Warren, to you.

We often go back for more, even if we have not had our needs met by our parents for decades. It’s a deep hunger to finally be nurtured, seen, and loved by those who brought us into being. But it’s been my experience that those who cannot meet those needs seldom change. Not because they don’t want to, but because they just aren’t up to the task. They don’t have it in them. They are in too much pain themselves. If you are someone who keeps going back for more, you have to stop. You are holding yourself hostage. It’s no longer them- it’s now you. It’s the unconscious hope to finally feel seen and loved that is wounding you. The key to your liberation is to finally see them for who they are. Really see them, the way you want to be seen. See them in their context, their woundedness, their limitations. Once you do, you no longer imagine them as adults capable of meeting your needs. Because they aren’t. They’re lost children, stumbling over their own patterns and conditioning. They can’t meet your needs because nobody ever met theirs. Of course, reaching this stage of awareness is no easy thing, because you have to achieve this without getting what you needed from them to grow developmentally into adulthood. It’s a kind of catch 22, one that requires that you fully see them as the fractured humans that they are with no part of you imagining them as adults with something they can offer you. It’s a huge and difficult step. But it’s the only step you can take. And when you take it- I mean, really take it- you become free to get those needs met by those who can actually meet them. You become free to truly live. - Jeff Brown