Life Coaching and Counseling by Len Sone – Empowering Young Women

Question:

Hi my name is Michelle *(name changed for privacy). I was in a relationship now for about 5 years. I am a very controlling person, I even went as far as abusing my boyfriend. Finally during the 3rd year he finally left. I can’t say that he was perfect because he had his issues however, my issues definitly out weighed his. I have changed some aspects about me as far as the abusing and things. However, I am still very controlling. During these 2 years that we have been separated we have tried on and off to try to work things out. I really thinks that he loves me and wants to be with me, but when he sees any sign of the controlling mose, he runs right off. I honestly cannot blame him though. I know that these things are wrong that I am doing. I have changed just not enough to sustain a healthy relationship with him. I do understand that it takes two to make a relationship work and I am not sure if he is actually meeting me half-way. However, I want to change these tendencies because I need to. I am 22 years old, and even though I can control my tendencies to a certain extent. Sometimes I can’t especially with him. I had so much built up resentment from him that I took it out in other ways. I loved him too much to leave him alone, but I was determined that I was going to control him. Now we are trying to be parents to our son and I am still letting my feeling leak out to that situation. I really need help trying to get this situation under control without controlling lol… I want this relationship to work, but I know that without showing him that I have set some of my emotions aside… it never will. And More than controlling… Its seems that I get angry so fast and the smallest thing can set me off. I need something that will calm me down and let me know that everthing doesn’t require an explosive reaction because I get so irritated. I am a very sweet person though, so I might be making this sound worse than it is but it is something that I need to get a handle on. I need to figure out when I am having these situations. can you please give me some ideas? I am really serious about learning to control the tendencies

Thank you
Michelle*

Answer:

Hello my sweet Michelle*!
fantastic question. I love working with people like you, who are abusive and controlling, and think they need to keep punishing themselves for it. I think you’ll really like my answer and it will probably surprise you!
First of all, I want to start by pointing out to you (and everyone else struggling with the same issues reading this) that you keep saying and thinking that you need to CONTROL this problem. Your “problem” is being controlling and yet you are trying to do what with it? Control it! Hehe. Do you see the vicious cycle here? You are trying to control your control, which is double control! This obviously doesn’t work because even if you succeed to suppress controlling and abusing others, you’re still being controlling (to yourself). No wonder this strategy always blows up in your face!

So let’s try something else, ok? Instead of trying to control the fact that we are controlling, let’s ALLOW and ACCEPT and WELCOME the fact that we are controlling. As you know, love is the highest frequency and it is the only thing that ever transmutes negativity. You can’t stop negativity by being negative about it, but you can start dissolving negativity by being positive or at least neutral about it. This is Energy 101.

Same logic here. Ok, so, we need to find a way to be OK about the fact that you are controlling and abusive sometimes.

How can we welcome it?

Let’s find some gifts in it.

1. People, especially women, who control and abuse, have the most potential to be very powerful, creative, and joyful. However, they currently have a lot of pain in them, so their intense energy comes out in a negative way. That same energy, coming from a happy woman, is the kind of energy that builds empires and evolves the species.

So, GIFT #1 is that your tendencies are showing that you are a very POWERFUL individual. This is something to be proud of!
2. Rage and outward abusiveness, although obviously not ideal, are still a higher vibration than complete powerlessness. Powerlessness is more accepted by our society because it is passive and people think it doesn’t hurt anyone. So, they would prefer that you just stay powerless. However, don’t get tricked into that belief. The truth is that powerlessness hurts you and others even more because those thoughts are emitted from you and create. Thoughts create! Just because you are not yelling at anyone doesn’t mean that you are not hurting the planet. I’m very serious. My point being that your current vibration is actually more helpful to everyone.

So, GIFT #2 is that you are moving in the positive direction. Your abuse is actually less abusive than suppression. Suppressing anything never works.
3. You can use this energy to create. I highly recommend getting a huge journal and just getting it all out everyday. Give yourself the permission to write, doodle, whatever, for hours, even the most horrid petty angry thoughts that you’re thinking. You do need to get it out. The more you get it out on paper, the less you’ll feel the need to get it out on your boyfriend. You can also go for a long run to get that energy out.

So, GIFT #3 is being able to use your feelings for creative expression.
4. I’ll leave this one and more for you. You should come up with your own reasons why it’s good that you are abusive. I just started you off, but you’ll come up with more reasons. The real work is in challenging your brain to see something negative as positive. This is true alchemy and the true gift in your “problem”. You are learning alchemy here! Just keep asking yourself, “What’s the gold in this? How is this actually gold?”
TRIGGERS

Now I’d like to talk to you a little bit about triggers.
When a person is controlling and abusive, it is because they have been controlled and abused and still suffering from the pain. Eckhart Tolle (who is a famous spiritual teacher) calls this our “pain-body”. It is an actual electro-magnetic field of negative energy in our bodies. Some people have a very heavy pain-body, while others not so much. Again, as I said before, this is nothing to fear, as the worse off you are, the better off you’ll be when you transmute that energy.

Now, about triggers: when these small things in your life happen that you react so strongly to, it’s not because of those things themselves. Those things are actually just little triggers that activate your whole pain-body.

The reason why I’m writing to you about pain-bodies and triggers is to help you feel less insane about your reactions. You may even want to explain this to your boyfriend. (I highly recommend getting any Eckhart Tolle’s book and reading the sections on pain-bodies.)

You just need to understand that it is all of your pain that’s being activated. You can also explain this through Law of Attraction: once someone activates a certain vibration within themselves, they attract all the thoughts and feelings on that same vibration. And not just yours even, but other people’s. So, you are NOT CRAZY! You are a perfectly sane and normal young woman who is just activating a certain vibration and happens to have a lot of pain.

GIVE YOURSELF A HUG! And give yourself a break! You are doing the best you can given how much pain you have in your body/energy-field.
But you will start dissolving your negativity by finding positive things about it. I know it sounds counter-intuitive given what we’ve been taught. Still, you know that your previous methods didn’t work. Love and acceptance, as cheesy as it sounds, are the only things that ever work. It’s energy. It’s physics.

BOYFRIEND

Lastly, just a quick word about your boyfriend. Let yourself off the hook Michelle*. He is a big boy and it is his (and only his) responsibility to take care of his well-being. He can leave anytime he wants to. So, take care of yourself and only yourself. It’s hard enough without worrying about him too. Appreciate his good qualities, focus on those, and let your work be YOU.

I realize your child may not have the same option of just walking away, but I think it is an incredible gift to watch your own mother learn to go from angry to joyful and learn all these things about personal development that you are learning. That is far more beneficial to a child than a mother who suppresses and denies, and pretends to be happy when she isn’t. Have candid conversations. Don’t be afraid to talk about your issues with your child. Children love honesty and respect complexity. The reality is that we are all children, still learning all the time. Adults don’t know it all and it will be good for both you and your kid to understand that.
Again, this is another question/issue where I think that you would benefit from working with a good life coach. It will help you to have someone on your side, guiding you along. Just don’t work with those who recommend suppression because it won’t help you. Remember the first thing we discussed: you can’t stop being controlling by controlling your tendency to control! It makes sense, doesn’t it?

I love you, and I hope you will start loving and accepting yourself! That means the good, the bad, and the ugly. In time, the dark clouds will leave you and the sun will be the only thing left.

Question:

Hello,

I really hope you can help me solve this seeming unsolvable problem. Between two friends of mine.

My friend and her ex-boyfriend. Had a break-up five months ago. The reason he broke-up with her, was due to the fact she had friends finding “dirt” on him. There was no dirt to be found, but his girlfriend eventually started asking numerous questions about it, causing way too many unnecessary fights and arguments. Which in turn cause unnecessary stress.

This boy, my friend’s ex-boyfriend, says he cared very much about her. He realized just how much she meant, when things started to go wrong. He tried almost everything to stop the arguments and fights, but due to several others on the sideline telling his girlfriend(my friend), otherwise, things weren’t able to be fixed.  Even as they tried to be friends several times after the breakup, arguments and fights would still happen, they gave up.

Shortly after, a month or two, She moved across country. I don’t believe a real chance was given to being in a relationship or being friends again.

To me it honestly seems he doesn’t want to let her go. As I’m a friend of his ex. I recently just started talking to him, about a month ago, other friends of his ex are talking to him also, trying to convince him to be friends with her again, including me. People continue to ask him questions and try to convince him, all he says is “no, I don’t care, its going to take a lot more to convince me, I’m stubborn it will never happen, if you can break my stubbornness maybe it will happen, etc etc.”. If he doesn’t want to be her friend, and he knows we definitely are going to try and convince him to be her friend again, why doesn’t he just block all of us?

His reasons and answers change from day to day. He has admitted a lot of things. He even realizes he was wrong during the relationship in some spots. He is an extremely stubborn person, he “blocks” his emotions as he says, and also purposely “forgets” things. I know for a fact he wants to be her friend again. Why is he being this way, what can I say or do to get him to realize that he shouldn’t throw away a friendship of four years.

Not too long ago, about a week or two, his ex girlfriend (my friend) was in an accident. Last night I received a phone call from her, she is fine. I had purposely posted an offline message to him, saying “she had died”. I might have been wrong for doing that, but it’s the only way to get this man to open his eyes and release a little bit of his stubbornness. I then signed on a few hours later and I received a message from him right away as I signed on, asking me if it was really true.

Can you make any sense out of this situation? What can I do to help him see, he’s being stupid and him being stubborn isn’t necessary at all? He hints to all of us that he wants to be convinced, why is this?

 
Answer from Len:

My dear Adam* (*name changed to protect questionner’s & his friends’ privacy) ,

you’re not going to like this answer (at first), but try to keep an open mind anyway and read all of it. I promise you it will save you from more trouble in the future.

First & Foremost: IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!!!!

None of this relationship is any of your business. No one has elected you counsel, and yet here you are talking about it and even trying to “fix” it as if it’s somehow yours. It’s between your friends and they are fully capable of making their own decisions. It’s obvious there was a lack of trust between them before, and as it is said, “It’s called a breakup because it’s broken.”

Given your intense interest in this situation, your actions, and even your temporary lie to your friend that his ex has died, I can tell you that you are being controlling and manipulative. You are doing it all under the “innocent” pretense that you care about your friends, but really, this is about YOU and your emotions.

Sweetheart, we all have shadows, and we all need healing. You really need to ask yourself why, instead of thinking about your own life, you are choosing to try to control someone else’s.
Your friend is not the stubborn one and he isn’t the one who can’t deal with his emotions- in fact, YOU ARE! When a person has trouble dealing with their own emotions, they tend to attach to other people’s problems. That’s exactly what you are doing here.

Please look into your own issues. There are many things in your own life that you are not dealing with and should. You are presently using your friends to ignore your own problems. Leave your friends alone because they know what’s best for them and have taken the right actions for them.

In addition, look into your own romantic history or current love life. It’s very likely that you are really projecting your own romantic feelings and regrets onto your friend. It’s even likely that you have a secret crush on one (or both) of your friends, and are too afraid to admit it to yourself, so you try to fix their relationship instead.

This reminds me of a small example of this in the movie “The Wedding Planner”. The character that Jennifer Lopez played had an insightful story about how her former best girlfriend was being a little too helpful and caring with all her (Jen’s) wedding details. Turns out, her girlfriend was in love with Jen’s fiancee!

There is a “selfish” reason why you are so intensely interested in this relationship. That reason may be a different one, but it exists. Find it!

Dig deep and be brave, because this is about you. Your question is all about you. Should you accept my challenge, you will learn something new about yourself and be liberated.

I’m glad you wrote because many people are doing exactly the same thing you are, and they need to read this.

I hope that someday soon, when you have really learned from this and soul-searched, you will share my advice with others.

Kisses,
LEN SONE
certified Life Coach
http://kissesandhearts.com