Denial Is Not A River In Egypt, Awareness Will Give You Choice!

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Denial Is Not A River In Egypt, Awareness Will Give You Choice!

We will finally get to the how we are going to overcome love addiction. The next three episodes will be dedicated to that. To be clear, there is no easy way to transform love addiction. The journey will take time, dedication and commitment. Having been through this journey myself, however, allows me to say with confidence that indeed there is a way out. Trust me, it is so worth it. Despite all the pain I had to endure, I would even pay for the experience if I knew about the outcome beforehand. A way out of love addiction, meaning that you can achieve a state of not being so controlled by the addiction anymore. A way out where you make better and healthier choices when it comes to you and your love life. A way out where your life’s focus no longer revolves around the compulsion to find, keep and feel loved at all times.

The deeper you dive, the more challenging the journey, but the bigger the rewards. Once you make a decision to seriously tackle your love addiction, all you have to do is stick with it and honor yourself in the process. The sticking part will get challenged over and over again. Trust me, it will be so tempting to give up, especially in the moments when you think you won’t make it out of it anymore. I have felt like that many times but I said to myself, “Keep going. Feel it one more time. Even if you don’t want to, just one more time.” Honor the commitment you make to yourself, all else will unfold one step at a time. Trust that you too are able to transform love addiction because what lies ahead will have you flattered.

There are three building blocks to transform love addiction and today we will be talking about the first one. Key number one is to create a high level of awareness and taking 100% responsibility. This key is the basis for all else that follows. We have to become what I call super aware. We have to start walking next to ourselves, watching ourselves from that place. Watching how and what we speak when we react when we act out when we get triggered, when we engage into unhealthy dynamics, when we try to make ourselves feel better, instead of feeling what is going on. It’s watching the moments we allow other people to abuse us or take advantage of us when we don’t follow through with the standards that we set for ourselves, when we are abandoning ourselves when our emotional state changes and so on.

The other part of this first key to overcoming love addiction is to take 100% responsibility. Often, we try to change something that is out of our hands, out of our control. For example, we try to change our partner or we put blame on them or we make them responsible for how we feel instead of turning inwards. Taking 100% responsibility means to take responsibility for whatever shows up in our lives, assuming that we in fact have contributed our part to it. We will be most successful when we always ask ourselves, “What did I contribute to a situation I’m finding myself in? What part of the mess is my mess?” Sometimes it’s not so much that we did something that created the mess but much more about us allowing and taking part in it.

The very nature of love addiction is denial. Click To Tweet

One example would be if I am in a relationship where my partner often acts out on me because of his unresolved issues. I, therefore, allow him or her to treat me anything less than with respect or I don’t speak my truth or I accept his or her malignant behavior, then that’s in my corner. I am the one that does not speak up. That stays in the situation. That does not clearly communicate my standards. By allowing a certain behavior that hurts me I’m saying that it is okay to be treated like that. It’s like you get what you tolerate. If you, however, go through life constantly asking yourself, “What did I do for this reality to happen?” and you take responsibility for that, then you are igniting real change.

We will never be able to change someone else. They have to do that job themselves. We can, however, through taking responsibility, empower ourselves to a level where we become strong enough to not take BS anymore. To speak our truth, to let go of unfulfilling relationships and so on. This is what we’re going to explore here. Awareness is key before anything else. The very nature of love addiction is denial. We usually completely lack the awareness of the subject. We don’t know that we are addicted to love and we don’t recognize the problems that our behavior causes.

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If you want more on getting the best out of your life and relationships, check out our new brand The Royal Path where you find everything about personal growth, deep healing and emotional liberation.

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We fail to recognize the fact that we are the common denominator in our failed relationships, where we mostly put the blame on our dates, lovers, partners or anyone else we’re entangled with. It allows us to avoid dealing with our desperate, problematic behavior, feelings and unmet needs that lie beneath it all. For most addicts, no matter whether it is a drug, alcohol or love, they have to hit rock bottom to start realizing the addiction and the severity of it. If we’re unaware, it means that we cannot make conscious and healthy choices and decisions. The addiction takes a life of its own in our subconscious. All of a sudden, we see ourselves do or say things that we didn’t mean to.

Awareness: When we are aware, we see more. That opens us up to opportunities and choice.

We have to face consequences that we don’t particularly find easy to deal with. With awareness comes choice. That’s why we need to immerse in the subject on a continuous basis so we can start developing that super awareness where we are able to see ourselves in real time, where I am aware enough to realize that my fingers are dialing his number even though I should not, then I can stop myself from doing something that I don’t want to and redirect the impulse. The most important step in this is to become aware before taking the wrong turn, before acting out, before acting on our obsession and call them too many times or run after the love we so desperately long for. Why is awareness so powerful? Because it makes us powerful. When we are aware, we see more and that gives us opportunities and choices.

The greater our awareness, the greater our options. Your level of awareness is directly correlated with your level of denial. The more in denial about your love addiction you are, the less awareness you have and the other way around. If we want to become more aware, we have to create the space for us to become aware and to be aware. How aware can we be if we run through life, if we constantly busy ourselves, if we work too much, if we never exercise, eat too much crap, and drink too much alcohol for example? A big part of awareness is our body. Our body always gives us signals about how we feel. Does something feel good and right and do I feel myself opening to a situation or does my body shut down and I have this weird gut feeling that is trying to warn me about something? If I can’t feel my body, I won’t feel what it is telling me.

I want to say this, especially to all women. Our body is our compass, our body, our heart, our vagina, our soul, it tells us everything. We can use our head to make sense of things, to be practical about things, to do our job, to organize ourselves and so on but our head won’t tell us much about our feelings or emotions. That is where the body comes in, and our body speaks a very clear language. If we listen and then honor what it is revealing to us, that is so powerful. In other words, we need to slow down to become more aware because we need to be able to perceive, to listen and to feel.

Becoming aware of our thoughts, actions, words and so on will make us more honest with ourselves. We’ll be able to figure out what we want and more importantly, what we don’t want. It will help in making the right decisions, especially the moment you become aware of how you feel about something. The conclusion will come after you truly felt your feelings about something. Feelings are the key to making the right decisions that are in alignment with our heart, our soul, our body, our vagina. When we started to attentively listen to what we feel and then act in alignment with that, then we show the highest form of integrity towards ourselves and ultimately towards others.

For starters, become fully aware of what love addiction is. Make sure to listen to this show from the very first episode on as I am building up over different episodes. We want to wholeheartedly see where we are at in all of this and start breaking that denial. I created a model in my membership area that will help you to reflect on that, to reflect on your behavior, to things you tolerate, the things you do that makes you lose your integrity towards yourself. You can sign up for a membership at AleahAva.com and click on Membership and you’ll get that first model for free. It will help you to get out of denial and wishful thinking into reality and you’ll see where you might be deluding yourself.

The ability to perceive our emotions and thoughts from moment to moment is key to understanding ourselves better. Click To Tweet

The good thing is the moment we see that we can do something about it – you are a winner already. We only lack awareness because we’re not there, because we are running from one thing to another, because we’re not in our body and because we are used to repressing our feelings instead of feeling them fully. The ability to perceive our emotions and thoughts from moment to moment is key to understanding ourselves better.

It will also help us to proactively work with our thoughts, emotions and behaviors. It will allow us to respond more consciously rather than react unconsciously. Besides, when we are in our body, life experiences are so much more interesting. You feel more alive. Everything is more colorful. There is more laughing, more magic. Feelings bring in all the magic to life. If we repress what we label as negative feelings, that repression will also keep our good feelings at bay. The more you feel the difficult feelings, the more you also feel the positive ones. We are adopting a new belief that could go something like, “I refuse to blame others for my problems. I refuse to try changing my partner but I am all in for changing myself so I can get strong enough to follow through with the choices I’d like to make for myself and create a life I love.” Besides, knowing that you are in denial about many things when it comes to love, you must assume that you are. Only in this way we can start lifting denial.

Awareness is key number one to overcome love addiction. Awareness needs space, so empty yourself. Check in with yourself more. Choose to take a bath with candles instead of watching a romantic movie for the millions of time and then tune into your body again and again. Think about becoming part of our member area where you will be working directly with me and so many other amazing women who are on the same path, women who want to overcome love addiction. Women who want to support each other. Who wants to feel instead of acting out and who made a commitment to themselves to choose themselves first! I know you have 1,001 things to choose from every day and that you took the time to read this post is simply amazing. I’m very grateful, thank you! See you in the next episode!

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If you want more on getting the best out of your life and relationships, check out our new brand The Royal Path where you find everything about personal growth, deep healing and emotional liberation.

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Important Links:

• Addicted to Love Podcast on iTunes
• Get our 30 days no contact survival guide here
• Our Retreats
• The Royal Path
• Free ebook How to heal for good with 0% spiritual bypassing