Mariya Ali

Help me own my own power to love and appreciate myself instead of looking to others to do that.

The Language of Letting Go

I’ve never seen so many Freudian slips in my life

Frasier Crane at a skiing conference for psychiatrists, Frasier

This is a screenshot of my diary entry from March 24th. I normally write my daily affirmation at the top of my entry.

It reads:

Appreciating others

Appreciating ourselves

Wow, what a Freudian slip that was!

Note to self – listen to Angie and appreciate myself.

Today, I will disregard any flack I receive for changing my behaviours or making other efforts to be myself.

The Language of Letting Go

Help me let go of my need to be a victim. Help me let go of my belief that to be loved and get attention I need to be a victim. Surround me with people who love me when I own my power. Help me start having good days and enjoying them.

The Language of Letting Go

My Prayer

Dear God,

Continue to reduce the number of bad days

And increase the number of good days

Bless me with good health

So that I can fight off the bad days

Today, help me become willing to let go of old beliefs and feelings that may be hurting me. Gently take them from me and replace them with new beliefs and feelings. I do deserve the best life and love have to offer. Help me believe that.

The Language of Letting Go

“Repunzel, Repunzel, let down your hair”

The handsome prince shouted from below the tower

Repunzel obliged, mermerised by the thought of leaving the tower she was locked in.

She let down her hair

Her long, black, straight hair

That she had grown out to the prince’s taste.

Up the Prince climbed, with promises of freedom

Exactly what Repunzel had yearned and dreamed of for so many years

“Oh thank you handsome prince, for saving me”

Said Repunzel

The handsome prince kissed Repunzel, supposedly True Love’s kiss

And held her hands in his

Repunzel breathed in his scent and thought

“All of those years of pain were worth this one moment in time”.

And just as she thought this

She felt a cold sensation around her wrists

Looking down, she saw the handcuffs that he had put around her hands

While he was kissing her and making her dream her deepest desires

He looked at her and smiled

While he threw the key out of the window

And then, he vanished

Not even looking over his shoulder.

What happened to Repunzel?

She cut her hair and used it as thread

And stitched a parachute from her cape.

In a blind leap of faith, she jumped.

And landed softly right beside her key.

Opening her handcuffs, she thought to herself

“I’m finally free and the world is my oyster”.

Then she took her first step

Towards her bright, free and beautiful future.

Today, I will  concentrate on making myself feel safe and comfortable.

The Language of Letting Go

Every day, there is a preamble in The Language of Letting Go before the affirmation is written.

During today’s preamble, it says:

Much of what we call codependency happens because we don’t feel safe in relationships. This can cause us to control, obsess, or focus on the other person, while neglecting ourselves or shutting down our feelings.

Suddenly, it all makes sense. Perhaps this is the Holy Grail realisation for me that will take me to the root of why I a) obsess over the state of every relationship and b) became and remained a codependent.

I decided to look up what creates emotional safety/security in a relationship and saw the following:

1. Identify and challenge your toxic thoughts toward your partner.  Overcoming your toxic thoughts toward your partner is imperative to create an emotionally safe relationship. Please see my recent blog, Do Any Of These Toxic Thoughts Threaten Your Relationship? for more on this topic.

2. Be Consistent. It is very emotionally draining and unsafe for your partner (and for you, as well) if you are moody and unpredictable. Being this way can sabotage feelings of emotional safety. As discussed in another recent blog, What Head Games Look Like in Lasting Relationships, avoid unwittingly or wittingly saying one thing and doing another.

3. Demonstrate Commitment. Protect your relationship.  Don’t destructively trash your partner to your friends or family. Be faithful and be supportive. Doing this will help you navigate choppy waters in your relationship and get you both to a better place.

All of this is highly ironic, because Voldemort literally did the opposite of all of this to an extreme degree. Challenge toxic thoughts about me? Ha, rather he blamed me for them. (FYI his delusional, highly disordered and narcissistic brain concocted many toxic thoughts about me). Consistent? Monthly mantrums (break ups or threats to break up – even after we got engaged) to constantly ensure that I was walking on eggshells and happy to please him in order to not rock the boat. Demonstrate commitment? He routinely tried to sabotage the relationshit and convinced his family (flying monkeys – *the term is applicable in more than one way*) that I was desperate for him, mad and a bad candidate for a daughter-in-law. He actually made me feel like I wasn’t good enough for his family. Let me break it down for you: He has a brother who works in a petrol station and can’t speak English, a mother who lives with him and is uneducated, vindictive, conniving and backwards, a father who is MIA, lives in Pakistan and takes no responsibility for his wife and kids (most likely because he’s shacked up with another wife in Pakistan), a sister who is the most smothered child I have ever come across and another sister (my friend’s initial reaction to seeing her picture was “talk about a dog without a tail”) who is arrogant and quite frankly delusional about how (not) good looking she is and how mundane her personality is. All of whom are financially dependent on the fucktard. I can’t believe that I actually bought into his crap that I wasn’t good enough for that family.

Again, I digress. Wow, I have been pretty angry in my rants the past couple of days.

So what’s the silver lining? Well, knowledge is power and I’m now aware of why I behave (and normally sabotage) the way I do in relationships – due to insecurity because of a history of feeling unsafe in relationships. I know what contributes to feeling secure in a relationship – and therefore can work on these points going forward and having such a contrast of a bad relationship, I really know what a good one looks like now.

I feel like I have finally put the last piece of the codependent jigsaw puzzle in place.

I think it’s time to start a new puzzle.