Hi beautiful people,
In today’s newsletter, I answer the questions I’ve received for Dear Me. I’ve called this column Dear Me because I believe that we already have all the answers we need inside of us, but that sometimes we need to reflect on someone else’s answers. I’ll be that someone. I share my truth, as always. As my teacher Tanya would say: « I may be wrong, this is my perception. »
“1) How to find a balance between taking care of yourself and taking care of others. 2) How to find a balance between wanting abundance for everyone and wanting what is right: who deserve and who doesn't. thank you <3”
Dear you,
Thank you for your questions. I smiled when I read them because finding balance is actually the theme of the next issue of the newsletter I’ve started to write. Coincidences don’t exist, right? I’ll write now about the two examples of balance you asked about and dive deeper into the subject of finding balance in the next newsletter.
When it comes to balance, the first step is for me to observe what the two sides of your balance are. In your first question, you oppose taking care of yourself with taking care of others. In the second one, you oppose wanting abundance for everyone and wanting what is right. Are the two sides of the balance really two opposite sides? Do they really oppose one another? I’m not sure that’s the case in your two examples.
What I feel when I read your questions is a “yes but” from a part of you that needs something. It feels like your heart wants to take care of others and abundance for everyone. It feels like you have this sense of compassion and love, already open inside of you. But there is a tiny resistance somewhere else, another part of you that is not ready yet, as “yes but what about taking care of me” and “yes but what about the ones who don’t deserve abundance”.
We tend to project on the outside the unresolved battle we fight on the inside. Most times, those battle are unconscious, we’re not aware of them. That’s why your two questions are amazing gifts for you to see what’s going on.
If you feel an imbalance between taking care of yourself and taking care of others, the question to ask yourself is: why do you take care of others? Ask yourself why a few times and dig deep. Find out how it makes you feel when you take care of others.
You don’t have to take care of anyone besides yourself. Read that again. And again. Your only job in this life is to take care of yourself, to take responsibility for you life and to make yourself the happiest person on earth. That’s it. We all are responsible for our own life. If I make myself happy and you make yourself happy, then we can be happy together.
Taking care of others is not your job. It is not your mission. It is not your responsibility. You don’t owe anything to anyone, not your friends, not your family, not your parents. We sometimes take care of others as a way to feel seen, useful, and even loved. We sometimes take care of others because it is what we learned as a child, that we had to do things in order to exist. You don’t need to be useful to have the right to exist, to be seen, or acknowledged, or even loved. Take a moment to rethink all the relationships where you feel that you do.
When others ask for your help, when you feel like you need or want to take care of others, the only thing you have to do is to check in with yourself. Ask yourself: Do I have the space to help someone else? If the answer is no, say no. That’s totally fair. There is no guilt here. You come first. You can’t help people if you don’t have the space to help them. And when you do it anyway, when you help them anyway, you feel it in your heart. You can feel a pinch, something that may feel heavier to carry, your intention is not aligned, not totally accurate. You’re not 100% there.
I always loved this scene in Friends, very first season, when Joey asks Phoebe to help and she says: “Oh I wish I could but I don’t want to.”
There is a big difference between taking care and caring. Taking care is about doing and giving, while caring is about being and receiving. Caring for other people is our most beautiful power as human beings. Most times, people don’t need to be taken care of, they need to be cared for. They need to be loved. And love is not something you do or give. Love is something you are. Imagine being so grounded in yourself that you can hug people and receive them as they are, hold them, support them, listened to them, be present with them, while not needing to do anything for them. Making yourself happy and grounded in who you are is the best and only way to take care of the people you love.
About your second question, wanting abundance for everyone and wanting what is right. I want to ask you: why do you want abundance for everyone? and then: who doesn’t deserve abundance and why?
Wanting what is right means that you know what is right and somehow punish what is wrong. We often have this need for right and wrong when we have experienced some kind of injustice and that the wound is still silently bleeding. Maybe you went through or witnessed injustice in your life. Either as a child, it can be something really small that you integrated as being true. Or in your adult life as something traumatic enough to leave a wound. Maybe a feeling that you don’t get what you deserve? Around injustice, we sometimes have beliefs like: I never have what I deserve or people have better than me or I deserve more than them or simply I deserve better.
Your two questions are actually really close. They both talk about your relationship with others and what you get out of them. Go back to your intentions, ask yourself why again and again, and observe what’s playing for you there.
I’ll write more about right and wrong, opposites and balance in the next newsletter. I hope it helped. I send you much love and light.
“How can I get out of thought loops? You know, the kind of useless loop as: “If I had done this differently, could I have prevented that from happening?””
Hi there,
The most challenging part with thought loops is to become aware of them, which you already did. Super good for you. Thought loops are very tricky and super convincing. They’ve usually been looping inside our minds since early childhood. They’re so present that we not only know them, we believe them and identify with them. In your case, I’m sure you’re really convinced that if you had done things differently, you’d have another result. Tricky.
Know that you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t have another result. The outside outcome would maybe be different, and that’s not even a given. But on the inside, you’d still feel unsatisfied, your thoughts would still be looping, trying to find another configuration of the same situation with a different outcome. It is a pattern.
Thought loops are a symptom of something suffering inside of you. They usually comes from a negative belief about yourself. In some ways, thought loops are like a glitch in your system. Your system — aka your mind — doesn’t know how to deal with suffering, so it runs many different configurations to give you a solution. Even though your mind has very good intentions and tries to help you, it’s a lost cause. Because your mind looks on the outside to fix something on the inside, and it never works. If you’re not careful, you can spend your whole life trying new configurations, over and over again, every time believing that this one would work, without ever finding the solution. Tricky.
Please note that thought loops are not useless. They point out something you need to look into. But they’re not effective.
To get out of them, here are a few steps:
Do not engage — Thought loops are very time and energy consuming. They can literally kidnap you in one second of inattention. Every time you see yourself thought looping, take a moment to stop and reflect. Get to know the different patterns running in your mind. For example, the pattern you describe is a very common one: “If I had done different/better/more, then I’d have the result.” Another very common one is: “When I’ll do different/better/more, then I’ll have the result.”
Understand why — Thought loops have an origin, they try to solve a problem you may not be aware of having. Listen to what they tell you and dig deep. In your example: “If I had done this differently, could I have prevented that from happening?”, ask yourself: Why do you want to prevent that from happening? What would you like to happen instead? And more importantly, how would you have felt if what you wanted to happen happened? This is what you need to figure out. What is the feeling behind all this? What is lacking?
When you go back to the root, you usually find the same feeling, the same source of lack. Love. You may have different words for it — as attention, validation, support, recognition, connection, freedom, and so on. But they’re just different manifestations of love.
Your example then becomes: “If I had done this differently, could I have received the love I lack?” Which means that somewhere inside of you, you believe that you need to do things differently or to be different, in order to receive love. That you may not be worthy as you are, that you may not be enough as you are, to be loved.
Reprogram — When you get to the core belief, you need to deprogram and reprogram it. And it takes a lot of time and patience. Take it slow. Write down the new belief you want to integrate. It can be as simple as: I am enough. I am enough as I am to be loved. And repeat it, again and again and again. Repeat it until it feels true and integrated.
I cannot leave without telling you that you truly are enough. You are enough exactly as you are. There is nothing you need to do differently, or to be differently, to be loved. There is nothing you need to do differently to prevent things from happening the way they need to happen. Things happen. They’re probably not even about you. Things move around you, come and go. People move around you, facing their own inner battles. Stay grounded in who you are. You are already beautiful as you are. You are already all you need to be.
I love you as you are.
“Why the people who are interested in me are rarely the ones I’m interested in?”
This is a super interesting question. And quite funny. I love it. What is even more interesting is what’s hiding behind your question, what you’re not saying. Not being interested in the people who are interested in you means that you’re interested in the people who are not. As you can imagine, it is a pattern. And quite similar to the one in the last question.
We recreate in our relationships throughout our lives the same dynamics we experienced in our very first relationships as a child. But more than that. We spend our lives trying to fix in our current relationships the dynamics that scarred us as a child.
Chances are that you grew up feeling a lack of love and attention from a parent figure. You grew up feeling that you were not interesting enough for your parent to see you and look at you. You created this belief that you were not enough as you were, that you needed to do more and be more for her/him to be interested in you. And you tried super hard, and tried again, and you’re probably still trying.
As the thought loops from the last question, you can literally spend your life trying many different configurations convinced that you’ll find the solution. It will last as long as there is this part inside of you that believes that somehow someway you’ll succeed. That you can hack it. That you’ll find what you need to do for your parent to finally see you and love you.
I’m sorry to tell you that it won’t work. I know that this is very difficult to hear, that you don’t want to believe it, and in the same time you already know. There is sometimes this little battle inside of us between what we know and what we need. As an adult, you already know that it won’t work. But as a child, as your parent’s child, you keep trying. Children are so resilient and hopeful. They need to be loved and they’ll do what it takes to succeed.
As long as you you’ll identify with your parent’s child, you’ll keep trying. You’ll keep being unconsciously attracted to people that are not interested in you, because this is what you know, and as crazy as it sounds it makes you feel safe. You’ll keep trying to make those people see you, because if you can change them, it means you can change your parent too. That it is possible, it is accessible.
You’re not interested in people who are interested in you simply because they don’t help you on your quest. They’re already into you. And they probably scare you too. Who are these weird people who find me interesting when my parent doesn’t?
As an adult, reflect on the flawed relationship at the origin of your behavior. Observe what’s lacking there, what you would have needed as a child. Integrate that it had nothing to do with you. Your parent didn’t have the ability to see you. And there is nothing you could do or be that can change that. S/he never did see you and probably never will. It is not on you. Hug this little child inside of you with unconditional love and compassion, give yourself what you needed, parent yourself. And slowly, allow yourself to be interesting.
Because you are. You are interesting. You are fascinating. And the people who can’t see that, the people who can’t receive you, are just not ready for you.
When you make peace with yourself, when you give yourself what you need, when in the places where you once felt lack you now find abundance, every human being becomes fascinating. We all have a valuable story to tell and magic in our heart.
I see you.
That’s all for today. I’ll see you in two weeks and we’ll talk about finding balance. You can already send your questions for next month’s issue of Dear Me by clicking here.
Love, as always.
Camille