5 Hard Relationship Truths That Will Set You Free

Also available on Apple iTunes- Awaken into Love Podcast

I'm so excited to be here. It's actually a little bit cloudy outside, but there's a really, really beautiful rainbow that I could see from the top of my house. And it's just really nice to be seeing that. As I record this podcast today, it reminds me of the fact that beauty is always everywhere, even when we are so stuck in our heads and we can't see it. And it's just a nice reminder for me being here, for me doing this podcast to be able to help you all in Awaken into Love. And so I'm super excited to be talking to you about 5 hard relationship truths that will set you free. 

Let's dive into today's episode; 5 hard relationship truths that will set you free. But before we do so, let's just kind of wipe out some cobwebs.

Right now, I'm going to invite you to take a moment to just come inward and center yourself for just a moment. Maybe this is the first time that you're doing this. Maybe it's the second time, whatever time it is, it's such a great opportunity just to come inward, check in with ourselves, create a sense of safety and kind of rewire the brain. As we do this work, we get to rewire as we listen to this podcast. 

So if you can close your eyes, I'm going to invite you to place your right hand on your heart. Do not close your eyes if you're driving, only do this if you are not driving. We're just going to set the intention that all emotions, thoughts, sensations are welcome here today. They don't have to define you. Whatever I say in this podcast is not to have to define you, doesn't have to be your story. At the end of the day, you get to choose.

And many of you know that we love non compulsive affirmations. So you can even say to yourself, I am loved, I am safe. It is safe for me to feel as always, keep in mind that you're listening to this episode and there are over thousands of people around the world listening with you, people who have the same thoughts, feelings and sensations. You are not alone. YANA, YANA, YANA and there's a huge community of people listening all around the world and they are there with you. 

So I want to just say before we dive in that a couple of these truths may be hard to digest at the moment. Make us a little bit of a sting, but that's okay. They're actually meant to be a little bit shocking because ultimately they're going to set you free. They're going to help you in your relationship. 

I'd like to start the story off with myself, the little bit of my past and this acknowledgment as I was writing this podcast script of you know, how my story would be really similar to yours. Just like many of you, I grew up watching Disney movies, Hollywood romance movies, as we like to call it, Honeywood, because of the honeymoon phase and the Hollywood idea of love condensed together. And I watch princesses get rescued by her prince living happily ever after. I also loved Mary Kate and Ashley movies. And it was the same plot over and over when they meet guys and they're happy and they have this fulfilling, amazing, passionate, exciting life.

I would go to my old best friend's house while watching these movies, eating popcorn and diet Coke that wasn't allowed at home. And we would watch these movies like the Notebook or How to Lose a Guy in 10 days. And at night we would just lie in bed side by side and giggle and talk about all the movies that we saw and how exciting it was and which guy we thought was the cutest and which one was her type and my type. And we just dream off into excitement over these men, these fantasy men who would later come into our lives and pick up our feet and we would have complete certainty and no doubt and live happily ever after. I remember she came to my house once after seeing the notebook, explaining how she knew Noah was the one for Ali, not the other guy, but Noah, and how after seeing the movie, she knew what type of relationship she really wanted. They say when you know, you know, which is why Ali picked Noah. He was her happily ever after because she just knew. I nodded in agreement because how else would I know what relationships were supposed to be like? I mean, I grew up in a family where my parents' marriage was always at the brink of separation. My dad was hardly there to be a strong role, role model and marriage. And my parents also had friends who were divorced and my friend's parents were divorced as well. My friend and I both didn't know what a healthy, secure marriage was supposed to look like. And so we turn to mainstream media, to romance books, to Hollywood movies, to magazines, to endless celebrity news of celebrities leaving marriages and affairs and having the one and being told how relationships should be. 

You grow up and you find the one you have no doubt, if you have no doubt, you have to leave. You know, when you know you aren't attracted to anyone else other than your partner, you always want sex. You always miss them. You always feel connected. You never have conflict. You passion, make out and have amazing sex. And you are in love for the rest of your life. And you believe this B.S. until you are in a secure and beautiful relationship and the opposite happens. Do you then wonder if you found the one? You wonder why you question things and you wonder why you have anxiety, you wonder why you find others attractive. Sex all of a sudden feels disconnecting and threatening. There's conflict, but no amazing sex afterwards. And you feel uncertain, confused. Shameful and guilty, because everything you were told and shown about love isn't, and then you feel conflicted inside and lonely, so lonely and so anxious. 

When I look back to my younger self, I first understand that I know that these lessons came about in my life for me to awaken in a lot of ways. But there are, of course, things that I wish I could tell her. I would first and foremost just hug her. And tell her that everything she is feeling is okay. And that life may feel confusing at times, and it makes sense as to why there's confusion, because you grew up in a childhood that didn't reflect security and safety. And I want to also tell her that the unawakened stories that she will start to believe start young, and because she grew up in a broken family, she was more susceptible, more vulnerable to believing those unawakened stories that she saw in the media, in movies and magazines and songs. And it was not her fault. 

I've always wondered why my husband didn't have anxiety or shame or guilt about falling out of the Honeywood phase or having doubts or feeling uncertain in the relationship. And a big part of his freedom, I realized, was because he grew up in an environment where his parents mirrored secure and safe love. And I want to add that I hear some of you saying, well, my parents had a beautiful relationship, they mirrored that. And I'm here to tell you two things;

The first thing is that you can still have anxiety and ROCD due to attachment styles and trauma, even when having a very secure and loving family. Sometimes we can have an anxious attachment style due to our parents constantly being there. The second answer to the specific trigger that may come up is that in some way you are still part of society on an unconscious level, you are influenced by media, by the honeywood scene, by movies. These are subliminal messages that get into our unconscious. From a young age, we are all shown "what love should be '' unless we awaken and question it, which we now have the power as adults to do so. 

Going back to what I would tell my younger self is that relationships aren't what you thought they'd be. And there can be shock, denial and grief in that. And for you, it's going to take some time to understand this. You had this idea that relationships were going to be complete bliss, happiness, joy, love, passion, incredible sex all the time. But not only that, and this is the most damaging part, you thought that you'd meet someone and live happily ever after and that you would find your happiness in them. Which is not possible and is not going to happen.

You cannot find your true happiness outside of yourself. True deep happiness comes from within. 

The third thing I'd say is that: whatever you're feeling is normal and it's okay. It's okay to feel disconnected, doubtful, insecure, bothered, not connected, strange, triggered, bored.

And as my old therapist said to me, because this one time, I was just feeling so triggered because I was feeling like my relationship wasn't this ecstasy, passion, excitement, and I was feeling annoyed and I was feeling bored and I was kind of moving through the stage of awakening when I started to kind of feel neutral. And she looked at me and said to me, "Kiyomi, relationships are kind of freaking boring." The reason why people with ROCD also feel afraid of boredom or feeling neutral is because they associate that with uncertainty and disconnection. Because disconnection in their mind means that something is wrong, which in an attachment style form, they can relate it to uncertainty and then loss. So when we work with attachment styles, with Awaken into Love and Alexis, does this work amazingly because her work is around attachment styles. We work with the idea that disconnection is okay, that disconnection is safe, but we have to do work with the nervous system because the nervous system is usually wired in a way to think that disconnection is unsafe. Disconnection to a lot of people who have gone through trauma and who have a lot of triggers means losing someone that we love, which ends up physically triggering our nervous system. So the work with this is actually starting to be okay with that disconnection. And bringing safety to that. 

Now, the fourth thing that I'll say to my younger self is that stability and security can feel threatening if you're used to chaos. My therapist said it's so beautifully, which is something that I always say to my clients as well who have grown up in a chaotic household. Which is that your relationship at times is going to feel boring because you're used to having chaos as a normal standpoint of your life. It actually brings up different stress hormones in your body, adrenaline, which for the mind can actually make an unconscious level feel kind of exciting. There's a little bit of like an addiction to that coming from a personal standpoint. I used to thrive in chaos, which is why I kind of dove into social work, used to work with people who had severe, severe mental disorders. And I thrived in that. It was familiar to me. So, yes, if you've grown up in an environment where your parents were unstable in any way, then you're going to feel as though security and safety is boring or as some sort of threat until we do the awakening work. 

I also want to add that the Honeywood romance has also told us that chaos is exciting, fun, and that romance is, you know, that back and forth, that deep passion, that lust, that infatuation. And it's told us that if our intimacy and romance is bland, if it's on passionate, to then run. I'm just sighing, specifically because it is so sad to me that we grow up and we get fed these unawakened beliefs, not only aside from relationships, everyone like we're going to get into this in Awaken into Relationships program. But not only is this about intimate relationships, but this is about our self-worth, how we feel about ourselves, our body image, food. How we relate to our power. I mean, this conditioning can go deep, and I think the reason as to why it makes me so sad is because a lot of people don't realize it. And the blessing with ROCD and anxiety is it pushes us to question the unawakened conditioning that we've grown up believing. That's really the gift of suffering, because we usually would not question these beliefs about intimate relationships, about ourselves, about a career, unless suffering was there. So if there's anything you can take away from today's podcast, know that we have the power to question these unawakened and conditioned beliefs that we have been programed to believe since we were young. We have the power that is what awakening is about. 

Now, the fifth and final point that I want to say to my younger self is that:

Relationship is an art, they are work, they are work toward our greatest awakening if we choose to take that path.

Maybe you've heard various couples talk about the fact that every difficulty in their relationship after they've kind of mastered that difficulty, actually brought them closer. This is the same thing. If we can start looking at our shadows and our disconnection and our suffering as gems in this path toward what's awakened. That we can actually have greater fulfillment, freedom and happiness. And relationships can be that path because relationships aren't meant to make you happy, especially not all the time. They can be meant to help you awaken. Yes, you can enjoy your relationship. Yes, you can enjoy your partner, happiness, excitement and joy. But we also need to understand that relationships are a full spectrum. It's that boredom and that disconnection, it's that sadness, it's that grief, it's that anger, but it's also a joy, that peace, that happiness, that fulfillment, that pleasure, that intimacy, that connection that is so unbelievably rewarding. And I say that from being in a 12 year relationship. 

At this point, I can step back and say that my husband and I have an incredible relationship. There's so much happiness and joy in our relationship and we've done a lot of work together, done a lot of work on myself. But were we always like that? No, of course not. In fact, we've had times where we didn't know if we could make it or if we should make it. Why? Because relationships will trigger you. They are work. They are work when you are triggered. They are work when our shadow sides come up. They are work when our trauma arises. They are work when there is conflict. You have two completely different people coming from different family members coming together to coexist, and that itself is hard. But if we can see relationships as a form of awakening, pushing us toward our greatest potential, then we can find a greater sense of freedom. We come into this painful, painful confliction within ourselves when we think that "Relationships should be perfect, they should be always full of this intimacy and connection without any doubts." And the problem with this belief is that a lot of us have been conditioned to believe this due to society, due to not having witnessed a marriage that was secure or safe. 

So it's not our fault. I want to remind every single one of you that it's not our fault. It's also not our parents fault. How we can use this to empower us is to say that, okay, it's not my fault, but I can change this. I can question this, I can awaken from this. I love this quote by Harville Hendrix, who is this amazing psychotherapist, I believe that I actually suggest to most course members in the community it's actually in the course and it's called Getting the Love You Want a Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix. And this book is really, really about using relationships as a form of awakening. Such as a quote that he came up with, with which I love, is that romantic love delivers us into the passionate arms of someone who is willing to trigger us, but for the best possible reason. Doing so brings our childhood wounds to the surface so they can be healed. We are born into a relationship. We are wounded in a relationship, and we are healed in a relationship. So if we can start to see the difficulties, the parts that are work, the parts that feel scary, the parts that feel threatening as just portals to help us awaken, to become more connected with our partners, then those honeywood ideas of love and the conditioning that we've carried since we were young have nothing on us, have nothing on us. They were merely just an arrow toward our greatest awakening in connection possible with our world, our partner and most importantly, ourselves.

So having all of this knowledge can be extremely empowering. I do want to say that these points that I just went through can absolutely and will absolutely set you free. But listening to them can sometimes feel difficult because it's kind of like a shock. Like we're kind of going into this feeling of like, wait, really is that really true. But I've been told the opposite since I was young.

So you might be feeling freedom, as you have heard me say all of these truths, but you might also feel resistance. And I really want to say that that's okay, too, with the intention that we have with this podcast coming in and really bringing acceptance and allowance to all emotions is a core part of our work. It's a core part of awakening.

So there are a couple of things that you can do to take this a little bit further. The first is to just acknowledge that whatever came up today is so okay. I would invite you to start with almost any kind of question, you know, things you've been told. What are some beliefs that you've carried with you that are triggering you and start to examine them beyond criticism so beautifully? When our reality doesn't match our beliefs, then we suffer. What that basically means is that if we have a belief, for example, that we need to feel amazing, passionate and intimate with our partner all the time. But our reality doesn't match that. When we don't feel that way, then we're going to suffer. So a really, really big part of becoming more awake is to start to question what our mind tells us. Is to recognize that we don't have to believe everything the mind says. In fact, the mind isn't us. Our thoughts aren't us. So we get to question that. So something that we really do at Awaken into Love ROCD course is that we start to examine our beliefs as cognitive work and this is also just kind of the work that we invite our course members to do, which is writing down your beliefs that are causing you suffering, specifically your shoulds. 

So, for example, you might write down, I should be feeling attracted to my partner all the time, or I should always find only my partner attractive, or I should always want to talk to my partner on the phone, or I shouldn't want to be alone even if I'm hanging out with my partner. Writing these beliefs down. Asking yourself how you feel when you believe these beliefs and asking yourself where they came from can be really powerful as we start to untangle the beliefs that have been causing us suffering or our belief in the belief that's causing us suffering. 

So you can write those down right down where you feel as though it came from. I wouldn't go deep, deep, deep into it to try and figure it out. If you can't figure it out, just leave it like that. And then what you can do is write down the awaken section. So, for example, if we took into the idea or a belief that came up that says I need to only find my partner attractive, then you could have an awakened belief that says being human is finding the world and others attractive. At the core really, if we get a little bit deeper, which might help, is that the core of finding another person attractive is the fear of losing control and then losing your partner. So empowering when we remind ourselves that we have control and we have a choice because with ROCD, we feel like we don't, but we really do.

So writing those things down can be really, really powerful and just start to just kind of bring this disconnection from our mind to the beliefs that we carry and to realize that we can question it, we can question and we can question these conditioned beliefs that we've believed for a really long time, which is a really, really big part of our awakening.