What Is the Basis For Authentic Relationships?

Recently, we talked about the process of Releasing, Resetting and Renewing ourselves in terms of the life we lead individually and the societal structures we are reinventing collectively. That’s what evolution is about. When we’re in the midst of a major life change (e.g. moving to another country, getting separated/divorced, job loss/change, etc.), it’s easy to forget that we are in a new paradigm that will affect one or more aspects of our life, including relationships. What is the basis for authentic relationships?

What is the basis for authentic relationships?

Over the years, we have learned about many relationship “rules” from various sources (e.g. parents, siblings, religious leaders, self-help teachers or marriage counselors) that we may have used for dating and marriage advice. Now that we are moving into the Aquarian Age, some of that advice may need updating. We don’t want to use “last century thinking” to go forward in our lives. That’s why I’d like to review some newer guidance about authentic relationships, as presented by Dr. Nicole LePera (“How To Do The Work”) and others.

Let’s start with some “OLD Rules” that need updating (@the.holistic.psychologist):

“Marry for money or security.”

NEW: Marry to build a life with someone, to learn to love yourself and another, to free each other in an authentic relationship.

“Commitment is the ultimate goal.”

NEW: A safe space of mutual evolution and freedom is the goal. Committing is a powerful choice. Ending a relationship that is enabling harmful behavior or causing self-betrayal is also a powerful choice.

“You need to work it out or make it work.”

NEW: Relationships are not a life sentence. Moving on or evolving out of relationships is natural.

“Stay together for the kids.”

NEW: Children learn what relationships look like from their parents. This sets the foundation for their adult relationships as to what behavior is acceptable, what communication style is used, what boundaries the parents have, what kind of emotional regulation the parents have.

“When you marry someone, you marry their family.”

NEW: You’re actually marrying their family’s conditioning, including their unconscious beliefs, their unprocessed childhood trauma, their coping mechanisms, their learned communication styles, their attachment styles, their ego and inner child that impact ALL of their relationships, according to LePera.

Why does this matter?

Most of our parents had little or no idea about self-help, inner work or transmuting their trauma. For better or worse, they used their own parents as role models in raising us. They didn’t know about anything else.

The point is not to blame our parents for everything that’s wrong in our life. They did the best they could with the knowledge, skills and experience they had, which may not have been much.
From the soul’s point of view, we chose them to set up specific programming and core issues that we wanted to experience in human form, to learn and evolve from them and to heal beyond them.

For example, childhood trauma (@the.holistic.psychologist) may arise from the following parental patterns that can be played by one or both parents:

Having a parent figure who can’t regulate their emotions (e.g. anger, rage) or their reactions to them.
Having a parent figure who doesn’t model healthy boundaries (e.g. codependence, oversharing).
Having a parent figure who makes the child feel not being seen or heard (e.g. dominance, neglect).
Having a parent figure who is focused on appearance (e.g. hairstyle, clothing, body image, status seeking).
Having a parent figure who denies the child’s reality (e.g. physical or sexual abuse, questioning events).
Having a parent figure who says you can’t or shouldn’t experience certain emotions (e.g. boys don’t cry).

As Jeremy McAllister (GoodTherapy.org) observed:

There is no escaping trauma in this world. The experience of trauma often shapes our beliefs of self, other, and the world. In turn, those beliefs shape our relationships, pervade our families, spread to our communities, and stretch across societies. (GoodTherapy | Attachment as Defense: How Trauma Shapes the Self)

Similarly, the attachment styles developed between children and their caretakers will affect their intimate, social and work relationships as adults. There are four different styles (take @attachmentproject Quiz here):

Anxious (preoccupied with approval, support and responsiveness from partner; fears abandonment).
Avoidant (dismissive of relationships; strong, independent, self-sufficient ‘lone wolf’ type).
Disorganized (fearful-avoidant who wants intimacy, but doesn’t trust or want to depend on others).
Secure (has emotional closeness, honesty and tolerance, depends on their partner and vice versa).

McAllister (GoodTherapy.org) said:

These attachment styles shape the ways we lie and/or cheat…They help mold our political and religious views, boundaries in friendships, assessment of dangerous situations, physical health, epigenetics…and interactions with employers or any other authority figure or system.

Once developed, unhealed generational patterns are passed on from the grandparents to the parents to their children. We say it runs in the family, as illustrated in the Figure below.

What is intergenerational trauma? And how do you heal it? – by Nisha Mody – The Healing Hype

How do we break intergenerational patterns?

Dr. LePera said it takes only ONE person in a family to create new patterns, to end generational trauma. Heather Dane described the profile of a “generational pattern shifter:”

You feel like you don’t fit in, you’re the oddball in the family
You choose the road less taken in your family
You may be fascinated with your ancestors or indigenous culture
You are the highly sensitive one
You have trauma or a health crisis that knocks you down on your knees
You are drawn to alternative health and don’t want to take medicines
You feel compelled toward transformation or spiritual growth

There are many trauma healing modalities, including treating negative core beliefs, rewriting your story, embodied meditation practices (not spiritual bypassing), nervous system regulation, expressive arts therapy, mindful self-compassion, faith-based programs, energy healing tools, FOAL, psycho-spiritual healing, etc. There is no “one size fits all” healing method.

While some of the more scientifically-minded might deny that spirituality is helpful in healing trauma, I have yet to meet a trauma survivor with an effective recovery process who didn’t rely on some sort of Higher Power, whether that be an inner spark, an outer God, the spirits of nature, or some sort of “energy” or “consciousness” believed to be larger than the small human ego or will. – Lissa Rankin, MD (Founder, Heal At Last)

Final Thoughts

In the Big Picture, our overall goal is to master incarnation, specifically by mastering the spiritual forces of Love, Wisdom and Power equally. Our life plan includes lessons from all three spiritual forces. We are learning to do this through our relationships and interactions with other people. For example:

Some people are learning about the right use of Love, played through the shadow states of neediness, cold-heartedness, jealousy, permissiveness, etc.
Some people are learning about the right use of Wisdom (Truth), played through the shadow states of intolerance, mental oppression of others, self-oppression, judgment, arrogance, etc.
Others are learning about the right use of Power (Energy), played through games of master/slave, dominance/submission, control, manipulation, rage, violence, promiscuity, etc.

As Richard Rudd said, every shadow contains a gift somewhere — it’s up to us to find it (see How To Dissolve Your Victim Patterns? – Big Picture Questions.com). By clearing these traumas, we can shift to higher acting behaviors and more authentic relationships. This is an ongoing process. Everybody is doing it in their own way and at their own pace. Have compassion for yourself and others.