Is it in the blood?

Confirmation bias.

I’m sitting at the end of the bar, martini in hand, watching the buzzing around me with blurry eyes. I’ve just told my husband I don’t want to be married anymore.

Those exact words, “I don’t want to be married anymore.”

I’m 22, but felt petulant saying it.

It doesn’t make logical sense. I love him. He’s very nice. Kind. We don’t fight, there’s nothing “wrong”. Except I don’t want to be married anymore, and if I’m really honest, I didn’t want to get married eight months ago.

When he got down on one knee in downtown Vancouver and produced a ring (we BOTH picked out), I hesitated because I wanted to say no, but couldn’t. I couldn’t find one logical reason.

So, I said “yes”.  

Saying “I don’t want to” felt childish. That’s not a reason, that’s not admissible.

“Feelings aren’t relevant, valid, or acceptable,” I thought.

My mind resumed listing all the reasons to say yest: he’s nice, fun, I love him, and isn’t this just what people do?

I didn’t have reasons to say no.

So, I said yes.

---

Now that almost 25 years have passed and I have more years in a life to spot patterns, I know being highly sensitive and overwhelmed by feelings led me to that point.

Overintellectualizing to under-feel felt safer.

My inner dialogue told me, “Feelings don’t matter; only logical facts are valid” (masculine / feminine energy imbalance).

This created a lot of problems for the next 20 or so years of my life until I started unpacking and unraveling it.

~

I know now there was more to my “yes, I’ll marry you” than people pleasing and being afraid to say no.

It’s overthinking, under feeling.

It’s disconnection from my self.

It’s practiced self-abandonment.

---

The following year my best friend (now roommate), and I, are sitting in a huge empty stadium. John Mayer has left, the band is gone, all the spectators have left the building.

“I think it’s time to go,” she says softly.

Years later, he wrote In the Blood 🎵 🎵 🎵:

How much of my mother has my mother left in me?
How much of my love will be insane to some degree?
And what about this feeling that I'm never good enough?
Will it wash out in the water, or is it always in the blood?

How much of my father am I destined to become?
Will I dim the lights inside me just to satisfy someone?
Will I let this woman kill me, or do away with jealous love?
Will it wash out in the water, or is it always in the blood?

I can feel the love I want, I can feel the love I need
But it's never gonna come the way I am
Could I change it if I wanted, can I rise above the flood?
Will it wash out in the water, or is it always in the blood?

---

As a hypnotherapist and someone who works with generational and ancestral stories, I understand what’s in my blood, is not my fault.

As a Coach, and a Cycle Breaker, I understand that despite that, it’s my responsibility.

I know now there was more to the way I left my first husband (a story for another time), that it had to do with attachment and the paradox of connection.

As humans we all want connection, it’s in our DNA for survival. I inherited and perpetuated a dismissive avoidant connection style.

Paradoxically, creating disconnection is the kind of connection that felt safe for me.

I know, it’s a bit of a mind bend, and again, a story for another time.

Hyper independence was like a cozy, safe blanket.

Unraveling the stories of my Grandmother, and her Grandmother, and her Grandmother, helped me understand why, after 8 months of marriage, I self-combusted the way I did.

🎵 🎵 🎵

“How much of my mother has my mother left in me?
How much of my love will be insane to some degree?
And what about this feeling that I'm never good enough?
Will it wash out in the water, or is it always in the blood?”

-John Mayer

🎵 🎵 🎵

Fast forward almost 20 years, I’m bright-eyed and bushy tailed about starting a business. I work with a coach, I quit my job, I go all in (I know. Now, I know).

Unlike saying yes to my first marriage, this feels like a whole-hearted, soulful, resounding need. Not just a want, but a deep desire, and need. A full body Y-E-S. No fear. “I’m a hard worker, I’ve got this.”

I have a pretty good first year relying on all my go-to tools: hustle, over-work, try, try harder, try harder, control, try harder again.

I worked with coaches and trainers. I became certified in hypnotherapy. Every single coach or teacher I worked with mirrored my “values” of hustle, work hard, control, and following a “formula for success”. The perfect example of trauma-bonding.

It all came crashing down shortly after that, and the next five years plunged me into a deep healing and a very dark night of the soul.

“How could answering a calling with a resounding Y-E-S feel so bloody awful?”

All those pesky feelings I’d been pushing down for years finally had a quiet space to come up.

We’re a beautiful, complex, nuanced blend, us humans.

We’re made up of stories from generations past.

What our parents, grandparents and great grandparents survived.

They live as preconceived notions, but as we grow, the subconscious looks for ways to verify them.

Confirmation bias.

When we inherit the belief, we aren’t good enough, we start looking for proof.

We actively seek out examples proving we aren’t enough.

Just like if we started looking for yellow cars, we’d start seeing yellow cars everywhere.

Confirmation bias.

These beliefs now become our own stories, our proof.

We spend our lives confirming what we believe.

If we think we aren’t good enough, we’ll find those examples.

That laser focus will make us miss the beautiful examples reminding us we are good enough.

We forget that’s inherent and can’t be taken or given.

Jeffrey Allen has a great saying, “beliefs are true, but only for as long as you believe them.”

they’re so ingrained, so in the blood, so automatic, we forget we have choice about beliefs.

But what if even the ones we inherited could be washed out in the water?

What if we really do have a choice?

With awareness comes choice.

With choice comes change.