When I was deep into healing my relationship patterns, I spent a lot of time working through disastrous connections I thought had the potential to be real relationships. Trauma caused me to choose partners that weren’t right for me, un-checked coping mechanisms caused me to stay too long, and I chronically sacrificed what I truly wanted in a partnership for the comfort of other people.

Doing all the ‘inner-work’ gave me a really good understanding of what was wrong with my relationships.

But I still didn’t know how to know when the connection was RIGHT.

I didn’t want to blindly launch myself into connections just to see if maybe they’d work out weeks, months, or even years down the road. I wanted a way to be proactive when it came to answering the question, “Am I with the right person?”  I wanted to feel more confident knowing if I’d found the right person for me.

7 Signs You’re Not With the Right Person

Before we explore 3 strategies to answer the question, “Am I with the right person?” … Let’s explore 7 common signs that you might not be.

Wondering “Am I with the wrong person?”

Take this short “Am I in the Right Relationship Quiz” and ask yourself…

1. Do you feel like you can be your true, unedited self with them?
2. Have your friends and family met them, and do they think they’re a good match for you?
3. Do you feel seen and heard by them, even in moments of conflict or tension?
4. Do you feel more happy, alive, and ‘yourself’ after spending time with them?
5. Do you feel comfortable asking questions or having difficult / vulnerable conversations?
6. Are you happy and satisfied with the relationship more often than you are frustrated, confused, or disappointed?
7. Can you genuinely say that you like and respect them as a person?

If you answered “no” to 3 or more of those questions…

It’s probably worth re-evaluating whether this relationship is in your best interest.

And if you still aren’t sure, there are specific strategies you can use to gather deeply insightful information about how aligned your relationship is! Here are the the 3 I recommend most often to my clients…

3 Ways to Answer the Question: Am I With the Right Person?

1. Create a reference point for your ideal relationships

Most people make two mistakes when it comes to building connections:

1. They move through their relationships hoping to end up in a relationship that finally feels ‘right’, believing that when you meet the right person you know it
2. They hyper-focus on what they want their ideal partner or relationship to look like instead of what they want it to feel like.

The truth is, the specifics of any relationship will inevitably change– jobs, salaries, height, hair color, weight, location, hobbies, and interests will all shift over time.

These inconsistent measurements for compatibility won’t help you know if you’ve met the right person. And leaving it to the fates, hoping that you’ll suddenly, magically realize what’s right for you is even less reliable!

Instead, consider creating an “internal reference point” for your ideal relationship with these questions:

• How do I want to feel in my ideal relationships?
• How would I know if my needs were being met in a relationship?
• What do I currently do in my life that I would no longer have to do if my relationship were healthy and fulfilling?
• What am I not able to do that I would be able to do if my relationship were healthy and fulfilling? 

Your answers may change and evolve over time, but your internal awareness of the type of relationship you’re actually looking for is immensely valuable– especially in the face of loneliness, frustration with the modern dating scene, or the ultra–suave, oh-so-good looking guy who seems perfect on paper.

2. Set boundaries early and often

Not only are boundaries a non-negotiable part of building healthy relationships (they aren’t just for fixing relationships or situations that aren’t going well!), but setting boundaries is a fantastic opportunity to gather information about the person you’re with. The way that another person responds to your boundaries is deeply revealing.

Red flag responses to boundaries include:

• Anger or threats, including lashing out or blame
• Belittling or degrading, including name calling, sarcasm, or making fun of your boundary or how you communicated it
• Gaslighting or trying to convince you your boundary is not necessary or valid
• Using guilt or playing the victim to convince you to back down on your boundary

In a relationship that has healthy potential, the person on the receiving end of your boundary should respond with:

• Their undivided attention and a desire to understand your perspective and your feelings
• A willingness to discuss, share, and collaborate to create an environment where you both can be seen, heard, and validated
• A willingness to reflect on their behavior and feelings in the current circumstances
• A healthy expression of / discussion of emotions
• An apology, when necessary
• An appropriate adjustment in behavior that reflects an investment in the health of the relationship

Note that none of the red flag responses should prevent you from setting boundaries in your relationships. Your experience of how a person responds to boundaries and communication gives you insight into their emotional health.

That information is a powerful way to measure whether the person you’re dating is a good fit for you.

3. Communicate your “Core Relational Needs”

Similar to setting boundaries, a person’s response to your needs is telling.  A healthy relationship will balance a natural desire to meet our partner’s needs and an understanding that our partners cannot be the sole source of satisfaction for all every need and desire we have.

As you consider your needs within the context of any particular relationship, focus on identifying your core relational needs.

The primary question to help us identify our core relational needs is this: What do I need in this relationship to feel safe, loved, happy, and secure?

As you move through a relationship, you will have more and more opportunities to identify what your core relational needs are. As you gather this information about yourself, communicate these needs to your parter.

In a healthy, viable relationship, the other person should:

• Show a sincere interest in understanding what your needs are
• Demonstrate a willingness to communicate about your needs, including how they might be met
• Be willing to compromise and clearly and kindly express boundaries around ways in which they may not be able to meet particular needs
• Take your needs into account even while expressing their own

It is normal and expected for one person’s needs to sometimes conflict with another’s. That, in itself, it not necessarily a red flag… It’s simply the reality of two different people coming together to create a relationship.

When this happens, any moments of tension or even conflict are opportunities to use the power of clear, intentional communication to know each other even better. Your and your partner’s responses to these moments will tell you a lot about the health and viability of the relationship!

The Right Person is Out There, Waiting for You…

Good relationships are possible– no matter how many challenging ones we have on the scorecards of our past.

They begin with developing an understanding of what a good relationship means, looks like, and, most importantly, feels like to YOU.

From there, you can use clear, intentional communication to not only help ensure that your relationships are safe and healthy, but also to collect data about the type of people we’re with.

If you’re interested in diving deeper into your own relationship blueprint or would love support in identifying and expressing your boundaries, email me at hello@ktumminia.com for opportunities to work with me privately, or in one of my popular group coaching containers!

You might be in a similar place right now!

For me, I had this realization in grad school. All of the students in my cohort were required to take a class called Leadership Development. It sounded like your standard, “we have to fill your credit requirements to give you an advanced degree so we added this filler course” kind of thing. I wasn’t expecting much but a Wednesday afternoon break in the middle of my otherwise-overwhelming class load.

The Surprising Moment That Revealed My Unhealthy Boundaries

Our first assignment was to spend the next week tracking how we spend our resources– how we spent our time and our money. I didn’t think much of it and left the class just grateful I didn’t have to write another paper.

Except, this little assignment ended up rocking the foundations of my entire world.

When we returned to class the following week, the professor asked us one question: How many of the resources you’re using, be it time, money, or otherwise, are being used in ways that support the vision you have for your life?

It was then that I had a MASSIVE realization–  I didn’t actually LIKE the ways I was spending my time or money! And every bit of my resources was being used to make other people in my life more comfortable, rather than supporting any goals or vision of my own.

I knew big changes were in order… but I didn’t know exactly what to change or how.

It would take me another couple of years to realize that the KEY to creating the life I desired could only be found by mastering boundary setting.

Why Boundary Setting Changes Everything

What are boundaries?

Put simply, boundaries are limits and guidelines we create for ourselves to help ensure that we are safe and respected in all of our experiences– by others and ourselves!

Our personal boundaries are the tool that empowers to change our experience for the better. You cannot create the life you want without them.

They help us determine what we will and will not tolerate in our lives, the types of relationships that are most life-giving for us, how we spend our time and resources, and even how we care for ourselves.

But for many of us, boundary setting is a nebulous concept we don’t know how to actually do.

So, if you’re thinking, “I don’t know how to set boundaries…”, you aren’t alone! A lot of us were never taught how to set healthy boundaries. We probably didn’t have good examples of healthy boundaries in our homes or early relationships. And we certainly weren’t given boundary setting lessons in school!

In fact, the lack of healthy modeling and understanding most people have when it comes to setting boundaries is a big part of why I do the work that I do! So, if you’re just getting started and want to understand how to get better at boundary setting in your own life, here are the 3 most common boundary mistakes I see now– and that I made myself– and how to fix them.

3 Most Common Boundary Mistakes & How to Fix Them

Boundary Setting Mistake 1: You Use Boundaries to Control Other People’s Behavior

Here’s the hard truth– we cannot control another person’s behavior or choices. And truthfully, efforts to do so never work out in the end.

Instead of using boundaries to control or change another person, remember– Your boundaries are about you and your behavior.

Boundaries dictate your own experience and the steps you need to take to make sure your experience reflects the sacred being that you already are. Needs and desires you have for other people’s behavior, on the other hand, are requests and expectations.

Orient your boundaries to yourself. For example:

• Instead of: “You have to text me every day while you’re at work,” a healthy boundary might be, “It’s important to me to have regular contact with the people I’m closest to. I need to make sure that the relationships I prioritize reflect that. I’m going to make sure I send you a quick message on my lunch break. Can we talk about how we can build more regular contact into our relationship during the week?”
• Instead of: “You spend too much time with your friends and you need to start spending more time with me,” a healthy boundary might be, “It’s clear that your friends are important to you. I want you to know that you’re important to me as well, and I need to create relationships where I am also a priority. For me, that looks like spending regular time together, and I need that from my partner in order to continue to feel secure in a relationship.”
• Instead of: “Stop yelling at me or I’ll leave,” a heathy boundary might be, “I cannot continue to have conversations when they devolve into yelling. I’m going to take a break and we can come back to this in an hour when we’ve both calmed down.”

When you create boundaries that are focused on your experience and your behavior, every boundary you set is supported by tangible, measurable action that keeps the boundary you set intact. For instance, if you set a boundary around not remaining in conversations that devolve into yelling, you are responsible for walking away from those conversations.

From this perspective, boundaries become empowering tools instead of frustrating pleas for what you need.

Boundary Setting Mistake 2: You Make Threats Instead of Creating Consequences

How many times have you caught yourself making a wild threat in the heat of feeling angry or hurt, even though you knew you had no intention of following through?

How many times have you threatened another person as a way to punish them for not doing what you wanted them to do?

Healthy boundaries cannot be upheld by threats, but they are supported by consequences.

Consequences in healthy boundary setting is really the next, logical move you need to make in order to ensure that you continue to be respected and continue to respect yourself.

Instead of “Do this or else!” statements, or a focus on punishing another person for their choices, start asking yourself what you need to do in any given moment to continue to feel safe and respected, and actually follow through!

Boundary Setting Mistake 3: You Assume Other People Should Already Know Your Boundaries

Good boundaries require communication. Specifically, they require communication that is in line with the nature of the relationship and your desired outcome.

No person, no matter how close or intimate the relationship, can know what you need, desire, or expect without communication.

And, when a person doesn’t inherently know or understand your boundaries, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the health or viability of your relationship.

I often tell my clients that boundaries are invitations to intimacy– they are tools telling other people how best to have and maintain a relationship with you– but like actual invitations, they need to be “sent” in order to be honored.

Your partner isn’t a mind reader, and good boundaries need to be communicated in order to be honored by others. (The exception to this rule is in cases where communicating a boundary is unsafe or the act of communication undermines the boundary in the first place).

If you’re new to boundaries, remember there is no shame in learning! We don’t know what we don’t know — and most of us missed out on healthy models for boundaries when we were growing up. If you’re guilty of any of these mistakes, focus on making small, attainable adjustments, and make sure you’re subscribed to the Self Love Club to learn more!

Camille was frustrated. She was on all the dating apps, going out every weekend, and constantly messaging, swiping, and looking for the next match– yet, she felt no closer to finding her person.  

Like I did Camille, I would like to invite you to consider that perhaps you don’t need to look for love. Camille is one of many clients who is so wrapped up in looking for “the one” that she isn’t really living. She desperately wants to add another person to her experience, but if she’s really honest with herself, there isn’t much of an experience outside of dating, swiping, and messaging the next prospect.

What would it be like to consider that finding love was never meant to be a life-long marathon that ends when you finally walk down the aisle?

What if finding your soul mate or your twin flame is not why you’re here on this planet and living the life that you’re living?

Our generation grew up under the teachings of the Church of Disney, watching beautiful characters like Cindrella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty get swept off of their feet and out of their ordinary lives by Prince Charming and just a touch of magic.

And all of those characters have one thing in common- they’re waiting.

They’re waiting for their soul mates. They’re waiting for their lives to begin. They’re waiting to find love and for their day-to-day to be utterly transformed by another person.

No wonder shows like The Bachelor are so popular- It’s a continuation of the same, exact storyline.

Cinderella, after having an amazing, magical night at the ball, goes home and continues to clean and work for her evil stepmother and stepsisters.  She doesn’t go out looking for the prince. She doesn’t change anything about her life whatsoever. She waits for him to show up with an empty glass slipper.

It’s positioned so that it looks endearing and magical, but in reality, it’s so powerless and self-sacrificing.

And don’t even get me started on Snow White and Sleeping Beauty- two characters that are literally stuck in a state of permanent sleep until Prince Charming shows up.

This idea that there is one person in the world who is ‘meant’ for us, who is intended to push play on our real, love experience and transform our lives is 100% and absolutely incorrect.

You don’t have to spend another minute looking for your soul mate or your twin flame. In fact, please stop looking for your soul mate or worrying about whether the guy you’re dating is your twin flame.

Instead, consider the idea that your job on this planet as fully and completely and beautifully and magically as possible because you are already connected to all of the love that you’ll ever need – instead of waiting for some magical fairy tale moment, or the next guy to ask you out, or the next blind date, or the next online match.

What if instead of waiting for those things, you were living life and embodying the love and magic that are already yours. And they’re yours because you came from them- you came from love and magic, and you cannot be separated from them.

When we stop worrying about where our soulmate is or who our twin flame is or waiting for the experience we want and instead, start living out the ways that we want to feel, and we start acting in the vibration of the love that we’ve always been connected to, then we start attracting into our experience other people who match that vibration.

Stop waiting for love and start living in the vibration of the love you want to attract.

As an added bonus, this removes so much pressure from your relationships. No person can single-handedly change you life, satisfy you, fulfill you, nor make you happy.  No relationship can survive under that pressure.

But when you recognize that you are already fully connected to all of the love in the universe, and you start living out that love, you will start to see the amazing things – and people – you bring into your experience. And you will begin to witness the sheer joy of partnering with another person who is fully living out their own connection to love and amplifying and adding to each other, instead of depending on each other to fulfill an impossible standard.

Trust me, you WANT to be with a person who adds to your already-fulfilling experience. It’s magic.

But the first step is embracing the idea that you are already fulfilled, on your own.

You don’t have to keep putting up with dissection, unhealthy relationships, and bad date after bad date in search of something you already have.

You are connected to an infinite flow of love- it’s where you came from.

Here’s a beautiful mantra for you to remember your true connection:

I am always connected to an infinite source of love. I choose to remember, in every moment and experience, that I am always connected to the love from which I came. I embody divine, perfect love in everything that I do and in every experience that I have. I choose now to open any part of my connection to this love that I may closed down in the past. That was then and this is now. And now, I choose to fully embody love in every way.

I choose to remember that I can never be separated from full and complete love. I am now open to receiving experiences that compliment, multiply, and add to the full and complete love that I already embody. I release any need and any expectation that another person will complete me or fulfill me. I release now any expectation or belief that I am incomplete in any way.

I release now any part of me that has been waiting to be rescued, saved, fulfilled, or satisfied by love that comes from outside of me. Instead, I choose to be pleasantly surprised by love experiences that compliment and multiply the love that I already am. I am complete. I am love. I am loved. I am grateful. Thank you. Together, divine.

It was my 19th birthday. I was killing it in my first year of undergrad, had a solid group of friends, and had been dating a guy I really liked for the last six months. As far as I was concerned, life post-high school could not have been going better.

That night, my friends had planned a surprise birthday party for me. Of course, it wasn’t actually a surprise to me – people rarely pull off surprising me – and I was so excited to spend the evening with good friends and my boyfriend. It was the first birthday we were spending together since being set up by a mutual friend just after Christmas the year previous, and I wondered how he would celebrate with me.

When I arrived at my friends house, fashionably late and acting appropriately surprised, I was surprised my beau wasn’t there yet. I checked my phone in case he had called or texted, but no notifications awaited. I told myself– and everyone who asked– he was probably still at work and would probably be here soon.

A half hour into the party, my boyfriend’s best friend walked in, shaking his head. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the other room. “I don’t know what’s happening.” he said. “He and I were just at a baseball game the other night and he told me he was super into you. He said he could see himself marrying you. I’m so sorry, I don’t know what he’s doing.”

I was confused. The truth was, I could see myself marrying this guy too. I didn’t see how that was a bad thing.

“What are you talking about?” I looked at him expectantly, wanting him to explain, before catching sight of the guy I was just imagining marrying walking through the hall toward the living room.

Finally.

I ran out to catch him, only to catch sight of the loud blonde hanging alllll over him.

“Who the fuck,” I thought to myself, as I watched him take her hand.  Under a chorus of her obnoxious giggles, I did what any girl would do in this situation– I locked myself in the hall bathroom and cried.

I ignored the knocks on the bathroom door as I felt all the feelings. When I looked into the mirror, I was a wreck, but fuck him. I would be the sweetest wreck he’s ever met. I vowed that I would be so kind and so cool and so “whatever” about the whole thing that he’d know I was different by the time the night was over. Which, of course, would make him pick me anyway.

Right?

———–

Fast forward five long years. It was the night before my 24th birthday and I was alone in Heathrow airport awaiting a return flight from a job I had just finished in London.

My little house in Philly awaited, along with my fiancee and my little weiner dog. He had been texting me all week teasing about a birthday surprise, and I was so looking forward to his plans and to sleeping in my own bed. My job, at the time, was at a small media company, and while I loved the travel, that year had been heavy with longer and more frequent trips than normal.

The next day, I took a cab from the Philadelphia airport to my house. My fiancee was working and couldn’t risk the time off to pick me up, he said, but I was glad to have a few hours to myself after such a long trip. Visions of a hot bath and a nap kept me going until I reached the front door.

The front door, through which loud music was blaring when I walked up.

I actually checked the house number (lol)

I mean, I HAD been gone for some time, and I was so confused at the sheer volume of noise coming from my house that I thought perhaps I had gone to the wrong one.

Spoiler alert: I hadn’t.

Lugging my bags up the steps, I unlocked the front door and let it swing open on its own, only to reveal my fiance, in the middle of the living room, surrounded by wires and toy instruments.

And it was so loud.

So loud that he didn’t even hear me open the door or notice me standing there.

It was only when the dog started to bark and ran to greet me that he looked up from the little simulation drum-kit he was hunched over and acknowledged my presence.

“Babe!” he yelled over the blaring music of the video game. “You’re back! Happy birthday- I got you Rock Band! It’s so awesomeeeee! I couldn’t go to work today, I just HAD to play it.”

In retrospect, I don’t even have words for the thoughts and feelings that coursed through me in that moment. But I can tell you that I left my bags in the doorway, picked up my dog, and stormed up to the second floor bathroom. If anyone knew me, they would know that this was perhaps the least appropriate gift to get me, nevermind the cab I took from the airport because he “had” to work.

I definitely locked the door behind me.

I definitely cried.

And by the time I let myself come out of the bathroom, to an imploring and slightly confused fiance, I had decided that I would just play the stupid video game, be amazing at it, and make him take me to dinner later to make up for it.

———–

Different guys. Same disappointment.

And, let’s get real, I had very valid, real reasons for feeling disappointed in both of those situations. Disappointment, as a temporary emotion is intended to show you that your expectations for a particular person or situation were different from the reality you were faced with.

The challenge becomes how we choose to respond to disappointment when it happens.

I can tell you, based on experience, that locking yourself in the bathroom and crying doesn’t really accomplish much – though I do recommend taking time to feel and acknowledge any emotions related to the disappointment you may have.

In both of these situations, I resorted to one of the most destructive patterns of behavior I see among people in relationships and on the dating scene: I altered my own response/behavior in hopes of eliciting a desired response/behavior from another person.

With bf #1, I assumed that by acting like it didn’t bother me that he showed up to my birthday party with another girl, he would in turn realize how cool/different I was, realize his mistake, and want to be with me anyway.

With fiance #2, I reasoned that if I were amazing at the video game I didn’t want, he’d find me more irresistible (what’s that they say about girls who play video games?) and WANT to show me love and acknowledgement in the tangible ways I’d been hoping for in the first place.

And taking me out to dinner? Yeah, he took me, and it was fine– be he didn’t know that in my mind he was actually taking me out to dinner to make up for being a dick about my birthday.

Ladies, you cannot predict or control another person’s thoughts, feelings, or behavior with your own. And this passive-aggressive, manipulative, probably habitual tactic only separates you from your own wants, needs, and desires.

In the face of disappointment in your relationship, you need to get really, deeply clear about what actually disappointed you, what you expected, and why.

And then you need to get really, deeply clear with your partner about what disappointed you, what you expected, and why. Leaning into and learning from your disappointment will make you a better partner, and will teach you to better honor yourself

Feeling disappointment? Click here to try this EFT tapping video to shift your emotions fast.

Among the people that show up in my coaching space every month, the topic of disappointment is almost a sure-fire guarantee– they may be disappointed in another person, disappointed in the turn of a relationship, or disappointed the person they were sure could be the one turned out to be another name to add to the growing list of exes.  Either way, the reaction is always the same. Unmet expectations, misplaced hopes and dreams, and frustration that dating efforts haven’t led them to “the one” garner the familiar feeling of disappointment.

The dictionary defines disappointment as: sadness or displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of one’s hopes or expectations.

But- let’s take it a step further: the word disappointment is derived from the French word desappointer, which means to “to deprive of an office or position.” In relationships, this can be understood as “no longer favored” by someone whose favor means a lot to us.

In my practice, I often invite my clients to acknowledge and accept their emotions as neither good nor bad, but to view them as information to which they can respond. Disappointment, however, is not an emotion like anger, happiness, or sadness, rather, it is a state of being. Disappointment stems from perpetual focus, whether conscious or unconscious, on the unmet portion of your expectations. Disappointment, if we’re truthful, doesn’t originate in the behavior of another person, it originates in our own expectations.

The trap of disappointment is that it can lead us to a deep, unfulfillable desire for the person who we feel disappointed us to remedy the situation. In a state of disappointment, in which all of our energy and focus is centered on our unmet expectations, we have given the other person power and control over whether we are able to feel fulfilled, favored, and positive. Engaging (or wallowing for some of us!) in a state of disappointment creates an energetic space that we believe can only be remedied by the behavior of another person.

If you catch yourself in a space of disappointment (you will at some point, trust me), your first move should be choosing to step into a place of reclaiming yourself and your power.  

Disappointment cannot linger when you take back responsibility for your own happiness, fulfillment, and wellbeing. Sure, expectations will go unmet from time to time, and it may require adjustments and boundaries on your end, or trigger emotions, memories, or feelings– but at the end of the day, you are ultimately in control of you. And that state of disappointment you keep catching yourself in? That’s your responsibility too, babe.

Not sure where to start?

Lucky for you, I have just the practice for consciously assessing your disappointment and taking back your power in the face of disappointing things!

CONSCIOUS PRACTICE: Disappointment

In your journal or notebook, explore and answer the following questions. Throughout the process, be open to any emotions, feelings, memories, or thoughts that may come up, even if they seem unrelated. Anything that comes up for you is more information and may be more related than you think!  

1. Acknowledge and clarify your disappointment. What exactly has made you feel disappointed? What emotions accompany your disappointment? What does this situation or these feelings remind you of? Be specific, name names and behaviors, and be as detailed as you can about the situation at hand. This first step allows you to take time and space to feel your feelings, but also to be exceptionally clear about what or who has disappointed you, which in turn puts everything into perspective
2. Assess your own expectations. What expectations did you have of this person or situation? Where did they come from? In what ways did you communicate them to the person(s) involved
3. Choose to see the silver lining. What can you learn from this situation or this person? What did this disappointment show you about yourself? How can this situation and your reaction to it shed more light on your growth, potential, and evolution as an individual
4. Respond. In what ways can you modify your expectations or goals in this situation to take back your power? What boundaries can you put into place to help you lay claim to yourself and your power in the face of this situation
5. Shift your feelings with purpose. Brainstorm the things you can intentionally do to shift your emotions and feelings, taking full responsibility for yourself and your well being even in the midst of a relationship or situation that has triggered disappointment.

Letting go of old relationships and truly moving on from past lovers, in many cases, requires forgiveness, but we humans have such a difficult time getting there for some reason. We carry a misconception around forgiveness and letting go that it somehow means something about the other person, their merit, and whether or not they deserve to be ‘let off the hook’ or ‘get away’ with what they’ve done or how they’ve treated us. The truth is, forgiveness is a part of the process of letting go that has everything to do with YOU.

It’s deciding that YOU deserve peace, well-being, and love MORE than you deserve to spend another minute of your life holding vigil over that old story.

It’s deciding that YOU deserve peace, well-being, and love MORE than you deserve to spend another minute of your time or ounce of your energy invested in the details of that past relationship.

You cannot bring in a new, better, more epic love story if you’re spending all of your time and energy re-reading the old ones. We live in a vibrational universe- where we put our focus and our energy is important. The universe will always bring more of what you focus on back to you– and that old relationship and those old feelings probably aren’t really what you want more of, if you’re honest with yourself.

This week’s Love Alchemy Session invites you to consider three keys to forgiving and truly letting go of your ex (or your exes).

No explanation. No apparent reason. What now?

In this week’s Love Alchemy Session, we talk about WHY guys (and gals) really ghost (*hint* it has NOTHING to do with you or even the relationship itself!). Plus, I give you some of the possible red flags that might signal a future ghost situation, and what you need to do after you get ghosted.

The #1 take away from this week’s video: If you find yourself the victim of ghosting, IT ISN’T ABOUT YOU. It means nothing about your inherent worth and value, and there’s nothing you could have done differently to prevent it.

Here’s what I want you to take away from this week’s alchemy session: Your boundaries are about YOU. They have nothing to do with changing or affecting other people.

Boundaries should give you freedom. They give you freedom to be who you are without apology, and to walk away when another person cannot respect that. They give you the freedom to be responsible for yourself and your own behavior and not for others.  They give you the freedom to communicate your needs and desires without questioning your worth or value based on the other person’s response.

Use this week and the Virgo new moon energy as an opportunity to go deep and evaluate what’s working and what isn’t working in your own boundary setting.

(Psst- if you want to get right to the tapping, jump ahead to about 14:29)

The long and the short of the message this week: You are not broken. Where ever you are on your path right now is exactly where you are meant to be.

If you missed this week’s episode, you can watch here:

Energy Shifting Exercise: Meeting Yourself Where You Are

What You’ll Need: A journal or paper, pen or pencil, quiet space.

Tapping & Visualization Exercise: This exercise is a combination of visualization, meditation, and tapping (a mind-body acupressure technique), but I want you to focus on the visualization portion first.  I include journaling in this exercise to help those who have difficulty visualizing, and to help you remember the information that you gather in this process. Unless you are having difficulty visualizing and choose to use drawing and writing to help you complete the exercise, feel free to use the journal portion of this exercise after you’ve completed the visualization, just to jot down any thoughts, reactions, or to simply record the information you receive for later reference.

Before we begin this exercise, I want you to make sure that you’re tapping or pressing on one of the EFT Tapping points.  EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques, and this form of mind-body acupressure helps facilitate cognitive shifts and create a sense of safety as we explore parts of yourself that you may not have encountered before.  In my experience, tapping or pressing one or more of these points during a meditative or introspective exercise, it can greatly help increase access to the subconscious and creative parts of the mind. If you are already familiar with the EFT Tapping points, simply choose one or more of the points that you feel comfortable with and make sure that you’re tapping or pressing these points the entire time you are doing this exercise. If you are new to tapping and are unfamiliar with the points, the easiest way to incorporate acupressure into your work and meditations is to hold your wrist (see the image).  Simply holding these points stimulates several acupressure meridians that run from your hands and fingers through your wrist, and won’t require you to find other points or worry about how to use them just yet.

Once you’re comfortable with holding or wrist or tapping the points you’ve chosen, you can begin the visualization. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and imagine there is an empty chair across from you.  In this chair, imagine the specific part of you that you want to change, or the habit you want to break. It’s important to choose one, single, specific change or habit for this exercise. Avoid lumping all of the changes you want to make together – remember the clarification work you did in the previous chapter.  Allow this specific part to appear however it chooses to appear, even if it seems not to make any sense. I could appear as an object, a version of yourself, a person, or something else entirely.

If you have difficulty visualizing this part of you, I’d encourage you to take out your paper and pen and draw the part.  It doesn’t matter how well you draw or don’t, just put onto paper whatever comes to mind, without judgement. It could be as simple as a scribble or a stick figure, or perhaps a more elaborate image will come to mind.  Just breathe, try not to overthink, and allow your pen to move on the paper. Whatever comes up is exactly what’s supposed to come up right now.

Once you have an image, either in your mind’s eye or on paper, use this opportunity to have a conversation with your habit.  Ask it the following questions, being open to it’s responses. I often encourage clients to go with the first thing that pops into their head after a question is asked.  Often, this information is the information that has a chance to come forward before the conscious, thinking mind can interfere, and if there’s anything I learned, it’s that you can’t think your way into the subconscious mind.

• Where did this part come from?

• What purpose does this part serve?

• What need is this part meeting?

• What problem did (or does) this part help you solve?

• When was this part created?

• Does this part belong to you, or did it come from someone else?

• What does this part of you need?

Take your time as you move through each of these questions, and give yourself permission to be flexible as you ask them.  Feel free to ask them more than once, ask follow up questions, push and search for the clarity and answers you need to have clarity and insight about this part of you.  If you notice feelings or emotions coming up around this part of you– fear, guilt, disgust, anger, sadness, etc.– acknowledge them and, for the moment, see them as additional information about what might be attached to this part of you.  When we begin to listen to the parts of use that are behind our habits and the things we wish we could change, instead of trying to force our way through them with guilt, anger, and self loathing, we set ourselves up for success. The information you gather in this exercise will help you begin to approach the parts of you that you want to change as something to work with, not against.

When you are finished with this visualization, jot down the information you received. You may not understand all of it right away, and you may find that you need time to process the answers that came up.  Likely, you’ll want to revisit this information again as you learn to view your habits and changes from a new perspective. Simply having this information is only the beginning of the process of rewriting how you’ve probably viewed change and your habits for a lifetime. Remember that in this stage our focus is on grace and flexibility, and you deserve to show yourself grace and flexibility even as you figure out how to assimilate this new information.

When we work with the parts of us that we want to change, acknowledging that they exist for a reason, serve a purpose, or meet a need within us, we open ourselves to creative solutions and guidance to begin to solve those problems and meet those needs in new and different ways.  When we have new realizations about the changes we want to make that don’t involve self loathing, guilt, and other negative emotions, we can create new paths to change that inspire and excite– new paths that are based in positive, open solutions.           

Now that you’ve gathered this information around this part of yourself, you will find that some of the insights may require further work and resolution. This will likely be in the form of your own processing and may also come in the form of outside support. One of the primary things I encourage my clients to work through is the process of identifying and resolving the wherever it is they learned their habits worked.  The moments in our pasts where we learn to meet needs with ineffective behaviors that no longer serve us are more often than not rooted in high emotion, and sometimes even trauma. Our subconscious minds can cling to old learnings in effort to keep us safe, keeping us rooted in old behaviors based on past experiences and old learnings. The quickest and fastest way I’ve found to resolve these past experiences and resolve the attachments our minds have created between our habits and the places that we learned to use them as a solution is using energy meridian techniques like tapping and Matrix Reimprinting.

If you would like to explore how these techniques, let’s chat! I offer a limited number of one on one private sessions for exactly this type of powerful energy work. Don’t be shy- Click here to reserve yours!

If you’re anything like most people, you can probably make a pretty impressive list of stressful moments over the past day, let alone the past week.  Maybe your kids are sick, you sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on your way to work, your boss dumped a list of new demands on your desk, you decided to grocery shop at Walmart on a Sunday afternoon, you have errands to run, meals to plan, chores to do…and on, and on, and on.

The problem with stress is that while the types of stress we experience in our modern age have evolved to match the fast-paced world that we live in, our brains haven’t quite caught up. See, when you experience stress, your body releases cortisol and other adrenal hormones to try and keep up. It isn’t that cortisol is the bad guy in and of itself; we were designed to release these hormones in times of physical danger, you know, the occasional run in with a saber toothed tiger that may have been inclined to have us for lunch. Once the moment of danger is over, these hormones are meant to subside. But, in the world that we live in now, most people are experiencing significant stress multiple times on a daily basis, and some of us even experience a continual state of stress!

This means two things for you:

1. Your brain cannot differentiate between types of stress. To your brain, shopping at Walmart on a Sunday afternoon can be the same experience as being chased by a tiger that wants to eat you. It isn’t that your conscious mind isn’t capable of looking at the two and seeing that they’re different, but to your brain and your unconscious mind, the FEELING is the same. And, more importantly, the same chemical response is triggered– every time.
2. Our bodies are not meant to live in a constant “bath” of cortisol and adrenaline. The release of these hormones is supposed to be a very temporary thing.

Elevated levels of these hormones cause:

• heart rate and blood pressure soar to increase the flow of blood to the brain to improve decision making,
• blood sugar rises to furnish more fuel for energy as the result of the breakdown of glycogen, fat and protein stores,
• blood is shunted away from the gut, where it is not immediately needed for purposes of digestion, to the large muscles of the arms and legs to provide more strength in combat, or greater speed in getting away from a scene of potential peril,
• clotting occurs more quickly to prevent blood loss from lacerations or internal hemorrhage.

And, to make things even more complicated, these hormones typically remain in the blood stream for extended periods of time, triggering your body to replenish energy supplies lost during the fight-or-flight response- even if you didn’t actually expend any energy waiting in line at Walmart. And how exactly does your body accomplish such a task? Increasing sugar cravings and even increasing our abdominal fat stores.

And over time, this cycle can do lots of damage. We’re talking fatigue, weakened immunity, anxiety, depression, digestive and metabolic problems, obesity, and even diseases such as diabetes, Cushing’s syndrome, and cardiovascular disease. Not to mention feeling like crap all the time isnt’ good for your motivation, your relationships, your sex drive, or your self esteem.

Before you get too stressed out over all this information, there is good news. EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), also known as tapping, is an easy, non-invasive, method you can use to lower your stress levels and the levels of these potentially dangerous hormones in you body. “EFT is a noninvasive technique that pairs the recall of emotional upsets (a form of exposure therapy, a common method in psychology) with physical stimulation of specific points on the body to discharge stress (as identified by thousands of years of use in acupuncture)” (EFT Universe).

A study published by the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease found that Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) lowered the major stress hormone cortisol significantly more than other interventions tested.  In a randomized controlled trial (the gold standard of scientific research), 83 subjects were randomly assigned to a single hour-long session of EFT, talk therapy, or rest. Their cortisol levels were measured via a saliva test before and after the session. The results showed that cortisol levels in the rest and therapy groups declined by an average of 14%, while the EFT group declined 24% (Read more here).

So, what does all this mean for your health and wellness journey? We already know that elevated levels of cortisol and adrenal hormones impair digestion, raise blood sugar levels, and, over time, cause your body to hold onto excess fat. Unlike expensive cortisol-blocking drugs that come with long-term side effects, a regular tapping practice can potentially significantly lower you body’s stress response. Chances are, you can’t remove everything from your life that causes stress, but you can adopt practices to help your body regulate its response to the stressors in your life. I recommend a daily tapping practice- even if it’s a small amount of time- dedicated to focusing inward and addressing the stressful events you’ve experienced that day.

What does it mean for your relationships? Having an effective self care routine in place will work wonders for your dating life, and even your existing relationships. Not only will you feel better and look better (who doesn’t want that?!), but when we show up for ourselves and invest in ourselves, we are then able to show up more authentically and become more aligned in our relationships. The energy you’re cultivating by caring for yourself in tangible, real ways shows up in your interactions with other people– it can be felt and sensed by others. And it makes a real difference. EFT tapping is a great way to invest in yourself each day, and as you transform yourself, you’ll transform your relationships!

Want to learn more about tapping? Make sure you join my mailing list or become a part of the High Vibes Energy Circle facebook group to be in the know about my next EFT Tapping training event! You won’t want to miss it!