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Jane is a fictitiously named character that represents a real character that is here to share her story in the hope that it helps illuminate something for you.
Jane works very hard, and has worked hard all her life to make sure things are taken care of. The trouble is, Jane doesn’t feel taken care of. And she really, really, really wants to feel taken care of too, not just be the one who takes care of things.
Jane uses money, and other tasks and busy work to help her feel taken care of, when she takes care of these things, when she is ‘smart’ and saves and scrimps and worries and ‘cares’ in a very worrisome way about things, then she feels she can relax because it helps her to feel like she has taken care of things, which in turn helps her feel a bit of that taken-care-of-ness feeling that she is deeply craving. When she is ‘on top of things’, like money and work and tending to details or house work or whatever it is… she gets to experience that ‘taken care of’ feeling.
But Jane harbors a secret resentment.
A boiling seething rage beneath the surface towards people who are “taken care of”. People who receive easily, and are more effortlessly and fully supported, who don’t have to do everything themselves. When Jane see’s people like that on tv shows, movies, social media or in real life she feels disgust towards them, she rolls her eyes and makes a jabbing comment under her breath, trying to laugh it off, but secretly feeling a near hatred for these “spoiled brats” who just get handed things and lavishly taken care of in that way.
This is a result of Jane’s deep grief over her own disowned desire to be taken care of.
She both wants to feel taken care of, and deeply resents and judges it, so she cannot possibly allow this part of her to exist and to get what it wants and needs.
And this part of her does indeed exist in her already, she just has suppressed it to such a degree that she has an overwhelming full body refusal to allow it to take up any space in her or her life, and because of that she believes she must continue to do everything herself and to earn and prove her way into the proximity of the feeling that things are taken care of, but never really get to feel that she is.
Now, to the average logical and practical thinker, the response to this is that Jane HAS TO do that, she has no choice, it’s how it’s always been and how it will always be for her. But to those of you here, who know that your beliefs and perceptions about yourself and the world create your life experience, you can easily see that for Jane to experience being taken care of, she needs to make a new decision and choice, and that choice is: “I am taken care of.”
Her focus has always been on the choice “I take care of things”, and “I have to do it all myself”, and when she shifts that focus, it’s going to be challenging at first because that old story and pattern has a lot of momentum behind it, but if she persists, and she adopts a dogged determination to focus on and thus expand every single tiny experience of evidence that she is taken care of too, that experience will begin to grow and add more and more evidence unto itself until one day it is Jane’s whole new reality.
But what stops Jane from doing that is her judgement and denial of that part of herself.
The part that was called and is called a ‘spoiled brat’ in the recesses of her mind, the part she judges as lazy and worthless and unworthy of love and support or allowing. The part that needs to buck up and take care of itself… the part who gets what it wants, which in this case is to be and feel taken care of. As long as she judges it that way and denies she is and has this part of her, just as much as she has the opposite parts, and is unwilling to love and allow that part of her too, she will continue to feel this mix of pride over who she is and what she does to take care of things and seething resentment towards those who don’t have to.
But because Jane has reached a point in her life where she’s exhausted by this old identity and simply cannot do it anymore, there is finally an opening… an opening where she is willing to release this pattern and enter a new era of her life and being.
This is good news.
It means Jane is ready.
So I asked Jane to go to her journal and let the spoiled brat speak. Let the one who wants and expects to be taken care of speak and say what she wants and expects and needs. Without judgement, without condemnation, but with unconditional love and allowing for this part of self to exist (because all parts of self exist).
I reminded Jane that the reason she was not willing to do that before was because she believed she would have to place those expectations on others, demanding them like some over the top character from a moralistic movie, instead of simply placing them with LIFE/GOD/LOVE/UNIVERSE, and knowing that she doesn’t get to control who or what shows up to support her in exactly what ways, but that when she decides she simply IS someone who is supported and taken care of, life will show up with that gift in myriad ways.
I told her to start counting the ways. I told her to count every SINGLE way, no matter how small – at least at first – until this new belief gained some momentum. So even the smallest things that were examples of how she was taken care of were getting amplified…
the bagger at the grocery store “wow, I am so taken care of.”, the UPS driver who brought packages to the doorstep so she didn’t have to go get them herself “wow, I am so taken care of.”, the heating or air conditioning that comes out of the vents so she doesn’t have to build a fire or trek to a cooler landscape “I am so taken care of.”, the water out of the tap, the earth beneath her feet, the money that came in for that bill, the food that was grown by those farmers, the person who held open the door, roof that protected her from the sun and rain…
It is not that you have to keep that kind of incessant noticing up and do it all the time forever, that would be exhausting, but when you are really entrenched in the opposite way of feeling and thinking, you need to start to wire your neural pathways to a new route. It takes effort to shift your mind to that when it is used to operating in a different way, when it is used to noticing and counting what is NOT there for you, instead of WHAT IS. But it takes WAY MORE effort to continue to believe you are unsupported and not taken care of. That is far more draining on your energy than the conscious effort to shift it will ever be.
I reminded Jane of this. I reminded her that she is already spending the precious currency of her energy on something, but she is not spending it on what she wants. She is spending it on what she does not want, and amplifying that by default, because she simply has not known another way. But now she does.
Jane asked, “how can I just declare that I am taken care of when I do not see who or how or what is going to fill that void??”
I asked Jane what other things in her life she declared that she did not know who or how or what was going to fill that void. She said things like that she would have love, that she would find her perfect pet friend, that she would get through something she didn’t know how to get through in the past, that she would do such and such type of work somehow / somewhere, and she began to see what I meant, that there ARE things she declares and just knows will happen somehow, someway, once she declares them, without knowing who or how or when or where. And that she can declare this too in that same exact way.
All she need do is make the intention, and notice and celebrate every time something happens that feels like it is in the direction of that intention.
I reminded Jane to let individual people off the hook for filling this void because that is a recipe for frustration and disappointment, and to transfer it to life/the divine to sort out, because it will find the most clever and unbelievable ways to show up for you when you release attachment to the specifics. But also because that will help her to feel more relaxed, because remember Jane’s M.O. is to use her own worry and hard work and control to relax, rather than being simply allowed to do so. She used that to tap into that feeling, so she must learn to use her simple CHOICE TO instead.
I reminded Jane her dogged determination and persistence will come in very handy here, but that dogged determination and persistence must be put into her decision and her choice to embody that decision instead.
Jane laughed that this seemed like madness and that other people might think she was off her nut for all this, but she also understood and remembered that “Oh yah, that IS how it works” in a way she couldn’t explain.
We agreed that it would be fine if people thought she was off her nut if it meant she got to finally truly and deeply feel taken care of. By god, by life, by love, by the million things that god/life/love shows up as when you decide and commit to your direction.
Jane has reported back that she is finding all kinds of ways she is supported that she never really fully saw before, ways that she is taken care of that she hadn’t fully noticed, and new ways keep sprouting up all the time in the wake of her noticing.
She also reported that sometimes she finds herself in a storm of the old way of thinking and then catches herself in it later. I told her that the catching of it, is also a new way she is taken care of, it means a pathway in her thinking that was never there before is now there and operating for her all the time, it is learning and acclimating to a new way of being just like she is, and this is something to be so proud of and to count as another of the blessings.
That helped Jane have more compassion for herself when she goes there and more patience, as well as more openness to be reminded and to be reminded more easily in the future, because it will happen again cause life is full of challenges…
but it’s how we MEET those challenges, repeatedly that forges pathways. It’s okay to fall off the bike, it’s okay to thrash around in the mud and cry, but when your desire to get up and try again is stronger than the one to stay in the mud, you will keep finding new ways to meet yourself in those moments that are more supportive to where you want to GO and who you want to BE than to who you’ve been before. And before you know it, you’re living a whole new normal. 💞
And if you recognize yourself in Jane, and you want some support with that, I recommend Moth & Moon my guided oracle journey to help you embody your power to create with simple easy daily reminders, or my Peaceful Prosperitycourse, or my Relax Into Receiving Workshop or if you are totally burnt out and really don’t even know anymore what fills you up and makes you happy anymore and are dead tired and want something super quick, easy and deceptively simple to re-find your joys and fulfillment, then my Deep Rest To Manifest Course for that.
See you next Sunday sweet pea’s,
xo,
Sunni
