I work with women to help them overcome guilt, shame and anger, the three main obstructions to self-love and a healthy self-esteem. I have the opportunity to have virtually the same conversation over and over but with many different women. It always includes regret about sacrificing her needs and desires to please everyone around her.
Often, women sacrifice their dreams, desires, and needs making themselves pleasers in order to earn the love that we crave. I hear how they want to be in a relationship without losing herself. Yet at the same time, they find themselves falling right back into the earning love rut, when they get involved again.
Women cognitively KNOW what they are doing when they begin to rearrange their life in order to be with the man in her life, she begins losing touch with her girlfriends, and even begins to neglect activities in her life that she values, to spend more time with him. I have even seen very intelligent business women neglect their own businesses and financial security in the name of being loved.
I have observed many women same situation more than once. Knowing full well what they were doing, yet feeling compelled to do it and not knowing what else to do.
So I had to ask WHY. Why DO women knowingly sacrifice their own desires, dreams, careers, businesses and even their children to EARN the love of a man?
There is an answer but it’s not quick or short. First you must realize that your actions are based on energy, your subconscious mind, and even history.
First, women are compelled to sacrifice so much to earn the love of a man because we live on a planet that has convinced women– and men, for the past two millennia, that women are innately inadequate and a disappointment.
Secondly, you must understand that as humans, we are energetic beings living in an energetic world. The energy around us is known by physicists as the “field” or the “morphic field”. This field is filled with the long-held belief systems of humanity. As energetic beings, we are naturally plugged into this field of belief systems. Carl Jung referred to this field as the “Collective Unconscious”.
Within this energetic are the the stories and characters that the majority of individuals resonate with.
The key word in this definition is unconscious! Between 90 and 98% of all of our actions are based on our unconscious beliefs and perceived needs. For example, you may consciously decide that you want to maintain your wholeness in relationship without sacrificing yourself, yet in the situations you still feel compelled to do what you have always done, just by force of your subconscious mind. Emotion ALWAYS wins out over logic. Logically you want to show up differently within a relationship, but emotionally you fear not being loved. This is why smart women do “stupid” things…actually why smart people do stupid things.
We are all unconsciously tied into particular character types. There are many, many character types and that is another article all together. At this time our focus are on the most prevalent types that can affect every aspect of our lives. There are the two MAIN female types that have been with us since biblical times. They are the Virgin and the Prostitute. Mother Mary is the blessed virgin to give birth to Jesus. Most women, because they, more than likely, want to be mothers themselves rarely identify with the virgin. She is an impossibility for women. An ideal set up to be completely out of reach. However, the prostitute is commonly identified with for most women. Now, I’m not saying that women commonly trade sexual favors for monetary payment. Just stay with me here.
If we look way back into history during biblical times, in patriarchal societies (we are still a patriarchal society) women needed men for survival. If a woman did not have a husband she was left homeless and hungry. Should she become widowed she was required to live with a sister and her husband or a daughter’s husband. If there was no one to take care of her she was sure to die…of starvation, as a result of rape, and/or being exposed to the elements.
So out of desperation women became prostitutes for their survival.
The Prostitute Archetype represents the energy of sacrifice (doing something you would rather not do, giving up a part of yourself or beliefs) for survival. In today’s standards survival may represent a financial standard of living. It also represents being love, accepted and approved of by a man. (This goes deeper into women being created as an afterthought and man being created in the image of God—which too, is another article.) Bottom line is, innately many, even most women has a core belief that she needs a man to survive or to be happy and worthy, although, that is not true in today’s society.
What we are tuned into unconsciously and energetically is supported by television shows, commercials, music and music videos, magazine articles and advertising continually portraying women as either the virgin or the prostitute. I challenge you to pay attention to everything you see and hear and notice how it ties into a woman’s inadequacy.
Our teen girls and boys are learning how to BE women, how to treat women, and how to be treated as women from the energetics of society and the supporting media. Is it any wonder why we have younger and younger girls with eating disorders? Younger and younger girls are dressing provocatively to be loved and accepted by boys. Dating violence is more and more prevalent. Yes, they see it every day, but they are also tuned into the energy that programs girls and boys to believe that being female makes her innately inadequate.
Do you know what unconscious beliefs are driving you today?
What ever your beliefs may be they can be released and transformed rapidly with Emotional Freedom technique and hypnosis.
