Hello!

I’m going to tell you a story first, and then I’ll explain my take on the real reason for the repetition compulsion.

I started doing an online course called Soulmate School a few days ago.

And yesterday, two unusual things happened.

And when unusual things happen, I like to see them as conversations between Life and me, and I like to listen in to what Life might be telling me.
 

The first thing was when my son and I went to Target Country (here in Oz) to buy my Mum a birthday present.

We were standing outside with our dog.

And along came a man and his carer. The man was calling out in a pained and frustrated way, “Baaa. Baa.” I imagine he had had some brain damage at birth, and also a lot of painful feelings piled on top.

Our little dog picked up on his feelings and started barking. The man kept on coming towards us. He struck out at his carer. The big burly New Zealander told us to go inside the shop.

So we did. And for the next 45 minutes, they were outside. At one point they came inside.

I felt scared, but also intrigued. What I saw also reminded me of children letting out painful feelings through raging.

After he had left and we got in the car, I wondered aloud to my son about what that was about – we both talked about our feelings, but I also wondered why we had had that experience.
 

And last night, we were out with some friends at the beach, and then we went to Byron Bay to get some food. It’s something we rarely do.

And I was in a shop, paying for food, and a man came in with grazes all over his face, looking at sweets/lollies, dropping them all over the floor. I imagine he was also in a lot of pain and perhaps had been drinking or taking drugs. And again he was right next to me.

When two incidents like that come along in one day, then I know it’s time to take notice.

So, very early this morning, I did my Inner Loving Presence Process with those situations.

The most obvious place to start was, “Will I get hurt by this man?”

And of course, that links to me doing this soulmate course.
 

So I went back to the first situation that came to mind where I had experienced a lot of pain in relation to a man’s actions.

I went back to the exact moment, where I was standing when it happened.

And my Inner Loving Mother was there with me, listening to my thoughts, feelings and needs. 

She kept hearing me with deep loving compassion. She heard what I needed to say and what I needed to hear. The theme was, “It wasn’t your fault.”

And just like Stan Grof’s condensed experiences, or COEXes, I felt myself drawn to an earlier experience with the same theme.
 

This was when I was a teenager, and a boy whom I’d had a huge crush on, after getting together, told me that he didn’t really care about me the way I cared about him. 

Again, I went back to that exact moment I heard that, and took my Inner Loving Mother with me.

At the time, I’d wanted to hurt myself by cutting all my hair off. But going back with my Inner Loving Mother, she could hear that teenage me with such deep compassion, and most of all, tell me that “It isn’t your fault.”
 

After finding relief there, I felt myself pulled again, as if through a time machine, to the night when I was 8 years old and my Mum went to Australia for 18 months, whilst I stayed with my Dad.

My ILM held little 8 year old me, and heard the deep loss and grief and sadness, and all the thoughts and needs. And again, she told me, “It’s not your fault.”

And the time machine came again, and took me to being a newborn baby, in an incubator, alone, with nurses and tubes.

And my ILM picked me up gently and did Kangaroo Care with me. And again, she listened to my pain. And I felt a sense of relief and coming home to myself. She told me that she would never leave me. And she told me that when I grew up, my Mum would come and live with me, and we’d see each other every day. 

With each moment, I felt a deep sense of being able to stay deeply connected with the feeling at that time, because my Inner Loving Mother was right there with me, being able to be with every single feeling, no matter how intense.
 

Each time I do the ILPP, I have that sense – of coming home to myself more and more, of including more and more of myself, of more and more feelings being welcome in me.

 

So, the real reason for the repetition compulsion?

Freud coined the term, to explain how we seem to repeat similar experiences again and again in our lives.

Plenty of other people over the years have added their own perspectives.

But often it is seen as pathology – something we need to try to change.

But I see it as our amazing psyche wanting to bring healing.

I believe that the reason we keep on having similar experiences is because in the earlier painful experiences, our feelings weren’t heard with loving compassion. And so they still sit there in our bodies, ready to be heard.

And they keep on trying to be heard, over and over again.

One way that they can leave our bodies is to be given expression, and to be heard with compassion. It’s the EXPRESSION plus COMPASSION that allows them to leave.

 

And it’s not just us that does the repetition compulsion.

Life joins in too.

Have you ever notice that? That experiences come from the outside, and they connect you with big old feelings?

I believe that Life wants us to heal. Life wants us to grow and evolve and become who we really are.

And my sense is, that’s why I happened to be in those two places yesterday, to see those two men, because I needed to hear, yet again, the question, “Is this man dangerous?” and, “Will this man hurt me?” so that I could hear feelings that had not been heard, and give back responsibility where it hadn’t been mine.
 

And our children do this too. They keep doing the same thing over and over again, so that we can help them heal from the original feeling experience, by listening to their feelings with loving compassion.

And just like with the ILPP, it’s most powerful when it’s done in real time – ie. our ILM talks to our 8 year old as if it was still that same day that our mother left. 

And for our children, they will often locate the feelings on something in the here and now. Like my son having really big feelings about wanting choice to be on the computer, when I can hold in mind that he really wanted to choose for his Dad not to leave.

For younger children, in particular, it’s usually most helpful for them to respond AS IF it’s about the screen time/their sibling taking the blue truck/us not having any more cookies, even if the largeness of their response tells us it’s probably feelings from the past bubbling up.
 

This is all on my mind at the moment because I’m writing a small book called The Inner Loving Mother/Outer Loving Mother. It’s all about how our inner dialogue with our Inner Loving Mother translates to how we respond as an Outer Loving Mother to our children.

It will be ready very soon.

I also have another live round of my Inner Loving Process Course starting very soon. If you’re already doing, or have done, the course, you get to be a part of it again. 

And if you haven’t done it, and have been wanting to, keep a look out in your inbox, because I’ll be offering a special early bird price.

I developed the ILPP from how I’ve observed children heal and grow with Aware Parenting. And I love how much is similar for adults!
 

I wonder if you resonate with any of this letter?

Do you experience Life as bringing you experiences to help you heal?

Have you found the phrase, “It wasn’t your fault,” to be profoundly healing to your inner children?

Do you notice those Condensed experiences in you, those similar experiences like beads on a thread starting back in time?

If so, I’d love to hear from you!