How to stop seeking validation and heal your abandonment issues

Here's something interesting about control. Control is only active because there's a belief that you cannot trust. And what happens is control is a survival mechanism to getting your needs met. Now, the thing is, what you end up doing is putting incredible pressure on yourself because now you must control what people think about you. You must control how things happen. You must control how people respond. And the belief is that if I control, if I can control, that I can feel safe. But really what's happened is there's a belief that you cannot trust. There's a belief that you can't trust, and therefore what ends up happening is you resort to control. Now, trust is something that comes as, oh, trust is literally a nervous system thing. People say, I don't trust. And what they mean is I go into fight, flight, or freeze because of things that have happened in the past, and therefore my nervous system gets chaotic and then I don't feel safe. So really trust is directly connected to safety. And if you don't feel like you can trust, it's because you don't feel safe in your own body. So if you want to open up in your life, to experience more love, to experience more synchronicity, to experience more people that resonate with you at a deeper level, what you wanna do is you want to learn to trust. And the way you learn to trust is by learning to go into your body to feel safe inside of your own body. And when you begin to feel safe in your own body, you will begin to trust. And when you begin to trust, you can then begin moving into relational trust. Because ultimately, a very powerful way to heal may be to go inwards to do your own inner work, but also moving that into relational dynamics as well. Open yourself up to deeper connections, Open yourself up to putting yourself out there, opening yourself up to leading with vulnerability. How many of you, it's like, okay, I'm gonna do my inner work. I'm gonna go meditate. That's how I'm gonna create trust. I'm gonna create trust by going into my body. That's part of it. But where a lot of people block themselves is they do that, but then what happens is they're like, there's relational trust that's not there that needs to be looked at. You can heal individually, but you can also heal through connection, through leading with vulnerability and connecting to other people, through putting yourself out there. There are many different ways to heal, But your breakthrough might not be going into your room and doing another breathwork ceremony. Maybe your breathwork is by actually connecting with other people and dropping the story. Many people have the story, I'm sensitive when I'm around other people, I feel everyone else's energies. There may be stories there that it's my responsibility to manage their tension. So instead of managing their tension, I'm gonna, I'm going to put barriers around me. I'm going to go into my room and I'm not going to talk to anybody. I'm just going to become a no— a person that says no all the time. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, now I feel safe. Now I feel safe in my room alone. I'm becoming a boundary queen or king. No, no, no, no, no, no. I am healed. No, no, no, no, you're not, because the way that you heal is by also opening up to relational dynamics. Relational dynamics is a very fancy way to say talking to people, interacting with people. So on one hand, I set boundaries with people. On another hand, your lesson may be to lean in and to connect with people. Does this make sense? And when you're connecting with people, you might find yourself in your body, feeling safe in your body, and you may be talking to someone and you may say, "You know what? I'm gonna lead with vulnerability here. I'm gonna tell this person how I feel, which normally as a kid wasn't okay. And I know this may cause them some tension, but guess what? That's their tension, not mine to deal with. So I'm going to be in my frame and then you're gonna be aware, oh, this is how I feel. Someone else is like, what? Maybe normally you do what this other person always wants you to do, which means abandon yourself. Now what happens is you say, you know what? No, I'm not gonna do this. They go, what? What do you mean you're not gonna do this? You always do this. And then what you do, as you feel inside your body their tension, and normally you think, this is my tension to deal with. Oh my God, mom or dad is not happy with me, which now is your friend, your family, or other people in your life, your boss, whatever. Oh, they're not happy with me. That's my thing to mitigate. No, it's not. And then in your body, you realize this is their thing. That's your breakthrough. You would not have gotten that breakthrough if you stayed at home and you became a boundary person. You're like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I will not, hey, I will not express myself. I will just ghost because that feels safer because I don't wanna cause someone else tension because their tension is my tension. So this is where the breakthrough is. Yeah, I went through this transformation a few years ago, really is when it started, and I had to become aware of how I felt when I had hard conversations. I remember having a hard conversation with a friend of mine where there was an imbalance of energy for like a year, and then I had this conversation. I was like, I'm gonna have this phone call with this person and I'm gonna finally tell this person How I feel, I'm gonna express myself. And there was, it was a very new dynamic compared to like how we'd interacted for like a year. And I remember thinking, okay, I'm gonna have a, we lived in different states. So I was like, we're gonna have a phone call. So I was like, okay, let's plan for a phone call. We plan for a phone call and then the person FaceTimes me. So now it's like we're talking FaceTime. And it's kind of, it's like this is the next level of intimacy. And I remember what I did is I expressed to this person how I felt, my interpretation of some of the energy dynamic that we had when we were around each other. And I reclarified myself and there was tension in the conversation. Now what ended up happening is this person ended up having a big breakthrough. Because they didn't know that that's exactly how I felt 'cause I'd never expressed it clearly. However, the other side of this is that for the first time, there was a deep level of respect that was there. And that tension allowed me to wire in, this is how I choose to live according to this vulnerability. So that vulnerability allowed me to open up and allowed a breakthrough to happen and allowed me to decide how I choose to live, realizing their tension was not my tension. Now, let me also share with you this when it comes to vulnerability. Very often when we talk about vulnerability, you leading with vulnerability will allow other people to open up. You're not doing it to get them to open up. You're doing it 'cause it's how you choose to live. Vulnerability is one of the keys to opening up and learning to trust again. I have a friend of mine who I went on a hike with recently. She's a good friend of mine. And we were talking about business. We have similar businesses. And she was telling me, she was coaching me and like helping me. She's a really like business wizard in certain ways. And we have similar businesses. And she was giving me advice. We were going into different things. And then, I started going, I was like kind of not just returning the favor, but I was kind of like, okay, let's look at her stuff now. It was like this dual coaching thing. And one of the things that she told me was that her dad, who is very narcissistic and gets very triggered, her dad gets very triggered with some of the stuff that's happening in the world right now. And she was telling me that like she feels like she can't open up with her dad because there's no point. There's no point because her dad is just very reactive to everything that's happening. He projects it onto him, projects it onto her and her family. And she feels like very tense and she feels like it's very hard to connect with him. And I could tell that some of the blocks that she has around men are because there's also these blocks around her dad. And interestingly enough, she met this guy that she dated for a period of time for like a month or two. And she ended it recently 'cause she realized it wasn't gonna go in the direction, it didn't have long-term potential. She kind of also woke up to certain patterns. But what was funny is right when she met this guy who was representing a certain pattern, she fell outta contact with her dad. And then right when she ended it with her dad, or when she ended it with that guy, her dad came back into her life, just synchronistically. Have you ever had that happen? Sometimes people come into your life, some people may leave your life, someone else may come in that playing out a certain pattern. So she ended it with this guy. She dated this guy for like 2 months, long distance. And then what happens is she broke up with him and then her dad comes back in And then she finally, and I kept encouraging her, have you ever expressed this to him? This is how he really makes you feel? 'Cause you could tell she was like, this is how he makes me feel. And this is how I feel about the situation. I said, have you ever expressed this to him? She goes, oh no, no, no, he's not. He would not be open to it. I would start this emotional like energy and he'd be like, he would just like deflect it. I said, well, what if you expressed it to him with no attachment to how he received it? And you're doing it for you because this could be affecting your relationship with men in general. And what happened is she's like, oh, maybe we'll see. And we were looking at different aspects of her relationship to her dad and how that may affect her relationships in general. And there were certain awarenesses. And another thing, another big breakthrough for her, by the way, is She was telling me that there are, she kept telling me like there are no conscious men out there. She does not meet conscious men. She's like, you and two other of my friends are the only conscious men I know. Well then what I told her is I said, stop saying that you don't know any conscious men because if you believe there are no conscious men out there, then you're not gonna find them. And it's not even true. You do know conscious men. They're just friends with you, and you only know 3 of them, but you do know conscious men, right? They exist. If you can perceive of them, they exist. Now, I told her, stop saying that. You can't say that anymore. The next day, we get off this hike. It was great. The next day, she texts me, and she goes, I just wanted to say thank you because I'm grateful for you being in my life and my 2 or 3 other friends that are like conscious men in my life because it's really helping me rewire that it is possible. But also, I finally talked to my dad. I had a conversation with my dad and I just held my own frame and I expressed to him how I felt. And for the first time ever, I saw him cry and he opened up and said that the reason he was the reason he was projecting so much of the stuff that he does onto her and other people in the family, and especially around some of the stuff that was going on in the world, that's going on in the world right now, is because what's going on in the specific culture that they're in represents a certain energy of injustice, and that triggers his trauma response, and then he projects it onto other people. There was like this deeper level of depth that her dad was able to become aware of, that then had this beautiful healing between them. But this beautiful healing only happened because she led with vulnerability. She opened up. And then now there's this opening. He's like willing to start going to like therapy to like get, so that they have a better relationship. So what I'm saying here is that vulnerability may be your ticket to more connection, more love, more freedom, more expression of yourself. You may find that you break through in many areas of your life as you open up to this love, to this vulnerability, to this courage that you have inside of yourself. So this is, and you're not doing it though because I'm gonna do this and then it's gonna lead to this over here. Okay, Aaron says that to attract love, I need to be more vulnerable. So, okay, I'm gonna be vulnerable. I'm gonna go, tell people how I feel. I'm going to go out into the world and I'm just going to be walking down the street, someone's going to, someone's going to pass me a certain way, I'm going to say this to this person. No, I'm not. I'm saying that you lean into tension. There may be tension to say no, and then eventually saying no may be the easy thing, and the tension may be opening up to connecting with people. Opening up to expressing how you feel. And I promise you, as you begin to express yourself, there will be freedom that is opening 'cause you're literally opening your heart. You're literally opening up and you're leading with the energy you want to bring into the world. This is where your breakthrough is. Vulnerability, vulner-ability. Vulner means wound and ability is going into the wound. Your ability to go into your wound. To have the courage to do so will open up other aspects of your life. It's opening up your heart. This is what if people have attacked you for expressing yourself? What do you mean by attacked you? Let's get clear. What do you mean by attacked you, Will? How has someone attacked you? Is it a physical attack? Because sometimes what'll happen is someone, you may express how you feel, someone else may express something back, and then you may interpret that as an attack. They may have a trauma response, they may have a response where then they say, "Well, you did this," and you say, "They're attacking me." Are they attacking you? Or are they responding to you and you're taking it as an attack? If that's their thing, not yours, then again, attack is a story. They're attacking me. You gotta be honest with yourself. Now, I don't know the context of this because you may say they actually came after me with a knife. They literally found a knife and they started running after me to stab me. That's a different thing. That's okay, that, okay, then they did attack you then. Right? But I bet you that's not what you mean. They express madness is what he said. They express madness. Okay. Do you realize that madness was their thing, not yours? That may have been their response to an energy of vulnerability. Remember, you're not being vulnerable to get other people to open up and it's kumbaya. You're being vulnerable because it's how you choose to live. It will trigger some people into their own responses to that, but that may be their medicine. Does this make sense? It may be their medicine. And in the moment, it may feel tension if their tension is your tension. However, it may be the medicine they need. I've got people in my life that for a long time I would help by paying for things, by helping them outta their situations with money. And now I've stopped doing that because I've stopped enabling family members by just giving them money. That causes them tension. And then there could be guilt there. It's like, "Yo, but what? Why would you do that? You're, we're family." I'm like, "No, this isn't helping." That tension is good for them. That tension is what they need to grow. What if the tension of you expressing yourself causes them to attack you, but then in 3 months from now they realize, "Oh wow, that was all my stuff." Maybe they never realize it, doesn't matter. And very often people that are empaths that can feel other people's energies, it's like, "I'm doing good, I'm being good 'cause I can feel people's energies." And behind the image of being good is control. Instead of sitting with the tension and letting other people go through their own work. How do you let go of control? It is a choice that you make. Letting go is really just a choice. You let yourself feel certain emotions that come up. You let them be there, not trying to control them. Like, imagine observing your thoughts. You're sitting at a park bench metaphorically, and you're watching people walk by. You're watching dog walk by with their owner. You're watching kids walk by. You're watching birds in the trees, and it's all happening. You're observing it from a neutral place. Now imagine that what you do is you try to control everything. No, you go over here. Okay, dog and owner, you go over there. What are you doing over here? Okay, you over here, kids, be quiet. Okay, the bird over there, what are you doing, bird? Get out of the tree. Control, control, control, control, resistance. Well, that's what's happening. It's if I can move around all these things to be in a certain configuration, then I can feel safe. And what I'm saying is let go of control means observe and realize it's not your responsibility to rearrange every single thing in the park, but you have made it your responsibility to be the park ranger. Think about that. You decided in the past, okay, if mom and dad aren't going to manage this park, I will manage this park. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to be the park ranger. So now every day you go to the park and you're like looking around like, what's going on in the park? What's wrong with the park? I need to feel safe in the park. You over there, walk your bike. You over there, do this. You over there, do that. And then you hide behind it. I'm good. I'm being the park ranger. I'm the park ranger that's doing all of this so that everybody else can feel safe and not feel tension. But in fact, what you're doing is robbing other people from their own autonomy. What you are doing is robbing people from their own awareness and insights. By controlling and resisting everything instead of just trusting the park has its own equilibrium. You don't know what's best for the dog and the dog owner. You don't know what's best for the kids, the bird, and the trees. You think you do because you said, "I'm a park ranger. Park ranger right here on my shirt." No, you appointed yourself as park ranger. And now I'm saying, Aaron, how do you let go? How do I let go of being the park ranger? I don't understand. How do I let go? Is it some metaphysical concept that I'm gonna ninja in my mind? And what I'm saying is you just take off the sticker that says park ranger and you just make the choice to let it go. You make the choice to trust and to actually have a positive view of other people and their power. You start to trust other people. So how do you let go? You make the choice. You make the choice. You take off the, the, the park ranger sticker. Does this make sense? Is resonating? Letting go is just a choice you make. It's just that you've made the choice to be the park ranger, and you're like, well, how do I stop being the park ranger? You make the choice to stop being the park ranger. You thought you had to be the park ranger and it's hard for you to let go because you've been the park ranger for so long. How do you let it go? You make the choice. You gave yourself the authority that you need to control everyone else and everyone else knows what to do. Yeah, there'll be such a relief. You're not responsible for other people. If someone trips and falls because they were running, it's not your fault. What if they trip and fall? Well, I'm as a park ranger, I know no one's supposed to trip and fall. What if a good way for kids to learn is to experience tripping and falling? Isn't the end of the world. They're gonna be okay. So let go and trust and realize that letting go lets— you're letting go of resistance, you're letting go of being the park ranger, and you're allowing yourself to trust life, to trust God, to trust the divine, and to trust other people. And when you begin to trust other people, that may be your breakthrough.