Love Coach Blog

Coaching Session #5 of Love Coaching Social Experiment - watch me coach Jodi, a single, bright, beautiful, late-thirty-something lady, to help her attract the man of her dreams – reality TV-style, right in front of your eyes and ears.

Read the full introduction to this social experiment, follow the links to the previous coaching sessions and then come back to this post.

This week Jodi didn’t ask her usual questions. Instead, she and I have been going back and forth by email, working on some issues she has not felt comfortable disclosing on the blogs. I think these issues directly relate to why Jodi keeps herself closed off from others.

She has promised me that she will be blogging about some of these issues shortly, because both of us have noticed that working like this, in the public eye, helps her push herself to grow and get through this stuff.

Jodi is avoiding dipping into the quagmire of her emotions – and she is not the only one. Most people avoid looking deeply into themselves. We are afraid of what we will find inside. Jodi is not doing this on purpose, or to be difficult. This is how most of us are socialized.

When we experience strong feelings the people around us tend to discourage us from feeling our feelings. Instead, we are told that we either don’t feel the way we feel or that we have no reason to feel the way we feel. Instead of dipping into ourselves and gaining strength from self-knowledge, we are encouraged to shut down and seek things outside of ourselves to make us feel better.

I asked Jodi to look at what she is afraid people will find out about her if they get close to her.

Here is what Jodi said in reply:

I am great at getting a laugh or two out of someone but never feel the need to go any deeper. It is not that I intentionally hide, I just don’t find any value in exposing my weakness in fear of not living up to my own expectations of myself or rehashing what I have done to create my own reality. Maybe that is why I am not the most compassionate person. Instead of dealing with my inadequacies, I close up and am not wanting or able to understand other people’s shortcomings. There is no doubt in my mind right now that is the answer to the unavailability problem. Even in doing volunteer work, I don’t feel real compassion. I feel happy that I am able to help people who are less fortunate than me but it is on a different level. I am on the level of how people perceive me and am wondering if I am doing a good enough job. It is about me. I am now wondering what true compassion really feels like.

Love Coach Rinatta says:

Jodi, this is the tip of the iceberg. Fear lies behind your not seeing any value in going deeper into self-disclosure. I know you don’t feel the fear, so you don’t know it’s there. But it’s there anyway.

Here is how you can feel it. Imagine you are on a date. Imagine you just told the person across from you one of the worst things about yourself. How do you feel, how does your stomach feel, as you wait for the person’s reaction? How do you think the person will react?

That’s the fear I am talking about. You fear a particular reaction, and that fear makes you avoid closeness. Why is this a big deal? Because you want love and closeness, but until you face that fear and deal with it, you will not let anyone close to you, which means you won’t have the love you want.

You may rightly say that everyone has something they are terrified of telling others. Everyone has secrets and craziness. For some people the fear of what might happen if the secrets come out is strong enough to prevent any deep connection. That would be you. For others, the fear is just not that strong, or the need for connection is stronger and so they forge connections despite the fear.

You still need to face your fear and figure out what it is about.

I also don’t want to forget to handle the issue of compassion and being closed up that you brought up, as it is one answer to your unavailability problem.

Compassion requires an open heart. And people who were not given the love they needed as children, whose deep feelings and needs were not honored when they were children, tend to have wounded, partially closed or fully closed hearts.

 In your case, Jodi, I think your heart is closed, which is why you feel no compassion. This is not a judgment. I am not saying you are heartless. I mean literally your heart has closed down from the lack of love and connection you needed in your childhood.

Luckily, I know just how to help you open your heart. It will take time and work, but over time you will learn to feel more compassion, more connection. I want you to learn to do a meditation called Remembrance. This meditation is from Mark Silver of www.HeartOfBusiness.com and will strongly improve your ability to open your heart. In fact, Mark created this version of his ebook just for my readers and clients and for this I am grateful. Jodi, and you, dear reader, please go download free Remembrance ebook now to learn how to do this meditation.

Start working on it and we will talk more about it in our upcoming, podcasted, coaching call.

Finally, Jodi had one more question:

There are more than a few things that still baffle me but my burning question is why have ALL the okay guys that crossed my path have been unavailable? How odd is this? Do I do something to make them unavailable? Maybe they are available to others but when they see me, they dig out their baggage and get ready to load it into my very own Amtrak baggage car.

Love Coach Rinatta says:

Jodi, if any okay, non-unavailable guys have crossed your path, you missed them.

You are a well-targeted, fine-tuned seeker of unavailable men. For you to see men who are available, and to be able to date them, you have to be willing to stand in the world, all of you visible, and still feel that you are ok. You have to get to a point where you don’t have to hide.

And if you wonder if the men you date are available to someone else but not to you – yes, to someone even less available than them. In other words, they will fall in love with a woman who doesn’t want them and can’t connect with them, one who is dismissive or cruel and controlling.

Why? Because unavailable people seek relationships in which they can have the trapping if a relationship, but don’t have the risk of real connection. Just as you have done in the past.

So, the question remains, what are you afraid that people will find out about you, and what are you afraid will happen when they do?

Update: See what Jodi has to say in answer to my question

Do you want the same help and coaching Jodi is receiving, so that you can find your way out of being single and into a healthy relationship? You can get help form me, privately by hiring me as your love coach. Tell me about your situation and we will go from there.

From the Heart,