Do you live in a fantasy? This may explain your suffering.

“I get so lost in what I had pictured my life would be.”

“But if he really loved me, he wouldn’t behave this way…”

“I am so worried about my daughter’s choices, I cannot sleep at night.”

These are some of my clients’ worries and concerns I heard last week.

So many of us spend our lives attached to a fantasy of how life should unfold, how our partners should behave, what our children should want from life.

This attachment to fantasy is responsible for a lot of our suffering, because we are locked in aversion toward our reality, unable to actually relate to it.

This is a trauma response: we avoid reality by escaping from the less-than-desirable present moment.

This is what often leads us to feeling stuck—in our relationships or in our lives—because the present moment is the only space where our life actually unfolds.

The present moment is the only space where we can make choices and create change.

When we focus on wishing something on outside of us to be different, we are not addressing the issue at hand.

We remain attached to a fantasy, and want to force that “un-reality” onto our lives and onto people with whom we share it.

Those of you who read me know by now that we cannot force anyone to change.

Nor is it our job.

Our job is to pay attention to our own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires – so that we learn what our inner world is trying to communicate to us about us.

That is reality.

For example, here are some questions to reflect on:

👉 What is the picture about how your life should have unfolded that you are attached to?

Where did that image come from? Whose wishes and thoughts are those? Are they even yours? Are they realistic? Do the values in that fantasy coincide with your values today?

What needs of yours are hidden in that fantasy? What do you need to do to address those?

👉 What about your partner: that feeling of love you seek and hope to receive from their behavior – what is that lack of love in your own experience tell you about you?

No one can make you feel loved, if you are not open to it.

The rigid conditions we impose on how we are willing to accept love disconnect us not only from people in our lives, but limit our own capacity for love.

Focusing on the behavior of others disconnects us from our reality, from our own needs and our own capacity to meet them. The more we are disconnected from ourselves, the less we are able to come close to people we love.

👉 As far as worrying about our children’s wellbeing – that is normal. However, it is important to remember that your adult child is a sovereign being. You do not know better than they do what happiness means to them. They make their own choices now and your responsibility is to trust them and let them live their lives.

Your inability to let go: what does that tell you about you? Where is there a void, a need, a desire that is not being fulfilled in your own life? Your judgment of your adult child’s choices – where does it reflect your own judgment of your own past choices?

This is the work.

You don’t have to do it alone.

Working in a group allows you to see your blindspots that are difficult to catch when you are stuck in your familiar stories of how things “should be.”

​True to Me, Open to You – Learn to Relate Deeply with Others without Losing Yourself begins this week, on June 11.

This is your last chance to join.

Grab your spot ​​​​​​here and join a community of like-minded people working on building healthy relationships with others by healing themselves.