Hello Friends:
I had a funny experience the other day. Well, not so funny really. Painfully revealing is more accurate.
While working on a coaching program for women, I developed the premise that our most important relationship is with ourselves. My gut instinct told me this is true. My learned belief taught that my most important relationships should be with God, my partner, my religious community, etc.
You might think that isn’t true for you, but if you look at your behaviors, you may realize that all the things you think, say, and do are focused on preserving those relationships, at the expense of the relationship you have with yourself.
Anyhoo… I wanted some facts to back up my premise, so I went online and talked to Claude about it. Claude is an AI model that is designed to be clinical and detached. There’s no warmth here that could fool you into thinking you are interacting with a real human. It may focus on a single word from your query and take apart your argument to maintain accuracy.
Apparently, if you suggest to a truth telling AI agent that it is the “universal” experience of women to feel they need to mold their behavior to the needs of others, it will get hung up on the one word it thinks is inaccurate (universal).
It isn’t that I was wrong, it was that Claude misinterpreted what I was asking for and went down a rabbit hole about why my specific words were inaccurate. AI doesn’t have the human capacity for nuance or intuitive interpretation of context.
The upshot is that thirty minutes later, I was stomping around the block, crying and arguing with an AI model in my head!
Trying to stay present with my own disproportionate emotional reaction, I stepped back from these deeply triggered, painful feelings and asked myself, why the visceral reaction? What emotion was I feeling and what unmet need was getting poked here?
For some reason, it felt shameful to not have the right answers, to have my thoughts and ideas invalidated, and to be told I was wrong and had made a mistake. To be honest, I’m still trying to unpack this. This isn’t the first time that “making a mistake” has triggered the shame and hide response.
If you were unseen and unheard as a child, your thoughts and feelings dismissed or shamed, you are going to feel shut down when someone tells you that you are wrong. You begin to feel that you are a mistake, not just your thoughts and feelings.
Bingo! That was me. The lost child, getting little acknowledgement or validation for thoughts, feeling, ideas, and the value of her own contribution.
So, when I interacted with a clinical, unfeeling AI model, who misinterpreted my intent and actively discounted my ideas, I felt invalidated and misunderstood. It didn’t hear me! I wanted to hide and give up on the idea entirely. Better to just stay quiet.
The way we learn to see and hear ourselves becomes part of the way we see and hear our children. Our children don’t need us to get everything right; they need us to be attuned to them, to accurately mirror what they are experiencing, acknowledge their feelings and ideas, and let them know that their inner world matters.
When a child feels seen, heard, and understood, they learn that their own experience is valid and trustworthy. This is about learning to trust ourselves and our own instincts and offering our children the same permission.
My own wound lived deep in that childish place of longing for connection and validation. So, the next step was to reparent the Child in me, reassure her that it is okay to make mistakes, and that her ideas have value. I could fill my own unmet need to be seen, heard, understood and valued for who I am.
How did I know how to re-parent the Child in me? From years and years of not listening, falling completely apart, and then being forced to finally turn inward. It set me on a path of discovery and healing with self-hypnosis, meditation, parts work, and flower essences. But that is a story for another day.
Do you know how to sit with yourself with loving attention and non-judgement? It’s not easy, nor does it come naturally to most of us.
You can learn how to be present with yourself, listen to your inner world, and discover the core childhood wounding that makes you react with strong emotions and behaviors now, in the present.
When you show up for yourself with kindness, compassion, and understanding, those wounds begin to heal.
I’ve taken the cumulative knowledge and experience of 20 years of doing the work with myself and developed online courses to help you go on this inner journey of discovery. With a Journey Membership you can learn how to connect with your true Self, the inner advocate that can give you the acceptance and validation that heals core wounding.
If you are ready to turn inward and learn how to re-parent yourself, sign up for The Self Discovery Journey online course. Your first month is free, you can explore the information at your own pace, and cancel at any time.
Learn more here:
👉 https://bluemorphojourney.com/self-discovery-online
Welcome to the journey!
Anne