By Dr. Marta Adelsman
Life Coach in Communication and Consciousness
www.DrMartaCoach.com
(August 23, 2017)
Have you ever felt miffed at someone because he or she hadn’t contacted you in a while? The ego goes into drama with the thought, “My son (or brother, daughter, mother, friend) should get in touch with me more often!”
It’s the ego that sets us up for unhappiness with thoughts about what someone ought to do. When others don’t meet our expectations, we indulge feelings of loneliness, sadness, resentfulness, or anger. We feel abandoned. The mind makes up stuff: “He’s mad at me… considers me unimportant… is shunning me,” etc. We may think vengeful thoughts about how we’ll shun him in return.
If we want to connect with someone and then feel dismissed because she doesn’t contact us, we have made her responsible for our resentment. What’s really going on here? If we look closely, we see…
When we accuse others of dismissing us through their lack of contact,
we really dismiss ourselves. When this becomes clear, it’s easier to make the choice
to meet our own need.
How? Rather than waiting for someone to call, we can pick up the phone: “I’m calling you because I haven’t talked with you for a while and I miss you.” Resist the temptation to make the person wrong for not contacting you. If you want to know, ask if she is mad at you or considers you unimportant. When you ask for the truth, your mind doesn’t need to go into that story any more. You have exited the drama.
When we stop dismissing ourselves, waiting for someone else to make us feel important, we step into our own importance. In taking responsibility to meet our own need for connection, we deny the ego its source of food – our drama.
When we send the ego away hungry, we weaken its hold on us.