Journey Of Self-Trust: Reflection After 2 Years Of Being Married (The 2nd Time)

April 18th was Diana and I’s 2 year anniversary.
I choose to celebrate for 2 reasons:

1)Because in today’s chaotic world, it’s important to stop and
celebrate LOVE ITSELF. I don’t think it’s possible to make it through
without it. I’m blown away each and every day by what true safe and
secure love feels like.
If you were a fly on the wall in our apartment, every day you’d hear the words:

Me — in a genuine tone pretending to be playful but meaning it deep down from my heart: “I love my wife so much and I’m so grateful for our son.”

D: “ya you do. You’re welcome.”
(She pretends to be cocky but she’s the most humble person I’ve met… and it’s the most hilarious thing I have experienced. Quite a unique combination.)

2) Because I didn’t think it was ever possible for me. I DIDN’T TRUST MYSELF.

I was one of those people who didn’t trust love, or believe it was even
possible for someone like me, even though meeting people and
hooking up was never a problem.
I could easily use all my usual “tactics,”
or skills I’ve acquired along the way to impress with the intention of
“getting a woman to fall in love with me.

That way, my existence and value could be validated.

It never crossed my mind as to WHY my focus wasn’t pointing towards connecting with someone on a deep and soulful level where the love
can feel mutually rewarding.

It was always an unconscious transaction where there was a goal
attached. So I had to “show up” to “impress”, and I had no shortage
of skills I developed to help rescue wounded souls out of troubling circumstances.

Without this sense of self-trust keeping me grounded and safe, I
would adapt to the insecurity by maintaining rescuing people to
maintain my relevance, dominance, and protection from the
intolerable pain of abandonment. It was always there in the
background — this ever-present dragon that has been chasing me
ever since my early separation trauma from my mother I experienced as a child (and didn’t remember).

This unresolved wound I *thought* I had dealt with through my
personal development journey was silently driving the bus in my
relationships and would rear it’s ugly head when I would work my ass
off to attach to women — — and once I got what I wanted — I would
freak out as it would feel like “things were getting too serious” and I
had to bail — only to keep coming back to this twisted dance again
and again

I wasn’t even aware of this pattern. It was hiding in plain sight — even
after my divorce in 2012 and 8 failed relationships later with the exact
same situation again.
My last breakup was enough to wake me up. 4 years ago, literally
losing touch with who I was in service of a shared fantasy with an
equally traumatized partner, I could no longer hide how it had gotten
so intense and volatile, and became so dramatic it would give Johnny
Depp and Amber Heard a run for their money.

I finally decided to do something different this time.
I decided to do the scary thing at 43 and finally learn how to change
the dance.

In order to go from there to finally having a relationship I could feel
seen, heard, and secure in, I had to find the root cause of what put me
there, and I had to look inside — not to blame, but to understand.

Feeling lost and disconnected from myself, my purpose, I remember
asking myself “who am I?”

Everything I ever learned couldn’t touch the level of disconnection and depersonalization I was experiencing.

The truth is I was dissociated because of how much shame I was
carrying.

When I think of who that person 4 years ago has become today, I feel
an immense sense of pride when I see the journey he went through to
get to the point where he is now celebrating a 2nd anniversary with a beautiful little family that gets stronger with every challenge and
adversity thrown their way.

When I get DM’s from people who’ve been resonating with my
journey asking me where to begin, I always say the game changer for
my entire journey was changing my relationship with my breath.

Yup. You read that right.
Shifting my relationship with my breath was the starting point to my transformation in all areas of life.

I’ll show you:

Take a deep breath in, and pay attention to how that feels in your
body.
Do you notice a restriction in the inhale?
I sure did. I realized I was hardly breathing.

Most of the time.
High levels of “alarm” cause us to take shallow breaths.
Our intercostal muscles (between the ribs) shorten and it feels
restrictive.
This causes a signal to go into the brain telling us it’s not safe,
which perpetuates the alarm feeling.

It’s uncomfortable, so we escape up into our heads and ruminate to
avoid the uncomfortable feelings.

This is how anxiety shows up in the body — causing us to create stories
in our heads. These stories spill into our relationships with others and
pollute the container, causing us to lose connection with self trust —
making a secure relationship with someone else damn near
impossible.

When I tell you this unconscious dance affects EVERYTHING, I’m not
kidding.

I mean EVERYTHING.

We then get pulled into unconscious alarm/anxiety cycles which
inform our body and mind we aren’t safe within ourselves.

When we aren’t safe within ourselves, we don’t trust ourselves.

WHEN WE DON’T TRUST OURSELVES, WE ACT OUT UNCONSCIOUS, INSECURE RELATIONSHIP DYNAMICS.

I know this link sounds pretty far fetched…

But follow along… let me repeat it to you in a different way (it’s THAT IMPORTANT):

Trauma from Childhood — causes Separation from Self.
Disconnection from Self — causes a sense of a lack of safety and Trust
within the Self.

Lack of safety and trust within the Self — creates insecure relationship dynamics (from Anxious to Avoidant patterns) as we are bonded to the Trauma Dance with another, who’s likely living out the opposite
insecure relationship pattern as we are.

If you’re anxious attached — you’ll pair up like a moth to a flame with
an avoidant.
When you’re a co-dependent, you’ll be attracted to the narcissistic type (and vice versa).

Soul Mates become Cell Mates.

Luckily, this cycle can be broken.
(And it’s not by luck that it gets broken)

How do we change this pattern?

The cycle gets broken through a committed practice of changing the
familiar dance through re-patterning everything we learned to do to
keep us safe in childhood.

It’s not a quick fix.

For all the emails and DM’s with backstories sharing your struggles in relationships, wanting to change, not knowing where to begin, I see
you.

If you’ve been sitting in the sidelines waiting, hoping, thinking that
watching videos and reading books will do the trick — even doing
therapy was going to solve the roadblock of repetitive self-
abandonment… You’ll notice how frustrating that is when it doesn’t
actually get you results. There’s a reason why that is, too. My
invitation is for you to change that dance, and lean in and go deeper.

My invitation is to get curious about what’s possible for yourself when
you commit to FULLY TRUSTING YOURSELF.

This Saturday April 23rd at noon — 4 pm PST (3–7pm EST) I’ll be hosting another community Breathwork and Badassery Experience where I
show you how to get started in changing this critical and primitive relationship within yourself so that you can start to see the
transformation in literally ALL AREAS OF LIFE.

The best way to describe it: It’s an experience you will never forget.
Did I solve all my problems with a breathwork experience?
No… But it created an opening for me to break free from my frozen
feeling and learn how to connect with myself.

If you’re tired of feeling like overwhelm has taken over, afraid to feel ANYTHING, constantly on alert, unable to take a breath and relax, overloaded, and deeply crave connection within yourself, your
purpose, and possibility to create a secure relationship….

Join us in the practice of the art and neuroscience of connecting with
your younger parts you have forgotten (but are still alive within you).
Master the art of embodiment and learn how to get out of your head
and get your life force energy back so you can be the parent,
entrepreneur, and partner you are inspired by.

It all begins with this primitive relationship with our own Nervous
System.

The success of EVERY OTHER RELATIONSHIP depends on us mastering this.

I’m living proof.

I may only have celebrated my 2nd anniversary. But I wanted to
celebrate something I never was able to celebrate before:
The fact that I trust myself now.

And If I can, I know you can too.

And if you feel you’re worthy of FINDING that trust,
Take a leap of trust in yourself by following the link
and once you register, and receive an email, hit reply and let me know
exactly what your intention is and I’ll make sure to help guide you
there.

(As with all our events, if you participate full-on, and you’re not totally satisfied, there’s a satisfaction guarantee.)