be able to bring that love to herself by connecting with her spiritual guidance, but until she can do that, she needs another’s love to help her discover herself. This is what happened to the man who went into the sanitarium. He felt loved for the first time in his life, which enabled him to love himself and others.

If you find you are stuck and you can’t do Inner Bonding yourself, then please give yourself the gift of reaching out for help. Help is here for you.

There is a battle going on within each of us much of the time. Our wounded self is always vying for control, while our essence, our true self, wants to let go of control and surrender to the guidance of spirit. In those moments that we are truly open to learning with our guidance, we feel the love, peace, and joy of spirit flowing through us. We feel the power that comes from being “in the flow.” Yet for many people these moments are fleeting and difficult to get back to or sustain.

Why is it that no matter how wonderful we feel when we are one with the universe, we lose it so easily?

The answer is that it is the wounded self’s job to keep us “safe” by exerting our various forms of control. The wounded self does not know that true safety is created by being deeply connected to our spiritual source of guidance. The wounded self believes it has to do God’s job for us. In fact, it thinks it is God. Yet the moment the wounded self takes over to try to keep us safe, we lose the peace and joy that come from opening to learning with our spiritual guidance about loving ourselves and others.

Are you aware of exactly what the wounded self is trying to control, or even that your intent is to control?

One of the major goals of the wounded self is to control your feelings because one of the goals of the wounded self is to avoid pain, coming from the false belief that you can’t handle your pain. While it’s true that the wounded self can’t handle your pain, you can learn to handle pain as a spiritually connected loving adult. But the moment you are operating from the false belief that you can’t handle your pain, you likely go into your various addictive ways of avoiding your feelings: food, alcohol, drugs, spending, TV, YouTube, anger, caretaking, withdrawal, sex or pornography, busyness, daydreaming, social media, gambling, video games, scanning the Internet, and so on. Are you aware of your intention when you are doing these things addictively?

This is why Step One of Inner Bonding is to be mindful of your feelings. If you are automatically avoiding your feelings, you will get stuck in your addictive patterns, which cuts you off from your spiritual guidance. Your addictions lower your frequency to the point of not being able to connect with your guidance and then you might feel very alone. Then you might want to avoid your aloneness, which you might do with your addictions, which creates more aloneness. Until you are willing to be in Step One of Inner Bonding, being mindful of your feelings and wanting responsibility for them, you will likely remain stuck in your addictive patterns and cut off from the connection you need to move out of aloneness and the other painful wounded feelings. Are you aware of your intention when you are acting out addictively? Are you being honest with yourself

The wounded self might also believe that you can control how others feel about you. The false belief may be that if you just act right, look right, make enough money, say the right things, or are intimidating enough, you can get the love and approval you need. The wounded self believes that it is someone else’s job, rather than your own, to give you the love and security you might be seeking. You might try to control others with your niceness, compliance, explanations, defensiveness, whining, anger, threats, lying, debating, and so on. Are you aware of your intention when you are trying to control others? Are you being honest with yourself?

At the same time that you may want control over others, you likely don’t want to be controlled, so you might want control over not being controlled. You might try to avoid being controlled by resorting to resistance, procrastination, withdrawal, lying, anger, explanations, and defensiveness. The wounded self might believe you have to be vigilant to maintain control and not be controlled. And what does this lead to? Of course, to all the painful wounded feelings. Notice again that these feelings are not coming from others or from circumstances, but from how you are treating yourself and others. Are you aware of your intention when you are trying, from your wounded self, to avoid being controlled, rather than setting loving limits with your loving adult

The wounded self, wanting to play God and have control over the outcome of things, believes that if you follow the rules, or pray enough, or give enough to others, or sacrifice yourself enough, you can control the outcome of things. The problem is that when you pray with the intent to control, rather than to learn about loving yourself and others, you are just using prayer as another form of control. Your prayers to learn about love and for help in being loving are always answered. Prayers to control others and outcomes have no power at all. Are you aware and honest with yourself about the intention of your prayers?

Similarly, when you give to others to get something back, then your giving is just another form of control. Giving for the joy of giving will always result in receiving joy from the very act of giving, but giving as a form of control with an agenda will leave you feeling empty. Are you aware of your intention when you are giving?

Whenever you are not feeling the peace that comes from connection with spirit, you have the free will to choose your intention and open to learning about what it is you are trying to control. When you notice, in Step One of Inner Bonding, that you are feeling less than peaceful, you can open to learning about what it is you are trying to control – yourself, others, and/or outcomes. Asking, “What am I trying to control, or avoid, or protect against?” can move you out of a stuck place and into the intent to learn. Then continue to go through the Six Steps, exploring your beliefs about control and opening to your guidance for the truth and the loving actions. Once you take the loving actions, you will find yourself back in peace, back in connection with yourself and with spirit, back into the flow of life. But to do this, you need to be honest with yourself and aware of your intent.

My clients often say they want to be open to learning about loving themselves and others, but that are too afraid of getting hurt to be open. Yet at the same time they want a loving relationship.

Is it possible to fully love without getting hurt? The answer is unequivocally NO!

Is this because love hurts? Again, the answer is NO!

It is not love that hurts. It’s loss of love that hurts. Love can be lost when a loved one dies, when a loved one rejects you and leaves, or when a loved one becomes mean, angry, abusive, distant, or disconnected.

Janie asked the following question at one of my events:

“I understand that in order to have a loving relationship with another person, I have to be willing to open up and let myself be seen, even when I feel vulnerable, and at the same time take care of myself. How can I open up to receive from the other if I am scared to be hurt?”

The answer lies in learning how to manage hurt so that you are not so scared of it.

The reason most people are scared of being hurt is because they don’t know how to manage the pain of loneliness, heartbreak, grief, and helplessness over others and outcomes.

The truth is that it is not possible to love without risking experiencing these very painful existential life feelings. If you are afraid of them because you don’t know how to lovingly manage them, then you will likely protect yourself from fully loving. When you do this, your intent is to control. Are you aware of this? Are you being honest with yourself about your true intention?

No one wants to be hurt. But, and I hope you really hear this, living a life without love hurts more than managing the hurt that comes with loving.

The fear of being hurt is deeply rooted in our growing-up years. I’ve never met anyone who was not hurt by parents, siblings, friends, schoolmates, teachers, or religious leaders. For most people, childhood was filled with many hurts. As little children, we were too small to manage these hurts, so we learned to close our heart and stay in our head to avoid the pain. It’s all we knew to do.

However, as an adult, you can learn to manage the hurt, and managing it allows you to keep your heart open to learning and loving. Since love and the existential pain of heartbreak, grief, and loneliness exist in the same place in the heart, you cannot shut down to the pain of life without shutting down to love.

Go inside and see which is more important to you – protecting against the pain of getting hurt, or being loving with yourself and others? You cannot do both at the same time. Again, be honest with yourself regarding what is most important to you – to love or to have control over avoiding pain.

I have discovered a very simple, yet powerful way of managing hurt – the deep hurt of loneliness, heartbreak, grief, and helplessness over others. I’ve shared it previously on a podcast, and I want to share it here again. Do not be deterred by the simplicity – it’s extremely powerful.

First, name the feeling. One of the most important aspects of lovingly managing hurt is to name the hurt. There is something magical about saying to the hurting part of you – your feeling self, which is your inner child – “I know that right now you are feeling so heartbroken by what is happening with your partner (or your friend, your child, your parent), and that you are feeling very helpless over them. I understand how hard it is to feel this, and how lonely you are feeling because of this.”

We all want acknowledgment for our feelings, and acknowledging these deeply painful feelings is vital for being able to release them. Naming them is a powerful way to acknowledge them.

Next, be kind and compassionate toward your painful feelings. When you feel hurt, you need understanding, kindness, and compassion. Put your left hand on your heart, and your right hand over your left hand. Hold a doll, stuffed animal, or pillow and imagine that is your inner child, and also imagine that you are being held by your higher self. Say lovingly to your inner child, “I’m here and spirit is here. You are not alone, and I’m not going to leave you alone.” This is very important, because it’s likely you were alone in your pain as a child. Allow yourself to cry if you feel like crying, as tears are a healthy way of releasing these feelings out of your body.

You will find if you stay with your feelings in this way, it won’t be long before they are ready to be released, at least for the moment. They might come back in 5 minutes, or an hour, or a day, and do this each time they come back. When the feelings are ready to be released, say, “I release these feelings to spirit and ask for them to be replaced by peace and acceptance.” You may be able to feel your feelings moving out and being released.

Now, open to learning with your higher self about anything these feelings are teaching you about a person or a situation. What truth are they telling you about this person or situation? Ask your guidance if there is there any other loving action you need to take for yourself in this situation? 

Accept whatever truth you learn about and take whatever loving action you need to take, and then notice how you feel.

Notice that you likely feel clearer and released, and that this didn’t take long at all. Notice that you CAN manage your painful feelings and that you no longer need to be afraid of the pain of loving yourself and others.

Becoming adept at this process of managing the painful feelings of life will go a long way toward helping you to be honest about your intent, and to consciously shift your intention from controlling to loving. Everything comes from your intention, so being able to be aware of your intention, and to consciously shift from controlling to learning about loving is life-changing, and life-healing.

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. 

And, I invite you to join me for my 30-Day home study Course that teaches Inner Bonding: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”

And you can learn so much about loving yourself, creating loving relationships, and healing from my newest book, “Lonely No More: The Astonishing Power of Inner Bonding” and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.